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Bruised Fruit: The Art of David Choe
A medium sized colorful bleeding edge art book. Edgy images and text on full color pages.
- GenresArt
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
30 people want to read
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October 1, 2013
David Choe is an artist in California and all over the world, who's created quite a market for himself, partly by his egoistic grandstanding but mostly through display of his quite obvious talents. This small art collection came out shortly after the republication of his very small press Slow Jams, and shows him at his best (i.e., without childish ramblings disguised as stories). The book is full-colour, and shows the broad and slightly startling range of the then-young artist.
He's tried to throw in a little bit of everything, and it's definitely to his favour. We see sketches that become full works, spray paint scribbles through which he loosens up and from which he eventually pulls faces, murals he's done on commission and even a handful of samples of the 'soulless work' he's had to do to pay the bills. There are stories here, but not fictional, and again that works to his credit: the best writing between this and the Slow Jams collection is his straight-forward travelogue on a trip to Gaza, illustrated with loose but evocative drawings throughout its few pages. There's even a page of his three-dimensional constructed gorilla 'statues,' available for adoption from the artist...for a nominal fee.
If there's a weakness to this collection, it's in Choe the man. He's clearly his biggest booster, and that regularly wears thin. He has repeatedly (here and elsewhere) asserted that he has his fair share of 'haters,' but I suspect these are people not disparaging his talent or his body of work, but who (like me) don't like jerks. He's an artistic jerk, but still a jerk. I know I'm not alone in suspecting it will be his eventual downfall.
In the meantime, this (now surely out of print) collection is a gorgeous little showcase of this tremendously talented jerk's range and ability. Twenty bucks still looks a bit steep, but it's certainly worth at least that.
He's tried to throw in a little bit of everything, and it's definitely to his favour. We see sketches that become full works, spray paint scribbles through which he loosens up and from which he eventually pulls faces, murals he's done on commission and even a handful of samples of the 'soulless work' he's had to do to pay the bills. There are stories here, but not fictional, and again that works to his credit: the best writing between this and the Slow Jams collection is his straight-forward travelogue on a trip to Gaza, illustrated with loose but evocative drawings throughout its few pages. There's even a page of his three-dimensional constructed gorilla 'statues,' available for adoption from the artist...for a nominal fee.
If there's a weakness to this collection, it's in Choe the man. He's clearly his biggest booster, and that regularly wears thin. He has repeatedly (here and elsewhere) asserted that he has his fair share of 'haters,' but I suspect these are people not disparaging his talent or his body of work, but who (like me) don't like jerks. He's an artistic jerk, but still a jerk. I know I'm not alone in suspecting it will be his eventual downfall.
In the meantime, this (now surely out of print) collection is a gorgeous little showcase of this tremendously talented jerk's range and ability. Twenty bucks still looks a bit steep, but it's certainly worth at least that.
Displaying 1 of 1 review