Balint Zsako distills as many disparate aspects of contemporary art into his works on paper as possible. Everything from the physical theatre of Performance Art, the process-based nature of Land Art, to the meticulous balance of Geometric Abstraction is referenced. But just as importantly, sex, mythology, bodily functions and primitive narratives are the themes that animate his works. Physical distortions serve as parallels to psychological states and mechanical appendages recall the conflict between the organic and the industrial. These open-ended stories, which are most often dark and complex, are rendered in lively bright colours and meticulous detail to add another layer of contrast between the visual, the narrative and the conceptual.
Working mainly with traditional pen and ink on paper, Oscar de Las Flores generates masterful figurative works, elaborately layered, that incorporate grotesque imagery with the beauty of sinuous lines. His drawings depict figures, both real and imagined, that tell the story of an unending battle between society's powerless and powerful. With a dark sense of humor that is Flores' own, his work also shows the influence of generations of artists, integrating the grace and detail of early masters with the imagination of the Surrealists.
Though the content of his drawings often display a clear narrative, it is rare that Flores begins a piece with a plan for its full resolution. He may have a theme in mind at the start, but prefers to allow each drawing to develop itself, each figure or symbol deriving form and meaning from the one before it, until a narrative has found its way onto the page. Flores is driven extensively by his surroundings. He is clear in voicing the use of his art as an outlet through which to comment on the condition of the world around him, and believes it is his duty to do so. Flores comments, “I, like Orozco, Goya or Kollwitz believe in the need to directly portray that which is inhuman and immoral in society as well as that which is compassionate and true in order to wake in all of us a sense or urgency in attending humanities' most pressing needs in a time when greed and rapacious hatred becomes ever more predominant.”
Michael Caines' current work situates American political figures, both past and present, in altered 18th century paintings and Christian religious kitsch, referencing scenes from Alice in Wonderland, Bambi, and the Wizard of Oz. Drawing on the lineage of political cartooning in these pictures, Caines treats Richard Nixon, JFK, and Carl Rove, among others, with surprising tenderness and humor.
Influenced by Rick Perlstein's 2008 book, Nixonland: The Rise Of A President And The Fracturing Of America, Caines considers the fate of now obsolete political figures, and those who will someday, in turn, fall into the shadow of history. Their images, so vivid, are given an afterlife in electronic media, and they are, in a sense, both entombed there and in limbo. Caines' new work reveals the peculiar beauty that history lends to these iconic physiognomies, and his work is as much a response to their physicality as it is to the politics they are, or were, embroiled in. Thus baby-headed Carl Rove is cuddled by Ronald Reagan as dowager duchess, while a younger, glowingly handsome Jesus-Reagan cradles a little Glenn Beck lamb.
Caines rifles through the past, masterfully reworking elements of historical pictures to provide landscapes for these figures to inhabit. By conflating painting and political history, his work evokes nostalgia for the idealism that comes with belief, whether in political or artistic greatness. Caines references Sir John Tenniel's beautiful illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, utilizing the spirit of absurdity in the drawings and text as a form of critique. Rather than passively absorbing history and media images, Caines asserts his right to creative action. He thereby extends to us, his viewers, a kind of tentative idealism, one in which he in turn asserts our right to act on – rather than be acted upon – the images of our shared histories.
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