NYAB Event - Brian Leo "Brian Leo is Every Soldier in the World"

Brian Leo "Brian Leo is Every Soldier in the World"

Leo Kesting

This event has ended.

Brian Leo's new exhibition, Brian Leo is Every Soldier in the World, opening March 7 at Leo Kesting Gallery, is what happens when one of New York's most recognizable young artists mixes popular imagery, global terror and irony with a twist of Day-Glo surrealism. For Brian Leo, these new works present "a cavalcade of images exhibited en masse that show deep events of cultural significance flanked by bizarre moments of personal experience."

In one painting entitled Commemorative Plates, mixed media on canvas, 4'x5', 2009, a haunting image of carnage is depicted in the form of a flayed Wall Street Bull. In Fresh Flesh, mixed media on canvas, 3'x4', 2009, viewers are invited to contemplate how "the Internet porn industry is no longer a sideshow to the mainstream but larger than major league sports and perhaps Hollywood" (Frank Rich, New York Times). While, in Cat with Dust Buster, mixed media on canvas, 4'x4', 2009, Brian contemplates utilitarianism, domestic settings, and most importantly returns to concepts based on sex disorder, recently brought to light through mass media coverage of actor David Duchovny. "The Internet has provided a level of access (to pornography) that was previously unavailable. So many people have this problem and the Internet has driven that," said Rob Weiss, executive director of the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles.

[Image: Brian Leo "Low Fliers" (2008) mixed media on canvas, 20 x 20 in.]