WHEN: April 12 - May 31, 2008
Opening reception: Saturday, April 12, 6-8pm
Gallery Talk: Saturday, May 3, 2pm

WHERE: 516 Central Avenue SW, between 5th & 6th Streets, Downtown Albuquerque

HOURS: Tuesday through Saturday, 12-5pm

IMAGES: Please contact Suzanne Sbarge, 505-242-1445

INTERVIEWS: Kathryn M Davis: kathrynmd@msn.com, 505-982-2708

PUBLIC INFO: 516 ARTS: tel. 505-242-1445, www.516arts.org

516 ARTS is pleased to announce Snap Crackle Pow! opening Saturday, April 12, 2008 concurrently
with Alchemy: Collage & Assemblage (see separate press release). Both exhibitions explore a “pieced
together” vocabulary of popular culture.

“The social organization which is most true of itself to the artist is the boy gang.”
—Allen Ginsberg

Though not nearly so consciously structured as the group of Beat Movement writers (who were none
too structured themselves, which may be a signifi er of “the boy gang” itself), male artists tend to fi nd
one another in schools—often as early as in elementary school, when the fi ne art of doodling in class is
honed. Boys are tacitly encouraged, mostly by their peers, to draw. They draw monsters, cars, bloody
eyeballs, and later, the impossibly well-endowed physical attributes of heroes and their women.

Snap Crackle Pow! features artists working in the medium of drawing, and investigates how the cultures
of comic book art (including, but not restricted to, R. Crumb and a correlated mentality that refl ects the
writings of Charles Bukowski) have intersected with popular graphics (such as those on cereal boxes)
to infl uence a new generation of draftsmen. Artists Luke Dorman, David Leigh, Larry Bob Phillips, and Clayton Porter could be said to represent the ‘boy gang’ infl uence that contributes so profoundly to art today. After all, according to The New York Times critic Roberta Smith, drawing is the new painting. As a curator, I became interested in how young women have made these highly graphical styles of drawing their own, and Maureen Burdock and Rose Simpson will contribute their knockout work to the exhibition—girls altering the dynamics of the boy gang in contemporary art.
—Kathryn M Davis, Guest Curator

We are pleased to announce that Rose Simpson has been selected to participate in SITE Santa Fe’s seventh international biennial exhibition, Lucky Number Seven, curated by Lance Fung, opening June 22, 2008. Also, Maureen Burdock’s artworks will be featured in Feminists Under Forty, a group exhibition running through May 30, curated by Judy Chicago and organized by Through the Flower in Belen, New Mexico.