We don’t need another hero

Matt Haffner’s Scenes from a Hero’s Tale makes one ponder all of the ways movies have come to define codes of behavior and morality. In a time when real-life heroes seem as rare as an honest man in Washington, the movie heroes portrayed by Humphrey Bogart, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger have become our icons of what is sexy, cool and brave.

The “hero” in Haffner’s works is the artist, who assumes the guise of cinematic tough guy.

Like Cindy Sherman’s influential Untitled Film Stills, in which the artist dressed in various costumes and played a number of “characters” in dramas of her own invention, Haffner is inspired by our familiarity with a film vocabulary of “good” and “bad,” which he upends by playing with conventional notions of hero and villain.

In his amusing mixed-media works, Haffner’s well-dressed alter ego is a Tom Waits-style dandy sporting a soul patch and other retro attire. He appears in settings pulled out of urban thrillers: alleys and bus stations, fancy downtown hotels and beneath elevated highways. Haffner inserts himself Zelig-like into these gritty settings sketched in white oil stick onto chalkboards. In the foreground of those drawings, Haffner’s black-and-white photographic likeness interacts with groups of thick-necked palookas who look ready to pummel him into hamburger, or sits before a phalanx of reporters at a ’40s-style press conference.

“Hustler” is an archetypal example of images that throw into question whether the artist’s alter ego is a cad or con. Dressed in a funky porkpie hat, Haffner stands in front of a group of tubby, doubtful wise guys. Raising his arms, Haffner assumes a gesture of, “Fellas, I’ll have that money for you tomorrow,” like some smoothy talking himself out of a heap of trouble.

Just as Sherman considered the passive, victimized nature of women on-screen, Haffner’s project in part re-evaluates what a male “hero” is, based on a reading of the kind of morally ambiguous films noir made in the late ’40s and ’50s. In them, the good guys played by Bogart and Fred MacMurray had more connecting them to the bad guys than separating them.

Forward Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award winner Matt Haffner’s Scenes from a Hero’s Tale runs through Aug. 7 at Swan Coach House Gallery, along with works by Forward finalists Susan A. Cipcic, Will Eccleston, Travis Pack and Jena Sibille. 3130 Slaton Drive. Tues.-Sat., 10 a.m.-4 p.m. 404-266-2636. www.swancoachhouse.com.