In his paintings, an astronaut comes down to earth
Scott Listfield began seeing astronauts in Weston -- not literally, but in his art. Five years ago, he was staying with his parents while looking for a job and caught ''2001: A Space Odyssey" on TV. The strangeness of Stanley Kubrick's environment intrigued him, as did the notion that humans could flow relatively effortlessly through space. Listfield began to consider his own place, both on earth and in the art scene.
''The contemporary world seems like such an odd place to me," says Listfield, 28. ''I needed a protagonist to show that."
So he invented a helmeted spaceman who now occupies every one of his paintings. In all, Listfield has created more than 20 works for his ongoing astronaut series. Sixteen of the paintings are on display at Locco Ritoro Gallery in the South End through Jan. 22.
With his white suit and oxygen pack, the astronaut knows no limits. He visits a tank in Baghdad, takes a horseback ride through the mountains, even walks his pet dinosaur -- leashed, thankfully -- down main street. The earth this spaceman traverses is dominated by Burger King signs, SUVs, and the works of Giacometti and Jeff Koons. Listfield's social commentaries rely on his postmodern feel, biting sense of humor, and Dartmouth College-trained painting chops.
Listfield freely appropriates famous artworks in his pieces. He does the same with pop culture figures. Lil' Kim turns up in a painting titled ''The Bathers," which he created while thinking of Botticelli's ''The Birth of Venus." He unites Chewbacca, Richard Serra, Sol Lewitt, and Donald Judd in ''Cloud City," named after a location in the Star Wars film ''The Empire Strikes Back."
As is the curse of the conceptualist, not everyone understands Listfield's art. His grandmother Trudee Fogel remembers sending Listfield a picture of a dog with a little cat cutely perched on its head after first seeing one of his astronaut paintings.
''I said, 'Why don't you paint something like this,"' remembers Fogel, who lives in Swampscott. ''I also told his mother he should paint something that people are interested in. There are not too many people who are interested in astronauts. His mother said, 'Don't say nothing to him.' So I kept my mouth shut."
That was a few years ago. These days, Listfield, is one of the youngest artists that Paul Lam, co-owner of the Locco Ritoro Gallery, has featured. Listfield's following has grown through his website, www.astronautdinosaur.com, so much that the show's opening in December attracted almost 500 people, according to Lam.
So far, the gallery has sold three of the 16 works featured, the most expensive being the $3,500 piece called ''To the Moon." The 3-by-3-foot painting features the astronaut flagging down a bus that, despite running on electric wires, advertises an interplanetary destination.
''I love the metaphor of using the astronaut for the exploration," says Lam. ''He's looking at all the strange things we have going around us, everything from a Damien Hirst installation in a subway to a
Four years into his astronaut series, Listfield, who works as a graphic designer for Visual i|o in Somerville, says he remains focused on the spaceman's journey.
''Each painting I finish I think of as a little addition to the story of the astronaut," he says. ''As long as there are places for him to go and people for him to see, I'll keep going."
Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com
