Sedition Magazine
Issue #2, Pages 67-71
Fall 2006

Article written by Leigh van der Werff & Jason Weeks

If your world could fit inside of a four-foot box, what would it look like? Would it be day or night? Furnished or unfurnished? Would you have someone with you? Or would you be alone?

We all live in boxes, be they limiting or open, either of our own creation or someone else's. Artist David Campbell Wilson's box was the confinement of a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. Flat broke and without a car, he embarked on a new art project that explored the concept of the box by inviting his friends and fellow artists to step inside a 4' by 4' wooden structure and express themselves freely.

"They could pose clothed or nude, alone or with a group, with props or without. My job was to facilitate their needs," Wilson says. His photographs and subsequent series of paintings ultimately became 'Queen of the Box', a fluid composition of interpretations of life within confinement.

'Queen of the Box' recently wrapped up a month-long show at the Lawrence Asher Gallery in Los Angeles. As part of the show, Wilson invited viewers to pose within the box and have their photographs taken for future paintings in the series. This playfulness and connection to the community are hallmarks of Wilson, who was recently in Portland and spoke with Sedition about 'Queen of the Box', his show at Vorpal Space, Portland's thriving art scene, and if there's ever been sex in the box.

'Queen of the Box' had its genesis in over 4000 photographs Wilson took of the nearly 150 models who posed inside the wooden box. These photographs became the inspiration and raw material for 12" by 12" paintings, 91 of which were arranged to create 'Queen of the Box'. They are bold in color and imagery and yet delicate in brushwork and their ability to convey heightened emotional states. Many of the pieces in 'Queen of the Box' have a three-dimensionality extending deep beyond the foreground figure, suggesting that while the subject may feel confined or secure within their own walls, there is life outside of those boundaries.

The universal concept of the box and the possibilities it offers are obviously attractive to Wilson. He explains that the box "is a cultural metaphor. A limited and definable space that some find comforting and others confining. To spend time inside the Box is to operate within known and established parameters. For some people, the Box is a job or relationship. For others it's a symbol of psychological space like a sanctuary or prison." All of these interpretations of the Box are evident in the individual paintings that make up the series.

Wilson's show at Vorpal Space (328 NW Broadway, Suite 117), entitled <i>Incendiary Journey,</i> ended in August, and exhibited several paintings from 'Queen of the Box' as well as a retrospective of his work from the last ten years. The solo show was Wilson's first in the Northwest since his move to Los Angeles, and Vorpal Space, with its dedication to exhibiting quality art by talented, lesser known artists, was the perfect venue. While in Portland, Wilson participated in a fire show at Dante's with members of Garnish PDX, and waxed enthusiastic about Stumptown. "I love this town. The air is clean, the sky is clear, and the foliage is in full bloom."

A frequent visitor here, Wilson has only good things to say about the local art scene. It's incredible, he says, and growing bigger and better. "It's inspiring to see artists getting street cred, working in a variety of styles, and being supported by a network of galleries." Wilson was excited to see how much Portland art reflects the urban community, and how much the community supports Portland art. "It's hot," he says about First Thursday and the bounty of galleries in northwest Portland.

His comments are hardly unexpected from an artist who emphasizes community in his work and who knows what it's like to be an unknown in the art world. After getting his art degree from Syracuse University, he began to incorporate subjects and themes from his concurrent studies in philosophy and religion into his art. For a year, he did odd jobs and spent three months driving across the country before winding up in Seattle. While there, he started getting shows and soon became an established artist in the local community, co- founding the Nico Gallery and featuring prominently in the Stadium Exhibition Center's New Year's 2000 ball. Having successfully devoted his life to art, he moved to Los Angeles and continued to hone his singular style.

With influences ranging from Dali to Da Vinci, and under the mentorship of Jerome Witkin, Wilson explored diverse mediums such as photography and oil painting. He combined these twin talents in 'Queen of the Box', taking the realism offered by photography and imbuing it with the otherworldly possibilities of surrealism. The result is a portrait of a community united in art while simultaneously illustrating the disparate lives and lifestyles of the individuals who modeled for him. Wilson is an integral part of this unique community, recording the expressions of a collective youth comprised of artists, writers, performers and musicians, all thriving on counter- culture and informed by events such as the Burning Man Festival.

Queen of the Box is a compelling commentary on this community. "My intention was to capture as many facets of the human experience as possible. Therefore each of the paintings is of different models, expressing different emotions, and different ideas." The whole composition illustrates the relationships between these models' emotions and ideas.

Because the individual paintings are freely mounted, they can be rearranged or removed, and new paintings can be added. This flexibility mirrors the dynamics of the community that inspired the work, a community of creativity and flux, of independence and acceptance. The malleability of the larger work means that different relationships in this community can be explored through simple manipulation of space.

It is important to remember that 'Queen of the Box', as arranged and displayed by Wilson, is a single piece of art, with a meaning and power greater than the sum of its individual parts. There is sensuality to 'Queen of the Box', but it doesn't lie with the work's title, or in Wilson's belief that "the Queen represents the abstract spirit created through the sum of... community." While the entire composition invites interpretation of these larger themes, it is because the individual canvasses reveal real lives caught unguarded or without reservation. 'Queen of the Box' balances the sensuality of curve and image with an understated sense of vulnerability - the viewer would be right to wonder if the poses are just that, if the models are making a statement or erecting another wall to the box, and still there are hints of intrusion and secrecy, as though some paintings violate the privacy of inner sanctuary.

However, 'Queen of the Box' is still a portrait of a community, with its beauty and its bruises. It is performance art in oil paint. It is interactive, collaborative, and engaging. Ultimately, it displays and invokes a sense of unity that transcends both artist-imposed compositional limits, and the borders and distances that separate us from the artwork and from each other. We can retreat, we can embrace, or we can observe, but as 'Queen of the Box' poignantly demonstrates, we cannot be passive members of the community that surrounds us.

All this is to say that 'Queen of the Box' is a complex and intriguing artwork, an evocative exploration of a universal concept, and a highlight in an already strong body of work. It is all that, but it is also fun. Wilson's box has seen a lot of action, such as the time he left it on a rooftop after a party, and found it flattened after the landlord allowed the local SWAT police to practice on the roof. Someone once completely lined the interior of the box with white fur. And of course, people have posed nude within those four wooden walls, which begs the question: was there actually sex in the box? According to Wilson, the answer is yes: "There has been sex in the box." Now, we just want to know where those paintings went...