The Fussy Eye: Smiles per Gallon

Please deface the Hummer!

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A Hummer drives into an art gallery, and all the patrons attack it with chalk. No, wait, I’m telling it wrong. In the scaled-down Hummer replica created by W. Scott Trimble, the wooden Concept Car #1 is actually about the size of a SmartCar, and it’s been coated in blackboard paint so you can draw on it. (Erasers are provided, too, along with the chalk.) Such an opportunity! Haven’t you always wanted to inscribe graffiti on a Hummer, to tell the driver what an asshole he is? And when, apart from writing “wash me” on a filthy sedan or drawing smiley faces on a snow-covered wagon, do you ever get the chance to talk back to automotive hegemony? There’s no irate owner, no wailing car alarm, no reason not to share your thoughts. Trimble’s car is interactive, wiped clean each night for your comments—or doodles—the next day. It’s part of the show Transvalue, which also features Adrian van Dooren’s wall of white speakers and white noise emanating from a bank of tape decks—also, like the Hummer, relics of the past. The cassettes record and amplify the ambient hissing until it fills the room. Meanwhile, Trimble’s SUV seems ever smaller, diminished by mockery and adorned with childish flowers.