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Lot Essay
“The idea is to take something familiar and make it strange.” – Erik Parker
Within the intergalactic paintings of Erik Parker are organised worlds of chaos, depicting fantastical biomorphic subjects and otherworldly landscapes. New Kiss (2016) combines Parker’s hallmark bright colours and fragmented forms to create an electrifying contemporary rendition of one of art history’s most enduring subjects. Having grown up in San Antonio, Texas, during the 1970s, Parker’s work is deeply influenced by the counter-culture of the time, which was dominated by hip hop, street graffiti and cartoons. Over the past two decades, he has used myriad imagery to ask what it means to be human in today’s world. After receiving his MFA from New York’s Purchase College, Parker rose to prominence following his participation in the inaugural Greater New York exhibition at MOMA PS1 in 2000. He has since mounted solo exhibitions at galleries and museums around the world, including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Foundation and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Moving away from his text-based pieces of the late ‘90s, Parker’s newer paintings embrace saturated colour and dizzying layers of detail. The fragmented forms of New Kiss entwine, interlace and embrace one another seamlessly across the canvas, creating a kaleidoscopic flow of visual data. Aspiring to create records of human existence, Parker weaves familiar yet alien imagery from elements of contemporary culture, drawing on politics, music, internet memes, hallucinatory dreams, conspiracy theories and subcultural symbols. As Parker has explained, “In this world of information overload, my paintings record this endless amount of information over a long period of time. I hope whoever gets to spend time looking at my paintings can see something new in it every time” (E. Parker quoted in Millennial’s Dilemma, exh. cat., Hong Kong Contemporary Art Foundation, Hong Kong, 2018, https://hoca.org/millennials-dilemma-solo-exhibition-erik-parker/)
Within the intergalactic paintings of Erik Parker are organised worlds of chaos, depicting fantastical biomorphic subjects and otherworldly landscapes. New Kiss (2016) combines Parker’s hallmark bright colours and fragmented forms to create an electrifying contemporary rendition of one of art history’s most enduring subjects. Having grown up in San Antonio, Texas, during the 1970s, Parker’s work is deeply influenced by the counter-culture of the time, which was dominated by hip hop, street graffiti and cartoons. Over the past two decades, he has used myriad imagery to ask what it means to be human in today’s world. After receiving his MFA from New York’s Purchase College, Parker rose to prominence following his participation in the inaugural Greater New York exhibition at MOMA PS1 in 2000. He has since mounted solo exhibitions at galleries and museums around the world, including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, the Hong Kong Contemporary Art Foundation and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
Moving away from his text-based pieces of the late ‘90s, Parker’s newer paintings embrace saturated colour and dizzying layers of detail. The fragmented forms of New Kiss entwine, interlace and embrace one another seamlessly across the canvas, creating a kaleidoscopic flow of visual data. Aspiring to create records of human existence, Parker weaves familiar yet alien imagery from elements of contemporary culture, drawing on politics, music, internet memes, hallucinatory dreams, conspiracy theories and subcultural symbols. As Parker has explained, “In this world of information overload, my paintings record this endless amount of information over a long period of time. I hope whoever gets to spend time looking at my paintings can see something new in it every time” (E. Parker quoted in Millennial’s Dilemma, exh. cat., Hong Kong Contemporary Art Foundation, Hong Kong, 2018, https://hoca.org/millennials-dilemma-solo-exhibition-erik-parker/)