Maku López

The Guardian

2022

This 61" x 44" mixed media painting by the artist XVALA is from his series 'Pandemic Collection: 6.' The painting was created with iridescent oil stick and spray paint on a screen print of a Star Wars poster. The abstracted "Basquiat-inspired" work depicts a silver robot with red eyes and large white teeth on a purple and blue background with the text 'cyber punk' in red at the bottom of the painting. 2020 twisted human reality in a number of ways no one could ever have predicted. XVALA pays tribute to this by melding the original Star Wars movie poster with the unexpected weirdness of the 21st Century. By combining a classic sci-fi villain with a modern symbol of literal Cyberpunk, XVALA shows the COVID-19 virus aimed straight toward the earth with a mission to destroy it. Exhibited during the Pandemic Paintings exhibition at the Meme Ranch August 7th, 2020. XVALA's art illuminates the hidden fallout spawned from our high tech Internet age. His' Fear Google' campaign exposed the decay of privacy and 'No Delete' used hacked nude celebrity photos to highlight loss of control over personal information. The artist has worked with trash from the homes of Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and others, as well as dirt from the graves of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. The dirt appears in the 'New World Order' collection as part of a pyramidal, 3D printed, living ant farm...

"I have been painting seriously for somewhere around 35 years, but have only ever sold regionally - most recently, through my gallery on Magazine Street in New Orleans. Through 1stDi...