The first ever Richmond Super Art Fight took place Saturday night at Strange Matter, when the Baltimore based collective brought their act to RVA.
The first ever Richmond Super Art Fight took place Saturday night at Strange Matter, when the Baltimore based collective brought their act to RVA.
Similar to the game Pictionary, artists competed head-to-head, but the goal wasn’t to draw well enough simply for others to identify their work. The objective was to outdraw their opponent based on an agreed upon theme. The winners were then decided by measuring the crowd noise for each competitor at the end of a round. In the inaugural Richmond competition, the themes were simple: Movies, Comics, TV, and Video Games.
Besides being legitimate artists outside of art-fighting, competitors performed as stage personas (a la professional wrestling) like Dijon Mustarde, a French pirate with a duck floatie, and Baron Von Sexyful, a European fashionista.
To mix things up, every five minutes each contestant was assigned via the “wheel of death” a new topic, such as “Babraham Lincoln” or “Pup Fiction”:
Due to a 25-minute timer ticking down, contestants came up with ideas quickly and acted on them, whatever came out.
Contestants drew over each others work. As themes changed, the art transformed, becoming a whole new entity by the end of a round.
Case in point: in one round, three Pac Man style ghosts were drawn. These became ice cream cones. They then became butlers before finally being turned into kitties.
While the focus of the event was the bouts between artist personas, Marty Day and Ross Nover provided commentary, often explaining obscure pop-cultural images and improvising wisecracks as they went. Baltimore based DJs The Megadrives blasted a mix of their own productions while spinning the works of others and collaborating with Day and Nover to keep crowd energy up throughout the night.
Between laughing at the artists’ drawings and the MCs commentary, grooving to the music, and cheering every time something silly happened onstage, Super Art Fight brought the ruckus.
For all its posturing, it didn’t seem like anyone cared much who won. The competition seemed more an excuse for people to hang out, listen to music, watch friends draw, and talk shit about it.
While plans to return to Richmond are not yet concrete, Super Art Fight will be performing again Sept. 12 in Alexandria.
