How many people noticed the owl Simon? How many, in turn, carelessly stepped on them? You will never know. The only thing that is certain is that the owl is no longer there.
David Zinn drew them with chalk crayons on a sidewalk in his American hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The weather, especially the rain, severely limits the durability of his works of art. Zinn is perfectly fine with that. On the one hand, because he sometimes integrates already transient or changeable things into his drawings: fallen leaves, grass sprouting between cracks or a lost glove. On the other hand, because he can use some cracks in the pavement several times, for example in front of the post office in Ann Arbor. This prominent spot has already been part of a monster’s big grin, a rabbit’s hat, and a dinosaur’s butt.
The mouse Nadine is having a picnic at sea.
(Photo: David Zinn)
Cora the octopus is embarrassed about her legs, but she has a breathtaking smile: Here, too, David Zinn integrates public space into his artworks.
(Photo: David Zinn)
The street painter likes it when only a few people notice his figures. They would then go to an exclusive club, a nice idea, thinks David Zinn. In the case of the owl Simon, however, he also flirts with the fact that a number of people carelessly rush past, possibly even stumbling across his pictures: the blue-eyed Simon is standing on a sidewalk with a challenging look, a little afraid, but above all defiant, as if he wanted to say something : Hey, look over at me! The caption reads: “Simon stood still and waited for someone to compliment him on his new shoes.”
Sometimes the draftsman Zinn fools the viewer
Some of these text-image combinations almost have the quality of Bernd Pfarr; this comparison, which tends to be presumptuous, is permissible if anyone still knows the grand master of comic art, who died young, for example from the time magazine or the titanicwhom Patrick Bahners rightly called a “master of balance, the harmony of tones and moods” in his obituary.
Zinn’s drawings are funny or touching, they irritate and are sometimes subversive. They often get a special twist with a small text, which to simply call a caption would be a brazen disparagement. “Val regretted almost immediately that he had opted for the ‘realistic engine sound’ option,” reads the drawing of a dog in a soapbox, followed by a hamster on a helium balloon, which cheekily lets its tongue flutter between its lips. fart sounds imitated. Sometimes Zinn also fools you, for example you think you see a daring kite skating, but you learn: “Vincent can balance really well. Tomorrow he might try to roll a bit.”
The good news: no one else was around to hear Sluggo’s solo performance of The Burp of Seville.
(Photo: David Zinn)
By photographing his street paintings and adding these curious, pointed, sometimes cryptic texts to his volume “Street Art”, David Zinn actually turns a quickly thrown motif into a comic or cartoon. However, none of these pictures denies their origin, they cannot be created on a canvas in any studio. It is always recognizable how the public space becomes part of the pictures – through its irregularities, through existing things that David Zinn integrates. By extending reality into a space of possibility.
For example, there is Sluggo, the poisonous green monster with a weakness for difficulties. Sometimes it might be a good thing if not everyone notices it. Especially not when he is once again giving a solo performance of “The Belch of Seville” in public, the only eye and ear witness to which is Pigasus. a particularly kind-hearted winged pig.
David Zinn: Street Art. Translated from English by Cornelius Hartz and Sandra Nettelbeck. Prestel Verlag, Munich / London / New York 2022. 160 pages, 18 euros.