British street artist D*Face has become a very prominent and prolific artist here in Los Angeles, and his exhibit ‘Scars and Stripes’, his largest solo show to date, was opening on Saturday night on Robertson boulevard in West Hollywood, a pop-up show in collaboration with PMM Arts Projects.
I had already attended one of these a few years ago, but this one looked gigantesque. First, a giant mural of one of his iconic girl crying ‘You’re dead to me’ was welcoming people (he also painted a second mural on Pico Boulevard), then a sort of hoax that apparently tricked the fire department earlier the same day: a real police car damaged by D*Face’s logo turned as a dangerous weapon, a giant replica of his signature helmet-dog face, fallen flat on the broken windshield of the car… The humor and dark irony is omnipresent in D*Face’s work, and I have always kept the card he signed for me at the first exhibit, which says ‘Going Nowhere, Fast’. the inside the gallery is filled with large 60s-style cartoonish and colorful paintings, famously inspired by Lichtenstein, with little white wings drawn everywhere and this recurrent helmet-dog-head-with-little-wings logo repeatedly crashing the scene,… may be announcing bad news and misery, I don’t know but all these people are crying!
What is also omnipresent is death, the ugly face of death… everyone in his bright paintings has a face of death, or has scars, or is kissing someone who announces death, as if there was always something very ugly behind the glossy images of pop culture. Even skateboards reflect the terrible end, as they are shaped as femurs and skulls and the image of this crying couple embracing and kissing each other is declined to death (if I dare to say), whereas the barrel of guns are distorted to write ‘peace’ and authentic war helmets have ‘Born to ill’ or ‘Misfit’ or ‘Stalkers’ written over them.
But the most striking part of the exhibit is probably his collection of dead musicians and actors, all dead in their prime under the tender age of 30, like Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Biggie Smalls, Buddy Holly, James Dean, Tupac, Aallyah… They are even represented in groups of four, on gold-like wooden school desks, looking more than ever like religious icons. It’s clear this dead-before-30 club of pop culture represents the poster boys and girls for D*Face, an artist who repeatedly illustrates the brightness of youth, fame and stardom prompt to be disappearing very fast: D*Face, a British artist mocking the American dream, watching it dissolves fast for those who managed to reach it for a little while whereas the rest of us stay fascinated by the cult of dead pop celebrities.
D* Face said it all in an interview for Complex: ‘Thematically my work always draws upon personal experiences, whether that’s the saturation of media in our lives, our fascination with celebrity and stardom or more singular experiences such as the loss of loved ones. I’m fascinated by, love, loss and the immortalization of celebrities, those that burn bright and die young, whilst their lives are cut short, they never grow old, never loose relevance and retain the spirit of youth forever, it is perfect for our consumer led culture, we get to put them on a pedestal, manipulate their ethos to fit with ours, over and over again, without them even being a part of this reconstruction/deconstruction.’ But I have to say that the largest (and most expensive… $65,000!!) piece, entitled ‘Public Enemy’, shows a man questioning himself with the huge letterings all over the painting: ‘Popcorn’, ‘Evil’, ‘Clown’, ‘Weirdo’, ‘Fraud!’, ‘Why do I do this… take these risks, the dangers… put my art on the line… and… for… what??!!’, ‘After all these years… It’s clear… I must be a glory hungry fool… or worse!’…
May be D*Face questioning his own art. Many pictures of the exhibit here.
