I AM THAT ‘EYE AM’: Mark Ryden’s Whimsy and Wonder at Perrotin Los Angeles |
Mark Ryden, the godfather of Pop Surrealism, has built a career with the uncanny, the recondite and the unapologetically kitsch. Photographed by Christopher French. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin
In late October, a pageant’s worth of costumed devotees gathered at Perrotin in Los Angeles for the grand opening of Mark Ryden’s solo exhibition, “Eye Am,” which showcased 12 new works by the cult artist. Buccaneers, Pierrot clowns and stag-horned fey wandered the exhibition, examining portraits of coronated Bye-Lo babies, taxidermy arrayed in whimsical mise-en-scènes and the pictorial apotheosis of a yam. It was a scene not too dissimilar from one Ryden might paint—a promenade of the curious and the willfully whimsical—and was one of his own making. A few hours before the opening, the artist posted an image of one of the paintings featured in the exhibition, Sweet Laurette #187—a pale, freckled pixie doll with her chubby hands wrapped around a pair of yams—to his Instagram with a caption reading “Wear a costume!”
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See all of our newslettersThrough his work, Ryden offers rabbit holes and tightly packed wonderlands and an invitation to be in on the joke. Where some see paraphernalia, Ryden sees psalms. In the recently closed “Eye Am,” he presents his own agreement on spiritual peace, or at the very least, a scripture on how to obtain it. Ryden’s scripture is not one written with words or even with........