
Raymond Pettibon, No Title (Why should I), 1984, pen and ink on paper, 12 × 9".
Raymond Pettibon
Contemporary Fine Arts Galerie (CFA)

Alas, poor Pettibon! Poet sublime of cryptic fabulosity, inkpot noirist, and restless chronicler of the muck and ick that splatters so freely, then embeds itself like a cancer, forming the blackest recesses of American consciousness. His caustic wit cuts deep, even as it elevates him high above the tabloid trash-scape that feeds his dauntless foraging. Though the press release for his recent Berlin exhibition highlighted “new works,” the show, a dense mass of text-image amalgamations on paper, included some pieces dating as far back as 1981. But it doesn’t really matter, because Pettibon is embedded so deeply within a concentrated continuum of his own devising; his time is always now, no matter the date.
Many of the drawings were pinned directly to the wall, although a few were hung in frames, as if in wooden boats adrift on a flood of paper. Overall, a stylistic dialectic was

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