Mark Gonzales
Shopping

December 4 – 31, 2003


Andrew Roth is pleased to announce the opening of “Shopping.”

Mark Gonzales, the renowned 35-year-old skateboard artist from the West Coast is an equally accomplished fashion designer, painter, poet, and bookmaker. “Shopping” will present a sampling of Gonzales’s output. Included will be a selection from his new fashion line out of Japan: Gonzo Cuntry; a group of limited-edition skateboards, T-shirts, and decals from his San Francisco based company: Krooked Skateboarding; handmade poetry books; drawings on paper; and wallpaper-drawings.

This is Gonzales’s first solo exhibition in New York. He has spent the last six months traveling between London, Paris, Rome, and Tokyo, living and working out of hotel rooms, preparing for the upcoming exhibition. One unifying characteristic in all of Gonzales’s work is a playful interaction between word and image. Essentially a visual poet, Gonzales phonetically constructs words and marries them to accompanying visual elements. For example, his Gonzo Cuntry jeans have graffiti-like poems streaming down bell-bottomed pant legs, white marker on black cloth: TRIED TELLIN MY BOSS/MY GANG COMES FIRST. One skateboard reads: to be a poet/ you must strive/ to be a poet/has spair time to make a fool/of himself. And a poem/list reads: Donald/Judd/Larry/Pitman/Joan Michaul/Stanly/Coubrick/Mike Mills/David/Sims/Larry Clark/Degas/Maggrit/Matise/Maro/Mandrian/Natalia/Gontcha Rova/Jasper Jonze. And lastly, Gonzales on skateboarding: FREEDOM/OF SPEECH/SHIT WATCH/ME SKATEBOARD/DON’T HAVE TO/SAY NUTHING/TO LET UM/KNOW HOW I FEEL/ALOGANT/RUFF/GENTAL/LOUD/ WHAT EVER THE/TROUBLE WITH/SKATEBOARDING/IS/I CAN’T MEET THE/DEMAND/OF/MY CONSUMMERS.