ARTnews
September 2003

For this novel exhibition, the Dactyl Foundation invited a mixed bag of 50 skateboarders and artists to design plain wooden boards. Rather than the Chris Johansen/Barry McGee esthetic one might have expected, the surprisingly rich and varied grouping encompassed everything from heavy metal-esque Fraktur to graffiti tags to idiosyncratic self-portraits. Young males were clearly the dominant skateboarding demographic.

The subjects seemed lifted from the margins of math-class notebooks- favorites were figures from video games, sports teams, and comicbooks, and women with big breasts. Jamie Story's O.J. depicted O.J. Simpson running down the football field with a red bullet hole in his helmet, while SSUR, a graffiti artist, silk-screened a pixilated image of a naked woman across four boards.

Aggressive posturing was fully in evidence- sample titles were High School Revenge Fantasy, Inner Conflict, and Chomp on This. For the arresting Bullets Can't Stop Them, KENT painted his board as a target, shot at it, and then sprinkled the bullets on the floor. Some of the best boards were linked to street culture. As if drawing a tattoo, Tom Sachs burnt a likeness of the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. on the board's polished surface. Erik Rossetti, Ray Mate, and Jon Buscemi likewise used theirs as eulogies, each commemorating Keenan Milton, a skateboarder who died in 2001.

A stand-out was GOOD's How Long Did That Take You?, for which the skater and graffiti artist carved his board into a fearsome expression, resembling a Polynesian tribal mask with wheels. Another was actor Willem Dafoe's quip on skateboarding's maturity level. Channeling kindergarten arts and crafts, he contributed a board decorated with gold spray-painted macaroni.