A Fine Example of Art

A modern-day shaman, Lurie leads us on a vision quest through the annals of our collective history, and on to a broader world. Alternatively exposing or addressing the larger, enduring myths of our culture through sketches of seemingly lost childhood reveries, this first compilation of ex-downtown indie art, film, and music god John Lurie’s paintings presents his would-be musings in a new, interpretive storytelling—haunting, poignant, or puerile as the outcome may ultimately be. The paintings are passages from the semiotics of his own mind: the enduring stories and images are seized upon then captured to communicate Lurie’s cryptic symbolism. The visions are of a perverse adult playground, peopled not by men and women in conventional adult roles or scenarios—at the office, home, or on vacation—but rather animals in new contexts, a reversal of the personification found in stuffed animals and bedtime stories. The titles or incorporated language and text are too simple for revelation, even too brief for a Lurie brand of dreamscape Americana, and function as a complicating punch. He broaches necessary questions in perhaps the only way we can access them—by the alarming surprise of his simplicity, and the non sequiturs in association with his symbolism.