| Clifford Faust is a master of color, filling his cut paper collages with brazen, unabashed flashes of vibrant primary colors of every hue. His newest works, many of which were put on display at his Broadway Gallery solo show, “Collage and the City,” this spring, are no exception. In these pieces, Faust mingles his characteristic vivid tones with playfully imagined figures from everyday urban life.In Taking a Break, for example, Faust captures that eminently contemporary urge to slough off an afternoon of work in the city. |  |
Collage in the City – Steven Levenson
Clifford Faust is a master of color, filling his cut paper collages with brazen, unabashed flashes of vibrant primary colors of every hue. His newest works, many of which were put on display at his Broadway Gallery solo show, “Collage and the City,” this spring, are no exception. In these pieces, Faust mingles his characteristic vivid tones with playfully imagined figures from everyday urban life.
In Taking a Break, for example, Faust captures that eminently contemporary urge to slough off an afternoon of work in the city. In the background of the composition, we can see a sea of people parading off to work, but, in the foreground, one man lies sprawled on verdant green grass, a cup of coffee at his side. While those behind him are bedecked in garish pink and blue running suits, brassy yellow tees and effervescent red baseball caps, this lone man wears a simple combination of muted colors, white and blue and black. Here in the endless tumult of the urban jungle, Faust suggests, it is perhaps the simplest hues and activities that stand out most sharply.
Lest such depictions of calm convince us that Faust is unconcerned with the harsher edges of urban reality, we need turn no further than another recent work of Faust’s, Demolition Crew. Here, the artist tackles a familiar image in the contemporary cityscape, the profusion of demolition work aimed at remolding and refashioning urban experience. The workers are rendered faceless, anonymous abstractions in yellow construction helmets. They heft old plywood into tawdry red, wheeled bins—never to be seen again. It is an image so familiar to today’s urbanites as to be invisible. Faust forces us to see it anew, however, alerting us to the fact that our cities are changing in front of our very eyes. Torn down into scraps of plywood, older buildings are being replaced with luxury condos and big box chain stores.
This may be an unfairly polemical reading of Demolition Crew (and of Faust’s recent work in general), but one cannot deny the quiet disaffection smoldering beneath Faust’s seemingly straightforward works. For, if Taking a Break shows us the potential for peace and equanimity in the vibrant city, this work shows us the powerful destructive forces, blandly shaded and faceless, striving to remake that city.
