Just Stick to the Story
Three hundred years of history, held together with duct tape
What is it about duct tape, of all things, that makes you want to take on three hundred years of New Orleans history?
When asked this question, Justin Lundgren gave a little laugh along with his response: “Duct tape is like New Orleanians—it’s strong, it’s colorful, it’s waterproof.”
It’s not a bad answer, and it’s one that comes naturally out of the mouth of a man who has called New Orleans home for over twenty-five years. But Lundgren continues, “That’s more of my joke, though. When it comes down to it, honestly, it’s just a fun medium, and it really caught my attention. And I wanted to show people it’s absolutely possible to make ‘real’ art with this kind of weird medium, showing feelings, telling a story.”
And what a story it is. The history of New Orleans is fraught with episodes that skid across the emotional spectrum, from hopeful discovery to despairing rage to raucous joy and everything in between. Lundgren’s latest exhibition, Caught on Tape! New Orleans Makes 300 takes on the whole story, layer by layer. Layers of duct tape, that is, “sliced, diced, and manipulated” into images inspired by these pivotal moments, often in delightfully eye-searing colors and on a large scale.
An orthopedic surgeon by trade, Lundgren’s first public foray into duct tape art was a series of portraits of New Orleans musicians, and while he enjoyed the project and counted it a success, he knew that for his next work, he wanted more. So Lundgren delved into the history of New Orleans, focusing on what he thought were key points in the city’s chronology, from the arrival of slave ships to the Louisiana Purchase, from the birth of Mardi Gras krewes to the recent removal of Confederate monuments. And, fittingly for a city that often seems larger-than-life, he knew he wanted to go big.
“[The musician portraits] were a good two feet [by two feet], but I knew from the start these would be bigger. The pictures and the story they had to tell were stronger; they needed more potential for shape and expression and more room to bring them to life,” said Lundgren, going on to describe how the first piece he assembled, the haunting Code Noir, depicting a shackled black man with hands despairingly pressed to his face, spans an impressive six by four feet, with his second, a Storyville study, is only slightly smaller at four by four feet. But even Lundgren didn’t realize how big the project was going to grow.
“Initially I was thinking around thirty or forty pieces, but as I really got into researching I kept coming across scenes and thinking, ‘I can’t leave this out.’ New Orleans history is such a fascinating subject, there are so many stories to tell, and they’re all important,” he said. Caught on Tape! currently boasts sixty-five finished pieces, with another ten planned.
Lundgren may laugh it off, but the metaphor between his medium and his subject seems to settle in naturally. The work of capturing the lifetime of New Orleans is a long and sometimes tedious process, one that results in colors and designs whose effects can be jarring, breathtaking, and often surprising, even to the artist himself.
Because though he’s gone through every step of the process with his own hands—covering the entire board with multiple colored layers of duct tape, sketching his design, then ever so carefully carving it out—even knowing exactly what color each layer is and having gone over the lines not once but twice is not always enough to predict a piece’s outcome.
“You don’t really know what you’re going to end up with until you get there,” said Lundgren. It’s something that’s true for most works of art, but there’s an element of dramatic reveal in the peeling back of the top layer of duct tape that gives it a certain flair, the drawing back of a curtain to reveal shape and color where there was just a suggestion of lines before.
“It’s the payoff,” said Lundgren, describing the moment when his vision comes together—or doesn’t.
“Part of the beauty of duct tape art is its flexibility... You can peel it off, adjust it, replace it, patch it, whatever.”
“Even when you plan the whole thing out ... maybe the colors don’t go together right, or the piece itself just doesn’t work.” But of course, surprises aren’t always bad: “It could turn out to unexpectedly wow you with how well everything goes together, and you see you’ve done things you didn’t even plan.”
The scope of the Caught on Tape project is ambitious not only in subject, size, and substance (as if that weren’t enough) but also in variety of style. Lundgren’s self-taught journey into duct tape art began with recreations of Dutch graphic artist Frans Masereel’s woodcuts, with one important alteration: Instead of sticking with black and white, he veered into “basically the most obnoxious color palette possible.”
This vivid array of colors carries into much of his work, and paired with the bold, wood-block inspired lines and sometimes emotionally charged subject matter, it makes for an arresting display. Though Lundgren isn’t afraid to delve into more delicate details and subtler hues with his duct tape expression, he appreciates the vehicle of pop art style for its ability to infuse stark, high-relief lines and loud, splashy tones with their own narrative. The project contains many tongue-in-cheek references to pop art touchstones, including a portrait of Andrew Jackson à la Warhol and a Lichtenstein-esque Ursuline sister tearfully calling home. And, of course, it’s just fun.
“It’s not really common yet to see a lot of tape art like this,” said Lundgren, “especially in a gallery setting.” He enjoys casting the humble, household duct tape in a new, “artsy” light, even as he uses it to illuminate history’s twists and turns. Still, he doesn’t bother putting it on a pedestal.
“This kind of art looks complex, but it’s actually a very accessible medium,” said Lundgren, with a note of encouragement in his voice. “The process itself is pretty simple.” Simple doesn’t always mean easy, of course, especially when it comes to hundreds of feet of duct tape painstakingly cut into elaborate detail. He finds the whole process therapeutic, however, and notes that it’s a great project to get kids into creating (presumably on a smaller scale).
“It’s very tactile—you’re sticking down the tape, things are making noises, you’re tearing things, cutting things,” he said enthusiastically, and it’s easy to see the appeal.
Museums and galleries generally hold the “Do Not Touch” rule to be sacrosanct, but the tactile nature of the pieces carries through to the viewing experience, making that rule a bit harder than usual to obey. The colors are striking enough from across the room, but as you get closer to the large, bright boards, their textures really start to demand attention. The familiar look and feel of duct tape—a sleek skin over the scallops and ridges of its flexible but stubborn thread—are blown up into something else entirely: slick, straight-edged brush strokes, interrupted only by the bold statement of the ridge that signifies the color has changed, that here is where the design is making its stand. Upon examination, the process is visible, the knife cuts along the seams between layers, a slight raised spot or change in tape direction hinting at some misstep that was patched with (what else but) duct tape. After all, it fixes everything.
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“Part of the beauty of duct tape art is its flexibility,” said Lundgren, who often finds himself making tweaks and adjustments after the initial design is set in place (and then stripped away). “You can peel it off, adjust it, replace it, patch it, whatever.”
Stories hold our world together. Then again, the same can be said for duct tape. Justin Lundgren simply saw a way to combine both in a celebration of his well-loved city, and he stuck with it.
While select pieces have been displayed at galleries in the Newman School and Ogden Museum of Art, Lundgren is quite eager to find a sufficient venue to display the project in its entirety once completed and asks that interested parties who might have quite a lot of space on hand feel free to reach out to him.