“Pony Glass” (1998) drops us in the thick of the retro-pomo era. Where the Pop Art aligned films of Jeff Keen responded to contemporary pulp inputs and info overload, Lewis Klahr’s film languidly oozes nostalgia for mid-century America. Collaging cut-out images from glossy magazines, mail-order catalogues and comic books, Klahr is attentive to the contrasting grain of the archival materials he’s recycling (there’s also an occasional dried leaf intruding an incongruous real-world feel). Characters talk through speech bubbles, but the text mostly consists of meaningless swatches of print ripped from books or newspapers. Sound-tracked by Sinatra or pre-WW2 ballads, the mood of this three-act piece is romantic and wistful, yet prone to irruptions of pure porn: watch out for erections poking out at unexpected moments, for the cheeky female finger probing a male rectum.
If you dig “Pony Glass’, check out Klahr’s earlier “Altair,” constructed largely from images taken from 1940s issues of Cosmopolitan. “When I first started doing this, in my late twenties, I was really trying to bring my childhood back,” Klahr told BlouinArtInfo. “I wanted the world to look like that again. As I aged, and as I grew as an artist... it was more about memory.... It’s a place I like hanging out.”
“Pony Glass” (1998) drops us in the thick of the retro-pomo era. Where the Pop Art aligned films of Jeff Keen responded to contemporary pulp inputs and info overload, Lewis Klahr’s film languidly oozes nostalgia for mid-century America. Collaging cut-out images from glossy magazines, mail-order catalogues and comic books, Klahr is attentive to the contrasting grain of the archival materials he’s recycling (there’s also an occasional dried leaf intruding an incongruous real-world feel). Characters talk through speech bubbles, but the text mostly consists of meaningless swatches of print ripped from books or newspapers. Sound-tracked by Sinatra or pre-WW2 ballads, the mood of this three-act piece is romantic and wistful, yet prone to irruptions of pure porn: watch out for erections poking out at unexpected moments, for the cheeky female finger probing a male rectum.
If you dig “Pony Glass’, check out Klahr’s earlier “Altair,” constructed largely from images taken from 1940s issues of Cosmopolitan. “When I first started doing this, in my late twenties, I was really trying to bring my childhood back,” Klahr told BlouinArtInfo. “I wanted the world to look like that again. As I aged, and as I grew as an artist... it was more about memory.... It’s a place I like hanging out.”
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