Brian Chippendale at D'Amelio Terras

Unlike such fellow RISD graduates as Jim Drain, Ara Petersen and Dan Colen, Brian Chippendale has long resisted the temptation to join New York's art throng, choosing instead to make Providence, R.I., his home. He has become a leading force behind the city's vibrant artist community, recently celebrated in the exhibition "Wunderground" at the RISD Art Museum. Chippendale is a prolific producer of comics and 'zines, and, since fronting the noise band Lightning Bolt, he has become something of an underground celebrity. This was his much anticipated New York gallery debut.

In keeping with the trend for all things Providence, this show formed one part of "Sets"--a three-part exhibition featuring artist/musicians with roots in the city, all linked to the noise music scene. It also ran concurrently with "Music is a Better Noise," a show at P.S.1 featuring artists who make music as well.

Early on, silkscreen became the preferred medium of Chippendale's coterie; he prints sheets of paper with cartoonlike arms, legs and props, which he then cuts out and wheat-pastes onto sheets printed with dot patterns. The result is a flat background of busy dots in lurid clashing colors interrupted by various odd comic-book characters. The patterned background suggests a drug-induced oblivion, although Chippendale has a reputation for clean living; the documentary on his band is called Power of Salad

A tall, tepeelike structure in the gallery was the commanding presence around which were hung silkscreened works on paper (all works 2006). Accessorized with slit windows and covered with Chippendale's signature dots, it resembles an antiwar monument decorated by nursery-school kids. Inside, cartoon strips are collaged onto pinkish dots so that playroom-bright colors are juxtaposed with hilarious, overtly political messages ("Cute cuddly cluster bombs ... children love 'em") while Sponge Bob Square Pants keeps watch in the corner. The show's best piece was Chippendale's reworked map of Providence. Locations include the One Choice Bank, Dead Fox No Woods Casino and the vast Rising Eagle Place Luxury Apartments, which dwarfed Affordable Housing. Since being kicked out of the famed artist's space Fort Thunder by the Shaws supermarket empire, Chippendale has made eviction by money-making landlords a recurring theme in his work.

The artist's frenzied drumming technique could be heard through small speakers in the gallery; the music clearly informs the art. His relentless onslaught of beats sounds like radio static, while the chaos of colored dots resembles the screen of a broken television set. Chippendale's output epitomizes his media-saturated generation.

In But We Are Innocent! an airplane explodes against a sky ablaze with orange. His jarringly bright colors were startling under the gallery's bright lights, but judging from the plywood sign "We Do Sterile," Chippendale clearly disapproves of the venue's disinfected ambience. It was here, however, away from his habitual cluttered artist spaces, that Chippendale's work really succeeded in captivating an audience. His art is as hard to digest as the forces it's fighting against.

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COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning