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Jennifer Rahman @southpaw.stipple - Philadelphia Pennsylvania USA

ADAPTATION : Basquiat’s Evil Thoughts

Michael Howard’s “Fake Aesthetics.”

Now on view at Supersonic Art Gallery is artist Michael Howard’s (aka NVM Illustration) solo exhibition of fascinating new work entitled, “Fake Aesthetics.”

Howard has a brilliant ability at portraiture and is able to capture the entire gravity of a generation through his complex, multi-layered works of art.  Through sly references to pop-culture, social media and other forms of communication, Howard deals with ideas of the impermanence of our world and projecting false identities in “Fake Aesthetics.” 

Howard explains, “There is something in the transition of turning an object or person into something else entirely by adding stickers, text or images onto anything that completely changes the aesthetic view of things. Take a tattooed man versus one without, the perspective completely changes for better or for worse.  The same goes for objects, etcetera.  The transient state of what is and what is not, has become somewhat obsessive for me and has almost conquered the restricting confinement of ‘why am I doing this’ into 'why the hell not.’ It’s empowering being able to change an image into something completely different by adding a simple piece of text or a small image.”