Picture if you will, a very large painting (4 by 5 feet, to be precise) that acts a little bit like a Where’s Waldo scene for adults. Except, instead of Waldo and friends, the image is one of debauched, unchecked anarchy.
Men vomit, boys pee in corners, women are caught in moments of sexual congress, drunks are pickpocketed, small children ready themselves to set off firecrackers and attack people with raised knives. Making this Breugel-esque scene even stranger? The time period would appear entirely medieval if not for a banner displaying a UFO and Saturn.
This is The Wedding Party by Mike Davis, the natural end point of a compelling and disturbing exhibit titled Surviving the Plague. The paintings, currently hanging in San Francisco’s 111 Minna Gallery, depict a version of humanity that has been plunged back to the Dark Ages, save for a few surviving cell phones. Alien overlords lurk overhead in flying saucers and artwork hanging around what’s left of humanity. In this new old world, civilization as we know it is gone — and with it, modern social mores.
Davis, the owner of San Francisco’s Everlasting Tattoo shop, unabashedly embraces the bleak in this series of paintings, but never once loses his sense of humor. And the devil is in the details.
On first glance, Always Looking the Other Way, for example, is simply a gathering of tired-looking souls outside a tavern. On closer inspection, they’re all going out of their way to ignore the fiery flying saucer that has crash-landed nearby.
