Totally Rad Gift Idea
The manic and varied output of Paper Rad--the art collective of Jessica Ciocci, her brother Jacob, and their friend Ben Jones--now includes a book, and it's more than a hard copy of the group's content-rich, arcade-like, bad html 'web mall.' The book, 'B.J. and da Dogs,' is published by art and comics press PictureBox, and is a collection of kaleidoscopic doodling, stoner poetry, two graphic novellas, found and staged photos, and installation documentation of large-scale painted cardboard dioramas. Adult insights, near-past nostalgia, and obsessive pop culture tangents mesh with teen aesthetics (i.e. punk and skate zines of the '80s & '90s, early video games, neoprint booths and drawing software) amid multiple paper stocks and, as the team boasts, 'almost every fluorescent Pantone ink.' Here fancy production is the perfect foil to Paper Rad's makeshift aesthetic and cavalier use of both obsolete and of-the-moment technologies. But remarkably, the collective’s pop treasure/ detritus sensibility, while astute, is only compassionately satirical, and hardly ironic at all. Mainly it's really funny and looks great. - Johanna Fateman
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