Pop art seems a little deflated. A movement that once used everyday objects to interrogate capitalism has mutated into a shiny kaiju of commerce, stomping all over its rebellious roots.
Which makes "Circles & Squares," a two-person show of post-pop paintings by Jack Kenna and Miles Shelton at Hexum Gallery in Montpelier, so surprising. Kenna's intricate, brightly colored portraits of milk crates vibrate with energy. Shelton's minutely observed paintings of price stickers offer up the blurs, blobs and blunders that personalize the mechanical, ordinary and brutal act of declaring worth. Both artists embrace solid technique and a subtle hand to illuminate unseen aspects of the workaday grocery store.
It isn't just Hexum's occasional club-beat soundtrack that makes Kenna's milk crates — normally rigid — seem like they're dancing. By warping the objects' planes, the painter animates them. He gives them strong personalities, enhanced by his spot-on use of color. The dull brick orange of "Wawa (Orange on Yellow)" and bright, preschool blue of "Readington Farms (Blue on Blue)" are the exact shades lodged somewhere in memory. Kenna's skillful use of light and shadow render them solidly, even as the skewed perspective contradicts that verisimilitude.
In "Dairyland (Yellow on Red)," a restricted palette of yellow, red and green, augmented by thin green outlines, makes the picture vibrate. In "Hood (Black on Black)," the painter interrupts his near-monochromatic palette with neon-pink outlines that signal this crate is having an awesome night out.
Shelton's palette is likewise arrestingly bright, but he wields it in an altogether different way. His subject is price stickers — usually fluorescent, sometimes smudged or torn, layered on top of each other or given room to shine.
Anyone who has ever used a price gun has experienced that moment when the stickers misfeed or misprint. These errors are at the heart of many of Shelton's works. He painstakingly reproduces faded numbers and blurred words, using a range of acrylics from runny, transparent strokes to bold, glossy black.
It may seem strange to call Shelton's neon colors and eye-catching sticker shapes subtle, but his technique is very much that. In "99% Organic," for instance, color shifts infinitesimally from the barely seen edge of one price tag to the one that covers it. There is very little depth here but just enough to tell the eye exactly what's going on.
Many of the works feature the round, handwriting-font "special" price tags used on day-old bread or other products a grocer is eager to move, and many look as though they got stuck in the printer. The resulting bendy, trippy numerals pair well with Kenna's psychedelic crates.
Hexum gallerist John Zaso's instinct to pair these artists was a good one, as each painter's work contrasts with but primarily adds to the strength of the other. Kenna's milk crates, with their overlapping open grids, are the stuff of first-year drawing students' still-life nightmares, yet he embraces their nooks and crannies with evident delight.
Shelton's subjects, on the other hand, seem as though they wouldn't be of much visual interest — they are bold, flat, straightforward. Yet they are carefully, clearly observed for the tiny details that make them real. That care is one of pop art's best qualities: the ability to point at something forgettable and make the viewer look at it anew.
Both artists demonstrate tremendous patience and skill with their chosen subject matter, which is par for the course at Hexum; over the gallery's inaugural year, Zaso has often presented subversive or provocative work that's nonetheless neat as a pin.
"I'm drawn, as a collector, to meticulous artwork," he explained.
In addition to its formal qualities, this work nods toward storytelling. Kenna's crates have been places, from Wawa (Pennsylvania's beloved convenience store chain) to Upstate Farms. Shelton uses titles to add occasional narrative, such as "This Week's Tuna Melt Special on Wheat" or "Girl Scout Cookie Flavored Deodorants." One canvas features three labels: "Buy," "Ripe Now!" and "$19.98" and is aptly titled "Smellovision."
Beyond these tidbits, it's tempting to look for deeper meanings in the artists' work, but that is hard to find. Shelton's "Wholesale Lamb Ain't What It Used to Be" seems like it should say something about the current moment: It presents the viewer with prices ranging from "2/$5.00" to "$299.99" and a large green sticker labeling the canvas "HALAL."
Likewise, many of Kenna's crates proclaim warnings such as "Misuse Punishable by Law," which could be a comment on the current climate of hostility, or power of ownership versus creative reuse. A milk crate is one of the few objects disposable enough not to be missed but of great practical value.
Thinking along these lines falls apart pretty quickly, however; any deeper meaning viewers see here is likely their own.
Pop art mixes up what matters with what's cheap and points out what's banal but expensive. That is done to great effect here. Prices are just numbers, and price is the only thing that matters. A crate holds things, but here the object holds its own. What you see is what you get: It's all just circles and squares.