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Among the terms used to describe art disconnected from the establishment gallery circuit and art schools are degenerate, outsider and lowbrow. Some prefer to call the work contemporary, or maybe street. Call it what you will. It’s moving on up and whether that requires a name change is someone else’s call.
In the past month, Mark Matlock and Harvey Kivel each opened a gallery dedicated to art not traditionally shown in galleries. Their approaches differ, but they agree on one thing: This art is young and political and of these times, a revolution and, secondarily, a potential source of revenue.
Matlock opened Fragment Gallery April 3 to collect the disparate parts of the Tucson scene in one place and to legitimize what he prefers to call lowbrow art. For his first show, he featured Melo Dominguez creating a mural of this place and these times in a continuous and interactive process.
“It’s like live TV,” said Dominquez, a former Los Angeles graffiti artist who would, by the way, like to talk to you while she paints the gallery walls in Suite 2A of the Citizen’s Warehouse, 44 W. Sixth St.
Kivel also has an educational mission. He’s planning monthly seminars on street art and contemporary urban art in his space, My Addiction Gallery, at 493 N. Sixth Ave., Suite 159. The gallery opened April 30 with a show pitting American street art against its British cousins called “US vs. UK God Save the Streets.”
Kivel has collected prints of the work of several prominent artists who display their work illegally, at least initially. He’s also installing an Art-O-Mat, a machine that, for $5, dispenses a cigarette box-sized work of art. “For the past year, this has been my addiction,” Kivel said. “It’s a healthy one.”
