Leiminspace proudly presents a solo show by Mexico City artist, Lucas David. The show will be on display at Leiminspace throughout the month of September. The opening reception will take place on the evening of Thursday, September the 8th, from 7 - 10 pm. 

 

   Pallid and unsound portraits of the stars shall line both levels of the space just a little bit too high to see from the ground - viewers will have to strain if they’d like a good glimpse.  Each portrait, rendered wispily in mixed media, depicts a hero or heroine of pop. The portraits are milky-faced and bloody, somewhere between dreaming and dead. The portrayed have lost their eyes, but continue to gaze out from the heights of the gallery walls, like slain Medusas, still able to turn us into stone. 

   

  Recognizable in a wink, the paintings do what every art professor has dogmatically disavowed: they reference a Google image of a celebrity.  And what of this sin that all young artists have been warned against — this sin that they continue to commit in secrecy, lying belly-down on their beds in the darkest hours of the night, scrawling in tattered sketchbooks, illuminated only by their glowing browsers and blog-feeds? This sin has populated an entire ecosystem of starry simulacra - from charmingly simple doodles to very earnest graphite renderings of the mighty few that are so dearly beloved. Atop this sea of Tumblrean offerings, floats the work of David. Indeed, some of his most venerated goddesses have graciously accepted the painter's oblations.   

 

   The artist’s muses are far from arbitrarily chosen stars. They are veritable obsessions.  David estimates that he has drawn over 200 portraits of Taylor Momsen, for example. The show investigates the devotional madness that drives fan art, through the lens of one of Tumblrs most *noted* artists. David's paled pantheon implores us to consider fan art as the sublimation of a vestigial urge for worship, leftover from the days of Athena or Baal. Does it really make a difference whether we are adoring Lana or Demeter?