Featuring: William Cordova Michael Queenland Marc Andre Robinson

From sports terminology to hip hop vernacular, and from drawing to making money, the term “scratch” has a variety of meanings and uses. A verb, a noun, an idiom and slang, it carries entirely different meanings depending on context and usage. The first definition, to mark, scrape or strike a surface, is perhaps the most physical and active one. While the context often specifies the meaning and use of a word or phrase, generation, culture and gender also build frameworks for communication. In the 21st century, the lexicon continues to expand. According to turntablist-musician Rob Swift, “scratching” records was invented by The Grand Wizard Theodore as “a musical note created by manually moving record or disk platter back and forth in a rhythmic motion to reveal a sound.” When you scratch past the surface of any structure, surface, image or sound, layers, both ancient and new, emerge.

The works of William Cordova, Michael Queenland and Marc Andre Robinson have singular, dual and multiple references and meanings. The indelible marks of both cultural history and personal memory not only scratch the surface of each artist’s work, they also permeate down to the core of what each one journeys to discover. In the more than 50 works of drawing, sculpture, photography and video in the exhibition, Cordova, Queenland and Robinson use interchangeable found objects and images to create and recreate visual language. Junked and rebuilt cars, soap bubbles on liquor bottles and Malcolm X iconography are just some of the images incorporated and scratched in different ways in Scratch.