by Bryan Gibel
Daily Lobo
Looking at a James Black mural is like walking through a crowded Downtown Albuquerque street.
Faces scrawled in black on clean, white walls look at you from a thousand perspectives, each one an improvised portrait of urban life in Albuquerque. Smeared strokes and dripping ink give the exhibition an aesthetic that only a longtime graffiti writer can bring to a gallery.
But Black said his exhibition "Ink," which was dismantled this weekend except for his ink murals, had more faces than the portraits he drew on the walls of The Trillion Space at 510 Second St. N.W.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
"During the opening show we had on Jan. 26, people came in, and I drew their essences as I watched them," Black said. "We also had a water installation flowing with ink that was covered with Plexiglas, and there was a DJ spinning records on top with the ink passing beneath his turntables. The whole vibe was a mix of hip-hop, drum and bass and visual art, which are some of the influences I draw from in my work."
Black, an Albuquerque native who graduated from UNM with a bachelor's of fine arts in 2004, said his work is influenced by forms of artistic expression that aren't typically found in galleries.
"I grew up doing graffiti and reading comic books, and I'm actually on probation for graffiti right now," he said.
Black said The Trillion Space has always drawn on nontraditional influences.
"The Trillion Space began two or three years ago as a venue for underground hip-hop and punk rock shows and has evolved from there," he said. "Some of the artists who run the gallery are also skateboarders, and one early show was an exhibition made up of art on skateboards that were displayed all over the gallery."
While it still draws on cultures like hip-hop and skateboarding, Black said the gallery and his work have continued to become more diverse.
In its full form, Black said the "Ink" exhibition incorporated mediums including silk screening, fine-art-styled monotype prints, custom screen printing and limited edition textiles.
"Some of the prints were monotype prints I did way back at UNM," he said. "We were also selling T-shirts in a limited edition print run and displaying silk screening and textile work. But the theme that tied all those mediums together was the use of ink."
While many of the smaller prints of the exhibition have been taken down, Black's massive ink murals still adorn The Trillion Space's walls, confronting viewers with dark imagery and screaming faces.
Black said he and a partner run a silk-screening company out of The Trillion Space called Cold Crush Cottons. They also run a printing press called Paper Chase Press.
He said working at The Trillion Space has been transformative in his growth as an artist.
"Working with other artists at The Trillion has pushed me to work every day and grow," he said. "We have a deep level of communication that's almost like another language here, and we're able to communicate visually about the aesthetics of everyday life."
