King Combrat

Pop-surrealist Ron English gained fame through billboard liberation and other Situationist-style pranks like his amazing cereal-box détournement project. He’s waged war against Camel cigarettes for overtly marketing to children, and against Apple for appropriating crucial 20th-Century social justice figures who were too dead to object to their commercial exploitation. But his broad critique of consumer culture has, like the work of his fellow street-art godhead Banksy, long since found its way into the gallery world, and in contrast with his billboard hijackings, his paintings are slick, highly-polished satires of corporate America’s propaganda campaigns (“…like if Walt Disney was a left-wing propagandist,” he once said in a Hypebeast interview).

English’s newest body of work goes on display this week at DTLA’s Corey Helford Gallery, in a solo exhibit titled “TOYBOX: America in the Visuals.” 36 new paintings will be included, as will installation pieces and sculpture, plus a musical performance by English’s alter-ego DJ POPaganda—the name being derived from a term he coined for his work, and which has served as the title for a book and a documentary, as well. The collected work seeks to examine self-creation and the development of identity as an act of the imagination, a process that starts in childhood through play—particularly play with toys, which can serve as proxy identities—but which continues throughout one’s life. We reached out to English for a comment, and he was kind enough to respond:

It seems these days everyone has an opinion, no one has a clue. Opinions and beliefs have become the currency of modern civilization, and we are in the midst of creating the new mythologies that will define us in the future. This show is a visual and musical intervention into that process.

Here’s a small sampling of the new paintings. A few of them were provided exclusively to Dangerous Minds, and we’re grateful to the Corey Helford Gallery for that extremely cool consideration. Click an image to spawn an enlargement.
 

The Ascension of deadmau5
 

Stroke of Genius
 

D. Menace and Richie T Grin
 

Close Encounter Intuition
 

Statues in Delusionville
 

Bunnny Rabbbit, Action Surrealist
 
While you’re here, enjoy a couple of English’s music videos—one for DJ POPaganda, one for his band The Electric Illuminati—both featuring his disturbing character Cathy Cowgirl, which seeks to underscore the luridness and pervasiveness of the advertising industry’s use of women’s bodies.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Fat Tony the Tiger figure by Ron English
The future of marijuana merchandising as imagined by artist Ron English