San Bernadino 1997

Joe Goode conjured this world with spray paint, in a way that feels both like a study of atmosphere and also a kind of raw documentation. I love the way the colors just float into each other. The top is all sunshine yellow and orange fading into this dreamy turquoise in the middle, and then settling at the bottom into a deep, almost melancholic blue. You can see how the paint was applied, not trying to hide the process at all, but reveling in the act of making. Look at those darker orange circles near the top. They are almost like a little family. The overall effect is less about depicting a specific place, and more about capturing a feeling, maybe the feeling of being in San Bernadino. It reminds me a bit of some of Ed Ruscha's work, but maybe more interested in the poetics of place rather than the deadpan flatness. In art, things always shift and change, each artist borrowing and twisting what came before. And that's a beautiful thing.