1 cut sent 10-20

Mark Turgeon, “The Birds and the Bees with the World on their Knees on a Dollar a Day,” 2007, pigment on wall compound, 20 by 16 inches.

FOR 11/2

BUTCH HANCOCK, MARK TURGEON AT CUE ART FOUNDATION w/1 cut

ak/gs set 10/18 #716414

NEW YORK CITY — Cue Art Foundation presents the works of Butch Hancock and Mark Turgeon in separate exhibitions on view through December 1.

Armed with the adage that rules are meant to be broken, Butch Hancock left architecture school at Texas Tech University to pursue many overlapping paths as musician, songwriter, troubadour, builder, planner, architect, artist, photographer, cinematographer, cartoonist and video producer. Throughout his extensive travels, he carried with him journals in which he recorded “the interesting ephemeral moments of life.”

Marking his first exhibition in New York, Hancock’s exhibition at Cue present a diverse selection of ten to 15 medium-sized, digitalized drawings installed alongside a vitrine containing the artist’s original travel journals and ten to 15 black and white photographs, most of which were taken during a span of 40 years largely spent on the road as a touring musician.

Working with a black ballpoint pen, Hancock’s elaborate drawings of fantastical, futuristic, curvilinear dwellings set in elaborate fertile fields reveal his inner journeys and meditations on the functioning of the universe.

Organic shapes and cantilevered structures featured in his drawings reference the works of architect-visionaries including Antonio Gaudi and Frank Lloyd Wright, while the liquid lyricism of his compositions evoke the Surrealist terrain of artists Salvador Dali and Juan Miro.

His facility for building two-dimensional forms in black and white derives primarily from his experience working as an architectural photographer in his early 20s. Developing techniques honed in the darkroom influenced his drawing practice by encouraging him to continue to explore different depths of tonality between deep black and bright white.

Still life imagery, much of it referencing both foreign and familiar curios — treasured artifacts found in the artist’s home — form the point of departure for Mark Turgeon’s recent series of 80 20-by-16- inch and two large-scale fresco paintings on view at Cue.

Accompanying the paintings is a selection of more than half a dozen soccer jerseys representing different countries. Each is emblazoned with the artist’s own visual and text-based statements, many of which point to specific transgressions that have occurred in the name of national pride. Throughout the works on view, visual elements referring to real world, literary and mythic events recede and advance out of the picture plane to form an intricate pas de deux between fantasy and reality.

Since the early 1990s, Turgeon has worked with a variety of different materials and techniques, with styles ranging from abstract expressionist portraiture to delicate floral watercolor. After an extended trip to Italy in 1998, he began experimenting with different forms of fresco.

His technique involves applying pure pigment to wall compound laid down on canvas, spraying the surface with water as he works, and then applying more layers of pigment. Fueled by the desire to posit history within a modern context, his processes are steeped in the artisan handmade traditions of painting, weaving, sign making, carving and plastering.

The broad variety of themes and imagery on view provides a wealth of cues for understanding Turgeon’s paintings. Moreover, the poetic titles of his pictures provide further clues surrounding his critical thinking. For example, a world of appearances is deconstructed layer by layer in “The Birds and the Bees with the World on their Knees on a Dollar a Day,” 2007.

Seamlessly oscillating between past and present, Turgeon intricately weaves together a myriad of words and places, objects and images into intricate visual samplers that lyrically reveal his observations and concerns about the current state of world and the human condition.

The gallery is at 511 West 25th Street. For information, www.cueartfoundation.org or 212-206-3583.