Princeps Legibus Solutus Est.

John Yoo writing the torture memos. It means: 'The Emperor is exempt from the laws'
basado en dibujo de Goya: "Contra el bien general" (Against the common good) Plate 71 de la serie "Los desastres de la guerra" c. 1810. http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/goya_disastersofwar
La frase en latin proviene de Ulpianus libro Xlll ad legem Juliam et Papiam. Digest 1.3.31.

Pseudo-Ethnic Architecture

Waiting for God-ot

Hysteria

The original was very disturbing... why is a pot full of flowers in the middle of a field? who put it there and where is she/he? Did something terrible happened? why only use one color? I bought it for the frame and to paint over the canvas but I decided to add another image to explain/scream/color the scene with social commentary. From a political point of view, it is a slap in the face of innocence (or the reluctance to see beyond the propaganda we are fed each day). The are brute forces surrounding our landscape of apparent benevolent settings. If we don't realize to discover the real machinations of the powerful we will suddenly be awaken by a shock. Not a nuclear flash per se, but by more pervasive and immediate events... the loss of our basic rights, the economic crisis, the plundering into a war for resources and power, the rape of earth, the sacrifice of our future generation by the greed of the few.

Evil ways

This painting was made from a recycled canvas. It represents a violent militaristic attack on beauty and peace.

Tempus Fugit for Sin

Recycled Clock using Hieronymus Bosch. Tabletop of the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things. 1485. Oil on panel. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

Tempus Fugit = Time flies.

Bought the clock for $1 at Urban Ore. Removed the plate with the numbers. Painted the frame in gold. Pasted a reproduction of Bosh's work (which I saw recently at Prado). Painted the Roman numbers. It gives me the time in my bedroom. It's always time to sin!!

Making sadness sadder.. or is it fun? - INTERVENTION

Bought it at Urban Ore for $2. It felt like sadness waiting to happen. It lacked the dramatic detail to explain it's existence.


I added the rusty sunken ship. Now makes total sense. I hope "Sophy" doesn't mind.

Tsunami mon ami

Waiting for the giant wave to get rid of Murakami's garbage.

I got so revolted after seeing Murakami's exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Modern Art that I decided to do something using a traditional Japanese art. I choose Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa (color woodcut, 25.7 × 37.8 cm, 1832). He is one of the greatest painters of all time. RESPECT!!!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's (New York) entry on "The Great Wave at Kanagawa"

art in public places

I am sorry.. call me crazy but I think they are fucking cool..

bug out!

I love bugs.. the creepier the better. The Peruvian jungle warmed me to these tasty fellows.. mmm hormigas gigantes fritas.. ninfas de avispa en mantequilla.. mmmm delicioso. Hey! its the circle of life and the food of the future.

Super DJ

Two hard drives with their guts inside out.
The frame of a broken cell phone.
random metal stand of god knows what.
Electrical unit with cables protruding.


This gal/guy is awesome. It spins so fast looks like it has 4 arms. The body is not important it's the mind. I wish I was a DJ. I have friends that are.. and really good ones. Check DAYoung, FaviFav in Oaktown and Rubber Band Girl at KALX. This is for them..

How to make a Pollock using a Murakami

Start with this piece of crap by Murakami:

Then ad a little of Mifune.. 

leave him alone for few seconds....

and voilá!!! A decent Pollock.

That's how art should be made..

New York - Before and After (cement)

They are only few yards apart...

Walking the Dog

When I was in Paris there were tons of old people with dogs. They were so proper and bourgeois. I imagine them a century ago and made this with random electric parts. I didn't modified anything just put them together.

State of the art

The biggest rooms at the SFMOMA are for the San Francisco "school" of Abstract Expressionism. Don't take me wrong I a big fan of the AE per se but I think the works of the SF "branch" is just overrated and it hangs on important walls just because of nepotism or social connections. 

So, in the hope that someday the good old folks that are paid big bucks to work as curators for their rich patrons, would made me "rich and famous", I made these delicious works:



In the worst case, I'll just eat the whole damned thing and enjoy it. Only Hofmann, Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning are invited. 

No Gas Today.. or ever

Montage digital. Resumen visual de las noticias cotidianas... la guerra continua (that is a humvee blown by an IED in case you wonder) , greed is wining. The world goes to the trash. Not very cheerful but real.

