posted 12-11-2002 10:05 AM            

Walker Art Center
December 19, 2002 - March 23, 2003

David Rathman's ink drawings of cowboys examine a particular kind of fable: the settling of the American West. Combining a range of visual references from the 19th-century landscape paintings of Frederic Remington to the Hollywood Westerns of John Ford, his sepia-toned images paired with darkly humorous texts evoke the strange, illogical irony of the writings of Samuel Beckett. His characters stand silhouetted against the Western landscape, spouting strangely existentialist aphorisms such as "No need to shoot straight when you shoot often" or "You don't put a name on something you might have to eat." Rathman's protagonists are high-plains drifters who rewrite aspects of the American mythology of the West with the artist's own brand of desperate black humor.