SAN FRANCISCO
Daniel Healey: “Sorry Entertainer”
at The McLoughlin Gallery
Daniel Johnston’s indie song “Sorry Enter- tainer” (1983) offers a heartfelt, twangy lament on the failings of life, accompanied by what sounds like an instrument fashioned from a cigar box and rubber bands. One lis- tener on YouTube, commented, “you can hear how much he influenced Kurt Cobain.” Oakland-based artist Daniel Healey titled his recent exhibition after Johnston’s song, and one can see how the somewhat makeshift, DIY aesthetic filters into both works. Where Healey’s path diverges quickly from the singer’s is in the result—with rough edges and humble beginnings swept under a metaphorical carpet, the recent exhibition of work at the McLoughlin Gallery presented
a formally elegant display, yet one with an undercurrent of subversive intent.
Healey presented an assortment of small and mid-sized works on canvas. If one did not know the medium—scotch tape transfer— one might be hard-pressed to guess how these surfaces were created. Using ink lifted from appropriated photographs, the imagery is fractured and obliterated, small snippets and shreds of patterns, fields of color set up rhythms and energies. In defense if language is a richly-hued, vibrant composition in which magentas and blues intermingle with cream and rust. A rosy shape suggesting a bird trails off into a dark violet, tail-like form; patches of lavender, sky-blue, cyan, and red intertwine. When viewed up close, solitary elements come into focus—a circle, parallel lines, polka dots—but objects still elude recognition. Pas- sages of collaged material present a surprising flow, almost mimicking the fluidity of paint. Another large-scale work, Picture, Itch has a subdued palette of earth tones. Woven, tan areas suggest deconstructed

baskets, dark rectangular shapes may be parts of windows, or doors. Rooted in Cubism, an image appears—a piece of basket, or unidentifiable striped or spotted pattern—only to reappear from another angle, flipped sideways or upside down.
As shifting planes of vision twist and mesh in partially transparent layers, depth is also created—along with a swirling, hallucinatory effect. Minor Histories has a distinctly urban feel, a vortex of angular shapes with jutting edges which suggest skyscrapers, windows, walls, floors and other architectural elements. Roughly rectangular, butter-yellow shapes could be either sofas or bars of soap.
With layers of tape that mimic varnish, and
a glossy, inviting look, one might misread the work as slick. Investigation into Healey’s media and process, however, reveals their questioning of underlying assumptions about painting, and provides a gritty underpinning to the shiny surfaces.
—BARBARA MORRIS