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Home  Archive music profiles Justin Tolentino
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Justin Tolentino |
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Written by Kyle Beachy
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Friday, 16 December 2005 |
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“It’s my new medium,”
Tolentino said, nodding to the flags he found ditched in a trashcan
somewhere.
Justin Tolentino’s studio in the Lemp Art Stables doesn’t much adhere
to the finer principles of decor. In one jumbled corner there’s an
aging “L” couch, its yellow and orange cushions saggy from years of
strain. A short wooden coffee table sits awkwardly within the couch’s
crook; on it sits the obligatory glass ashtray packed with butts and
thick tiers of slag. The only other piece of furniture is the small end
table that supports a simple, black boom box, which in turn supports a
sloppy stack of CDs.
Everything else in the room either is, or
is becoming, Tolentino’s artwork. There are rows of glass bottles (too
many to count), some the approximate size of your standard alcoholic
grandfather’s flask, the others probably five gallons each. Both sizes
are painted with various faces, characters, or animals. On one, what
looks like a drunken, deranged cartoon chicken is squawking at nothing.
Dominating the studio, though, are the paintings, either hung or
leaning in rows against the wall, that span the gamut from 3” x 5”
postcards to 4’ x 4’ canvases. In between are the found wooden objects
of various size and shape: old oak shutters from a forgotten window,
discarded, tired signs from a long-gone era, etc. In other words,
anything that will accept several coats of paint.
When I
stopped by, there were a bunch of flags draped over two pipes that run
just below the ceiling, hanging almost to the floor like a bizarre set
of multi-colored curtains. In between the two rows stood Tolentino, his
truck-driver cap restricting his wild, neck-length thatch of brown
curls. He wore what he always wears: jeans, slick Euro-style shoes, and
a T-shirt. He usually has a mustache and sometimes a goatee, neither of
which is ever especially full.
“It’s my new medium,”
Tolentino said, nodding to the flags he found ditched in a trashcan
somewhere. One was from A.G. Edwards; others weren’t immediately
identifiable. But there were also a couple Missouri State flags.
Tolentino pulled one of these from among the group and, wearing a
devious expression that would send any mother worth even half a shit to
her early grave, said, “This is really going to piss some people off.”
If it were up to him, Tolentino would still be practicing his craft on
an entirely different set of canvases. He started painting graffiti
during the eighth grade, after opening up an issue of The Source
magazine and seeing photos of tags in New York. “Listening to the
music, I felt like I was already a part of this hip hop culture, but I
didn’t feel like I was taking part as much as I could. I wanted to do
all four elements and just be good at all of them, but because of my
background in art, this was the part I focused on.” And for years,
throughout high school in Fenton and a four-year stint in Tennessee
attending the Memphis College of Art, graffiti was a major component of
Tolentino’s life. “There’s no drug that will ever match the feeling you
get going out and painting a wall and wondering if you’re going to get
caught.”
Property owners, though, aren’t especially fond of
graffiti, nor are many city courts. Tolentino admits, “I’ve been locked
up too many times to go out any more. It gets expensive. Last time cost
me like $1,200, with court fines and vandalism and trespassing fines.”
These days, he spends a lot more time indoors. Now 25 and one of two
curators of the ever-revolving collection at the Art Stables,
Tolentino’s paintings aim to capture the urban aesthetic of a bombed
freight car in a more potable, marketable dosage. His work is like
visually matured graffiti, condensed and refined for a smaller stage.
Most involve figures—myriad cartoon faces that convey things like
frustration, disappointment, constipation, intellectual malaise, a
hangover, etc.—against rudimentary, simply colored backgrounds aimed at
emulating the textured surfaces of train cars and weathered walls. Many
of the images, including the several tobacco-themed works, deal with
“mocking myself, mocking people’s vices. Just the things people do.”
Others represent Tolentino’s jabs at American culture. Explaining a
pair of paintings, one an eyeball hanging open by its lid from a
fishing hook, the other an ear plugged with a cartoon cork, he said,
“Western culture wants you to see, but they don’t want you to hear.
They force you to see everything, and then downplay what’s actually
going on.”
There always seems to be a CD playing in
Tolentino’s studio. “I listen to everything,” he said, “a lot of
raggae, and I do listen to a lot of underground hip hop.” Acts like
Slug, Eyedea, and Sole, along with the Anticon crew, who, he says,
“allow my brain to concentrate on something completely different than
the painting, so my subconscious just streams through my hand. It takes
my mind off of what I’m doing.”
Tolentino’s is one of five
permanent studios at the Lemp Art Stables (sidebar: if you haven’t been
to one of the monthly shows put on by ArtDimensions in the Stables, go
as soon as possible). Out of his disorderly studio comes a brand of
artwork that likely wouldn’t have found a home had it not been for
Davide Weaver and ArtDimensions. Tolentino understands this, and is
eternally grateful for the opportunity. “There’s a lot of people out
there who can paint really pretty portraits or really pretty
landscapes, and a lot of the galleries in St. Louis, that’s what
they’re looking for. What we do here, we’re pretty much open to
anything.”
Just outside of Tolentino’s studio are two enormous
paintings, each featuring a photo-realistic image of what looks to be
an Abercrombie or Gap model. Behind them, in an ocean of sepia tones
and pencil strokes, are the skewed, misshapen faces and figures that
exemplify Tolentino’s artwork. Though from early in his career, the
pieces are a perfect summary of the artist: a trained painter capable
of realistic renditions of the beauty in our world who would rather
focus on the madness that stays hidden in the background. “Those were
basically me telling my school to fuck off,” Tolentino said with that
devious smile.
Tolentino’s art was born of a culture that
defies domestication. Now, with ArtDimensions finally providing a venue
for local art that stretches beyond really pretty landscapes and
portraits, he’s found a home for his brand of refined graffiti. A
messy, crowded, smoke-filled home with a constant soundtrack bridging
the gap between consciousness and his rag-tag collection of unlikely
canvases. For more info, go to www.studiotolentino.com.
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