Matthew Bone - Paradise Lost
Soey Milk - Malus Sieversii
Bonni Reed - Cartes De Visite
Christine Wu - Shhh...
February 3 - February 26
Opening Reception: Friday, February 3rd, 8-11 pm
La Luz de Jesus Gallery
Matthew Bone
Paradise Lost
Raised on a diet of comic books, horror movies, and pornography, Matthew Bone injects a distinctive voice into his painting: pride, lust, vengeance, the lurid underbelly of humanity, and the allegories that illustrate the consequences of its revelation has long been the focus of Bone's oil, acrylic and panel works. By utilizing the conventions of pop culture, and its willingness to embrace the artifice as the sincere, Bone is able to create a reinvisioned modern mythology.
"Come with me and join the Darkside." the ventilated voice said as it's owner's gloved hand extended towards the hero. In my story, he accepted and a new world was opened up to him, breaching the inner sanctum of the old. Growing up a latchkey kid in the 80's, my unattended viewing and reading habits slowly migrated towards the adult at far too early of an age. While I still had the rich, innocent imaginary life of a boy who could defeat an alien invasion or help save the city from his archnemesis, the shadow of a different interior world was cast. In my newest body of work the icons and visual cliches of two seemingly disparate spheres collide (comics, Star Wars, toys vs. Hustler, Chic, Juggs) finally forming what has long brewed in my head into a tangible visual language for the first time" states Bone (who lives with his ol' lady and menagerie of pets at the bottom of a wishing well in downtown Los Angeles) about "Paradise Lost."
Soey Milk
Malus Sieversii
Soey Milk depicts lone women in romance, she gifts the ladies with symbols of pleasure and agony.
Often enriched with subtle oddity or darkness, her delicate oil on paper works tell stories of tender and sensitive shared encounters. She is in love with lily specialists. "Malus Sieversii" is Milk's very first feature exhibition, but her work has been featured in Blue Canvas Magazine, on the High Fructose Blog, and the artist herself has been the subject of much internet forum discussion. Her debut signals the start of a new era of classical painting, in a very contemporary package.
"I throw the apple at you, and if you are willing to love me, take it and share your girlhood with me; but if your thoughts are what I pray they are not, even then take it, and consider how short-lived is beauty." Plato, Epigram VII
Bonni Reed
Cartes de Visite
Cartes de Visite:
Noun, French. 1. Small photographs, traditionally mounted on card stock, for mailing and trading purposes. Used during the Victorian era. Having a professional career in creating Saturday morning cartoons, Bonni Reed wanted to break from this candy-coated world in order to depict another side of childhood, one that is much darker, haunting or just plain weird -- to evoke a time before we child-proofed everything. By utilizing old photographs of family, friends and found images, this collection portrays the alter ego that resides in all of us -- the real inner child which isn't always what we as adults want it to be.
Reid lives in the West End of Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work has appeared in various galleries throughout North America. Aside from brewing her own visual concoctions, she is an illustrator, graphic designer and an animation colour designer.
Christine Wu Shhh...
Christine Wu's"Shhh..."
is an exploration on the power of things left unsaid... Wu is a certified practitioner of the arts and general awesome maker. Stylistically, her oil and panel work is multi-layered with creepy and sexual undertones. She often depicts people in flux and captures the vulnerability of growing up. She is rather fond of making a ruckus.
