Graffiti as Art: Loud Message, Little Else

Art’s grappling attempts at meaning can be staged anywhere--in the coffee house as well as in the gallery. In Brett Cook’s current show, art adds its voice to the existing social and intellectual dialogues at Java Coffee House/Gallery to reveal a confluence of concerns.

Cook’s “Social Questions in a Medium of Question” prompts patrons at the coffee house to reconsider their place in the social spectrum.

Cook, a San Diegan studying art and education at UC Berkeley, practices “aerosol art.” More commonly and pejoratively known as graffiti, Cook’s spray-painted murals are, in his words, “an exercise of global citizenship.” They address universal questions in immediate, accessible terms, using the cheapest available materials--spray paint and existing walls.

Cook has created more than 20 murals throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, and several are documented in color photographs at Java. They lament the abuse of the environment, internal tensions in the African-American community and the persistent perils of racism.

Though Cook’s aggressive use of public spaces gives the work an edge of rebelliousness, the images themselves feel tired and trite. They shout their messages with the immediacy and directness necessary to be grasped at street level, but they leave little for the mind to ponder. They phrase pressing social and environmental issues in an all-too-familiar manner.

Like an entire generation of “aerosol artists” who came of age in New York in the ‘80s, Cook is trying to bridge the gap between gallery and graffiti by making self-contained panel paintings in addition to his fleeting expressions on the street. Although Cook’s street work tends to sell the viewer short, his two large paintings on wood panels, created specifically for Java, leave a bit more to chance and the imagination.

Three laughing, overlapping Asian faces dominate one of the paintings, with the words “impression,” “appearance,” “trend” and “arrogance” applied to the surface in cut-out letters. The words provide a filter through which to perceive the faces, while spelling out the very obstacles that often block our perception of others--the reliance on first impressions or superficial appearances, a dependence on fashion and a haughty disregard for the unknown.

Cook’s other painting juxtaposes three faces that stare forward placidly, with one whose teeth are clenched and eyes clamped tight in tension.

Here, the words “openmindedness,” “respect” and “learning” float across the surface--keys, perhaps, to the peace embodied in the three calm faces.

The imagery in both of Cook’s paintings tends toward the bland, but a few potent words anchor it to the turbulent sea of social critique. At this stage in Cook’s work, the connection is tenuous, but the idea is promising.