Last night Spoke Art welcomed back Austin artist Tim Doyle for his third solo exhibition with the gallery, and the latest installment in his ongoing “UnReal Estate” series. Inspired by the popular culture landscape, quite literally, Doyle re-interprets the iconic settings found in contemporary cult television. The Blot was blown away by Doyle’s first two “UnReal Estate” shows, and I’m super excited about his new crop of screen prints. We’re featuring a different print each day this week in honor of the show, which opened on Thursday, February 6th, at Spoke Art in San Francisco.
The fourth UnReal Estate III print we’re spotlighting here on TheBlotSays.com is “Three Apples High”, which is a reference to the height of everyone’s favorite blue creatures, The Smurfs! The Blot’s always loved The Smurfs, but I love Doyle’s explanation of why he made this print even more: “There are always a few prints every year for this show that I do JUST BECAUSE I want to do them. The Sesame Street and King of the Hill prints from year one, and the Downton Abbey and Mr. Rogers one from year two are other examples. They’re prints that I feel very strongly about, fully aware that to most people, they’re not ‘cool’ or ‘current’ or ‘what the heck is this guy thinking?’ Hey, I did a Smurfs print. No regrets. I love how weird and whimsical that show was.”
“Three Apples High” is a 16"x20" The Smurfs screen print. The Standard Edition has a limited edition run size of 125 pieces, while the Variant is limited to just 35 prints. All of the limited edition screen prints from the show were first made available to attendees of the February 6th opening reception, with all remaining copies available online at the Spoke Art online store starting today, Friday, February 7th.