David Pagel

“The computer is particular to its age. It’s the tool that’s available now. I didn’t mean to explore it, but it made its way into my world.”

Critic David Pagel describes the work of Rubén Ortiz-Torres as both “phantasmagoric and realistic.” Torres creates images that are overwrought, cliched and fantastic, which also reflect the sociology of border crossing—from both sides of the border.

If you think that art and fun have too little to do with one another, you’ve probably never seen a painting by Michael Reafsnyder. 

At a time when a lot of artists get a lot of attention for acting out rock ‘n’ roll fantasies (or pretending to live the lives of starry-eyed groupies), it’s refreshing to see a young artist fantasizing about opera divas—and then realizing these fantasies in lifesize paintings of imaginary prima donnas

Good old-time religion and edgy, contemporary art make for odd bedfellows, but this unholy alliance thrives in the art and life of Reverend Ethan Acres.

Sometimes it’s fun to listen to the sounds abstract paintings make in your imagination.

Jeffrey Vallance’s art has infiltrated the Vatican, the Debbie Reynolds Museum, the Liberace Museum and a Nautical Museum not far from the Arctic Circle. Writer David Pagel quizzes Vallance on the sacred and the profane.

Truly a cyber-era artist, Monique Prieto’s bold, colorful abstract paintings are composed on the computer. Their emotive quality relies on the traditional triangle of the eye-hand-brain. BOMB contributing editor David Pagel finds out how it all connects.

David Pagel attempts to crack the feminist, violent and “slightly off-kilter” world of Kim Dingle and her paintings and installations.

“Nostalgia is always about estrangement. And it’s also always a rebellion. To be nostalgic is to rebel against the present.”

“You could ask me, ‘Why do you do it this way?’ There’s absolutely no way I could tell you. It takes me a month with a piece of lead on a table. And day by day, it gets folded or bent. And that becomes this underlying, hidden piece that you barely see.”

Painter Lari Pittman creates silhouetted scenes brimming with sexuality and nonsensicality—the folk art of a liberated past, channeled through the social realities of the present. Here, he discusses his envy of abstraction, and the horror of an empty bed.