To kick off Cotton Candy Machine's 4-year anniversary, they celebrated with an exhibition of new works from Juxtapoz-featured artist David M. Cook and one of our favorite artists of the salacious-persuasion, Tina Lugo. Take a look at a selection of their works here.
Inculcated by waves of Saturday morning cartoons, characters portrayed in comic book literature, and videogame culture, Tina Lugo became instantly infatuated with the bright colors of the animated world. As she grew up, the social and sexual undertones of these cartoons unbridled themselves from the confines of her childhood memory. Tina began to realize that the sexual and often tongue-in- cheek humor she expressed had stemmed from what she had watched on early 90’s television and only fueled her passion to uncover the subversive and controversial qualities in the pop culture of yesteryear. The use of enamel and plexiglas in her work is to suggest that the smooth, hyper-gloss finishing of a world that allures us will always be beneath a transparent barrier we can touch but never enter-a replication of the voyeuristic qualities we all posses. Her style references and pays homage to her variety of modern influences which include: Takashi Murakami, Toshio Saeki, Hanna Barbera, Japanese animation, and Henry Darger. Follow her online as she creates masterpiece after masterpiece for this awesome show, which she has titled "Sleep Sex."
David M. Cook is the architect of a mischievous microcosm. Amicable and unassuming, he hardly seems the “type” to consistently and skillfully crank out such a lewd labyrinth of work, but the cheeky hedonism comes all too naturally. Based in Los Angeles by of Brooklyn, but originally from Louisville, Kentucky, David (who also answers to Bonethrower) uses no shortage of fine lines to design a world that is equal parts modern mysticism and memento mori—at the end of the day, it all sinks in like a psychotropic drug. David has been in Los Angeles working away and we are so excited to have him back here on the East Coast! Follow him as he prepares for his return to Brooklyn with his new body of work, "Seeing Machines."
