"Crying Uncle..."

...Continued

Cole�s strategy, it seems, figures that in order for one to counter patriotic fervor one must replace the �recognizable� slogan with the �idiosyncratic�. In this exhibit there are four large works titled; �Hemorrhaging Billions�, �Chilly 1973�, 100 Years of Mistakes� and �True Value� The connotations in these titles states Cole ��reflect my interest in developing my own personal style of drawing to reflect the world I live in. Part of this world, I find, involves being inundated with sound bites. I�m trying to see these sound bites as absurd pieces of language. Ideally I could re-write language through art, giving it a richer context for re-interpretation.� Throughout all of the drawing are ever-present showers of tear drops, black, green, pink and blue, suggesting an ambient sorrow tinged with a schematic reference possibly, to blood, oil or rain. These drops fit in and around various drawing elements and oddly molded clear plastic packaging from discarded consumer products. These lend the drawings a unique dimension, isolating drawing elements or objects within an articulated form and functioning almost as a tangible palimpsest of daily life.

"Hemorrhaging Billions" was a sound bite about the airline industry shortly after 9-11."In much of my recent work I've used cancelled checks as a collage element. I like how they document time and the daily life of an individual; they also seem to reflect for me a kind of personal struggle to survive! In this work I've used checks that were dated on both September 11 and February 26. These were dates of the second and first times that the World Trade Center was attacked. For me these events hold a personal meaning. My wife Vicky survived the first attack, as a Port Authority employee working on the 54th floor in 1993 and in 2001 my fireman friend, Eric Allen, was killed in the second attack." In this respect the language that imbues this sound bite becomes more of an expression of personal loss rather than defining a larger economic issue.

"Chilly1973" refers to the deadly military coup in which Augusto Pinochet ousted democratically elected Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. "I've deliberately misspelled the country's name to compound the confusion that so often occurs as we associate words with events and begin to give meaning to things. A study of events in Chile from the late 60's through the seventies and beyond reveals extreme clashes of ideologies involving American mining industries, CIA involvement and various struggles within the political spectrum of Chilean society itself. It is my contention that each constituency has their own belief structure, often tainted in part by some form of myth. This clash of "mis-information" all to often has "chilly" or chilling results and this drawing alerts us to this phenomenon and the potential birth of a new myth as one can't help to connect in ones mind the dates 9-11-1973 and 9-11-2001."

"100 Years of Mistakes" refers to a sound bite that I've taken out of context and has come to suggest for me instead a period in American history that begins with the rise of corporations; in particular John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. His reign was brutish and cunning and still stands as a model for much corporate and political behavior."

"True Value" is for me a loaded phrase and probably the most appropriate or accessible one in terms of reflecting the theme of this series': "Crying Uncle�replacing political fervor with poetic flavor". We each have our own "true values" yet America as a whole tends to run Christian and there is much semantic and cultural dialogue today that struggles with this particular faith and it's underpinnings in our laws and nationalism. I've attempted to almost deflate the issue only slightly by writing the phrase stylistically as the True Value products logo, only to suggest the ubiquity of such phrases and how "ordinary" they can become." From the megaphone in this drawing are spewed what appear to be real pieces of the cross. At the opposite end is a handgun, which has fired a bullet that ricochets off the debris only to find its mark at the source of the voice behind the megaphone, a person who has deftly caught the bullet in his teeth.