the strange loteria of ken brown’s wrapping paper.
A cinder block follows a pair dancing the watusi. A lawn butt bows down before El Sad Clown. El Roadside Dino is about to eat El Rubber Chicken. El Bolo ricochets into El Beatnik. La Nose Job hangs over La (Day Old) Meatloaf.
Ken Brown‘s wrapping paper, inspired by the Mexican game of chance loteria, haunts with its dissociated associations. Objects and figures have been recovered from some strange thrift store on the edge of consciousness. R. Crumb tours Tex-Mex byways; Mad Magazine on an alcoholic binge.
This is retro not as hip kitsch but as troubled, melancholy nostalgia. It’s leery and fevered. It suck you into the fragments of lost fads and junk abandoned. There’s not so much chance here, just an absurdist doom in lurid colors. Its noir reimagined in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse zebra neon stripes.
It’s funny at first glance, but less and less funny the more you look at it.
Strange thing to wrap your gift.
Unless your gift is headed for oblivion — and you are too.
- Image: Ken Brown website.