Former Juxtapoz cover artist Eric Yahnker (May 2011 issue), will be opening his 3rd solo exhibition @ The Hole in NYC, tonight, on November 15th. Factory Reset consists of all new large-scale pastel drawings on sandpaper, recontextualizing America's socio-political and cultural past, present, and future, and calling on much needed “factory reset.”
The Southern California-based artist who always picked working with subjects that are uncomfortable and somewhat provocative, is now presenting, as he puts it - "fifteen new pastel drawings and one large, room-filling sequential animation that all try to metaphorically encapsulate the state of our union; its hopes, fears, desires, and mind-bending surreality come to life." Due to the current state of things in his beloved homeland, he is calling on erasing all content and settings, wiping the memory, and rebooting the corrupted system. Mashing up the icons of popular culture, celebrities, sports stars, and the characters from the never more surreal political life, Yahnker creates a parallel universe in which Lebron talks to Yoda, Zuckerberg mutated into Trump, Spiderman found a new partner, cowboys are riding Koons' balloon dogs, and Hawking is contemplating Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel.
Aside from working with unusual, made up narratives based on existing people or events, the artist developed a particular drawing technique from existing mediums, successfully achieving the irresistible beauty of painting. By grinding the pastels and smearing their dust, Yahnker is able to create velvety gradients, subtle shadows, and mix most elaborate shades of certain hues. Using this unique technique he drew a new series of sometimes humorous, sometimes controversial images that leave no one intact. Starting with a show title piece depicting Warhol taking a selfie, an image that mirrors the "celebrity-influencer social media selfie culture", the show presents where we are as a nation and suggest how we got here in the first place. "All this is as seen through the cracked lens of a 40-something, Jewish, West Coast progressive artist and political satirist, who not only deems himself a red, white, and blue-blooded patriot, but is also a newly-minted father to a badass little girl that I’ll have to one day tell the story of Trump to (without vomiting)” sums up the artist his personal motivation and inspiration for the show. —Sasha Bogojev
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