January 12 - February 10, 2001
Ron Laboray
Mapping Pop
Ron Laboray’s paintings map popular culture, and its effect on place. Mass media contributes to a large degree how we define a location. Hollywood, Gotham, and Metropolis may exist in reality (check with Rand McNally) but they loom larger in our cultural mythology. The relationships that emerge depict the geography of our culture and it dependence on media for definition.
Mary Anna Pomonis, an artist and writer living in Los Angeles, writes: What then do I make of Ron Laboray’s work? It seems to be not just painting but American painting in its methodical apprehension of commonality. All of the map paintings depict places that are separate but connected by their names and pools of color. The color assignments are based on cartoon characters such as Lisa Simpson and Batman, popular and understood instantly as commercial identities. The colors as well as the names are coded to evoke everyone and everywhere. Without any knowledge of the choice of materials or location I am left with the feeling of both everywhere and nowhere because the maps are obliterated with sameness and minute difference. The paint, no matter how objectively controlled by the artist through a jig, bursts out and forms specific microenvironments. What is understood as American here is not only banal, but private and particular."
 plastic on alumilite, 16" x 23" 13 Barts in Ohio #2, 2000
 Batman Superman Team-up, Little by Little, #3, 2000
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