DEM PASSWORDS

Contrasting the delicate line work and cartoony figures he is known for, this latest peek into Rege's universe has yielded larger dark, abstract works painted with enamel on wood panels. In the breathing space that follows the kind of frantic outflow of ideas that was The Cartoon Utopia, Rege has slowed down to focus on a loose and transcendent style in paintings that serve as snapshots of some unknown vibrational field. Like trying to draw a flame or an ocean wave, these latest works aim to grab some sort of frozen close up of the shimmering effluvia - of the flowing dark matter, the invisible ether of quintessence that surrounds us always, unseen.

"Ron Rege, Jr., is a very unusual, yet accomplished story teller whose work exudes a passionate moral idealistic core that sets him apart from his peers. His new book The Cartoon Utopia, a unique work of comic art focusing on magical, alchemical, ancient ideas and mystery schools is part sic-fi, part philosophy, part visual poetry and part social manifesto. Rege's work exudes psychedelia, outsider rawness and pure cartoonish joy" - Abraxas Journal

Originally from Plymouth, Massachusetts, Ron Rege, Jr., began publishing his own minicomics in 1988. He has since published work with Highwater Books, Fantagraphics, Buenaventura Press, McSweeney's, and Drawn & Quarterly. An active and accomplished musician, Rege writes and performs music as a solo artist and plays drums with Los Angeles-based band Lavender Diamond.

Ian Flynn has shown work at galleries including Cooper Cole in Toronto, The Arm in New York City and exhibited as part of group shows at the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore (curated by Matt Groening and Gary Panter), Mutant Pop by Loyal Gallery in Stockholm and Scared Straight at Perugi Artecontemporanea in Padova, Italy.

In this exhibition of his works on paper, canvas and word processed writings, Perry plays both the prayer and the punisher through fast ink dispatches that contrast more elaborated paintings. Each work carries with it a unique psychic weight supported in part by Perry's legacy as the creative fount that nourished Bob Marley, among so many artists, and by his seemingly inexhaustible capacity for evolutionary abstraction.

Lee Scratch Perry was born in Jamaica in 1936. He lives and works in Switzerland.

Pearlman's paintings, music and video capture that possibility of excitement from a seemingly ordered zone but really it's the guffaw she cherishes - it's the spontaneous outburst of dance she's after. Romance too. And her works deliver that punch with an exaggerated beauty that bleeds from her canvases and paper into her video and songwriting. Her paintings merge with her digitally rendered video landscapes serving to unite her figures and the viewer on the dance floor in search of an "intense freedom" and sporting a flared hem.

Annie Pearlman lives and works in New York and has shown at galleries including Tomato House and Malraux's Place.

In this, his first solo showing of artworks, Reynolds defines in part, a "colonial contaminated mindstate" through "degenerate realizations" that introduce his characters to their boundaries like the game master of an RPG. His digital dysmorphia emerges out of his after hours legacy and the music contained therein and into his spiral bound dream journals plumbed for work arranged here mostly the way it exists in its natural environment - tacked to his bedroom walls.

In his Starbucks series of drawings, shown here as framed 24'' x 33'' ink-jet prints of the 8.5'' x 11'' originals, Reynolds launches his assault on the banality of the iPhone era with the acrid stench of roasting coffee beans at his back; a stench matched only by the stink of desperation in his subjects, dutifully observed and cataloged through his uniquely illustrative style of surrealist portraiture. His dynamic range in these drawings extends from flat, 2-D emptiness approaching the simplicity of a smiley face to pointillistic, almost Crumby elements. And the tonal range of the unfolding narrative extends from generally harmless and subtle sex obsession to full clowning, in both the metaphorical and literal senses.

Reynolds' spirit is pointed but the fetishizations contained in "San Fernando Valley Heady" seem more for the purpose of defining his own private universe than improving on ours. He's been emboldened to this state.

"Mucoid Plaque," a term coined by naturopath Richard Anderson to describe an elusive fibrous shit rope alleged to cling to the inside of the human gastrointestinal tract and removable only through colonic cleansing, is Maher's outward reference to "artists unloading psychic garbage onto their audience" and inwardly to a sort of revitalizing and cleansing of his own spirit. The idea of psychic garbage, however, is useful in relation to Maher's work too if you acknowledge that his knack as an artist is for finding transcendent tones in materials that may otherwise be in the recycling bin.

