Americans don’t talk much to each other these days. They shout, stomp and take a stand on everything. A storm cloud of violence swirls through the air. Since January 1, 2023, there have been nearly 100 mass shootings and we still cannot politely discuss possible solutions, let alone agree on what constitutes a massacre. This is one of the reasons why Marc Thomas Gibson is an artist of our time and more: he sees what is happening and has just the perspective necessary to remain courteous, even a tad optimistic. He is able to find human madness in his subject. Unlike news anchors and other pundits, he never expresses shock. Instead, he recognizes that there is fun and (so far) safety in the making, which allows him to infuse humor into his work. If Thomas Nast, who is considered the “father of American cartooning”, has an heir, it’s Gibson, who goes even further and elevates caricature and commentary to the rank of art. This is my impression after visiting his recent exposure at Sikkema Jenkins & Co in Chelsea, Manhattan.
A whirlpool is a spinning toy that goes nowhere. That’s Gibson’s view of the country’s current political and social situation, and he’s not wrong. This bitter impasse – for which few can see a peaceful outcome – is the main focus of the series.
He gives viewers plenty to look at and think about in 12 works, ranging from collages and graphite on paper to ink on canvas. These latter works are detailed cartoons on the scale of a painting. If a measure of both designer and artist is the originality of a design, then Gibson already stands out. He developed images, such as anthropomorphized steam whistles (a casual sign of American industry) and hands passing a magician’s black cloth over a pile of bricks, from which a white hand emerges. Does the magician make something appear or disappear or both?
In “Whirly Gig” (2022), Gibson depicts two pairs of tangled legs and arms, one clad in blue and the other in ochre, against a black and white printed background. The hands of the person in ocher are white, while the hands of the other person are brown. The background of the curved and stylized shapes seems to be some kind of printed material.
As the centerpiece of the exhibit, “Whirly Gig” evokes current struggles in the United States over race, civil rights, access to the vote, education, and just about everything. We only see nested members, no faces. Gibson never indicates why they are struggling. This ambiguity is what separates him from political cartoonists.
Although inspired by current events, such as the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol, Gibson does not identify his source in this exhibit, except in “The Show Goes On” (2022), where we see a crumpled sign with “TRIP” (Trump) on it. The broom suggests that January 6 may be slipping away in our rearview mirror, but the forces that enabled that day’s outburst of vehemence are still very much with us. Part of it is, as the title suggests, “a spectacle”, a disavowal of history and reality.
When he includes lines of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” and the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in “Rally Jams” (2022), along with clasped white hands, a cross burning, a balaclava that looks like something between the Ku Klux Klan and Casper the Friendly Ghost, a pair of hands holding a red sheet, provoking the bull whose horns are visible, and a blue chain-link fence in the background, it’s hard not to think that Gibson is trying to turn his fears into humor. He tries to understand what troubles both the United States and his daily life.
In “All A Go (Steampipes and Hands)” (2022), Gibson offsets the anthropomorphized steam pipes with a brown hand in the upper left corner reading a book by Édouard Glissant, the great Martinican philosopher, poet and critic. In the context of building walls against others, Gibson offers the alternative philosophy of Glissant, who wanted to think beyond narrow definitions of identity and essentialism.
In his large ink on paper, ‘Mark and the Shark’ (2022), Gibson revisits John Singleton Copley’s best-known painting, ‘Watson and the Shark’ (1778–82), which depicts nine men in a dory rescuing 14 Brook Watson, a 1-year-old cabin boy, victim of a shark attack. As an adult, Watson, who had become a successful merchant and later Lord Mayor of London and Director of the Bank of England, commissioned it. In “Watson and the Shark”, Copley depicts a black sailor at the top of the painting holding the rope who will aid the victim, who is said to defend the slave trade and was described by American prisoner Ethan Allen as “a malevolent man”. and cruel character.
What does it mean to save a man who supports slavery and believes others are subhuman? This is one of the questions Gibson poses when, in “Mark and the Shark,” he replaces the nine men in Copley’s painting with the same number of self-portraits. This question hangs over this exhibition and over Gibson’s work. What would happen to the United States if blacks no longer held positions that benefit whites? Would these same people continue to be as shrill and loud as Gibson’s steam pipes?
