What to see at Inner Outer Limits
Inner Outer Limits, now at the Todd Weiner Gallery, is a circus of crowd-pleasing pop art and multigenerational nostalgia by father-son artists Michael and Ian Young (respectively). Three of its works are standouts worth seeing before the show closes later this month.
Ian Young’s board-game-themed paintings tap into some of the conventions of commercial box art. “Battleship” splashes its title across the canvas like a movie poster, and the action-packed scene conveys the high energy of a Saturday-morning toy commercial. A hinged game board serves as ground for a charge led by swarthy, rosy-cheeked cartoon pirates. From their pigmented arcade colors to their deliberately mismatched proportions (a 1-inch-tall sailor stands next to a pirate six times his size), Young’s figures have the posed feel of a mixed-gauge model-train display.
Both artists tap into a similar spirit of imaginative play, but Michael Young seems more interested in the boxy shapes and bloated bumpers of 1960s cars, a theme you can trace through a few of his paintings.
The desolate, sun-baked landscape of “The Late Saucer City” wouldn’t look out of place in one of the Fallout games, but surprising subjects and brushwork (a pterodactyl chases an aircraft in the background; mosaic dabs of color capture the glint of sunlight on alien metal) give the parched palette a cheery feel. “Saucer City” frames a few muscle cars approaching a dealership — one peddling new and used flying saucers — and the clash of retro autos and neon signs with beat-up extraterrestrial transport provides a sustaining comic riff.
“Kansas City Transportation” rewards close inspection. Dozens of figures in motion dot the noisy skyline, iconic Kansas City buildings abandoning their addresses to crowd into Michael Young’s view. Here, the artist leans toward a neoimpressionist aesthetic, staccato points of color blending into a fuller tonal range. It’s the right touch for an exhibition marked by frozen scenes of furious action.
