Pachamama’s Restaurant is displaying the paintings of self-taught Joshua Rizer, a Kansas City native. Joshua has been drawing, writing, filming, composing and most recently, painting for seventeen years. His works are realist and surrealist at once, blending fairy tales, archetypes and literary figures into everyday scenes. He explains his methodology:
“I don’t believe in, or agree with, a lot of artistic jargon and rhetoric. Personally, I value the lowest common denominator of understanding over the elitism of high concept. I sometimes hear people characterize accessible work as, 'dumbed down,' but I believe archetypes, symbolism, myth and commentary can be sophisticated and approachable simultaneously. I prefer communion over confusion.”
Here’s a painting from Joshua’s Dysfunction series.
“I hope that I am able to accuse and console at the same time. I would like to unsettle the viewer by suggesting that they might somehow be complicit in any number of spiritual, ethical or emotional maladies, but also reassure them that these are faults we all experience.”
From Joshua’s “The Big Top” series:
“I found a setting where each piece could be an exhibit of freakish failure, strength or overcompensation. I wanted the series as a whole to tap into our appetite for both train wrecks and redemptive spectacle alike.”
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