Root For This 'Underdog'

Towles's "Underdog" includes "Ball Buster," at right, and "Don't Make Me Tell You Twice," below. (Kelly Towles)

CALLING AN ART exhibition "Underdog" suggests a lot of things, not the least of which is speculation as to whether the artist might have a bit of an inferiority complex.

After all, the last place I saw Kelly Towles's work was at the recent, much-maligned Artomatic, an uncurated discharge of art -- both sweet and smelly -- that briefly flowed forth to fill the now-shuttered Capital Children's Museum. Before that, it was on the living room wall of a private residence on the Hill, whose owner had opened her home to a fly-by-night art-show-cum-house-party intended to cultivate young and novice collectors. And before that, it was part of the D.C. Arts Center's "1460 Wall Mountables," another show open to all comers with a hammer and a nail and work that could fit inside a two-foot square.

Talk about coming up in the world.

The David Adamson Gallery, known for representing such artists as blue-chip Chuck Close, Jim Dine, Lyle Ashton Harris, Judy Pfaff, Donald Sultan and William Wegman, is Towles's new home. He didn't take long to make it his own.

Fans of Towles's work (among whom I count myself) will appreciate the modest irony of his appearance in the tony Seventh Street gallery, where the graffiti- and comics-inspired artist has done a bit of on-the-cheap redecorating, starting with the walls. If the wraparound mural featuring several dripping renditions of Towles's signature dunce-cap-wearing, boxing-gloved figure (a stand-in for the artist?) is less radical than the indoor plywood construction-site barricade the artist had been contemplating installing, it is nonetheless considerably livelier than what one typically finds in Washington.

Add to that the artwork itself -- largely, pictures of peg-legged misfits, battered sad sacks and broken-toothed losers, painted on pieces of unfinished lumber hung from visible nails by means of packing twine -- and you'll understand the show's self-deprecating moniker. Even the artist's slickly framed digital prints (mainly enlargements of images the artist has printed on Priority Mail labels, and which he was giving away for free at Artomatic) have a certain underground je ne sais quoi that belies their high-end presentation.

Towles, of course, doesn't merely fit into the tradition of the outsider artist (a largely meaningless designation these days anyway since the wholesale embrace of the "street" by the fine art establishment). In a sense, he's simply carrying on the age-old tradition of the history painter, except in his case the vernacular narrative is more opaque and the hero, well, less heroic.

What exactly is going on, or what has just transpired, in Towles's art is hard to articulate. One thing that's clear is that there has been some kind of struggle. Along with the boxing gloves, the swollen eyes, chipped teeth and missing limbs suggest that. In some cases, the appearance of firearms -- whether real, as in the arms of a Red Army soldier, or toy, as in the hands of a cowboy-suited child -- suggests an ongoing threat, or, at the very least, suppressed anger. Did I say suppressed? There's nothing equivocal about the rage expressed in the print of a snarling guard dog at the show's entrance.

More than anything else, though, what Towles's art exudes is a sense of bemused resignation. The world he shows us is one in which childhood is every inch as scary as adulthood, and in which adulthood is defined not by achievement but, apparently, by one's ability to handle constant defeat.

It will be interesting to see whether Towles's impending personal success spoils -- or enriches -- the artist's wry and jaundiced art.

KELLY TOWLES: UNDERDOG -- Through Jan. 29 at David Adamson Gallery, 406 Seventh St. NW (Metro: Gallery Place-Chinatown). 202-628-0257. www.adamsoneditions.com. Open Tuesday-Friday 11:30 to 5 and Saturdays noon to 5. Free.