faile
where wild won’t break
21 september 2013 - 22 december 2013
curated by adjunct curator pedro alonzo
Where Wild Wont Break, Faile’s first solo museum show, consists of a series of wood-based artworks. The installation blended a wide range of materials and techniques including wooden boxes, copper, relief paintings and T-shirts.
The artists developed new images for the exhibition based on the myth of Texas and the wild west. Exploring Dallas in a rented Dodge Charger, they drove through the city observing outdoor signs and advertising, visiting bookstores, junk shops and antique stores.
A selection of individual works was brought together to make a massive site-specific installation presenting a synthesis of their practice.
Faile’s imagery stirs the imagination and have cultivated popular admiration. Perhaps this is because their tableaus capture the essence of American society, producing meaning from the abundance of seemingly random imagery that surrounds us.
Faile saturated the space with their colorful iconic imagery. The exhibition featured prayer wheels, large double-sided paintings, small paintings and a monolithic tower in the center of the gallery.
Fresh images based on an exhaustive research were created and incorporated into a new body of works. Existing icons from earlier exhibitions were mixed and arranged in relation to the Western motifs.
The research resulted in a new landscape populated by cowboys, muscle cars, horses and Texan street scenes.
Each individual work is laid out on a square or rectangular grid and then combined to compose the overall painting. There is no central figure instead, a collection of competing narratives.
The installation as a whole is a visual assault of imagery, similar to the images that we are bombarded with on a daily basis. It is like standing in Times Square, where we sense everything around us cars, lights, people, advertising.
Faile’s work is intentionally accessible through their use of common references, figurative style and wide dissemination of their visual language through the Internet and placement in public space.