The pseudonym Tony Bones (a.k.a. Soler, Soyler, and/or Goya) currently represents the story of a petty criminal emerging from the streets of East Dallas to rub elbows with the Dallas art elite. He has spent a day in jail and donated a ton of money to the Dallas Police Pastry Fund for his crimes against humanity, and he's now attempting to make it good as a gallery artist. For years, Bones has skirted the line between tagging and true graffiti, but can his gallery work cross another line and evoke enough of a response to force open the pocketbooks of Dallas art collectors?

Bones' street trademark is a spindly stick figure with arms creepily reaching out towards the viewer, sometimes subtly depicted with broken handcuff chains dangling from its wrists. His graphic world melds the bland surface value of Keith Haring with the playful chaotic genius of Bill Watterson, both influences Bones has admitted in interviews. He has wielded his artistic skill while ruining people's property from here to Brooklyn, and is currently on probation for his crimes, leaving him technically unable to venture out of Dallas until 2009. The Public Trust is currently hosting a solo exhibition of his work at their gallery space in Deep Ellum, on view through September 6, 2008.

I started off really wanting to hate this show. I have mixed feelings about graffiti art and have no respect for someone who would ruin other people's property in the name of self-promotion. I somehow thought Tony Bones was going to be displaying chunks of concrete and brick forcibly removed from the external wall of a family-run dry cleaners, but it turns out Bones isn't all that bad, and he does generally have some scruples about whose property he'll destroy. And what this particular show turns out to be is the harmless commercialization onto canvas of Bones's trademarked stick figures. It really wouldn't be surprising to find some of these images on a t-shirt at Target some day, and there's a sense of humor pervasive throughout the collection that makes it hard to dislike.

The drill for the whole exhibition is as follows: A brightly colored solid background with an engaging stick figure and other whimsical objects are arranged playfully on the support. There might be some funny or poignant text included. A lot of the canvas foreground is empty and the arrangement of objects is suitably reminiscent of a graffiti wall, mimicking areas that can't be reached with a spray paint can. All of the pieces are immaculately executed with invisible brush strokes -- if they aren't air brushed or otherwise sprayed in the first place, and on several of the canvas backgrounds, you can see hints of initial subject outlines that have been corrected in the final paint layer. These corrections lend an additional dimension to some otherwise very straight-forward paintings. There were also three pieces done in neon tubing that would go great in an artsy downtown loft's romper room, possibly next to an ironically placed glowing Schlitz Beer sign.

It's great that Bones and The Public Trust include some cheaper screen prints in the show to cater to the drove of youngsters that showed up at the Saturday night opening to support him. The more expensive pieces (City Smash Pt. 1 and Take Me Home) were well chosen since they seem to contain some deeper meaning that helps qualify them as the kind of art that the people with money would pay for. A smaller canvas titled Ancient Gods of Blood & Fire fits as well into the latter category, but was priced for us poor folk, making it a possible steal for someone wanting to take an investment risk on an artist that could seriously prove commercially viable in the future.

It sounds like this "Mr. Bones" is a good guy. He doesn't sound like a jackass in his interviews, and he seems to be genuinely fond of Dallas even though The Man around here has put him under city arrest for his previously destructive artwork. One has to award major points to his former street work for its playfulness and humor, but in essense it really doesn't accomplished much artistically beyond self promotion. Really, it is tagging pretty much by definition. And tagging isn't enough to qualify as true art.

Of course, there is inherent social criticism behind tagging & graffiti. Bones himself said perceptively that it makes the haters feel "that they don’t have control over their city." The fact that an art form can evoke that kind of reaction is pretty awesome. But without the inseparable strength provided by his previous media, will his new paintings as a gallery artist have any weight in the real art world? What exactly will his artistic purpose be? Bones's work currently lacks the conceptual complexity of a Barry McGee, or the artistry of an Ed Templeton, and with a few more gallery shows along these lines, he'll probably exhaust his market.

Bones has set himself on the right track and has a lot of potential. He has a baited audience that obviously really loves him as a person and as an artist. This solo show should inject him with some legitimate financial reward for his risky past work, and I hope he'll take advantage of this opportunity and focus on expanding the emotional impact of his pieces.

Galleries:
dallaspolice.com (genius name for a subversive website)
flickr pool of street art
personal site

Photograph courtesy of Erica Felicella.