Exhibit at Nasher taps urban energy

DURHAM -- Trevor Schoonmaker emerged from the closed gallery with a smudge or two of what appeared to be paint on his hands. Inside, his fellow staffers at the Nasher Museum of Art were climbing scaffolds, and an artist was configuring a 16-foot stack of discarded audio speakers into a sculpture whose title incorporates sexual slang and his native Peru.

For Schoonmaker, a year spent organizing the new "Street Level" exhibition had led to the hands-on part of the curator's job: installing photographs, videos, sculpture, drawings and paintings by three rising artists who focus on urban themes.

Museum shows often take years to organize, which makes the "Street Level" time frame extraordinarily rapid. Schoonmaker began organizing it for the Duke University museum a few months before joining the staff in June as curator for contemporary art.

This is not the first time he has worked with the "Street Level" artists: Mark Bradford, William Cordova and Robin Rhode. He had chosen one work by each artist for "The Beautiful Game: Contemporary Art and Fütbol," a project he curated in New York City last year, and he knew he wanted to work with them again.

"Street Level" gave him that opportunity. His task was to choose works from each of their oeuvres that specifically dealt with the urban themes of the show's title and complemented one another.

"These artists relate in their use of recycled materials and in the way in which they interweave high art and street culture -- they know art history, they know hip-hop," Schoonmaker said, breaking away from last week's installation chores to talk about the show. "I am interested in working with artists who are not yet household names, with concepts that have not been as quickly appropriated by the art world -- with underrepresented artists and artists of color."

In a sense, the show is organized as three separate solo shows, with each artist's work shown in its own space. Yet all works can interrelate and be compared and contrasted from different vantage points. Tennis shoes, cars, tires, stereo speakers and boom boxes -- quotidian urban props travel with ease and morph through the gallery.

"Street Level" brings a particular artistic vision to bear on Durham's own urban legacy. Schoonmaker's choices are bold and fresh, and they adjust our eyes and our thinking in the ways the best of current art can. We've had tastes of such urban art over the past decade from Lump gallery/projects in Raleigh and now from Branch Gallery in Durham. With "Street Level," the Nasher gives us a glimpse of the kind of heat it is capable of generating in the Triangle art scene, locating young masters of the here and now.