A Breakfast of Eggs and Absinthe: Relativist Pop Art Painting by Moe Profane

A Breakfast of Eggs and Absinthe: Simple Pleasures

Dick Van der Wurst on October 22, 2012

2012 • 42″ x 24.75″
acrylic, spray paint on used fence pickets

This was created for submission to the 2012 Huevos Rancheros jurored silent art auction. I had a while back found and noted a great(?) morning after, hair of the dog type drink: egg whites and absinthe. The idea was to use eggs in a vintage graphic sign type design on old fence pickets, incorporating themes from those wonderful Victorian absinthe lithograph posters.

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Self Doubt and Sauerkraut: Relativist Pop Art Painting by Moe Profane

Self Doubt and Sauerkraut: An Unusual Perspective

Dick Van der Wurst on October 22, 2012

2012 • 52.5″ x 35″
acrylic, spray paint on used fence pickets

We’ve all heard about combining food with other pleasurable sensory experiences like cheese and art shows, prime rib and strippers, sex and pastrami, so why not combine delicious food with a debilitating existential crisis?

Self doubt and sauerkraut obviously came together because of the rhyme, but the feelings of doubt that could be induced by the sight and odor of the strange and exotic are what is highlighted in this piece. The cautious angel is repulsed, the devil is ready to try anything, and the cat in the lederhosen is caught between belief and disbelief. Uncertainty, distrust, lack of sureness petrify him.

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Sedimentary - Rock Quarry (2012)

Sedimentary – Rock Quarry: For A Great (Geological) Time, Call Moe

Dick Van der Wurst on October 21, 2012

2012     •     48″ x 18″
acrylic, spray paint, fabric on panel

I’ve been interested in the logical absurdity of the Young Earth creationist knuckleheads for a while, but making fun of the willfully ignorant is too easy…there is more to be explored. The concept of geological time is tied to so much that exposes any theology as primitive superstition: topics such as Biology, Chemistry, Geology, Astronomy, Anthropology and Archeology give a better appreciation of the unique circumstances it took for us to be hear interpreting it all. That is the essence of these pieces, a truer appreciation of our humblingly minute moment in time rather than convincing ourselves we were an inevitable part of some god’s plan.

The tall format of this series and silhouetted subject matter at the top came to me while driving west towards a landfill at sunset. The back lit trucks on top of the layered mound of discarded modern artifacts and shitty diapers were a contrast of beauty and decay, landscape and landfill, timelessness and immediacy. I place the small insignificant human reference atop millions of years of layered history.

The first in the series, this gravel quarry was inspired by a drive outside San Antonio towards the Alamo Cement Company quarry.

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Ennui Au Jus: Relativist Pop Art Painting by Moe Profane

Ennui Au Jus: Boredom Of A Lifetime

Dick Van der Wurst on October 19, 2012

2012 • 46.5″ x 27.5″
acrylic, spray paint on recycled fence pickets

We’ve all heard about combining food with other pleasurable sensory experiences like cheese and art shows, prime rib and strippers, sex and pastrami, well we also combine delicious food with our debilitating existential crises.

I found a picture of the most bored person I could, put a chef’s hat on him and was off and running. Like Sauerkraut and Absinthe before it, this piece tries to be flat and graphic and distressed hearkening back to the days sings were hand painted on whatever wood could be found.

The text, the existential crisis, the food the materials all come together to highlight how good food and parties serve only to mask the angst that makes them so necessary for us to get through the ever changing seasons of life.

Diminished Castration of a Slave: Relativist Pop Art Painting by Moe Profane

Diminished Castration of a Slave: Fascinating Metaphor for Circumcision

Dick Van der Wurst on October 18, 2012

2012 • 48″ x 18″
acrylic, spray paint on recycled fence pickets

From dear ol’ Wikipedia

Circumcision is arguably the world’s oldest planned surgical procedure, hypothesized to be over 15,000 years old, well pre-dating recorded history. There is no firm consensus as to how it came to be practiced worldwide. Peter Charles Remondino suggested that it began as a diminishment of full castration of a captured enemy: castration certainly would have been fatal, while some form of circumcision would permanently mark the defeated, yet leave him alive to serve as a slave.

So we see, the slave mentality of blindly mutilating your son’s sex organ because of some ancient religious dogma, is indeed, still, the diminished castration or marking of a slave.

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