Ron English has a new book and to coincide with its release, there’s a launch this Thursday at Atomica Gallery in London.
Death and the Eternal Forever is the new book from fine artist and street art legend Ron English. In this collection of visually astonishing and bitingly funny work, English explores his belief that all art is a futile attempt to cheat death, and death is the thing that gives all art meaning. Featuring more than 170 of the artist’s iconic paintings, sculpture, and vinyl figures, Death and the Eternal Forever teems with fantastically twisted creatures, from three-eyed rabbits and his signature udderly delicious cowgirls to grinning skulls. The book is published by independent publishing house Korero Press.
The starting point for Death and the Eternal Forever is English’s own shocking encounter with death; he was once kidnapped by a knife-wielding artist who demanded he assess his work. Questioning the sincerity of English’s comments, the artist then destroyed his life’s work with his knife. English managed to escape, but the experience of witnessing the destruction of the artwork, or as English calls it “a suicide by proxy”, profoundly impacted his outlook:
“Art that has outlived its creator exists beyond the reach of death, and its ultimate purpose may be to preserve the high marks of human consciousness for unborn generations. It is, at its core, a very human attempt to outwit death, or at least to protect those divine flashes that are too new and fleeting to be encoded and preserved in our DNA—to protect this thing we most covet, which is uniquely ours, from extinction.” – Ron English (from book introduction)
Ron English has bombed the global landscape with countless unforgettable images: on the street, in museums, in movies, in books and on television. Coining the term ‘POPaganda’ to describe his signature mash-up of high and low cultural touchstones; from superhero mythology to totems of art history, his work is populated with a vast and constantly growing arsenal of original characters.
Death and the Eternal Forever is available online via www.koreropress.com, or in-store at Atomica Gallery, 29 Shorts Gardens, London WC2H 9AP.
Price: £24.99
ISBN-13: 9780957664920
Publisher: Korero Press
Find out more about the launch event on the Facebook Event Page.
