Review

"Untitled (Work, Play)", iPhone Photo with White Ink.

Matthew Huff
La Familia

6-10 p.m.
(Opening Reception)

Plenum Art Space
504 E. 18th St.
Kansas City, MO
816.813.4688

Hours after First Friday: By appointment.
Runs through: Sept. 24.

Gallery site: http://plenumspace.weebly.com

Back to the usual First Friday routine, I suppose, in that I'm recommending a show based on seeing one image and the artist's information.

That's the way of First Friday, though, with so many galleries only open for receptions and by appointment. And having seen what I've seen and read what I've read, I'd say it's a safe bet that Matthew Huff's La Familia, which opens tonight at Plenum Art Space in the East Crossroads, won't disappoint.

Huff has come up with an intriguing premise — blowing up cell phone photos and combining them with a graffiti-inspired code of his own divising — and made it work on both the visual and conceptual fronts.

Enlarging small-scale 2.0 megapixel photographs so many times — for example, Untitled (Work, Play), today's featured image, clocks in at 54 inches by 36 inches — gives them a gritty, raw feel.  That's entirely in keeping with the source of the cryptic messages written in white ink across the prints.

Writing in the third person, he explains:

Being raised in Los Angeles County, Huff was keenly observant of the ever-present gang graffiti, particularly throughout his neighboring city Azusa, where he spent much of his time skateboarding. The best skateboarding spots were located in the heart of the Azusa 13’s territory, giving him an early exposure to the street gang's cryptic communication. Thirteen represents the letter M, being that it is the thirteenth letter in the alphabet, and Azusa’s “13” was a reference to its affiliation with the Mexican Mafia, one of the oldest and most powerful prison gangs in the United States.

LA FAMILIA is directly inspired by Huff’s passion and interest in life’s duality: positivity informed by the negative, creation from chaos, smooth yet abrasive, black, white, and the gray areas in between.

The image above is only one part of the encoded story, though ... to see the rest, you'll have to show up tonight.

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