Solo en la Cancha

Metal and plastic mounted on a very old plastic-felt and wood film drier. All recycled materials.
El jugador de futbol que no tiene con quien jugar es una metafora sobre la ansiedad de la soledad y un libido acumulado. (check the screw protruding). CReo que es mi trabajo mas frio y conceptual hasta hoy.

Appropiation-Pop-Reconstruction

This work is a digital intrusion onto another mediums (in this case silkscreen and publishing).
This silly image has 5 layers of individual colors overlapping. I scanned each color proof (the blue, red, yellow, and teal) from an old silkscreen manual and used Photoshop to mount them onto a white background (my digital paper).

The result is the same as the traditional in visual terms but there is an intervention, an extra element that makes it totally different: a despicable act of vandalism.. and provocation. 

New piece at the Metropolitan Museum of New York

The guard asked me what was I doing moving the rope-posts like that. I told her that I was going to trick my "know it all" friends and challenge them to tell me who made this piece at the Metropolitan. She told me I was "evil" and laughed. I felt naughty.

Month Special

Digital invasion of a humvee on a Hooper. Sign borrowed from an African gas station. War and high gas prices courtesy of the freaking neo-cons.

Anser management?

I found this on a wall in San Francisco.. pretty creepy stuff.. poor little doggy dog.. 

Geometry

The Centennial Stadium at UC Berkeley.. home of the CAL Bears. I couldn't care less about sports but this place is cool for its geometrical shapes. I find it disturbing the extreme order and repetitions. Is like being trapped in a mirror room. Ad infinitum images makes me want to puke. I know, Freud would have a field day with me.

Bathouse

Why only for birds.. bats also need housing. They are great for natural pest control. Peasants love bats and you should too. Dollar Store birdhouse, candle stand from Urban Ore, red LED using a 3.5V battery inside de house. Cutout bat.

Ghost light

The LED light is powered by the USB port of my TIVO. The light is covered by a plastic tube with a squared pattern. Since it is a little bright there is a metal frame holding a piece of patterned glass that diffuses the light into a ghostly apparition. All recycled materials.

Mira Miró la hora

Twice a day this clock-painting of Joan Miró looks like the original. The eye and the green leaf find the right spot and time freezes for a second .. then it is gone....

All recycled materials from the dump.

Submarine

When I was growing up I didn't go out much. "Mi barrio" was a little rough and dangerous. My family didn't have enough money so I made my own toys from anything I could find... pieces of wood, cardboard, plastic, cords, bottle cups, etc. I wish I had "Urban Ore" back in those days...

Blue Ray

No. I am not a Star Wars fan. I am just cheap.. well.. a cheap nerd.
Metal base hiding a 12v transformer powering a blue LED. Reused a burned out fluorescent lamp. Works with a switch.

Guardianes

If I had a garden I'll post them there to defend it from squirrels and snails. Scare away naughty dogs trying to poop over my garden. They may look rough and ugly but they are loyal. They allow children, old ladies and cute girls pick few flowers.

Clockdinsky

Keeps me on time....

Rhinocéros

I remembered the play by Eugene Ionesco and that's how this "ready made" piece was born. Something personal prompt me to make it... I felt many times like the character Bérenger...


According to Wikipedia:
Rhinocéros is a play by Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959. The play belongs to the school of drama known as the Theatre of the Absurd. Over the course of three acts, the inhabitants of a small, provincial French town turn into rhinoceroses; ultimately the only human who does not succumb to this mass metamorphosis is the central character, Bérenger, a flustered everyman figure who is often criticized throughout the play for his drinking and tardiness. The play is often read as a response to the sudden upsurge of Communism, Fascism and Nazism during the events preceding World War II, and explores the themes of conformity, culture, philosophy, and morality.

Runaway Bride

The wedding is postponed indefinitely.....

Still Dead

Intervencion brutal sobre un pseudo "lienzo pintado a mano" de un tal Ritter. Compre el cuadro por 3 dolares solo por el marco (que ahora esta enmarcando mi televisor colgado en la pared). Me dio mucha risa el sticker colocado en la parte trasera de esta absurda copia: "A fine color brush stroke print magnificently reproduced, faithfully in appearance to the priceless original handsomely framed to enhance the subject." This is what it looked when I got it:



This is what it looks now after some gold, black, blue and red acrylic violent intervention. The painter's name is now "Critter". Indeed.

Perspective lighting

Candle holder using various pieces of glass from recycling bins and coaster set from the Dollar Store.