marc bell

In his second solo exhibition, Marc Bell seamlessly combines his decade plus comics activities with his lifelong devotion to, as he calls it, “Fine Ahtwerks.” The result is over eighty drawings, watercolors, paintings and mixed media constructions of a fully formed visual world of tubular creatures, inexplicable landscapes, and nonsense words that imply narrative as quickly as they distract from it. One of the works in the exhibition is the long, scroll-like ink drawing on EKG paper “Supernatural Hot Rug and Not Used II,” 2004 – a composition teeming with Bell’s manically animated people and quasi animals amidst text rife with free-associations. In the mixed media construction “(Hide Behind Bloo Chip) Kid,” 2005, a complex melange of people, creatures, forms and buildings constructed from cardboard, we see his work has roots in masterful renderings, typography, and old-fashioned gags, but then grows into assemblages that bring his images into real space, and funny, seat-of-the pants comic narratives that give his characters an inner life. Visit the Adam Baumgold Gallery.