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Ra Deal
Douglas Ra | Jared Deal
2-Person Exhibition
Curated by Liz Artinian (Bunnycutlet Gallery)
at Mighty Tanaka Gallery
111 Front Street, Suite 224
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Opening reception - Friday, May 30th, 7pm - 10pm
May 30th - June 28th, 2014
BROOKLYN, NY [RELEASE May 20, 2014] — Mighty Tanaka Gallery is pleased to present Ra Deal, an exhibition curated by Liz Artinian (Bunnycutlet Gallery) featuring new works by New York-based artists Douglas Ra and Jared Deal.
Douglas Ra's work owes much to growing up in Queens, NY. His drawings are meticulously contoured with thin ink lines, vacillating between portrayals of mundane repetition and chaotic violence in a way that is idiosyncratic to urban life. Ra populates his scenes with anthropomorphic characters -- swapping out human heads for animal ones -- a playful and fanciful element that frees him to satirize city life without directly evoking ideas of race or morality. In the artist's own words, "I didn’t want to draw scenes where a viewer would be fixated on what kind of person was portrayed, what was the color of their skin, whether they looked like someone... violence looks extremely odd and unfamiliar when inflicted on a horse by a pig with a stick... animals look strange when they wear other furs, and stranger when they don human-masks for costumes."
Jared Deal's opulent acrylic paintings draw upon anthropomorphism from a different source. Growing up in woodsy Delaware, nature had a profound effect on the artist. His work often involves a hybrid of three things; a childhood attachment to animals, the influence of living nearly 20 years in New York City, and the artist's career as an animation director. Deal's work is tongue-in-cheek joyful, often incorporating graffiti, pop art, fashion, toys, street scenes, cartoonish characters, and animals that kinetically take on human form. In describing his painting series for Ra Deal, the artist explains, "I wanted to do something a little different for this show, focusing on animals that are now extinct. I put them in situations from the past, retro garb or holding retro props... lots of fun references to Mr. T, Sesame Street, Nintendo and Duck Hunt." |
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ARTWORK ON VIEW
email bunnycutlet(at)gmail(dot)com for availability
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Douglas Ra
Portrait. 3
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 15 Inches (Paper Size)
20 x 20 Inches (W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Portrait. 4
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 15 Inches (Paper Size)
20 x 20 Inches (W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Portrait. 5
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 15 Inches (Paper Size)
20 x 20 Inches (W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Portrait. 6
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 15 Inches (Paper Size)
20 x 20 Inches (W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Portrait. 7
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 15 Inches (Paper Size)
20 x 20 Inches (W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Portrait. 8
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 15 Inches (Paper Size)
20 x 20 Inches (W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Portrait. 9
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 15 Inches (Paper Size)
20 x 20 Inches (W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Portrait. 10
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 15 Inches (Paper Size)
20 x 20 Inches (W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Portrait. 11
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 15 Inches (Paper Size)
20 x 20 Inches (W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Portrait. 12
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 15 Inches (Paper Size)
20 x 20 Inches (W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Stage Scene
Micron on Watercolor Paper
22 x 30 Inches (Paper Size)
(Larger W/ Frame)
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Douglas Ra
Zoology Scene
Micron on Watercolor Paper
15 x 22 Inches (Paper Size)
(Larger W/ Frame)
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Jared Deal
5 Pointz
Acrylic on Birch Panel
12 x 12 Inches
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Jared Deal
The Breaks
Acrylic on Birch Panel
10 x 8 Inches
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Jared Deal
Break It Up
Acrylic on Birch Panel
10 x 8 Inches
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Jared Deal
Chasing The Clouds Away
Acrylic on Birch Panel
12 x 24 Inches
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Jared Deal
Dead Lift
Acrylic on Birch Panel
12 x 36 Inches
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Jared Deal
Duck Billed Hunter
Acrylic on Birch Panel
11 x 14 Inches
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Jared Deal
Frilled To Meet You
Acrylic on Birch Panel
24 x 24 Inches
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Jared Deal
The Big Chill
Acrylic on Birch Panel
12 x 12 Inches
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Jared Deal
Tiger Beat Down
Acrylic on Birch Panel
11 x 15 Inches
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Jared Deal
T Rex
Acrylic on Birch Panel
24 x 24 Inches
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Jared Deal
Back In The Day
Acrylic on Birch Panel
24 x 24 Inches
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Jared Deal
Bone Thug
Acrylic on Birch Panel
12 x 24 Inches
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Music/DJ Nithya Rajendran
Event Photography Annie Tao
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Douglas Ra is a New York based artist. He creates production art for web design, games, print, and television. Ra’s work often depicts animal heads on human bodies. In the artist’s own words, “Using animals can give characters universal appeal because they are racially and culturally unspecific… I hope to invite the viewer to watch the characters as one would watch animals on a safari show, to see how familiar the scene is but how foreign it is as well, to recognize their own city in it but experience another metropolis.”
Jared Deal is a fine artist, animator, and toy designer based in New York, and has frequently exhibited with Bunnycutlet over the years. Jared studied animation at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, and was nominated for an emmy for his work as lead animator for Nickelodeon's series Team Umizoomi. His fine art work combines a bold, cartoon aesthetic with the charm and intimacy of folk art themes, utilizing a variety of media, including cast plastic and sewn plush, for his installations.
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