Midcity, Los Angeles
Ron English
Translations
Allouche GalleryAllouche Gallery is delighted to present Ron English's new collection of works in a solo exhibition entitled Translations. One of the most prolific and recognizable contemporary artists, New York-based painter, street artist and designer Ron English has bombed the global landscape with unforgettable images across all categories of culture, history and art. Translations offers a vibrant presentation of Ron English’s prolific career and its diverse nature. Notable icons of Ron English’s visual language, such as his Marilyn with Mickeys, Mousemask Murphy, Elefanka, Forlorn Unicorn, Bunnny Rabbbit, and the Mad Happy Grin make appearances in this collection, together bringing to life Ron English’s “Delusionville” universe. The New York-based painter, street artist and designer has transformed the global landscape since his controversial mural projects grabbed the public’s eye in the 1980s. Ron English took an active stance in questioning consumerist culture through hand-painting 68-feet-long and 14-feet-high traffic-stopping canvases and then wheat-pasting them over the pre-existing highway billboards in Texas, starting in 1982. His recreations of consumerist billboards called out corporate hypocrisy, specifically regarding advertisements catering to the appeals of children, as they targeted youths as a vulnerable and impressionable consumer base. Instrumental campaigns targeting companies such as McDonald’s and Camel Cigarettes, planted a seed of question in the public’s perception of the brands. Issues of social justice merged with mainstream culture in his “billboard liberation” that carried through the 90s and 2000s. The influence of pop art in his political appropriations is evident as he continues to mix high and low cultural touchstones in his contemporary work on and off the street. As a result, the term “POPaganda” quickly became affiliated with English’s unique style and voice. The emergence of said unique voice is detailed in the documentary titled “POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English,” released in 2005. Following his eruption into the street scene in the 1980s, his murals appeared in locations such as the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Palestine Wall in 2007 and the U.S.-Mexico border in 2010, with over 900 feats of guerrilla billboard hijacking under his belt. The merging of high and low cultural notes pertains uniquely to the new collection of works debuting in Translations. Ron English reinspires Picasso’s “Guernica” of 1937 in the exhibition, incoorporating a series of the historic painting in English’s own visual language. His “Mousemask Red Love bomb Guernica” notably reflects how politically charged his work can be through the use of recognizably American cultural icons. English’s animated Mousemask Murphy is painted in the center, adorned with a gas mask, flying over the scene of “Guernica” in a plane tagged with US on the wing. The painting is dramatic, even theatrical, and inserts America’s consumerist identity into Picasso’s painting of the 1930s. English’s appropriation of contemporary and historic sentiments is strategic, masterful, and smart as a whip. While the voices of painting masters carry through the collection, works such as the “Couture Storm Trooper” are rooted in a contemporary and alternative space. In English’s world of “Delusionville” cartoons are made vogue and we visit newfound parallels of exaggerated and animated realism.