Toys and Toons

(Rahway, NJ)            Arts Guild New Jersey presents TOYS & TOONS, an exhibition featuring seventeen artists creating artworks based either on toys, cartoon and comic characters or created in cartoon styles. The show will be held at 1670 Irving Street, in downtown Rahway, New Jersey. The exhibition opens with a free, public reception on Sunday, October 14, 1:00-4:00 PM, and runs through November 8, 2012. Gallery hours are Saturdays and Sundays, 1:00-4:00 PM, and during regular office hours on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM.  The exhibition is wheelchair accessible. A four color exhibit catalog is available for $15.00.

 Exhibiting artists include: Aric Calfee, Fred Cole, Sarah Chambers, Kevin Darmanie, Dan Fenelon, Daniel Genova, Dawn Gilmore, Mary Gorgy, Susan Evans Grove, Abby Levine, Barbara Lubliner, Jack Moore, Tom Nussbaum, Rocco Scary, D. Jack Solomon, Fran Beallor and Howard Lerner.

When we reach adult age the things of childhood are often left behind, yet many people hold on to the best of their early years through their life. As children most of us delighted in the holiday gifts of toys, and as ‘grown ups’ we can remember well the fun we had playing with those treasures. A train set, a favorite doll, an action figure or perhaps a game to occupy us with our friends. The artists selected to exhibit in TOYS AND TOONS are not focused on the nostalgic aspects of either cartoons/comics or toys. They are creating  insightful, imaginative and often very humorous artworks using elements from popular culture that have become an increasingly significant part of the contemporary visual landscape.

Pop Art in the 60s used many of these elements as the hallmark of a style that commented on contemporary culture. Artists since then have often employed cartoon imagery or cartoon styling in the creation of ‘fine art’. Modern sculpture since the mobiles and stabiles of Alexander Calder have often had an element harkening back to the joys of childhood and the playful imaginations that allowed us to become so preoccupied with our toys, games and comic heroes. What child didn’t want to fly like Superman? Or swing from the buildings like Spiderman? How many hours were we absorbed in creating exciting fantasies or playing a favorite board game with neighborhood friends?

Most children growing up in the fifties and sixties flocked to their TVs each day to watch the many, many cartoon shows and the latest adventures of their favorite cartoon characters….and there were many. Comic books, likewise, long considered to be for kids only, have a huge audience of teens and adults who follow their heroes through the years.

Today, toys are associated and marketed with every new movie that comes to our theaters……, and each year there is a mad scramble to get the most popular toys of the season for the children. Movies also have found a new subject matter long associated with children, but apparently fondly followed by millions of adults as well. The current spate of high-tech ‘super hero movies’ and animated films have been enormously popular and each movie in the genre is eagerly awaited by children and adults alike around the world. All through the TOYS & TOONS exhibit visitors will bear witness to the delight we still find in imagination, playing and make-believe today.

Dan Fenelon is painting cartoon-like images that in many ways refer to the pictograms of the ancient Mayans as well as to the characters of modern animations. Aric Calfee has found a way to bring together influences from the extremism of Hieronymus Bosch, to Keith Haring to Kenny Scharf in images of tubular bio-morphed forms with many mouths and eyes that would make the older Dada and Surrealist artists take note.  

Barbara Lubliner has created a series of geometric forms from plastic bottles that look like elements from some cosmic board game. The amazing figurative sculpture of Tom Nussbaum in their simplified forms and subtly nuanced gestures seem to be icons of isolation in a world of their own  and resonating with a deep sense of irony, melancholy humor like  powerful beacons of the human condition.

Daniel Genova is represented by watercolors of jousting knights tilting within the arena of a toy tambourine, a monster figure, huge in feeling but no taller than a simple glass of water and several pictures of super heroes overshadowed by common household items. Howard Lerner has created a magnificent assemblage of wood and odds and ends modeled on the shooting galleries we saw in theme parks or jersey shore arcades. Fran Beallor’s meticulous smaller paintings show a jumble of toy figures floating or falling through the air.

If you have children of your own or if you have great memories of games, comics and toys from your childhood, the TOYS & TOONS exhibit at Arts Guild NJ is a must-see show.