The Dry Points

When: On View now thru December 15th

Location: MIAD'S Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., Milwaukee, WI

Written by Anna Rose Menako

As a Milwaukee native, The Dry Points exhibition, curated by Max Yela, felt like stepping into a living collage of historical figures whose names have been in the air for as long as I can remember. The men featured in the portraits built legacies that continue to shape the city’s identity and live on in its infrastructure, whether or not we ever asked for their presence in our lives.

The portraits on display, drawn from 19th- and early 20th-century steel engravings, remind us that the faces of power in Milwaukee were overwhelmingly white, male, and wealthy. That reality is an elephant in the room that this show doesn’t shy away from. By reworking the engravings with contemporary motifs and mischievous interventions,The Dry Points poke fun and punch up at these moguls of yesteryear, inadvertently holding their cultural dominance up to the light and acknowledging their lingering relevance in our city’s infrastructure and memory.

What’s most compelling is how personality creeps into the reimagined works. The original steel engravings, created with the painstaking practicality of its time, left little room for individuality or warmth. Here, flamboyance, humor, and idiosyncrasy are brought in, as if the artists are resurrecting subtleties that time and technological limits once flattened.

Much like a sonic rock band, The Dry Points bring together distinct artistic voices to form a sum that is richer and more nuanced than what any individual artist could create. Their mashup of historical gravitas with enigmatic, pop-cultural irreverence transforms these portraits into a collaboration across time. More specifically: a collaboration that examines who we immortalize, how we remember them, and who today might be building the kinds of legacies that will loom over Milwaukee tomorrow.