About This Exhibition

Flash on the walls
of Chelsea —
tattoo as fine art.

Body Electric opened September 18, 2014 at Ricco/Maresca Gallery in Chelsea, New York — one of the city’s preeminent venues for American vernacular and self-taught art. The exhibition was curated by Margot Mifflin, author of Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, and brought together historical flash alongside work by contemporary tattoo artists.

Prior to the opening, Frank Maresca and Margot Mifflin made the trip to Lift Trucks Art — coming up to Croton Falls to review the archive in person alongside Tom Christopher and select classical flash works for the show. Among the pieces chosen were works by Sailor Jerry, August “Cap” Coleman, Bert Grimm, Dainty Dotty, Earl Brown, and Rosie Camenga.

The exhibition also featured work by Ed Hardy alongside other contemporary artists. Hardy — a printmaker trained at the San Francisco Art Institute who turned down a full Yale MFA fellowship to apprentice under Sailor Jerry Collins and become the first non-Asian to receive traditional Japanese tattoo training — had spent decades making the exact argument that Body Electric was built around: that tattooing is fine art, and always was. His presence in the show, alongside flash by his own mentor Sailor Jerry, made that lineage explicit on the gallery wall.

“The show placed historical tattoo flash in direct conversation with contemporary practice — and the historical work asked nothing for itself. It simply stood there and was great.”

Lift Trucks Art  ·  Exhibition Notes

The exhibition received coverage from The New York Observer and Inked magazine, both of which recognized the show as part of a broader critical reassessment of tattoo art’s place in American cultural history. For Lift Trucks, the collaboration with Ricco/Maresca Gallery and Margot Mifflin affirmed what the archive had always argued: that the men and women who made classic American flash were artists, full stop.