9/15/2003: 

Mark Ryden "paints high atop a magic castle in Pasadena . . .," according to the artist's press bio, "among his many trinkets, statues, skeletons, saints and old toys that he collects for inspiration." A star of the Juxtapoz/lowbrow/whatever scene, Ryden's work has tended to the horror vacui typical of many lowbrow practitioners, cramming his smallish canvases with a phantasmagoria of creepy, big-eyed children, medical objects, terrycloth bunnies, effigies of Abe Lincoln, and various cuts of meat. This everything-including-the-kitchen-sink strategy, while inevitably entertaining on some level, often exposes how little craft or content an artist actually has in their repertoire.

Ryden has managed to avoid this pitfall by treading a fine line between nostalgic cliché and disturbing archetype, and working obsessively through a magnifying lens to manifest the otherworldliness of his visions in the impossibly detailed and meticulously glazed surfaces of his painted panels. There is something of an arrested adolescence in Ryden's work - in its content, which oscillates between aching over lost innocence and stupefaction at the revelation of personal mortality, but also in its technique, which takes the shibboleth of getting it right to vertiginous extremes. Small wonder he's become a hero to the modernism-despising illustrational set, who measure artistic validity by the illusionistic persuasiveness of receding checkerboard floors and gathered brocade drapery.
     - Doug Harvey, LA Weekly
Selected Comments:

The turnip refused to squeal out or show any sign of pain
and maintained a look of stoic indignation throughout the illegal plasma
transfusion. This gave the nurse little satisfaction, as she greatly
enjoyed the sounds of terrified screams. A nasty little idea creeped into
her head, as she reached for the drill.
- insert evil laughter here

these paintings are
- awesome

jesus! if i've told you once, i've told you a million times...
put a band-aid on that thing! i'm sick of mopping up stigmata juice.
- ice queen

Sort of a JOHN WATERS of the canvas set...I'd say.
- 7T'sSoFla

Gotta love a Nurse with a motor !
- Miami Mike

I love RYDEN'S self portrait on the bottle of liquid
sitting on the bedside table.
- Hitchcock and beyond !!

So is the doctor c-sectioning the teddy bear from the
turnip, or applying some secret teddy bear juice to the turnip's wound?
- I can't believe I said that

The nurse with the roto-rooter is checkin me out
- clam king

Did you see MONKEYBONE?!!!!! Well did ya?
- whop de do for bad movies

Bitty butch baby...
Baptized by blood...
Bobo blinks
blithely...
Baby boxes blooms.
BAM BAM BAM !!!
- BBBB!!!

You know what they say: You are what you eat.
- King Chicken

that curs-ed fleshy carrot haunts my every waking moment.
change it, before i tie you to a chair and force you to watch titanic
for 60 hours straight.
- i'll do it!
And I'll still cry everytime Jack drowns.  -Ed.

I'm jusy glad someone is finally tackling the issue of
humanoid tubers being discriminated against for sireing fluffy stuffed animals.
- The Youth of America

ART!

(42 Votes- 86% Art, 14% Porn)


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