Working in mixed media on wood, artist Sya Warfield has created a new series, Pulp Idols. Completed throughout the last year, seven of these layered works will open this weekend in a new Santa Clarita gallery space.
Consisting of seven, immediately recognizable images, Warfield used photographic pulp transfer, combined with water-based pigment inks, acrylic ink, crackle paste medium, metal leaf, vintage newsprint and spray paint.
Warfield’s work is quite alive in her depiction of iconic and well-known figures and the ideas associated with them. Elevating these images into fresh focus, the artist has shaped entirely original portraits, centering them in a way in which each individual’s character, cultural importance, and era, are also a part of each artwork.
Warfield says she chose to create “portraits of key figures who have effected change within our societies and cultural lives… [such as] controversial 1980s-era artist Keith Haring, pictured with one of his own designs on his t-shirt; and Andy Warhol, [with] heavy bangs across his eyes and a constellation of stars applied to his shoulders.”
Other images include those of Frida Kahlo, Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Nelson Mandela, and Malala Yousafzai. A direct and intensive gaze is the dominant feature of the artist’s evocation of Kahlo; her works featuring Monroe and Madonna exude a hypnotic sense of both power and sexuality that pull the viewer into these popular stars’ worlds.
She also includes a kindly smiling Mandela and a serene yet watchful image of Yousafzai. While the latter two images are inextricably bound to global politics and just causes, and Kahlo is a passionate icon for art and women’s issues, Warhol, Haring, Monroe, and Madonna are true pop – or pulp – idols.
According to Warfield, “The series invites viewers to reflect on the complexity of life, the passing of time and the ongoing ripples of influence we experience and can exert positively in the world.”
The work also includes a message rooted in “elements of the Japanese notion of Wabi Sabi, deliberate imperfection. There are spiritual elements to this series which include the energies that surround [these] people supported by colors and textures,” Warfield says.
Each image seems to emerge from the wood it is created upon, as if rising from underwater, or the passage of time. It has a resonance that builds upon the featured image, transforming and elevating it. The viewer might consider not only each subject as an icon in society, but due to the image Warfield creates from it, as an updated and secular evocation of a worshipped religious icon.
Her images have layered, gilded quality reminiscent of the Byzantine images that decorated churches from the 4th century on. In a way, the viewer can see Warfield’s idols as just as venerated in our modern culture as the figures of early saints.
Pulp Idols represents just one aspect of Warfield’s work. The artist has created images using photography, video, and mixed media, including the process used in her current work utilizing the “photographic pulp transfer process combined with water-based pigment inks and acrylic inks,” along with a variety of other elements.
“My work has definitely evolved over the years,” Warfield asserts, explaining that she is always seeking new challenges. She’s specifically looking forward “to working bigger and creating installations. I want viewers to be curious, inspired, and hopeful.”
To that end, Warfield has also recently completed a public art commission of 2 utility boxes in Del Rey.
Her current Pulp Idols exhibition is on view starting this weekend in Santa Clarita’s new Canyon Country Community Center. The show opens October 30 at 10 a.m. and runs until December 16th.
Santa Clarita’s new cultural hub, the community center is located at 18410 Sierra Highway, Canyon Country, CA, 91387.
The exhibition is also on view virtually on artsteps.com.
- Genie Davis; photos provided by the artist
