{"id":864,"date":"2009-07-31T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-31T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp\/2009\/07\/eric_yahnker_a_dog_walked_into\/"},"modified":"2009-07-31T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-31T12:00:00","slug":"eric_yahnker_a_dog_walked_into","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/2009\/07\/eric_yahnker_a_dog_walked_into.html","title":{"rendered":"Eric Yahnker: Ludicrious Cubism (A dog walks into a bar)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doggie-style perspective isn’t above a grade-school joke. The myopic have four eyes. (4-Eyed Dog<\/i>, Pencil on paper)<\/p>\n

\"ericyahnkerdog.jpg\"<\/span>Currently at Ambach & Rice<\/a>, Eric Yahnker draws as if the camera hadn’t been invented and he’s the unreliable narrator assigned to keep a record. Exactitude is his straight man. He renders tongue, teeth, slack lip, the golden shine on the short hair to set up the punchline.<\/p>\n

Another artist who drew this well would stick to drawings, but Yahnker has the nervous energy of a comic on stage. Visual jokes tumble from him. Part of the joke is their production: Serious craftsmanship is essential to being absurd and saves him from the trap of visual one-liners.<\/p>\n

Dorothy’s trip to bright lights, green city exposed a sham. If she’d read a little Existentialism, would she have bothered to go? Online, the drawing itself is hard to see, but in person, pencil on paper orchestras a drama – soft light pools across the top of her head as shadows curl around her fingers and deepen into the nape of her neck.<\/p>\n

\"ericyahnkeroz.jpg\"<\/span>Robert Smithson’s Mirror Displacement<\/i><\/a> is the source of Yahnker’s Analogous To The Fall Of That One Empire (Moby Dick<\/i>); roughly a million cut-out and alphabetized letters from Moby Dick<\/i> on 27 mirrored panels (26 for the letters in the alphabet and one more for punctuation).<\/p>\n

\"ericyahnkersmithson.jpg\"<\/span>It’s also a tribute to Andy Kaufman, who read The Great Gatsby<\/i> on stage.(here<\/a> on YouTube). What to do with a masterpiece? Scholars who analyze cut it up, while cut ups like Yahnker take the process to its literal (and fatal) end.<\/p>\n

Less Than Zero to 101<\/i> is a shelf full of CDs cassette tapes, LP’s, books and magazines whose titles number in order from <0 to 101. Less Than Zero, Absolute Zero, The Beatles 1, Two Dads, 2 1\/2 Men, Three Amigos! Four Brothers….7th Heaven, 7th Season, …12 Monkeys…18-Year-Old Virgin, 26 Gasoline Stations…36 Hours to Die…Around the World in 80 Days <\/i>to 101 Dalmatians. <\/i><\/p>\n

\"ericyahnkershelf.jpg\"<\/span>Detail:
\"ericyahnkershelf2.jpg\"<\/span>Yahnker is a maker run deliberately amuck. His methods are rigorous, and his results absurd but not frivolous. <\/p>\n

Analogous To The Fall Of That One Empire (Gap Shirt)<\/i>, shirt in which all of the thread has been removed excluding the pinstripe pattern:<\/p>\n

\"ericyahnkershirt.jpg\"<\/span>Drew Daly<\/a> did something similar with chairs: Whittling away a sturdy one to produce a pair of barely-there ghosts.Yahnker began unthreading the shirt after Bush was elected for the second time, in 2004. The empire that fell is our own.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doggie-style perspective isn’t above a grade-school joke. The myopic have four eyes. (4-Eyed Dog, Pencil on paper) Currently at Ambach & Rice, Eric Yahnker draws as if the camera hadn’t been invented and he’s the unreliable narrator assigned to keep a record. Exactitude is his straight man. He renders tongue, teeth, slack lip, the golden […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/anotherbb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}