The bullfight has always been a ritual of extreme occult significance, heavily loaded with allegory. The primary meaning of the bullfight concerns the triumph of man over our own primal nature. Los Angeles based artist Brian Viveros, featured here, sees the bull and the sexy fighters of his upcoming exhibition "Matador" at Thinkspace Gallery as one and the same. While he thinks of the fight as a cruel tradition, he finds power and inspiration in its symbolism. We recently visited with Viveros at his Dirtyland studio to go behind the scenes of his matador-inspired exhibition, one of his most researched and dynamic bodies of work to date.
HF Vol. 23 artist Mark Dean Veca celebrated the opening of "Everlast" (previewed here) last weekend at Western Project, Los Angeles. His pop culture fused, immaculate paintings and drawings are inspired by 1970s signage and cartoons. Looney Tunes characters like Tweety and the Tasmanian Devil are literally given a new twist in Veca's style, whose linework makes them appear twisting and organic. The psycheldia of the 70s is also apparent in his Fender and Zildjian logos, breathing attitude into these corporate identities. Photos after the jump!
The lines between art and product design become blurred in Mark Dean Veca's upcoming exhibition, "Everlast," at Western Project in LA. While some artists appropriate the language of advertising to critique consumer culture, Veca (featured in HF Vol. 23) enjoys looking at logos and views them as a perfect marriage between images and text. For "Everlast," which opens on October 18, he looked back on the signage that surrounded him during his 1970s upbringing in the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of the logos in the show are borrowed and some are original, but Veca transforms them with his rich, illustrative line work. Forms that would normally be flat come alive with the biomorphic textures for which he is known.