Mark Dean Veca: Paintings, Wall Drawings and Collaborations

Mark Dean Veca is renowned for creating paintings, drawings and installations that portray surreal cartoons, psychedelic landscapes, and pop culture iconography while also being inspired by long-established decorative motifs. He is widely recognized for his all-encompassing installations that surround the viewer and inspire a sense of awe. Revealing fantastical and, at times, humorous imagery with frenzy and pattern-like precision, his works often resemble a modernized interpretation of toile painting. In the 1998 catalogue for Veca’s El Gloominator exhibition, Steve Mitchell asserts that “Veca works in the meticulous tradition of the fresco painter to produce an image that paradoxically evokes the immediacy of the graffiti artist.”

This solo exhibition will for the first time present a comprehensive overview of his practice, including two new wall paintings, one inside the gallery and one outside, documentation and studies for previously realized projects, paintings on a variety of surfaces and works that he has made with companies such as: Ford Motors, Nike, Burton Snowboards; editions he has produced in collaboration with museums; and works made with other artists such as the New York artist and designer KAWS.

Marc Dean Veca was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1963. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design in 1985. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Mark Dean Veca’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan at institutions such as The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Veca’s work has been reviewed in numerous publications including The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Art Review, Juxtapoz, and Flash Art. Amongst his many honors, Veca has twice received the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2006. Veca’s recent solo exhibitions include Imbroglio (2007) at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery.

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