XVALA

'Meme Money 000: Goochi Sponge, ' by XVALA, Mixed Media Painting

2019-2021

In this mixed media 24"x24" painting, 'Meme Money 002: Goochi Sponge,' by XVALA, the artist colorfully plays with the 'Gucci' brand in tandem with the childhood cartoon series, SpongeBob. Spongebob, a 'Goochi Sponge' takes center stage with red dollar sign glasses in a palette of green, red, and gold on a lime green background. 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...

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'll Be Back,' by XVALA is a mixed media painting and colorful screen print with iridescent oil stick painting featuring the theme of the 'New World Order.' It was produced in 2015/16. The phrase 'I'll Be Back' is printed on the top and bottom margins of the work with the words 'New World Order' on the top margin. Three heads are stacked in the center of the canvas with the 'all seeing eye' on the top of the head. 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...

From the Pandemic Collection: Series #5 "During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, suddenly disappeared from public vie...

With the distinctive medium of post-it notes, Özmenoğlu re-contextualizes everyday objects from something ordinary to a beautiful work of art. The individualized behavior of each pos...

This haunting abstract portrait of several figures in muted earthy colours is by Fiona Ackerman. Under a gray-blue sky, a central figure, an older man stands on the earth as fragment...

Sukanta Das : Sublime Love, Figurative, Mixed Media Size : 36 x 48 inches Sukanta Das says, “ I am primarily inspired by the human body and nature. I love to use subtle hues and ton...

Victor Wang's subject is a female seemingly caught in a contemplative moment yet a war rages behind her. She dons a hat shaped as a boat and carries and oar as if to "Dream Away" these other thoughts. Wang uses a blend of luminous colors and buttery textures to evoke these enigmatic moments of meditation. Influence by the Renaissance Masters Titian and Rembrandt for their glazing and layering techniques respectively, the artist builds the surface using heavy paint, swirling and mixing the color on the canvas. The end result is a poetic and emotionally powerful representation of the human form. Victor Wang Dreaming Away, 2017 oil on canvas 42h x 56w in 106.68h x 142.24w cm VWG009 My path through life has been adventurous, exciting, and dream-like. My experience of settling into America in search of better opportunities has been both challenging and inspiring. I use the human face as a vehicle to paint human experiences - worry and wonder, sadness and pleasure - which reflect the emotional stage directly tied to my immigration experiences. I grew up amongst the sunflower fields in northern China. In my childhood years, I played under the bright, yellow sunflowers with my brothers everyday. China’s Cultural Revolution played an important part in my life. During that time, sunflowers were used as political allegories to depict how citizens of China should follow Mao who represented the sun, since sunflowers follow the sun’s movements. People eventually inferred the deception that this symbol masked. After graduating from high school, I was sent to a labor camp in the country for ‘reeducation’ during China’s Cultural Revolution. There, I was subject to grueling farm work. Often, I worked in corn and sunflower fields from sunrise to sunset. Thus, for me, sunflowers evoke both personal joy and sadness. Therefore, to deliver my complex feelings, I use sunflowers as a metaphor to connote my background and emotional stage. My incorporation of collages of figures from China’s Tang Dynasty represents my Chinese heritage and is a constant reminder of where I came from. The texture and earthiness on the canvas’s surface are inspired by the texture of the soil on the farm where I worked in China. Although I often gain great pleasure from the process of painting, it is most important to unfold expressively those feelings within myself. Wang belongs to a generation of immigrant painters from China, whose artistic background was defined by socialist realism but took advantage of their skills and broke away from that tradition to create new subjects in the U.S. “When I was a student during Cultural Revolution, Soviet realism art was among the dominant source of influence and it grabbed us like lightening rod...