A Feral Life

I've been meaning to lay down my thoughts on the "Feral" installation at the Luggage Store Gallery, a collaboration by wheat paste aficionado SWOON and local found object hustler Canilao, but a whimsical decision to take a plane for New York has delayed my writings.
Fortunately for me, the intimate "feral" environment encapsulating the tales of the suggested but not required subtitle, "wicked women and wildish girls," lend itself to both the dreamy rumination and rigorous urban exploration of my own spring trip.

The dank, crawling staircase of the Luggage Gallery, completely tattered with tags and stickers, took on the life of a gateway to the mystical world of "Feral." (And yes, that is Good Life Cafe's finest Medusa repping a blue Dickie's jumpsuit and a plastic cup of wine at the top of the stairs.) The walls of the actual gallery space complemented the many stories told by the staircase, being plastered themselves with SWOON's wood print pastes and stencil cuts of fleeting people, trees, ghosts, and animals. Each print arose from its layering on top of other pastes, some peeling from the edges while some already showing signs of decay, giving an elaborate texture to the walls.

In the center of the space two shanty town shacks stood crisscrossing each other, inviting visitors to search their interiors and catch a glimpse of some quiet, majestic world against the background of so much vibrant noise. Pulled by this aura, I stumbled underneath one shack to find an eerie grandmother approaching death in what looked like the interior of a human sized birdhouse adorned with foreign ritualistic objects constructed out of found pieces of urban junk. The claustrophobic restrictions of the hidden spaces forced strangers to become intimate not only with the art but also with each other.

Canilao and SWOON meticulously constructed an interactive environment where each object, from the splintery wood to the patchwork stuffed tentacles, demanded my consistent visual and tactical indulgence. I was happy not to be restricted by the puritan etiquette of museum no touching rules, but nonetheless I did not feel comfortable enough to climb onto the roofs of the houses as one might do in the streets.

SWOON's first love is graffiti art, so the gallery scene always poses the dangerous possibility that the work will lose its vitality within the sterile white walls of a dead, closed building. However, much to my surprise, SWOON and Camilao seem to be genuinely applying some of the more fascinating concepts reaped from graffiti art into an engaging, if not quite feral, gallery space.

One finds more to be explored and felt than immediately apparent, but only those who venture into the secret crevices and run the risk of really touching this world will grasp a personal view of this whirling world. For that reason I will end my teetering analysis and suggest that you go experience Feral yourself before the cacophony of the funeral bells!


The Luggage Store is located on 1007 Market St. near 6th St.
The exhibit continues thru April 26.
Check out some photos of the artists building Feral at Fecal Face.