Beauty Master is the name of Bobby Gonzales one-man show at Exclamation Gallery. And he tells me in no uncertain terms that it’s fashion that cranks him up. He also tells me to call him Robby.

Gonzales, a Tyler BFA, has packed a lot of work into this tiny, out-of-the-way gallery housed in an old corner store in East Oak Lane–the gallery has only two blank walls. The rest is two walls of windows. But Gonzales has hung works on the windows with suction cups and projected his video (a stop-action animation made with gallery owner Austin Lee) above the works on the wall. He decorated the windows with painted arabesques. Nice installation all in all.

Bobby Gonzales transforms Kate Moss into the Harley logo. He wasn’t thinking Harley when he made it, however, saying he was inspired by Aboriginal art and patterns.

Wielding an Exacto, Gonzales has cut (and often folded) paper from magazine fashion ads, transforming the images with his excisions. An image of model Kate Moss becomes an aggressive Harley Davidson logo, or maybe a car grille. Posing models go topsy turvy with arms transformed into legs and bodies take on menacing caligraphic gestures. The work walks a line between Pop and illustration.

Bobby Gonzales reimagines a Calvin Klein ad

Clothes become full-suit armor under Gonzales’ razor–isn’t that what clothes really are? But he himself is not in the least bit defensive or well-armed! There’s an interest here in scarification and the contradiction between the inside and the outside, the clothes vs. the man.

The dough shapes turn up in this doughy nude with ball.

The exhibit also includes a number of other approaches. One piece is a graphite drawing of bits of dough that look like clouds. Gonzales told me he works as a baker, rolling dough; he drew the shapes of the various leftover dough scraps, which are rather cloud-like, tumbling across and up and down a large sheet of drawing paper in a rough grid. Those same shapes show up in some of his cut work.

Gonzales sporting a paisley-lined coat with tails made for him by his roommate, and some transformative "hair." He's posing with Carol, his high school art teacher (Delran High School), who said he was outstanding from the day he walked into her classroom. — Gonzales sporting a paisley-lined coat with tails made for him by his roommate, and some transformative “hair.” He’s posing with Carol, his high school art teacher (Delran High School), who said he was outstanding from the day he walked into her classroom.

Another piece begins at the top with small color shapes that then become gray shapes and finally cutout shapes, lending the paper a fabric-y drape.

In the small video loop, Gonzales snaps a whip a la Indiana Jones. The whip motion–the stop action animation element of the video–is sinuous and seductive–very Beauty Master.

Email or call for an appointment info@exclamationgallery.net, 570 906 0766.