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The “Ghost
Stang,” white-powdered and returned to the wild near Weldon, California.
Artist Charles Linder, who wrangled the Mustang out of the desert, offers
the potential collector GPS coordinates to the Stang’s original
location where conversation, campfire and cold champagne are necessary
tributes to the re-installed auto.
Charles
Linder at Gallery 16
and Back
The
Ghost Stang as Coral Reef,
Mr. Linder as Clark Gable
by
John Graham
CHARLES LINDER’S latest shot-up, found American artifact
is at Gallery 16 this month. For years, Mr. Linder, a founder
of Linc Art in San Francisco, has collected road signs, spent
fuel cans and other fistfuls of Western bric-a-brac, blasted by
firearms and plunk-crazy citizens, creating an archival litany
of ordinance-perforated stuff he often repainted or simply left
“as is.”
His latest discovery seems to be the ultimate roadside
cherry.
It is a 1965 Ford Mustang, harangued by gunshots and
time, splintered away in the dust as a desert rat made its living
hanging on inside the carriage of the lost automobile.
The only curiosity one can think of when coming upon the gallery
mustang is the deep, white paint job Linder and folk have arranged
for the Geisha-faced auto. What about the Schwinn sparkle blue
suggested by the driver’s seat installed in the Stang?
No matter. The white pate on the the shredded sides
of the chassis from various calibered blasts mimics the kind lacerating
coral reefs that many cars sitting on ocean floors create to this
day. Shot-up and sunken American automobiles are the last few
decades’ "new coral reefs." Fish just love ‘em,
I’m told. Should I suggest that Charles Linder and his New
Coral Reefer Band will be performing all month at Gallery 16?
Naw. But almost.
Mustangs are notorious for their front end suspension
problems—as we admire them, restored and passing down the
street, we are usually beset by the sound of their front ends
making squeaky squeaky as they hump on by. In the case of this
Mustang, the problem is either intensified or nullified, depending
upon your point-of-view—being undriveable, Mr. Linder’s
Mustang needn’t worry about its front-end mobility. As a
kind of nobility, its new servants will make fair passage of this
carriage when needed. (“It was a small load; we did it by
hand.”)
A nice pay-off arrives when Rat (Fink) shows up in
the trunk (where else) of the car, held in a small plastic display
box, his eyes still glassy and intact like garroted Mob victim
stuffed in many a trunk from Western desert to New Jersey turnpike.
The presence of the rat tells a story from the grave—the
once wild Mustang was the habitat of the rat who now ends up finking
on both the automobile and the artist. The dead have tales to
tell even if their tails are gone.
No longer is the Mustang a wild habitat, a coral reef.
Human hands have dragged it out of the desert with a coroner’s
care, cleaning it up, baking, painting and installing it in a
gallery setting. Now it's an artifact. Art, in fact. So is the
rat. And, I might add, the archival impression of the chassis
number 5R07T 52699 / 3038 01. (You can look it up: http://www.classicmustang.com/decoding_part_numbers.htm).
As Linder notes, one may be able to determine the original owner
of the vehicle by tracing its VIN or vehicle identification number.
Who owned it and how did the blanched carcass of a once running
Mustang end up still in the hot sun? We know that the Spanish
left the mustang of the hooved kind off to the side of the desert
road, but who abandoned this one-time cherry? Was it stolen by
Indians or did it just plain conk out?
Linder is both mobster and artist here, a kind of
Clark Gable in “The Misfits,” finding his way to redemption
by processing this wild horse to his advantage. It's not pretty,
but it ultimately is.
Alas, Linder can’t leave a good ride alone. After
the Gallery 16 show—and after humping himself down and back
to Miami Basel—Mr. Linder mounted the pretty vehicle once
more to ride it back to the location he found it: in the desert
near Weldon, California, exact GPS coordinates available to the
discerning collector for a price.
While limited-edition before-and-after digital prints
of the automobile are available, the real artifact is, in the
artist’s mind, located precisely at the non-point that the
collector-adventurer buys into the journey to the location of
the mustang. As Mr. Linder confirms, “it's in a safe, climate-controlled
storage in the desert for the rest of eternity.” Any questions
regarding the archival quality of the piece can be put to rest
right there. Bring a pistol.
As a gesture of gratitude to the desert species displaced
during the course of the project, the trunk of the car is loaded
with sunflower seeds and bird food. Rat Fink, therefore, is remembered
with a small, nutritive trust fund. As the ocean slowly laps its
way into Weldon centuries from now, fish as well will be rewarded
when they discover Ford Motor Company’s well-designed contribution
to the world’s great coral reefs. Until then, a small campfire
can be lit and finest bottle of bubbly sampled by art’s supporters
the moment they arrive, the GPS is turned off and the camera turned
on collector and object. “Smile. Say cheese,” as the
sound of a whinny is heard just over the rise.
Or was that the creak of a front end?
—John Graham
San Francisco, 2008
RELATED
LINKS
Classic
Mustangs, Decoding Parts
Charles Linder's
Website
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