In this exhibition, Maher is also recycling his own degraded work with a ribbon of water damaged pages of an old photocopy zine running along the floor of the gallery's west facing wall underlining framed works dating back to 2007, content previously featured in French graphics journal Nazi Knife. In contrast, along the east facing wall of the gallery, prints and original versions of his latest works alternate back and forth in a way that evokes a waveform, an allusion to the "rotten-ambient" music that is his hallmark.

Hundreds of delicately arranged tiny strips of cut paper with rounded and serrated edges are layered on top of each other like brushstrokes of paint; the paint pallet here being Fangoria(?) magazines, mail order catalogs and old paperback book covers, among other printed materials, culled more often for color than content. The content, however, is key and never too far from the instantly identifiable Maher aesthetic: halloween motifs, rubber stamps, spiderwebs, mildew, missing person mugshots. He's more of a jock than a nerd. His work has teeth. It's oozing. This is collage work closer to black mold than Black Dice.

The opening reception will include a music performance by Pat Maher to begin promptly at 9 PM.

From 1972 to '76 Jaffe traveled with and contributed to the energy of the Reggae music explosion led by Bob Marley and company. What remains is their spirit embedded in images rich in modern celebratory energy, ordered by Jaffe's rural topophilia, but more exotic for their rawness. Peter Tosh rides a donkey. Bob and Peter hang out by a window in a long-take video. Peter poses in a red clay ganja field. These are young men in touch with a dangerous energy that at the time these images were captured was only beginning to manifest.

The 1974 international breakthrough of "Natty Dread" crystallized their contemporary impact, fertilizing the marketplace for Tosh's solo output and the advancement of their revolutionary politics.

Jaffe's collection captures Peter Tosh in the spring of '76 just months before the release of his now classic debut solo album "Legalize It," 11 years before his assassination.

"...The divine spirit that we was born and raised with, it teaches us to multiply nothing with nothing and get something. Zero with zero and get one." - Peter Tosh

What follows is a condensed interview with Lee Jaffe conducted on August 23rd, 2012.

"Peter, he had such a militant air about him. And at the same time you could be at his place and he'd roll you a spliff and say, 'here mon, a nice draw of herb.' He had this incredibly generous heart, which became apparent once he accepted that you were on the side of the 'sufferers' and you were a part of the struggle.

Bob, Peter and Bunny at that time were so focused on the work and the necessity, the message in the music and the importance of it-- how it could be impactful. It was 24/7. It didn't really let up. Even the fun parts of it. And they could be really funny through difficult times--humor making difficult times sweeter. No matter how hard things were, you know, you were in Jamaica, you could find a good spliff and drink a coconut, so there was that part of it. Never taking that for granted.

Peter was living in Spanish town and we were all into recording the 'Legalize it' album. The song had been recorded, we had done most of the overdubs, I think we had done just about everything except mixing and we were working on a deal with Columbia, but it was in the air and to me... in the US at that time, nobody grew herb. It didn't exist and nobody knew what it looked like. Herb was something that came in bricks or something like that. So the first time I saw an herb field was with Bob because I used to go to the country with him all the time. I used to love to go to this little village where he was born, Nine Mile it's called. So one time we went there and it's in the mountains and we took this hike and you go down in this valley and you go up the mountain and down another valley and up the mountain, like a half hour. We were on top of this valley and I look down and it's glowing this iridescent green and it was this whole valley of herb. It was the first time I ever saw that. It was so mystical.

'Legalize It' ...it has so many meanings. First it's about herb and herb is about everyday existence. And to have it illegal means you're illegal all the time. It means you're always outside the law if you're a Rasta. And the Rasta's were at the vanguard of changing the culture, of changing the mentality of slavery, of deconstructing neocolonialism. And it's why the music and lyrics are still resonating today. Because those problems still exist. It's not just about legalizing herb. Once the herb is criminalized then your whole existence is criminalized. Your whole way of life. It's a way of trying to kill your inspiration. It's saying this incredibly potent medicine, you can't use that. And that's the weapon we use to fight the guns."

Lee Jaffe was born in 1950 in The Bronx, NY. His work has been exhibited internationally at museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden and The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin Ireland. His collaborative legacy includes works with venerable artists including Vito Acconci, Gordon Matta-Clark, Helio Oiticica and Jean-Michel Basquiat.