Travel Pick: Art and Archaeology in Germany
Mail Order Monsters

Peres Projects presents a group exhibition by curator Kathy Grayson exploring new trends in fucked-up figuration. Every generation has its unique take on the figure and some new art seems to all see the figure as broken, decaying, fractured, and monstrous. For example:

Fran Spiegel's soupy, sloppy women protrude from and are engulfed by pop slime piles.

Dennis Tyfus' work comes out of graffiti and underground art and music in Europe and America

Ben Jones, a member of east-coast art collective Paper Rad, takes neon and comic to new oddities of meaning.

Tomoo Gokita favours creepily still portraits of women and wrestlers executed exclusively in black and white.

Eddie Martinez favours men in hats, potted plants, parrots, and patterns.

Wes Lang's monsters come from the cultural detritus of a very fucked-up America. He takes images pushed under the cultural carpet and forces them back into view to be countenanced. He often takes on Native American art, black Americana, the Civil War era, or pornography in his exploration of the deleted scenes of American history.

Ry Fyan is a hyperrealist painter who makes hallucinatory figures out of animals, products, and landscape.

Taylor McKimens' monsters are not terribly other-worldly or fantastical but are rather the monsters next door, down the street, or on the wrong side of the tracks. Deadbeats and derelicts roam sparse, harshly lit worlds of soggy bread and Band-Aids, bologna and knotted garden hose.

Joe Grillo is a member of Virginia Beach art collective Dearraindrop and has been putting the figure through the pop media shredder for years with very hyperreal results.