Ben Jones

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2374

"The exhibition consists of five components of equal importance to the artist: Ladders, Minimalism, Cartoon Drawings, Dogs, and Bricks. Buy a pizza and throw it into a dog park. Build a doghouse out of bricks. Draw cartoons to sell to street wear corporations and gorge yourself on soft pretzels. Then come to the exhibition."

Towards a perfect icon

Right now I'm trying to refine this image. I want the care and time and thought that went into each one to impact the viewer immediately. They should be as close to perfect as possible.

A few goals here:

-The figure should be aggressive, strong, and still.

-contained yet chaotic.

-Balance between articulating depth and form, and rhythm and pattern.

Megaman

Yeay. Mega man. That's 3/3. I just set up my studio space in the Senior Studies studio, and surrounded my desk with images of religious icons and pictures of super heroes and other cool stuff. Time to really get to work.

Exploded action heroes

Finally getting somewhere. They should look like dieties and also like "exploded" diagrams,  revealing what's inside. There will also be a Mega Man.

So right now, I tentatively plan to do four paintings. Each one will be a "portrait" of a character from the mythology of pop culture. One of the handful of fictional pop-culture heroes/villians the project will focus on is Darth Vader. Here's a version of the Vader mask I did based on a Thai temple painting.

Been sketching a lot in my sketchbook. Lots of stuff sourced from the Mayans and Olmecs, and also from mythologies from all over the place. I want a really good mix of stuff, to the point where the boundaries between cultures start to fade away and the works enter an imaginary place where pop-culture and mythology start to blend.