Johnny “KMNDZ” Rodriguez, painting in studio for Westinhouse. Los Angeles-based artist KMNDZ is featured in Hi-Fructose Volume 7…
In his painting titled “Pleasure to Burn,” he depicts a robot smoking a cigarette. The concept is borrowed and reimagined from a classic 70s anti-smoking campaign which featured a middle-aged woman who, despite losing her larynx to the addiction, smokes a cigarette through the hole in her neck reserved for her robotic voice box, then rasps, “They said nicotine wasn’t addictive…”
KMNDZ explains, “That piece is not so much about the whole anti-smoking thing but more about those things that we as humans all gravitate towards that are so destructive to us.”
From studio visits to behind-the-scenes peeks at exhibitions and installations, the