500-foot scroll serves as playground for dragons
By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic
| • | '2000 Dragons'
Don Ed Hardy 10 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 1-5 p.m. Sundays Through Jan. 31 Academy Art Center |
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Hardy, an internationally acclaimed painter and tattoo artist who has exhibited in museums worldwide, is also one of the few artists credited with taking the art of tattooing out of the parlors and into museums. Classically trained, he recently acquired an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Hardy's dragons morph and change on a 500-foot scroll. Miniscule and expansive, ferocious and good-natured, they breathe fire, drool blood, roll in the waves and fly through the mountaintops. The tension Hardy has created in composing this 51-inches-high scroll is not only with the varieties of dragons and their environs but also with the many different styles of painting he incorporates. Fine details in acrylic paint and colored pencil give way to broad brushstrokes and fields of solid color on archival synthetic paper.
A video showing Hardy painting "2000 Dragons" runs outside the exhibit space. It is worth viewing because it shows the limitations (primarily in the viewing plane) that Hardy worked with and his definitive way of painting.
The scroll premiered at Track 16 gallery in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2000 (the year of the dragon in the Asian zodiac) and represented the United States at the VII Cuenca Bienal in Ecuador in 2001. It has been exhibited in eight locations.
Laurie Steelink of Track 16 masterminded the initial installation. Although its length is a challenge, it weighs only 55 pounds. She designed high-tension grids of wires that connect to clips attached to the painting that give the scroll an additional serpentine dimension.
Hardy says it has changed
each time it has been exhibited. Each venue has to deal with the challenge of the length and the space of the room. At the Academy Art Center it was installed in numerous winding cul de sacs, each 25 feet long. Because of the presence of rolling but unremovable walls, it is attached in many sections rather than completely suspended.
This installation, although it may have been the only solution, is a bit of a disappointment. It gives a symmetrical, boxy appearance to the otherwise asymmetrically pleasing qualities inherent in the work. What should have been a roller- coaster ride through the dragons in Hardy's brain feels more like a maze-like line-up to get through Customs. Often, we cannot view the larger dragons from any advantageous distance. This shortcoming, however, does not diminish the magnitude of Hardy's accomplishment or the magic of his creation.
Hardy will give a free lecture on "Dragon Painting in Asia" at 4 p.m. Jan. 18 in the Honolulu Academy of Arts' Doris Duke Theatre.
Catalogs of two of the previous installations of "2000 Dragons" are available at the gift shop as well as Hardy's recent publication, "Tattooing the Invisible Man."
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