Kelly Towles at Adamson

"Underdog", Kelly Towles's first solo show, closed at David Adamson Gallery over the weekend after a run that earned emphatic nods from both the Washington Post and Times. Saw lots of those gravy red dots while I was there, too, so it looks as if it sold pretty well. Towles further distinguished his first exhibition by dragging the street into the gallery.

Kelly Towles, "Underdog," installation view. Courtesy of David Adamson Gallery.

Sharp installation. He emphasizes the olive palette in his work with the frames provided by the oversize dunces. I'm not sure that there's a great deal of correspondence between the macro gallery presentation and the individual works; the unorthodox appropriation of the gallery highlights the fact that the works themselves come from a tradition that's unsuited to a downtown art gallery.

That street aspect is paradoxical for gallery work, I think, but it's only one source that informs Towles's work, which draws equally from the Basquiat and grafitti approaches to urban animation. With real synthesis at times, too—my favorite moment in the show comes in Towles's marking system for On the Razor's Edge.

Kelly Towles, On the Razor's Edge, 2004.

As to the works in the show, I very much admire Towles's consistency with his characters: particle-board stooges in boxing gloves, Mexican wrestlers, dopey birds, pop gun–toting goons—all artifacts of a moral system in which actions and uniforms make the best descriptors, and everything else amounts to an impressionable, pliable underbelly. (I loved what Jessica had to say about Towles's galaxy.)

While I see why Towles isolates his creatures in portraits, I'm willing to bet that some larger interactions would bring to the fore in a sweet way that street/gallery dynamic that he taps by hanging his U.S. Postal Service prints. I've heard talk of a street festival for 14th Street—sounds perfect. I'd also recommend that he take to the natural format for his work: murals. I'm thinking of, say, Kingpin (a bar on U Street). Everybody loves that bar, and—to be opportunistic about it—now that it has burned down (but is being rebuilt), why not approach them about installing a mural? I think it's great that Towles penetrated the downtown gallery quarter, but I don't see a formal commitment there that ought to prevent him from doing the grafitti and murals that his work so clearly lends itself to.

And Towles'd probably be the first to tell you how he intends to do exactly that—he has real energy he intends to spend in the District and has proved that he plans to upend even the art galleries that show him. The better for us.