| “Suburban sprawl” is a familiar term of general degradation in a contemporary society where green solutions and densely packed diversity are increasingly prized. Green is sexy and the suburbs, with their tract housing, two car garages and strip malls as far as the eye can see, are decidedly un-sexy. The suburbs are a necessary evil for those who require an alternative to the frenzy of the city, but they carry stereotypes of homogeneity and monotony. In a world where the conception of the artist is practically synonymous with the city, what happens when the artist moves to the suburbs? |  |
Wasted Bodies: Suburbia in the Work of David A. Parker – Hillary Cook
“Suburban sprawl” is a familiar term of general degradation in a contemporary society where green solutions and densely packed diversity are increasingly prized. Green is sexy and the suburbs, with their tract housing, two car garages and strip malls as far as the eye can see, are decidedly un-sexy. The suburbs are a necessary evil for those who require an alternative to the frenzy of the city, but they carry stereotypes of homogeneity and monotony. In a world where the conception of the artist is practically synonymous with the city, what happens when the artist moves to the suburbs?
David A. Parker addresses this exact issue in his new multimedia work. His recent show “On and Off the Grid” at Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery dealt with his relocation to the Chicago suburb of Naperville, IL. A series of photographs titled “Escape Strategy” especially encapsulated the theme of the show—the artist’s futile attempt to escape from his suburban surroundings. The first three photographs in the “Escape Strategy” series show Parker in mid-jump on a trampoline, arms outstretched as he attempts to fly away. The trampoline is photographed in three different locations, each of which includes a background of tract houses. In Escape Strategy No. 4, we look down (as if from a second-story window) on a fenced in, well-manicured backyard where a coffin-shaped rectangle of lawn has been cut out and dislodged. Perhaps the grass covers a hidden tunnel; perhaps the referenced escape is something much more forbidding. The final photograph in the series, Escape Strategy No. 5, is Parker’s attempt to camouflage himself within the structures of suburbia. He dresses in white, including whiting his face, and presses his back to a telephone pole near a highway and various shopping plazas. From a distance, Parker is almost consumed by the telephone pole. A close up view shows his body poised as if caught in mid-movement; one arm is stretched above him, and he is standing on tip-toe. He looks frozen in the middle of a dance or like a cat burglar caught in the beam of a flashlight. This photograph especially displays Parker’s concern with the body’s place in the suburban landscape and the ease with which that landscape consumes the body.
The “Escape Strategy” series follows an earlier body of work, Parker’s “Circular Reasoning Series.” In these photographs, we see the landscape invaded by a large, tire-shaped kite. This sculpture is photographed in mid-air in a variety of landscape settings—the beach, a football field, an empty lot and the lawn in front of a museum, to name a few. When seen suspended in the sky above these settings, the kite becomes a doorway or an escape hatch through which one could imagine leaving or entering. The difference between this series and Parker’s new work is the mood; the “Circular Reasoning Series” is playful and hopeful, with the possibility of transference and beginnings, while the “Escape Strategy” series offers little in the way of possibility. What we take from “Escape Strategy” is a stifled desperation manifested in the impossibility of fruitful action. One might think of suburban structures as a waste. In David A. Parker’s work, we see the effect of this waste on the body.
