Faile NYC Solo Show 06.09.07

by Peter Aleksa

As I first enter the warehouse on Chrystie St, announced by a large yellow 'Faile' Banner hanging above the entrance, I'm greeted by a metal statue of an orally fixated boy with a look in his eyes that I can't quite discern, something between nervousness and sadism. This opening theme, representative of an emotionally neglected yet over-protected society, stares you in the face as you enter, and returns a number of times throughout the exhibition. There are a number of common themes and images splattered throughout the show: images of Mao Zedong, images of women in danger, desperately needing to be protected by a strong hero of a man, and alternately women with a sense of power, holding a gun, or simply holding out. But it is this first theme of menacing vulnerability that everything else seems to run a connective thread through the works.

The expansive warehouse is an appropriate setting for Faile's work and a number of the artists' consorts mill about the entrance, while a deejay (i use this term loosely) runs through an eclectic playlist, lest you thirst for some aural stimulation.

The works--displayed on canvas and on a collection of stacked boxes--are intricately layered works combining elements of wheatpasting, stencil, and comic art. All these techniques converge to form a juxtaposition of words, speech bubbles, ads, and assorted images of pulp heroines, cultural icons such as Mohammad Ali and Chairman Mao, and distorted surf imagery of dashing young men on surfboards wearing horse heads atop bodies you would expect to see topped with beaming, all-american features and a perfectly coiffed do. Images and themes extend across panels and seem to continue into spaces beyond the canvas--blurring the line between the works on display and the broader canvas on which the collective is used to working.

The Whimsical World of Souther Salazar

by Peter Aleksa

Souther Salazar is an up and coming young artist who lives and works in the Los Angeles area. Despite being a relative newcomer to the Los Angeles art-scene, the 27-year-old artist has steadily garnered an expansive underground fan base. A graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, one of the top graphic design schools in the world, Salazar has displayed his work at a number of successful exhibitions in galleries in Los Angeles, New York, and Tokyo.

In addition to his gallery exhibits, Salazar has also created numerous zines and comics, had a series of his textile patterns printed by the California based Alexander Henry Fabrics, and most recently he wrote and illustrated a children’s book entitled “Destined for Dizziness!”

With his crowded works overflowing with brightly colored images, Salazar shares a certain stylistic kinship with artists working in various forms of street art—an artistic current most recognizable for producing the 1980s avant-garde artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, but notable as well for the rise of more recent artists such as Dalek and Swoon. In a similar sense, so to does the composition of Salazar’s works, constructed from a wide assortment of materials—blending collages, drawings, and paintings to create intricately layered installations displaying an assorted medley of textures as well as images.

It’s not often that one would describe an artist working in Salazar’s medium as a storyteller, but that is exactly what Salazar is. Drawing on the broad tradition of comic illustration and comics-as-art, Salazar plays with the traditional written and illustrated aspects of comic art, fashioning his paintings and drawings into a series of nostalgic mini-narratives and illustratives romanticizing the notion of childhood. Reinterpreting the world around him through the anything-is-possible view of adolescence, he creates whimsical landscapes full of carnivals and lost cities overflowing with childlike images of dinosaurs, robots, giant insects, and strange new creatures that overtake the real-world elements present.

These fanciful images lend the works an undeniable sense of innocence and wonder that contrasts with representations of the physical world that often belie a foreboding sense of the dark reality of modern life. This uneasiness is essentially washed away by the childlike inventions that become the focus of the works. While it looms in the background, it is not the sinister face of reality that Salazar ultimately wants to portray but rather the captivating nature of childhood invention; to capture that enchanted time when make-believe mattered and for a fleeting moment everything was going to be okay. You can check out selected works by Souther Salazar displayed on his personal website, or buy merchandise featuring the work of Salazar and like-minded artists at the Giant Robot Store.