Technarcissism Part I
24”x30”
Acrylic on canvas
2015
This painting is of a robot in his artist's studio. Two of his pieces are painted replicas of pieces I've made myself (Angel on my Shoulder and Create Outside the Box). This is a sister piece to Technarcissism Part A. With its sister piece, these works play with the perception between two and three-dimensional media.
Angel on my Shoulder
34”x44”
Acrylic on canvas
2014
Bound 2 be Kitsch
36”x48”
Acrylic on canvas
2014
Following the release of Kanye West's "Bound 2" song in 2014, I made a parody portrait of the rapper. I defined kitsch as art that is so terrible and cheesy that its pure audacity is actually enjoyable. This is also how I felt about Kanye West's new song "Bound 2" so I painted this portrait of him as a modern sort of kitsch.
Forgotten Souls
36”x60”
Acrylic on canvas
2016
This piece is a self portrait but also a more realistic portrayal of a yamask, which is a Pokémon. In the lore of the games, yamasks are ghosts of dead people and the mask that they carry is its face from when it was alive. It's pretty dark and creepy, especially for a children's game so I'm super into it. You can check out the process for making this piece .
Jeff Leavitt
Things I Wish Existed
For the longest time, I thought of my interest in toys and my interest in art as being two very distinct, separate parts of my identity. One was a hobby, the other a passion. Recently I realized that my interest in toys and play has been informing my art throughout my career. I make the things I wish existed. In many ways, I’ve been making toys for myself for years without consciously realizing it. I make tactile objects, things to fiddle with. I make imagined scenarios, little snippets of implied narrative that allow just enough room for the viewer to add their own meaning. Above all, I make work that I consider to be fun.
Robots are a common image in my artwork. I enjoy the aesthetic of robots because they work very naturally as toys. If you have an action figure of a human being, every
bit of articulation it has is a visible joint. On an organic creature like a human, the visible joints work against the aesthetic. Whereas on something meant to appear mechanical, the joints work for the aesthetic. How it works and how it looks function in tandem instead of being at odds. This is why robots make some of the best toys, which leads me to be attracted to the image and use it in my work.
My current line of work focuses on the cyclical and often futile nature of human existence. I illustrate this futility with the use of uniform, toy-like robots of my own design. I use the image of these robots in paintings, sculptures, and multimedia pieces. One of the primary influences for this body of work was the 1942 philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus. Camus discusses the futility of the human condition, comparing it to Sisyphus from Greek mythology endlessly pushing his boulder up a hill.
The robot toy I have designed draws inspiration from Japanese pop-culture characters such as Hello Kitty. Like the Japanese icon, my character is intended to appear as a blank slate for others to project themselves onto. The absence of expression can alter the figures’ mood and personality depending on the lighting, color, and environment.
I am interested in designer toys and how the artists involved in this community will often reuse the same image repeatedly in their work. It is akin to a ‘tag’ used in graffiti art. The designer toy community is similar in many ways to the street art community, in that both their work often plays off of urban and countercultural ideas and images. Much of my recent work has been developing a character for myself that serves as a ‘tag’ in this same way. The character is specific enough to be recognizably mine, yet simple enough to be a blank canvas with the potential to have emotions and situations added onto it. This character is, of course, a robot. I likewise repeat the same image of this toy-like robot until it holds more meaning as a signature and representation of myself, rather than a hypothetical commentary on technology or artificial intelligence. I make art to see what I can do and to bring the thoughts in my head into reality. I make my own toys, and try to find a way to share that experience with others.
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“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
-George Bernard Shaw