Inspired by his work on Zack Snyder's brutal revenge fantasy Sucker Punch, artist Alex Pardee brings universal horrors to life in his expansive new exhibit, Vertigo: A Decade of Hunting Nightmares.
The original concept was to explore what the San Francisco artist calls "the 10 most popular nightmares in America – dreams of falling, losing teeth, showing up to school naked, and so forth." But after delving into the subject, Pardee said he "decided to create different boogeymen based on different walks of life around the world."
Pardee's first solo exhibition at Los Angeles' Corey Helford Gallery, Vertigo situates its phantasms around invented nightmare hunter Verti Parker, whose heroic fictional exploits form a framework that allows the artist to explore global night terrors with a universal eye.
The result is the freakout tableaux viewable in the preview gallery above, which represents just a part of Pardee's horrific acrylic-on-wood work. Running now through Jan. 26, Vertigo is fleshed out by invented backstories for each nightmare, with artifacts from Verti Parker's campaigns, including a music box used to exorcise demons from terrified victims and an 8-foot taxidermy monster (the hunter's first conquest). The exhibit even boasts its own creepy promotional video (below).
Pardee's inspiration for Vertigo's immersive approach came from a less-than-nightmarish source.
"I'm a huge fan of Disneyland," he told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. "The ride is the main course, but all of [the attractions] offer extra elements like videos, props and passages that immerse the rider further in the experience. I approach my exhibitions in a similar fashion."
Pardee found that spirit of immersion in full force while creating original artwork for Snyder's upcoming film Sucker Punch.
"Zack has one of the most amazing creative-production teams in the world, hands down, and he's the perfect example of a leader who gets in the trenches and leads by example," Pardee said.
"The most amazing aspect of working on Sucker Punch was that Zack genuinely trusts his creative team," he added. "I've had experiences on other projects where so much back-and-forth and second-guessing on the art direction had come into play that, by the end of the decision-making process, the art was a mess. But on Sucker Punch, we briefly brainstormed a visual direction and Zack would say, 'Alright, that sounds awesome, run with it.' It was exhilarating to watch such a huge project come together so smoothly. [Although] Vertigo doesn't directly tie in with Sucker Punch, its creation was definitely inspired by how hard everyone worked on that picture and its entirely new universe."
The scale of Sucker Punch dwarfed Pardee's previous multimedia experience working on film, television and music projects for screamo punks The Used, indie-hopper Cage and Warner Bros.-bankrolled web animation series Chadam. But his most engrossing project remains Zerofriends. The creative collective's pop-up galleries in cities across the country provide an outlet for Pardee and his arty pals to go widescreen in a packed transmedia landscape.
"I started Zerofriends as an art and apparel company in 2006 with a couple of close friends as a more affordable extension of our fine art and illustration," Pardee said. "But now we're expanding and collaborating with some of my artistic idols, like Greg "Craola" Simkins, Tara McPherson, Sam Kieth and more. We've been traveling around the country setting up temporary pop-up shops for a few months at a time to introduce our brand, meet people and move to another city like gypsies! In our current economic climate, short-term leases in different markets seem to make the best sense."
What doesn't make much sense is that, despite Vertigo's phantasmagoric roll call, Pardee experiences few nightmares of his own. In fact, he says he wishes he could dream more about monsters and less about recycled reality.
"I rarely have them," he said. "My first nightmare didn't even occur until I was 14. My dreams are mundane."
Images courtesy Alex Pardee. Follow us on Twitter: @morphizm and @theunderwire.
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