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Bad Ass Trip

Bill Saylor Makes the Brown Acid Taste Like Chocolate


Title: Installation shot with paintings and drawings at S.F.C.C., Spokane, Oct. 2002
Artist: Bill Saylor
Gallery: Leo Koenig
Media: Everything
Price: $10,000


Bill Saylor says he is inspired by: “organic systems, Viennese action drawing, collective graffiti, and sci-fi.” We would like to add the following to that list: Grateful Dead graphics, paint dripping in the rain, and biker iconography.

In tripped-out works that make white space as evocative as lurid colors, Bill paints and draws the smeared visions of an Altamont survivor reflecting upon mortality. Skulls pop up, phrases like “Mississippi Wolf Pack” appear, and spiders climb down faces. It would all be really scary if it didn’t tap so beautifully into memories and images that are permanently embedded in the American countercultural psyche. As it is, Bill makes a bad trip feel like a fuzzy blanket.

VICE STAFF

8 years ago

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