In Hawaii, consolidation is so hot right now. Our television stations and our major daily newspapers have been compressed into single respective entities, with our art museums currently weighing the pros and cons of pursuing the same path. What’s next, arming the tourists for national defense?

Behind these orchestrated collapses is the paradoxical expectation that we should "do more with less." In art this directive is expressed through minimalism and modernism. In popular cultures, especially those that develop at intersections of poverty and innovation, doing more with less produces skateboarders, graffiti writers, street dancers and deejays.

The show by Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary artist Teebs, currently at the ARTS at Marks Garage, is a visual reminder of how art and culture interact when the desire to share creativity comes up against economic constraints. But instead of a cynical exploration of lack or shortfalls, Teebs’ paintings are a celebratory exploration of creative diversity.

HE PRESENTS three major modes of work: 24-by-24-inch painted canvases, 18-by-24-inch screen prints and 12-inch remixed record sleeves. In each, he uses layering and intricate repetition to build up vibrant fields of pattern, color and texture that marry abstract expression, graffiti-related techniques and organic accumulation. Some elements read like refractions of light in a lens; others are elaborate but loosely organized decorative interactions of brush strokes, carefully rendered smears and free drips.

Sound and rhythm form the foundation of his work, whether he is integrating sheet music as a visual element, extending and interpreting his record label’s logo (Brainfeeder) or bending the original messages of album covers.

The album covers are particularly successful. Perhaps it’s because most people have a dusty stack of albums somewhere, and there’s something amazing about taking "these old record covers" and doing something entirely different with them. Like Christian Marclay, Paul D. Miller and Eamon Ore-Giron — artists who do more than play or collect records — Teebs is also dealing with a kind of creative and conceptual sustainability that retains an honest and legitimate dialogue with the underlying medium.

Teebs’ specific approach is engaging because he selects record sleeves for the individual power of their design or message and also remixes them by playing with geometries and gestures of hide ‘n’ seek and overpainting. By presenting the two approaches in a large grid, the viewer is encouraged to freely associate the images, reading them as groups or series, or investigate them close up.

THIS PLAY of scales is a consolidation of efforts, and it represents Hawaii’s specific response to general pressures. Teebs was brought to Hawaii by Space & Sound, a Honolulu art and music promotion and production collective. In addition to presenting Teebs’ work, the group curated highly compatible work by local artists Alika Pfaltzgraf, B3AK03 and My Cryptonauts.

Pfaltzgraf’s photographs combine architectural form and a highly charged visual mood; B3AK03’s birds will be familiar to anyone who pays attention to the corners, alleys and underpasses of metropolitan Hawaii, as will My Cryptonauts’ ever-expanding roster of handmade plushies that join the aesthetics of Sanrio and Mexican wrestling.

S&S and the ARTS at Marks Garage have done an admirable job of showing how our local artists and interests connect to global networks of contemporary culture, independent of our larger mainstream institutions.

In this era of consolidation and reduction, when one has fewer channels to work with, one must increase the capacity of those that remain, not pursue a parade balloon logic that expects belief in giant inflated images that replace the diversity and divergence that preceded them. A specialized network plugged into a more general infrastructure allows relatively small or remote ideas to spread, amplify and evolve rapidly. This is why collaborations between established venues and emerging local production groups can be a formula for success, and why Teebs enjoys and deserves his highly appreciative local audience.