BillRadawec_A_Study

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Story time with Uncle Bill

Bill Radawec delves into his personal history at raw & co gallery

Wednesday, September 15, 2005

Page 54

by Lyz Bly

Diorama Debauchery

Radawec's Study sculptures were inspired by Munchkin orgies. Cleveland'svisual arts community is

peppered with unconventional characters who devotedly attend art openings throughout the city. It

doesn't matter how far east, west or south the event is located, they are there. Artist Bill Radawec is one

such person; his affable presence gives openings a feeling that is not unlike a family reunion. He is the

uncle who always has a story to tell about his adventures in faraway places. The escapades Radawec

most likes to recount are about his days in Los Angeles, where he weathered earthquakes and a stormy

relationship, crossed paths with art and movie stars, and — perhaps most important to his art career —

immersed himself in L.A.'s art scene. The excess of L.A. seems to have permanently permeated the artist's

psyche, since years after returning to Cleveland to care for his widowed mother, L.A. is still front and

center in Radawec's mind and art. His current solo exhibition at raw & co, Bill Radawec (A Study) is a

trenchant amalgamation of his two lives as a dutiful son who now lives in Parma, making art in the

basement that was decorated by his deceased father, and as a California art scenester. The atmosphere

in the small, pristine gallery is spare and appears from a distance as an installation that was created by

a resolute minimalist. The wall that parallels the entranceway to the gallery is largely imbued with traces

of Radawec's complex life as a dutiful artist-son. On this wall there are three black paintings, which are

all the same size; two framed fragments of vintage green foliage-print cloth flank the black panels. The

five works are then hung on a wall that has a dark green-blue stripe painted above, and a wider field of

aqua blue below. The colors are a direct reference to Radawec's father, as they are but a few of the

hues he used to paint the family basement, which now serves as the artist's studio. The installation is multi-

layered and complex, referencing Radawec's history, and also his personal and artistic influences. All of

the black paintings are titled A Clean Slate, but each has a subtitle, which serves as a homage to artists

Joseph Beuys, Cy Twombly, and Gary Simmons. However, the works also reference his recent

engagement to another Cleveland-area artist and, as raw & co's director and curator Per Knutas says,

“It's no accident that the black pieces were painted with chalkboard paint, as Radawec worked as a

teacher at one time in his life.” The influence of the artist's father underlies his career as an artist, his

current relationship, and perhaps his past vocation as a teacher. The wedding of his artwork with his

home life is apparent in the wall installation which, while stark and simple, is infused with emotion. As a

whole, the painted wall, the three black panels, and the two framed pieces of fabric serve as iconic keys

into Radawec's past and present realities. The artist manages to simply and intelligently give viewers a

sense of this reality, yet there is nothing mawkish about the work. The rakish side of Los Angeles is a

central theme in Radawec's sculptural works, which are all titled A Study and installed at varying heights

on the two walls adjacent to the larger installation. The works are like tiny dioramas, which the artist built

to mimic the shapes of galleries where he planned to curate exhibitions. The miniature “galleries” serve

as voyeuristic stages for raucous parties and orgies, as well as seedy and violent encounters between

scantily clad women, naked men, armed bandits, police officers and drunken merrymakers. The

debauchery is, according to Knutas, inspired by the orgiastic and supposedly destructive fêtes that the

actors who played Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz held at the Culver Hotel in Hollywood while filming.

And, while there is a degree of over-the-top partying — including bare-breasted women being ogled by

lecherous men, and groups of miniature people drinking and dancing — the works also serve as social

commentaries. In one work, a male, African-American police officer confronts a naked white man and

boy. This scene seems to reference the recent Michael Jackson child sex-abuse scandal. The twist — in

Radawec's realm both the abuser and his victim are white, and the agent of authority is black — subtly

addresses the racial subtext underlying the Jackson trial and the discourse surrounding it. But there is

more than social commentary and decadent fantasy in Radawec's sculptural studies, as the colors of his

family/current studio are present in most of the pieces. Again, even within these fanciful and, at times,

seedy scenes the artist's personal life and iconography are revealed. The ambiguous brilliance of these

scenes is realized when you recognize that you are not unlike the tiny people in the sculptural settings. As

you recognize the basement hues on the raw & co walls and the colors within the sculptural tableaux,

you realize that you are in a large-scale version of the diminutive structures that you are voyeuristically

peering in to. The effect is at once humorous and startlingly surreal. Ultimately, the exhibition delivers

what its title implies. It gives you a glimpse into the mind and reality of the artist, which is far more

complex and intelligent than any storytelling uncle at annual the family reunion.

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