Desire Obtain Cherish: We Are Known By The Company We Keep at Unix Gallery

All Photos By Gail

If the new standard of originality in the arts is based on how cleverly you appropriate and reinvent images and ideas from other well known sources, then LA based pop art sculptor known as Desire Obtain Cherish (real name Jonathan Paul) is a genius. We Are Known By The Company We Keep is his new solo show at Unix Gallery, and it is a mind blower.

Some kind of Blow Up Sex Doll Thing

Desire Obtain Cherish (DOC) works across a wide variety of different media to create art that both validates and critiques the cycle of consumerism alluded to in his pseudonym. His controversial and self aware work combines pop, street, conceptual and appropriation art to explore contemporary society’s unrelenting obsession with sex, drugs, luxury, media and fame.

Here are some of our favorite works from the show.

Giant stuffed Bear Shaped Like a Beehive fills the center of the Gallery’s front room.

Wrapped Candy Sculpture inspred by Damien Hirst’s Spot Paintings.

This series of conjoined canvases pays homage to Warhol, Mondrian and Pollack.

Intensive Care Units is an ornate display cabinet filled with rows of silver and gilt-accented “blood bags,” each of which is embossed with the name and logo of a famous designer brand.

Designer Blood Bags Close Up

DOC has done Blow Pop sculptures like these for other exhibits, but this one appears to be a direct reference to the factory-made works of Jeff Koons.

Obviously, there are many, many layers of thought and meaning behind each work, which made it even more hilarious that one woman followed me around the exhibit repeating the phrase “I Don’t Get It” over and over.

We Are Known By The Company We Keep by Desire Obtain Cherish will be on view through May 6th, 2014 at UNIX gallery, Located at 532 W 24th Street, in the Chelsea Gallery District.