Artist Shawn Campbell is obsessed with the all-American icon of the cowboy. For his latest exhibition at The End Project Space he’s done a deep dive into how the cowboy is depicted in advertising, art works, movies and music and how that icon has become embedded into our national psyche.
It’s a fruitful study since there are few archetypes that so perfectly encapsulate an idealized vision of both masculinity (another subject area of intense interest for Campbell) and the American virtues of unshakeable fortitude and rugged individualism that the cowboy embodies.
For his current exhibition, the cryptically titled “Act IV: We Are What We Are Sold - Part 1 Primed,” University of Georgia MFA grad Campbell has created an eccentric curio box dedicated to a reconsideration of this American archetype.
Visitors walk through plywood saloon doors (look closely and you’ll see bullet holes that appear to have marred the wood) and enter into Campbell’s alternate reality.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
The floors are covered in curls of wood and sawdust that cushion every step and a hand-built pool table with the words “You’re Not From Around Here” — the kind of movie dialogue that precedes a barroom dust up — carved into its side. On a looping video screen embedded into the table are scenes from movies that emphasize the trope of barroom brawls in the cowboy film genre. There are clips from classic fisticuff scenes in films like “Road House” and “Urban Cowboy,” though I have some quibbles with Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” being included in this company.
An overhead speaker plays a litany of honky-tonk classics to further enhance Campbell’s immersive cowpoke experience. Both devices feature bright orange cords that bring a Home Depot DIY vibe into the project, as if to signal the hand of the artist in all of this stage craft.
On one wall an image “Presented By Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association” is hung purposefully cockeyed, as if to indicate Campbell’s questioning of its imagery (as well as bar fight collateral damage). The piece replicates “Custer’s Last Fight” painted in 1884 by Cassilly Adams and appropriated by beer company Anheuser-Busch for its Budweiser advertising campaign in saloons and barrooms across America. In Campbell’s hands, the work shows the inextricable links between advertising, American legend and the icon of the stoic tough-guy, whether Custer or John Wayne. On the opposite wall, Campbell presents a framed and flayed Marlboro box titled “Cowboy Killer,” in homage to how the brand’s association with the cowboy flipped when their cigarettes were given that morbid nickname. Though the deconstructed box’s text is missing, its iconography is unmistakable, proof of how deeply advertising is embedded in our psyche like some Jungian archetype.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
A barroom still life “Backdrop,” features a collection of empty beer bottles, some with soggy cigarettes snuffed out in their depths, littering a shelf. Names and initials have been hastily scratched into the shelf and wall for an additional verite honky-tonk touch in this frozen tableau of cowboy revelry.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Amping up the consumption-defined intertwining of the cowboy, masculinity and American life, a tiny “General Store” awaits outside the gallery space so that visitors can take home a little bit of that tough guy ethos. There are stickers, beer koozies, tote bags and T-shirts, the kind of tongue-in-cheek wink that typifies Campbell’s world view.
Campbell appears to delight in the process of creation more than anything. And, as usual, his execution in this solo show is precisely detailed.
Does Campbell forge new insights into the mystique of the cowboy? Sometimes. The strange links between beer and cigarette advertising, the cowboy mystique and the construction of American ideals are well observed. But if you’re giving points for the exquisite creation of an alternative reality, then Campbell is your guy.
VISUAL ART REVIEW
“Act IV: We Are What We Are Sold - Part 1 Primed”
Through April 29. Noon-4 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and by appointment. Free. The End Project Space, 1870 Murphy Ave. SW, Atlanta. instagram.com/the_end_project_space, acdrennen@gmail.com.
Bottom line: Atlanta artist Shawn Campbell has created an elaborate art installation that fugues on the American icon of the cowboy and makes some interesting observations about the intertwining of consumerism and mythmaking.
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