Hammer Observes Richard Hawkins’ Universe

The faces may be very familiar—Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Slash…but it’s the context that’s different.

Since 1991, Richard Hawkins’ collage work has offered voyeuristic, teen idol-worship glimpses of effeminate, exotic-looking males—mostly of mixed race and/or non-Caucasian and often androgynous. Richard Hawkins: Third Mind, now at the through May 22, recaps a career now 20 years in the making.

Organized by Lisa Dorin, associate curator of contemporary art at The Art Institute of Chicago, and subsidized by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Third Mind is packed with approximately 60 works that includes collages, books, drawings, paintings, and sculptures. 

A reference to the title of co-author William Burroughs’ 1978 book, The Third Mind equates its collage with the literary collage and deconstruction of narrative structure that was the Burroughs book. Indeed, the collages on display are jarring and take close investigation to parse through.

One of the best pieces hits the viewer right at the beginning of the show. Borrowing its name from the famed Japanese mystery author, Edogawa Rampol #2 (2010) is the most evocative of two collages sharing the same title. The second of the pair effectively overlaying photo bubbles of a Japanese pin-up boy, whose soft looks blends the genders, over black-and-white pen-and-ink renditions of a ramshackle interior with wooden beams, cracked windows, and dashes of white acrylic paint serving as hasty highlights on a chandelier.

Depp and Reeves are obsessed over in collage pieces from 1995 and 2000. Another object of Hawkins’ idol worship is Slash. The iconic Guns ‘N’ Roses lead guitarist, often shirtless with his trademark Cousin It hive of long-and-flowing curls, is front and center in Every Mother's Nightmare, a work authored in 1991, the year when the GNR phenomenon had peaked with the blockbuster release of the twin Use Your Illusion albums…in other words, at the height of Slash’s popularity and notoriety. Another Slash-centric piece from 1992 pairs school folders and sketchbooks with a book on Nietzsche.

In addition to Slash, ultimate androgynous android singer David Bowie gets the Hawkins treatment, as does Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde (Captive, Blue, 1993), his long feathered hair flowing in vintage images, solos away on his guitar in classic phallic poses so cliché to hard rock fans. Onto a number of his pieces, Hawkins clips handwritten notes with words repeated like a masochist's mantras: "Suffering..." "Jealousy..." "Pain..." 

From swaggering metal gods, the Hawkins show segues to statuesque Greek gods, as ancient Greek and Roman sculpture become the focus of 2009's Urbis Paganus series.

The outright weirdest and most jolting images are a 1997 series of ink-jet prints featuring decapitated heads under the horror-show title Disembodied Zombie.

Aesthetically a mixed bag, Hawkins’ art may not always look pretty to the eye, but it frequently begs closer investigation, and, as shock value loses its value with each passing day, engagement is the best any artist can hope for these days.

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