DEAD BEATS

Comments (0) By Michael Simmons Thursday, Apr 2 2009

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Bohemia ain't what it used to be. Rampant faux-bohemianism has replaced lush and mainlining with gelato and yoga and Brangelina forbid you've been up all night with your reprobate pals when you oughta be waking up to dress the tot (adopted or homemade) in a Ramones T-shirt for Daddy Day. The urban landscape is lousy with FoBos because the real ones WENT AND DIED. Thankfully la bohÃ¨me elite left behind lots of evidence as both creators and subjects. Bukowski and Burroughs pays tribute to two late literary outlaws, as well as their living conspirators. Sam Cherry is a 95-years-young photographer who took lots of gritty black-and-whites of Buk in the '60s and '70s, San Fran's Black Cat CafÃ© in the '40s and L.A.'s Skid Row in the '80s. He is a wizard of light and shadow whose subjects never ate gelato. Paired up with Cherry's earthy pics is the Left Coast premiere of the lost art of Ah POOK IS HERE, a never-pubbed 1970s graphic-novel collab twixt Burroughs and artist Malcolm McNeill based on Lonesome Cowboy Bill's ruminations about the Mayan death god. (Many will remember Burroughs' recitation of "Ah Pook the Destroyer" from his 1990 Dead City Radio recording.) McNeill perfectly captured Bill's twisted, funny mythopoetic landscape with his own detailed, realistic fantasy art. These four masters of their mediums transport us poor 21st-century suckers into worlds real and imagined that share a serrated edge currently lacking in art, literature and the everyday lives of those who claim to be edge dwellers because of their choice of T-shirt. (Opening reception on Saturday, April 4, 6-9 p.m.)
Fri., April 3; Tuesdays-Sundays. Starts: April 3. Continues through May 2, 2009