David Hinnebusch was my student in 1998 at the Santa Monica College of Design, Art and Architecture, where at first I found him to be annoying and insistent. These types of students can be nightmares. However the redeeming thing about David, was the fact that he would do anything, try anything, take any amount of shit off anyone, was not afraid to make an ass of himself, had a bizarre sense of humor and above all he persisted in just doing his work.
When I think back I thought he was either truly mad or he really wanted something out of the experience of art making or perhaps both. He was like a child who could barely take direction and I did try to give him direction. I think the only thing I might have actually succeeded in doing was introducing him to the work of Francesco Clemente, who at the time was like a God to me. (In my opinion, Clemente's later work went down hill fast when he started making less than mediocre portraits of his rich friends.)
After school I lost track of David, only to rediscover him casually a couple of years later at an opening. He looked so crazy to me and since I actually knew him a bit I thought to myself do I really want to be engaged by this guy again? I guess I did. We talked for a while and as usual David was always very nice to me and seemed to have allot of respect for me. It's hard to ice someone who genuinely seems to like you for whatever reason.
He told me that he was currently showing his work, selling his work and to some extent making his work on the Venice boardwalk. Now this really interested me, in part because I had always thought that doing so might be a great "performance piece" for a highly trained, sophisticated artist from one of the confirmed country club schools and in part because I would never have the guts to do such a thing myself. It might also be a trip just to see how people might react and how they would treat an artist such as David. What would they think of someone in that position, someone seriously doing their work on the boardwalk?
A couple of weeks later I went to the Venice boardwalk with a date and came upon David's set up. The date was an artist known for his career in the late eighties and early nineties when artists thought allot about career maneuvers and the money that could be made. Needless to say the date was uncomfortable and probably mortified when I fully engaged David that day about his work and the fact that he chose to "inhabit" the boardwalk Thursday through Sunday every week. That alone imPRESSed me.
After many subsequent discussions with David I believe that his work is very simple; it is about following his interests, of which David has plenty. David is not a good editor of his own work and I'm not convinced he should be one either. His work is about something other than making the right moves to imPRESS, to sell or to maintain consistency. I am convinced that making use of the Venice boardwalk was a brilliant and intuitive action on his part. It seems that the chaos the boardwalk provides, day in and day out, is a clear external manifestation of David's internal lan ape. Visually, David reminds me of the Venice/urban version of Matta, slightly gone wrong.
There's a story that Max Ernst got fed up with living in New York City and decided to head west with his then wife Dorothea Tanning. When they arrived at Sedona, Arizona Ernst suddenly realized that he'd come upon the place he'd been painting about all these years, never knowing that such a place actually existed in reality until that moment. They settled there and he lived out the rest of his natural life.
This is what I think happened to David. He'd been making art about the kind of chaos one finds on the Venice boardwalk and never truly made the connection until he put himself there. It seems that his work is given a fuller understanding by virtue of the context the boardwalk provides.
By his admission David is an exhibitionist but he claims that he makes his work in "private time." Working and exhibiting on the boardwalk seems to provide a venue for both aspects of his person. He says that he paints his Paintings on the boardwalk to pass the time and that in essence it is no different than working in his studio. He is able to close out the external chaos enough to focus on the internal one. David is a person of porous boundaries, maybe few boundaries altogether and working in the manner that he does is smart. It allows him to just be, see and be seen and do whatever interests him within a context which itself is porous. David's work engenders the spirit of the Venice boardwalk and in turn the boardwalk provides David with more than perhaps even he is aware of.