Cuek Street
Cuek Street
Date
2011
Edition Size
unique
Media
Hand-painting
Binding
Hand-sewn
Format
Artist Book
Dimensions
11.25 × 8.65 × .85 in
Pages
24
Collection
Collection Development, Unique Books$ 1,000.00
Unavailable
View Collectors
Florida Atlantic University (FAU), The Jaffe Book Arts Collection
(‘Cuek’, Indonesian, slang; rough translation “easy going”)
An ultra-vivid book of complex design matrixes, sardonic pop, and psychedelic cultural deconstructions. The compositions are airbrushed from precise hand-cut and found stencils, painted with archival acrylic pigment paints and various other paint application techniques. An encyclopedia of patterns and cosmic landscapes, Williams introduces found stencil techniques (using tools and other urban detritus) reminiscent of Man Ray’s solar-grams in their haunting beauty. This book emanates its radiant object nature before it is even opened.
Williams has come out of two years of seclusion with a selection of eight similar books that are like mesmerizing portals into another universe. These are books that one falls into, beyond iconic or even symbolic narrative, they are kaleidoscopic codices and may very well represent the apotheosis of Bay Area psychedelic culture. Using pacing structures that are reminiscent of musical compositions the books are synesthesiastic narratives!
Godfather of both the San Francisco New Mission School and the Global Stencil Pirate movement Scott Williams is the leading pioneer in the painterly expansion of stencil and airbrush media. The relentless intensity of William’s artwork compels you to see the way he sees, to think the way he thinks; his drawings draw you into his own parallel universe, like a visually motivated Phillip K. Dick or Stanislaus Lem.
Williams work is pan-American in its roots and unique to California culture, its a hybrid mix of both Catholic and indigenous Mexican paper cutting technique, with the intelligence and sardonic commentary of Jose Guadalupe Posada, and the spice of modern Chicano aesthetics (Williams has lived in the Mission District of San Francisco for about 20 years). Throw in some beat, punk, and psychedelic San Francisco sub-cultures and you have an exceptionally original and potent aesthetic vernacular.
2011, 8.65” x 11.25“ x .85”, 24 pgs., unique, hand-sewn binding, hand-painted museum board covers.