Erik Parker on Making the Familiar Strange
A profile on the Brooklyn painter ahead of his “New Soul” exhibit.
By: Keith Estiler
Delicate guitar licks from a Hawaiian blues song by Gabby Pahinui pulls us into a studio that’s one part entryway, one part kitchen space, and two parts work space. Through a slit in a wall, we’re confronted with a row of large-scale tondos — circular canvases that were popular during Italy’s Renaissance period in the 15th century — portraying surrealist landscapes filled with decomposing flora and collages made from vintage Playboy magazines. Although there’s a sense of chaos in the visuals, the soothing Pahinui tune puts us at ease as we observe the works — a kind of magic one can only get at Erik Parker’s Brooklyn workspace.
“Gabby Pahinui is the shit man, anyone who disagrees is lying,” Parker remarks as he paces around his studio in a pair of YEEZY 500s. The artist, known for his psychedelic face paintings, invites us to take a closer look at a few in-progress tondos, which will be displayed at his upcoming solo exhibition “New Soul” at Mary Boone Gallery in Midtown Manhattan. Although Parker reveals it’s his first time working with the round canvas, he has already masterfully crafted a few compositions on the material -- packed with details that invoke his life story and artistic journey.
Parker says it was his unconventional upbringing in San Antonio, Texas that influenced him to create the vibrant works that are now his signature. As a child growing up in the early- to mid-‘80s, he was interested in the counterculture of the time, which was dominated by skateboarding, punk rock and hip-hop. “Those were my creative outlets, but being interested in them can get you an ass-whooping by the local jocks or cowboys,” he says. “Those cowboys didn't even have fucking horses, only cowboy boots. And they're dicks. So I hung out with the Mexican or Black kids. A lot of the white boys were pretty lame.”
The artist often looks back at his childhood interests when painting, especially when it comes to crafting collages from vintage magazines. Parker begins such works by rummaging through yellowing Topps baseball cards, newsprints, or publications from the ‘60s and ‘70s like Playboy and Jet. He then cuts out photos of ethnically diverse people and attaches them throughout the canvas using an archival adhesive. “Before the internet, magazines were the main source of selling and getting information out there. They spent a lot of money on the quality of the printing and I like to collage from that. I also like the way people looked in the '70s, kind of hippy but not,” he says.
Walking towards the back section of his studio, Parker shows us a number of boxes filled with dusty periodicals, laying them atop a desk to show us cut-outs from various spreads. From a surfing magazine to a wrestling publication, the artist carefully goes through them one by one. “I'm 50 years old, so maybe looking back at some of the stuff from my childhood, whether I consciously remember it or not, is a way of reminiscing... They say when you're reminiscing, you might be a little afraid of the future,” he says as he flips through the pages.
Parker says it was blind ambition that made him want to pursue a career as an artist. In the early ‘90s, with only $200 USD to his name, he drove a van from Texas to New York City to look for gallery jobs. He landed a position at the progressive Luhring Augustine Gallery in Chelsea as an assistant, while also studying visual arts at SUNY Purchase. “Go pick up the dog shit outside, sweep floors, pack art...I wasn't in front of clients because I looked crazy, scruffy,” he says of his duties at the Chelsea institution. After graduating from Purchase, Parker decided to quit his job as an assistant and pursue a career as an artist full time.
He found the Williamsburg studio we stand in now back in 2001 and has evolved his practice here ever since. Nowadays, Parker is sourcing stock photos from the internet to use as the basis of his pieces. After finding a digital image he likes, he prints it out and sketches it on the canvas, manipulating its form by injecting text, symbols and other graphical elements. The result is a highly-intricate composition.
Pointing to one of the still barely-sketched tondos in the room, Parker recalls how the piece was inspired by an image he found online of a pensive man wearing glasses, his pointer fingers resting against his mouth. “The whole reason they [stock photos] exist is that they're very familiar to us. The idea is to take something familiar and make it strange,” he says of his reason for using the seemingly generic visuals. “We all identify with [stock photos] subconsciously. They wouldn't use it unless it did something to us.”
Apart from the bizarre figures and landscapes in his paintings, one of the more interesting finds in Parker’s studio is tubs of bold acrylic paint scattered across the various rooms. Each one is given a quirky title like “Dark Brains” or named for a celebrity he admires, such as Seth Rogen and Mos Def. “I'm dyslexic, so a lot of artists use a lot of different color variations. They'll usually be numbered, but numbers are only good to me if it's money,” he says. “I just freestyle or pick a word and run with it and make that color.”
Whether it’s creating his own labels for paint tubs or distorting familiar expressions in his paintings, Parker has reinvented artist studio standards and developed a visual language that’s all his own. “Let’s say you’re an artist who worked on the same paintings from 1998 to now, it would be like a skateboarder doing the same fucking tricks, man. You haven't really pushed yourself,” he says of his artistic growth. “The injuries are minimal when it comes to painting, you know, like getting neck pain, but if you try to push yourself in skateboarding, you’ll get fucked up.”
Parker’s “New Soul” exhibition will be open to the public at the Midtown institution from January 10 until March 2. Head over to Mary Boone Gallery’s website to for more details and find the address below.
Mary Boone Gallery
745 5th Ave
New York, NY 10151
"They say when you're reminiscing, you might be a little afraid of the future."
“The idea is to take something familiar and make it strange.”