John Lawlor's SplashingHorses.art provides a wide variety of colorful images that are well suited for placemaking and other corporate installations. Especially compelling are the multiple variations of image styles applied to each photo.

Result #1

A series of brightly hued white printed canvases printed with thick gold liners is meant to elicit sympathy and sympathy alone, which is a huge part of the piece. The trick seems to be to make the viewer think twice about how he or she should respond to the photo. Another group of six color prints is made of a variety of collaged images: a wide field of colors in a thick gray ground; a close-up of a hand, arm, and foot; and a snapshot taken at an airport. Almost as though they were representative of the artists locale—a picture of a beach in Maine—the collaged images are about life in general, about the experiences of all people, and about human relationships.

Result #2

The total body of work is comprised of two kinds of daguerreotype images, the 100-foot-long panoramic image and a scaled-down zoom photograph. It is these two types of prints that give Lawlor's subjects unique personal histories.For example, the Pan-American Standardization, 25th Avenue/No. 4, Bridgeport, Conn., July, 1985, shows two blond-haired female nudes. The three sides of the image are the same, but the results of the enlargement are different: The features of the heads are left out and the faces are more like doll-faced versions of themselves. And the image is shot in black-and-white on a 35-mm. film stock, which gives it a chromatic presence similar to that of a commercial product. A variety of modernist, fantasy, and comic themes are interwoven throughout the work. The figures seem to have been pulled out of their time, some of which are adorned with exaggerated prosthetic hands, such as the long noses of the figures in this group. And the final image is the result of a cropping of a single portrait, showing the same women in the same pose.Lawsons subjects are grouped by gender. There is a striking similarity between the subjects of Chicagos Art and Life series, as well as between the Pan-American Standardization, Bridgeport, and the photographs in the January 1985 issue of Life magazine. As with his earlier work, the subject remains the same, only the reason for its being no longer in existence. We are talking about a part of the American mind that we do not have to be afraid to lose. Every aspect of the photos is nothing less than a part of the American psyche. And that is why they are so important. What they show is how important it is to deal with our sense of national identity.

Result #3

John Lawlor's SplashingHorses.art provides a wide variety of colorful images that are well suited for placemaking and other corporate installations. Especially compelling are the multiple variations of image styles applied to each photo. In a photograph of a happy family, for example, the artist covers her photograph with a separate layer of black rubber so that only the outline of the family remains. A photograph of a group of soldiers seems to play with the notion of heroic qualities. The subjects of the photographs are usually considered harmless, and in some cases the soldiers are depicted by their costumes and not by their titles. A photo of a smiling young woman is captioned with the words By the grace of God, there is no need for fear.Although the primary appeal of SplashingHorses lies in its flexibility, a number of its subjects might be a bit more palatable if the artist had explored more specific themes in her photographs. (The war is just one example.) For example, the poses of some of the photographs are erotic, and the expression on the face of a woman in a bathing suit can be shocking if it is really said to be one. However, the poses are also vulnerable in their way, and the images give off a tactile, even though visually passive, experience. The images are ambiguous and evocative, but one never feels betrayed by the images.One of the more successful pieces in the show is that of the twenty-five photograph series from 1998 that take the form of a free, many-layered book. In these photographs, Lawlor presents a range of human emotions: pain, love, courage, anger, and hope. In the case of the one from the series 2002–2003, the artist also presents a series of identical but slightly different rephotographs of the same subject. The results are like little fan photos, each image reflecting the intense emotion that a fan may feel in conveying a message to a loved one. The emotions displayed in the photographs are so intense and so intense that the viewer might lose track of what is being depicted. Although the images are beautifully composed, they remain enigmatic, as if the artist were offering a covert message.

Result #4

John Lawlor's SplashingHorses.art provides a wide variety of colorful images that are well suited for placemaking and other corporate installations. Especially compelling are the multiple variations of image styles applied to each photo. The most striking are the geometric forms used in the bottom halves of the titular t-shirts, complete with striped and crepe-lined bottoms and patterns. Several of the photographs feature cutout hats: one featuring a red-striped Top Ten motif and another featuring a row of three-part construction motifs. The earlier works, made between 1978 and 1978, have blue, pink, and green backgrounds. Those that are less than a year old are black and red. The symmetry of the patterned tops is reminiscent of the 1960s and 70s rainbow patterns of Bonnard and Giacometti.There are several cool works on display, including the films of Guy Smith, Harold Rosenberg, and Leslie Thorn. The latter group includes both a remarkably close-up of an individual hair and an image of a squatting naked woman. The image of the woman with the hair stuck up her ass is a stark one and conveys the closeness of its subject. Other works from this group are paired, one from each of the remaining works in the show: the beautiful crepe-lined image from the series Skin X. and from the one-shot Oil Paintings series of 1981. Smiths Watercolor/Painting and Woodcut series of the same year are close to being The With-It Series.The show also includes many of the very best work in the show, such as the television series 15 Minutes: The Dilemma of a Gifted, Motivated Man. It was created by the duo and starred Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. It is the first television series based on an original work by the two men. A look at the art shown in this show reveals that the men are in fact, like the media, a kind of forgotten or sidelined generation. The television series, first broadcast on the US Network, has an early-80s graphic palette and a rich, almost anti-materialism.

Result #5

John Lawlor's SplashingHorses.art provides a wide variety of colorful images that are well suited for placemaking and other corporate installations. Especially compelling are the multiple variations of image styles applied to each photo. The two unclassified photos from the 1969 wedding of Marilyn Monroe and her second husband, Jim Breuer (the latter was her husband) are as bizarrely aggressive as any photo Lawlor shoots. The playful style of a boy splashing with his hands against a black background appears to be a harmless expression, while the red-skinned boy in a Coca-Cola commercial (with the girl in the background) is more aggressive. Even the photographs of child-aged women in the photographs, such as those from the 1960s, seem playful and sexually explicit.While the splashes in these works are playful, they are also a metaphor for a personal experience. The splashes in Splashing Horses could be seen as a kind of response to the sexual turmoil of the times—and certainly the sexual frenzy in the present. Lawlor had developed a particular way of dealing with sexuality in his work. In Splashing Horses, he manipulated his subjects in a way that emphasized their vulnerability. The painters brushstrokes on the hair and the smeared, stained-black skin of the women and men in the photos were a faithful expression of the pain that these women were suffering. The use of this much-ballyhooed expressionism was a way to reflect on the fear of death in a culture that values beauty over life. Lawlor's paintings of the same subject matter and subject matter—the sexually exoticized, as it were—seemed to show the world the way his victims saw it. One could read the painting of Mary Lou Williams, for example, as a reaction against this cultural attitude. Lawlor painted this painting not to show her but rather to show her fear. He described her as having lost the love she had for you, but here she appeared in a position of horror. Like the women in her paintings, she is torn between wanting to be loved and knowing that she is utterly alone in her feelings.