“Suppression and Oppression have left us disconnected from each other, ourselves, and the universe, from ancient wisdom, knowledge and understanding of all that was, is, and could be. Yet, despite what lies secret behind our vaults,I can’t escape the fact that we are all these subjects, they belong to all of us, for what has endured the whole of history is the idea of spirit linking us to a universal connection of a higher dimension, and our liberation exists somewhere within this state of wide-awakeness. All is but temporal in our eyes, castles made of sand await the hands of consciousness to reinterpret its matter.”
-MEAR ONE
The above two works are the latest from Los Angeles artist Mear One. We've covered Mear on this site extensively, watching as he has continuously evolved as an artist, all while sharing and refining a powerful narrative of the way he sees the world. These latest works represent a new pinnacle for his gallery work, as they manage to fuse the messages of his most powerful graffiti murals with the details and wild imagination that has always defined his art. The following is a statement from his gallery:
C.A.V.E. Gallery and Thinkspace are honored to be showcasing the powerful new work from Los Angeles’ west coast king of graffiti, MEAR ONE, at this year’s fifth and final installment of Beyond Eden, a multi-gallery event celebrating the New Contemporary art movement. In Cognitive Dissonance MEAR ONE explodes back onto the scene with a thought-provoking narrative series of large oils and acrylics, recently described by the SF WEEKLY as the “blood diamonds of pop-surrealism” and by fans as the "Robert Williams of Graffiti."
In Cognitive Dissonance MEAR ONE claims neither fact nor fiction; rather, here, he merely lays the groundwork for thoughts and queries worthy of conversation to build. Through a dialectical method of sorts, his work questions the standard taught model of mankind’s origins, postulating that we are all part of a much longer historical identity that has been kept from our knowing - Why? By whom? To what end? - is one side of the story he aims to relate. Like many thinkers before him, MEAR ONE believes that the collective unconscious already knows the soul of humanity, that we were once part of an ancient global society connected to a higher order and purpose, and works from the simple premise that a single paradigm shift in thinking has the revolutionary potential to change the order in everything, the end result being sublimation.
Cognitive Dissonance will be on display Saturday, October 3rd, 6PM – 11PM & Sunday, October 4th, 12PM – 5PM at the Beyond Eden Gallery, Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027.
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Beyond Eden is a multi-gallery event celebrating the New Contemporary art movement. The fifth and final edition of Beyond Eden will once again be hosted by the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park, put together by Andrew Hosner (co-owner / curator at Thinkspace) and made possible by the City Of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. The public is invited to attend this special event and admission will be $5 and open to all.
Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027 www.beyondedenart.com