Armed with a spray can, Dixon paints people you know in places they’ve never been

FROM DIXON’S ‘THE FUTURE IS TANDEM’

A canvas of two 1890s damsels on a tandem bicycle lends its title to Dixon’s new exhibition, “The Future is Tandem,” up now at DDR Projects—but his most dire street art-influenced paintings are, strangely, some of the most comforting and compelling works here.

That’s partly because the events they depict—parking tickets issued, citizens menaced—aren’t happening to you. But also, because he paints with the graphic polish of a 1982 Duran Duran album cover, and seems to utilize a list of stock characters, Dixon’s work is both memorable and familiar.

Do you like the devil? He’s in here, in Untitled (Graffiti Flow), standing alongside Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and one of the Seven Dwarfs as they watch a cop glower at a man gluing up a wheat-paste poster. (The poster reads “Obey is a double agent,” which sounds like a swipe at Shepard Fairey—or a nod to Dixon’s past. Born Juan Carlos Noria, he’s a wheat-paste poster himself.)

Beelzebub turns up again in White House Devil, standing hat in hand behind a weary Richard Nixon. It all gets a little pat—“take scene 1A; insert stock characters; mix well”—but wait; there’s much more.

Gray is All We Share gives you a rodent’s Home Sweet Home, while the exterminator looms: a cut-away of a mice nest in a field—babies all curled around the mother, while above ground, the men in white jumpsuits are coming. That’s different, and we like varmints.

And in A Great Mess—two men who look like Roman soldiers (in those great metal helmets) regarding an oil derrick. This used to be an oil town, and Dixon remembers it for us here and in Cornered, a canvas of a tiny frame house surrounded by gushers.

It’s a nice juxtaposition.

DIXON: THE FUTURE IS TANDEM DDR PROJECTS | 3403 E BROADWAY | LONG BEACH 90803 | 562.434.8380 | DDRPROJECTS.COM | OPEN WED-FRI 12-7PM | SAT 12-6PM, SUN 12-5PM | THROUGH JAN 31 | FREE

Tags: art, ddr projects, dixon, Long Beach, spray paint