The way he tells it, artist Paul Madonna’s life should have ended in 2022. In November of that year, he was driving home from his studio when he was struck by a driver going well over the speed limit. Madonna’s injuries included damage to a carotid artery, a collapsed lung, bleeding in the brain, and a shattered heel, necessitating the use of a cane since then.
From that perspective, “We Came Here to See” at the Nelson Duni Gallery – the artist’s first solo show in over a decade – allows his fan base to check in on the progress of his rehabilitation. Indeed, the staff at the gallery tell patrons that the work represents how “drawing became an internal act of coming back to life” for the illustrator.
The Carnegie-educated Madonna made a name for himself in 2004, when his monochromatic comic “All Over Coffee” began appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle. The comics were often large, single-panel images of sights and sounds from all over San Francisco. This could be anything from a hilltop view of the Golden Gate Bridge (which would feature the occasional splash of color) to an empty cup of coffee at a local cafe.
Madonna’s recognizable style – with its barely-straight lines and liberal manipulation of the viewer’s perspective – made the comic a hit well outside of the city it portrayed. Whereas most newspaper comics feature outlandish adventures, and most newspaper stories about San Francisco lean towards the sensationalist (for better or for worse), the images of “All Over Coffee” were akin to visual poems, allowing the reader to contemplate the minutiae of Fog City without any distracting aesthetics.
No panels from “All Over Coffee” are featured in “We Came Here to See.” In fact, the comic seems to have been purposefully deleted from the collection, which includes a crayon drawing (“Pink Piranha,” 1979) from a 12-year-old Madonna featuring fish playing an Atari 2600. That’s one of the few displayed works that isn’t for sale. Instead, the Nelson Duni show leans heavily on the works the artist has created from 2022 onward.
It features several pieces that obviously wouldn’t appear in a mainstream newspaper, including a large collection of nude life-sketches. Most of the sketches occupy the largest wall in the gallery, each at a different stage of completion. Some of the incomplete sketches almost have a Picasso-like quality in how they represent the body in abstract forms, seemingly blending into the background.
The more detailed sketches show the artist’s grasp of both shadow and form, creating an Escher-like realism. One prominent piece features a topless Black woman on a lounge chair as the sun streams over her torso, her dark skin contrasting with white furniture and wall behind her. Another features a fully-clothed man cosplaying as Emperor Norton, his feathered top hot adding some eye-catching color to pleasant portrait. It’s in the detail of these glorious sketches where Madonna’s roughly-drawn aesthetic seems more of a choice. It isn’t that he’s unable to draw straight lines (which are still pretty lacking in the nudes), but that they might actually take away from the image.
Nevertheless, “All Over Coffee” makes an influential appearance, if not a literal one. The majority of works in the show are the contemplative images for which Madonna has become known, lifelike still images of San Francisco, a city that seems to constantly be in a state of flux. In fact, a triptych of images from atop a hillside crosswalk collectively feature the blue-texted message “This is a beautiful place that is not a place, but a feeling.”
A similar large landscape of Bernal Heights features the hillside adorned with its own Hollywood sign, which simply says ““DREAM,” a project by artist, Ana Teresa Fernandez.
Another roughly-drawn image of a Dogpatch cafe sees the business tagged with the phrase “Go Back to Where You Think You Started.” For many people, San Francisco is less a place and more an idea; very rarely do those ideas align between any two people. Through a gaze that’s equal parts indifferent and infatuated, Madonna’s images almost allow for all the ideas to be correct at the same time.
Incidentally, the first thing one notices about the Nelson Duni Gallery is how the former Barrish Bail Bonds building (for which the deactivated neon sign still hangs above the entrance) has this show’s title stenciled outside its brick walls. Take a step towards the display window and you’ll see Paul Madonna’s hand-drawn portrait of the gallery, complete with stencils. Even before one enters, the artist has shown them something familiar in a manner one step removed from reality. Even in this tiny gallery, the illusion holds strong.
“We Came Here to See” runs through Dec. 3 at the Nelson Duni gallery, 35 Bartlett St.