We dropped by Blackbird Studios earlier this week as artist Spencer Olsen was hanging his show, which opens tonight for Preview Thursday and tomorrow for First Friday.
This painting — giant skinless creatures advancing on a plump, primitive man — began as a drawing in Olsen's sketchbook. He bigged it up for one of the Gorilla Kage projects that've become a First Friday thing, then eventually turned it into this piece, which keynotes his show at Blackbird. "I spent a lot of time getting the colors right, so that they were bright enough," he says. In the image's pervasive playfulness — from the visual style to the color scheme to the whimsical narrative it implies (are the creatures coming for the guy's skin? to make what, a glove?) — you can see the influence of pop culture on Olsen's show. You can also see their pixelated genitals. "My favorite thing about the painting," Olsen says, smiling.
Above, detail from a wall-size installation, below. Floating islands of cut-paper creatures drift above a stylized landscape. Olsen's collaborator, fellow artist KITZE, has created animations that fill the sky with wheeling stars, the river with flowing water, the hourglass with moving sand. It's an attempt to give his work a new, kinetic dimension. The two were still tinkering with it when Desert Companion visited; it warrants a return trip to see it all pulled together. Scott Dickensheets
