Corey Helford Gallery's video: SHAG Josh Agle Jungle Drums Kitsch 1950s Pinup Inspired Art

For more information on Shag's exhibit, please visit: http://www.coreyhelfordgallery.com/shows/new-works-by-shag "The paintings of the “Jungle Drums” collection were inspired by a sheet of vintage 1950s “Pinup Girl” decals I’ve had since I was a teenager. The girls, clad in zebra stripes and leopard spots, lounge placidly amongst tigers and panthers and boa constrictors. Even in the early 1980s when I found the stickers, I realized they were sexist, objectified women, and defied the bounds of political correctness. But they were hot - the combination of beautiful women and savage jungle beasts spoke to the part of me that had evolved from a primate in the forests of central Africa. In the decades since, I’ve seen women reclaim the Pinup Girl aesthetic: strong, tattooed models and independent female photographers have revived and revitalized the genre and turned themselves into pop culture stars. In “Jungle Drums,” the women are always in control. They exist in small patches of civilization carved into the wild undergrowth of the primordial jungle. They have tamed their environments, tamed their exotic pets, and tamed the men in their lives. I’m sure it’s a metaphor for something. But I just wanted to paint women in sexy tiger fur outfits." Josh Agle is a painter and designer from Los Angeles who is probably better known by the name he signs on his paintings, “Shag.” Agle has spent the last decade creating a body of work based on his idiomatic aesthetic preference, a world of mid-20th century modern architecture and design, populated by hedonists, supplicants, and indifferent women. The paintings themselves celebrate consumerism and consumption on vividly colored, sharply rendered panels where the characters drink, smoke and eat in lavish, stylish surroundings. But Agle sees the visuals of his work as window-dressing or stage scenery. He’s more concerned with the narrative of the art. “Most of my paintings are set in the middle of a story or situation -- characters are interacting and reacting to each other and to outside events.” Agle doesn’t offer too many clues about the stories, preferring that the viewer create his or her own narratives to fit the situations. While Shag’s work might easily be dismissed as retro-kitsch, the influential New York Times art critic, Roberta Smith, has called his painting catchy and witty, saying “the eye is snared by Mr. Agle’s economic use of saturated colors -- sharp greens and warm lavenders, smoldering reds, sour ochres - and the tinted-gel space created by his thin-on thin paint handling.” Interest by museum curators and academics culminated with a solo exhibition of his work at the Laguna Art Museum in early 2008. For up-to-date news and more: http://www.coreyhelfordgallery.com/ Stay connected with us on social media: https://www.facebook.com/coreyhelfordgallery https://twitter.com/coreyhelford https://www.instagram.com/coreyhelfordgallery/ Film by Eric Minh Swenson.