A dark horse describes someone whose potential for success is hidden. According to Jeff Falk, a Valley-based artist and curator for the Dark Horse Exhibition, Phoenix is that dark horse.
Falk and other local artists will be showing their work at Bragg’s Pie Factory located near Grand and 15th avenues the entire month of February, beginning Friday.
“I think most of the artists that live here are pretty much over looked by the immediate audience,” Falk said. “Most of the time they’re going to try somewhere else because nobody here seems to care.”
The show will include multimedia works such as installations, music, poetry, films and a multimedia soundscape. It is an event to gain recognition for an art scene that Falk describes as a dark horse; his hope is that this horse will finally show.
“It’s just to create an opportunity for the public to come out and see not necessarily what was but what still is,” he said.
Falk has been involved in the Phoenix art scene since the ’80s, showing at places like M.A.R.S. Artspace and Paper Heart Gallery. Bragg’s Pie Factory focuses more on bringing the community together rather than showing only gallery art.
Steve Weiss, curator for the film series in Dark Horse, calls Bragg’s an “incubator space.”
Beatrice Moore, owner of Bragg’s, said, “I’m all about getting people the opportunity to propose and organize an exhibit on their own.” She does this by having a space that she said is “a little bit more open-ended than a traditional art gallery.”
Falk said the city is struggling to get its art community recognized with the public.
“The arts community that’s been in downtown Phoenix here has pretty much existed on its own,” he said.
Paul Wilson, an installation artist in Dark Horse, said he’s been lucky to get grants to continue his work.
“It’s been luck, but it’s been passion,” he said.
Wilson’s art focuses on his love of the ’50s. He described wanting to make art that had meaning to him, “I’m never going to go mainstream. … I could have done that years ago and probably had more money.”
Featuring artwork by: Bob Allen, Leslie Barton, Esmeralda Delaney, Lennee Eller, Jeff Falk, Barry Moon, Greg Roberts,
Randy Slack and Paul Wilson
Music by: Last Wave
The Poetry Industrial Complex will perform at 7 p.m. on Saturday.
A Third Friday reception will be held at 6 p.m. on Feb. 15.
Music by: The Dry Surfinis
Multimedia soundscape by: Pincushioned
An indie films show curated by Steve Weiss will be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 16. There is a $5 charge for this part of the exhibit.
For all other days and the remainder of the month the public is open to come in and see what the Phoenix art scene has to offer.
Falk described how difficult it was for Valley-based artists to get shown in the Phoenix Art Museum.
“In the last five years or so they have actually shown more … Valley-based artists’ work, so they are making inroads,” he said.
Local art museums are more of “encyclopedic museums,” Weiss said. He added that the Phoenix Art Museum shows art from around the world, but there is no museum dedicated to Valley-based artists.
“We have a Phoenix Art Museum, but we don’t have a Phoenix Museum of Art,” he said.
Weiss said commercial art galleries in downtown Phoenix where artist’s can showcase their work, sell it and make a living are almost nonexistent. Falk said the audience does not take the time to look at Phoenix art. The purpose of Dark Horse is to show there is a market for art to be shown.
“It’s a great big reminder, reminding people … there’s some very valid stuff here,” Falk said. “Someday people will be recognized here.”
Falk wants people to notice that Phoenix is becoming a city of prominence.
“One of the good things I’ve heard over and over is (in) Phoenix you can reinvent yourself,” he said.
Grand Avenue reinvented itself and the emerging Roosevelt Row has become part of the morphing nature of the city’s art culture, he said.
“Cultural scenes are organic. They’re kind of like a living thing: they move, change, morph. … It’s responsive to the audience,” Falk said.
Weiss said the artists will always be here and Dark Horse is proof.
“It’s going to showcase people who have been around here for over 25 years,” Weiss said. “They’re not showing old work, they’re showing absolutely contemporary work.”
Although the artists are struggling to make a profit from their art, Weiss said it’s a good thing Phoenix doesn’t have “a lot of trappings of something that is less about the art work and more about success. … People are judged by the quality of the work that they do and less about the game that they run to get their work there.”
Many artists come and go, and start to wonder, “Why am I doing this?” Falk said. “If you’re still doing it after 20 years then what you know is that you made the right decision, there’s something to this.”
“I feel comfortable in the dark horse realm,” Weiss said. “The dark horses, you know, they’re the ones who are most interesting.”
Contact the reporter at carolina.marquez@asu.edu
