You are probably familiar with the Abraham Obama images that popped up around election time. You know the ones: where the 16th president’s likenesss was morphed and mashed with Barack Obama’s distinctive eyes and expression, throwing up invisible props to the voters for change. That was the work of Ron English, a pop artist who is one part propaganda distilled with two parts cheekiness. His recent works infuse that pop art spontaneity and reliance on metaphor and context and the commercial, public medium to understand that there is something much greater at the core of the work, and in the case of his show at the Shooting Gallery, “The History of Kiss,” the message is this: there is a renaissance of rock, in all its basest forms, to be had. And KISS can guide you to the light.

Sure, these are ironic comments on a rampant and reckless consumer society, and Gene Simmons is definitely an opportunist, but what else could English’s re-envisioning of a classical Baroque painting defaced with an image of the Star-child translate to? We have to look at the past to appreciate the present? History repeats itself? God bless rock and roll?

I’ve seen KISS play. Twice. With my dad, who’s always had his nose pressed up against the window of the rock and roll world. As I am definitely my father’s daughter, I’ve analyzed this KISS worship as a sort of escapist experience. Moms in their Mom jeans can throw on the warpaint and pump the sign of the beast, all under the guise of someone else. That’s what makes these classical figures so weird and clever: these cherub-faced babes and bishops and Holy Mothers get to live out a secret double life of worship.

English is yet a dazzling technician in the painterly manner of the symbolist and Baroque artists, so thank the lord he has a context for his talent: pop culture! So for any dirtbags who think they can’t hang with fine art, this should whet the appetite for what is secret and what is the sacred: backstage passes y’all! It’s time to renew that membership in the KISS Army.

–Jolene Torr

(*Images, from top to bottom, left to right: Ron English, Peter and Paul, oil on canvas, 30 x 40″, courtesy of the Artist and Shooting Gallery, SF.  Ron English, Here Comes the Son, oil on canvas, 24 x 36″, courtesy of the Artist and Shooting Gallery, SF.  Ron English, Grease Paint Baptism, oil on canvas, 24 x 36″, courtesy of the Artist and Shooting Gallery, SF. Ron English, Kiss the Bride, oil on canvas, 36 x 48″, courtesy of the Artist and Shooting Gallery, SF.)