Mark Mothersbaugh and Shepard Fairey Take On the Big Picture

On a recent Saturday night, a crowd gathered at street artist Shepard Fairey’s gallery, Subliminal Projects, to catch a glimpse of The Big Picture, a joint show of artwork by Fairey and Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh.

The doorman turned people away from the entrance with pit bull-like persistence and a long line snaked around the corner of the gallery and down the block.

Inside, Fairey was stationed in his usual spot behind the turntables. Artworks were hung intermittently on stark white gallery walls. Although no museum-style placards adorned the artworks, it was easy to decipher whose piece was whose.

The Japanese-style character complete with supercute bear ears walking across a blue-hued billboard-shaped canvas? Pure Mothersbaugh. Or the intricately carved stencil of Andre the Giant's dome covered with layers of dripping paint? Shepard Fairey, no doubt.

Along with a collection of retired stencils, Fairey offered up silkscreens of the American flag with familiar symbols--anarchy sign, star of David, sickle and hammer, Republican elephant, Democrat donkey—in the stars.

If paintings could talk, Mothersbaugh's Postcards, 1998-99 seemed to respond to Fairey’s provocative imagery. Featuring photo album pages stocked with painted postcards, the collection sampled everything from pop culture to politics to sex. In one image, the silhouettes of two children are juxtaposed against the outline of a naked female body. Another depicts a woman in a vintage-y bra and panties next to the word "poison". Still another reads, "Today tea was served... in New York City by Islamic Terrorists" next to a Victorianesque silver tea set.

Despite the small-sized postcards, the show’s title, The Big Picture, is literal, said the Art of Elysium’s Yasmine Mohseni, who co-curated the exhibition with the gallery.

“For the past forty years, everyday, Mark paints a postcard and then often times transforms it into a large-scale oil painting,” she explained. “The postcard is really the point of genesis in his creative process.”

Similarly, Fairey’s stencils were once used to embellish big walls, but are now decorated with micro-designs.

“A lot of his work is so detailed that you have to really get up and put your nose almost up to the glass and then take a few steps back and you’ll see the big picture of it,” Mohseni said. “Both of these artists work is very much having to do with scale and the finite. The little picture and the big picture.”

The title’s other meaning has less to do with yards of canvas and more to do with the meaning of life.

Both Mothersbaugh and Fairey support the Art of Elysium, a non-profit organization that pairs well-known artists with hospitalized children for an arts workshop. A series of small-scale artworks by some of the children hung in the gallery's long hallway.

“[Fairey and Mothersbaugh] are both very cognizant of the importance of philanthropy and giving back to the community,” Mohseni said. “For them that was a great outlet to come into the hospitals and do workshops and be able to share their art and their creative process with critically ill children.”

In other words, she said, “The big picture in life is that you can take but you also have to give back.”

Presumably, many an art aficionado would have traded their spot in line for an opportunity to sit in on Mothersbaugh or Fairey’s session with the kids, but that experience was clubhouse-style: No adults allowed.

At the opening, it was art for the people, well kind of--just wait at the end of a long line and you too just might get a glimpse of The Big Picture.

The Big Picture will be on view through February 18 at Subliminal Projects, 1331 W. Sunset Blvd., (213) 213-0078 or Subliminal Projects.