Ron Terada

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Ron Terada, “BBQ Beer Freedom,” 2023

offset print on newsprint, 170" X 98" (courtesy of Catriona Jeffries)

By now, the iconography of imported contemporary populism from the U.S. is familiar to just about everyone. Neither new, nor particularly interesting, the tropes of the American far-right have proliferated in the Trump era and grown to steroidal capacities in the wake of police brutality, racism, climate-denial, anti-vaccine rhetoric and the claw-back of reproductive healthcare. If we follow the signs, at least the ones that seem to scream the loudest, it is a far-right world (certainly, a far-right U.S.).

BBQ Beer Freedom, an exhibition by Vancouver-based artist Ron Terada at Catriona Jeffries until Nov. 11, explores a culture rife with political conflict. The exhibition mainly consists of multiple large-scale black-on-black paintings of text appropriated from American right-wing demonstrations of recent years.

Common slogans from these events serve as Terada’s medium, a material he formats in matte paint against a high gloss background, creating a reflective surface that distorts. The rallying cries of the MAGA hordes are emblazoned throughout the gallery: Guns Save Lives; Black Rifles Matter; It’s OK To Be White; Talking to You Reminds Me To Clean My Gun; and a few other nods to popular culture, such as Ye, Dilbert and WQKE.

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Ron Terada, “It’s OK To Be White,” 2023

acrylic on canvas, 66" X 44" (courtesy of Catriona Jeffries)

Like a kind of hologram, the black matte text against the high gloss encourages viewers to move around the painted phrases to fully take them in. The camouflage of tonal colouring seems to want to invoke a kind of embodied viewing, but the impenetrability of both the blackness of the paint and the gratuitous hatred of the slogans doesn’t reward a closer look. This seems vaguely purposeful, perhaps commenting on the source material’s lack of depth. But I feel cold.

The text-based works only differ from slogan to slogan, whereas the relative sameness between paintings points to the ubiquity of viral MAGA culture. Terada chose the typeface Summit Regular as a reference to college sports lettering and the inherent rivalry between teams, in this case right vs. left.

The second room of the gallery features the titular photographic collage, BBQ BEER FREEDOM. There are pictures of extreme Trump supporters of all kinds among the 2020 images of Mark and Patricia McCloskey as they point guns at the Black Lives Matter protesters passing outside their St. Louis home. The repeated images form a wallpaper of bright orange iconography that contrast the black painted texts and shows the t-shirts, placards, and trucker hats where the expressions first appeared.

This is a clever series of works that are either too clever or not clever enough, in that their gambit is utterly blatant. The texts speak to the intensity of our culture wars. The politics of this series are relevant and timely. Blanketed in black paint, the images are slick like a brand-new Tesla. Irony is abundant!

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Ron Terada, partial installation view of “BBQ Beer Freedom” (courtesy of Catriona Jeffries)

On the one hand, BBQ BEER FREEDOM points to the artful concern around the indeterminacy of both language and imagery. Yet, as the gallery didactic asks, hung in a gallery and called art, can a new context for old hate offer us something different to consider? Is it even possible to read these images as anything other than what they are? There is a hanging suggestion that over time, even this propaganda will lose its potency.

As I see the images from this show circulate on my social media feed, there is an apparent wry humour to be found for some. For me, I am both too bored by the language of populism and too blinded by my own political outrage to find it. ■

Ron Terada’s exhibition BBQ Beer Freedom is at Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver, Sept. 29-Nov. 11

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