Shotgun Reviews are an open forum where we invite the international art community to contribute timely, short-format responses to an exhibition or event. If you are interested in submitting a Shotgun Review, please click this link for more information. In this Shotgun Review, Takeema Hoffman reviews 2BENAMED at Naming Gallery in Oakland. 

Art Party Collective. 2BENAMED, 2015; installation view. Courtesy of the Artists and Naming Gallery. Photo: Wilson Linker and Lisa Aurora.

2BENAMED, an exhibition currently at Naming Gallery in the heart of downtown Oakland, is an electrifying showcase of diverse artworks from the Art Party Collective. Comprising roughly 20 members aged 15 to 21, the group was formed out of the desire to do something with all the bad-assery, or art, that the close-knit group created.

A key influence in Art Party’s philosophy and aesthetic is Oakland. When asked “What’s so Oakland about the show?” collective member and featured artist Winnie Smith replied, “It’s the action, the pep, the hyph.” The spirit of hyph here, as in the Bay-born hyphy[1] subculture, is strong. In a collaborative piece by Jared Ford and Conor Hickey, Mac Dre’s face beams from the square center of an elaborately painted cross, looking down on the space like a grand cosmic deity. Under Art Party’s control, the gallery is an installation vibrating with the manic electricity that hyphy represents. The walls are blanketed with fluorescent murals and doodles, broken pieces of chocolate-chip cookies, and tagged phrases such as “My girlfriend is starting to bum me out, you can have her.” It’s eye candy, sure enough, but there’s more here than sugar and dye. Just as “going dumb” [2] requires equal parts whim and technique, the work in this show is as effervescent as it is contemplative.

Smith says a prominent theme in the show is the tension between childhood and adulthood, and the desire to “stay in your fantasy.” A sense of fantasy that is exuberant, bare, and delicate is palpable in the many prismatic offerings on display. Nikos S’s day-glo illustration In My Room features smiling sperm jumping from a barrel into a coffin. One phallic creature holds the barrel and cries, while the other opens the coffin and smiles. The cartoonish joy of the one is offset by the sorrow of the other. Yeah, masturbation is fun, but not without its casualties. Potential life becomes certain death; life is death. These are the kinds of self-reflective thoughts that don’t really matter until they do.

On its face, this show could be read as a signpost of pop culture’s absoluteness, evidence of how a certain lowbrow, weirdo, post-punk aesthetic has settled into the marrow of the American teenage soul. However, to reduce the show to its obvious aesthetic influences wouldn’t be so much inaccurate as dismissive. 2BENAMED is a dynamic display of the chaotic elegance that forms creative ingenuity, like the spirit of youth itself, the spirit of Oakland, and the spirit of the hyph.

2BENAMED is on view at Naming Gallery in Oakland through August 7, 2015.

Takeema Hoffman is a creator and educator living and working in the Bay Area.

[1] Hyphy is a Bay Area hip-hop subculture that includes particular dance and music styles. Notable artists who are key influencers of the hyphy movement include Mac Dre, Keak Da Sneak, and E-40.

[2] “Going dumb” is a slang term associated with the hyphy movement that refers to a particularly expressive way of dancing or moving.