MONKEY PLAYS JOKER
Monkeys, although adorable, are a crude version of ourselves. Smart and powerful, they pose a threat to our own security both physically and symbolically. They are caricatures of men, representing our most despised traits. They are the jokers and the politicians. They have demeaned an entire race. Yet, they have a foot in idealized nature, in a purity we often feel detached from. This concept of the monkey as a phantom of ourselves, the animal inside we can’t escape is where I found twisted humor.
The drawing is designed to be disorienting, in your face, comical but frightening. The colors are bombastic, clown-like, broken and compartmentalized. The piece is tight and feels claustrophobic. There is an underlying tension created in balanced opposites. The face is both abstract and illusionistic, shallow and deep, geometric and organic. Within the chaos a fractured image of a phantom emerges.