Fancy Graffiti Comes to DC

You gotta love Nevan Lahart. He looks just like one imagines an Irish artist would look: a bit disheveled, a little dessicated; wiry, to be kind, skinny to be accurate; gap-toothed, big-smiled and gripping a can of beer. Words pour forth that could be poems of urban decay and disillusionment. My favorite: “Giotto wasn't making art, he was making propaganda for the Church.” Hard to argue with that.

He makes his art quickly, spontaneously, with whatever is at hand. He doesn’t overthink or overplan and he makes in-your-face work about what he is thinking and doing at any time. His titles are terrific, e.g.: “The Everyday Miracle of Turning Drink Into Piss.”  I really wish I’d thought of that one.

Lahart has been brought to Washington by Solas Nua, an organization dedicated to showcasing contemporary Irish culture. He will be here for a month, during which he will fill a large space on the ground floor of 1200 First St. NE, made available by the NOMA Business Improvement District. Last night he was the featured guest at Salon Contra. DC-based artist Kathryn Cornelius was there to act as questioner, but there was hardly ever any need for prompting or probing since Lahart is a life force of ideas and opinions.

Much of the talk centered around Lahart’s recent exhibit at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, which came down just a couple of days before he flew to DC. Titled “A Lively Start to a Dead End” (originally "Shit In My Brain At 40 Cents an Hour”, an accurate assessment of the value of an artist’s labor), it is a sprawling installation of dozens of paintings on wooden structures, a deconstructed car, a dead horse, a painter’s garret and much much more. It is messy, assaultive and all over the block and, amazingly, it manages to work. I cannot wait to see what emerges in NOMA.