Image via Complex Original
You already know how you feel about Kanye West. Presumably, you either exalt him as one of the greatest artists and Renaissance men of our era, or you’ve yet to let Yeezus into your heart and still perceive him as that loudmouthed jerk who interrupted Taylor. There have been many faces to Kanye West over the course of his sprawling career—his music epochs, his tabloid controversies, his side projects—and yet public reaction to him remains fairly binary.
Los Angeles-based artist TheMostFamousArtist—civilian name Matty Mo—has curated what might be the first adequate shrine to such a polarizing figure. Wrangling what he purports to be the world’s largest collection of Kanye West portraits, donated from other artists across the globe, Mo is attempting to create art of his own by presenting his West menagerie as a religious altar at which the audience might worship.
Viewers walking into the exhibit—titled Kanye Loves Kanye and open at 1820 Industrial Streetin Downtown Los Angeles until tomorrow—one at a time, hear a recording of Buddhist bells and monk chants as the collection of portraits fans out at their feet. Candles and incense bring home the religiosity of the experience. Mo tells Complex he felt the need to curate the exhibit as it’s exactly what Kanye himself would have done.
“I want to display this work in a performative way that represents how I view Kanye as an artist,” says Mo. “It ought to create a line around the block, as well, which is very much in line with most of what Kanye puts out.”
Over 60 artists have donated to the exhibit so far, and Mo predicts that number will grow. Ultimately, he’d like to take the exhibit on tour, and he’s counting on the exponential coverage of contributing artist retweets and Instagram posts to get him there. The project is as much an exploration of social media reverse engineering as it is a tribute to the rapper. Complex spoke with four of the portrait artists to see what they learned about Kanye, themselves, and the state of modern art from participating in the exhibit.
Calen Blake
Instagram: @calenblake
"Using things that are already super famous and reinterpreting or re-appropriating them as a way to make an impact or get noticed—it’s a concept that I already knew through my background in design, but was emphasized in a new, powerful way here. You’re dealing with a subject that’s so iconic. Like most people, I think Kanye’s actually a creative genius. He’s got some, uh…interesting characteristics that people hate on, but ultimately, he’s human just like the rest of us. He speaks to that little brat we each have inside us."
Joey Colombo
Instagram: @jdotcolombo
"I found it interesting that I gained over 2,000 followers in the process of doing this piece, from the very first video I released, up to last week. This person is so powerful, so influential, that just his image can make people more interested in what I’m doing than they might’ve been otherwise."
Plastic Jesus
Instagram: @plasticjesus
"I try and steer clear of pop culture pieces, because I feel it’s quite often a very easy route for an artist. I mean, how many Marilyn Monroe or Andy Warhol portraits have we seen? I’ve told people that, if I ever do a Warhol portrait, please shoot me. They can become very cliché. It’s just using the icon for the sake of promoting your own work, riding on the back of that celebrity’s fame.
A lot of my work is ironic. My portrait depicts Kanye as Christ, dressed in a loincloth, his arms outstretched. I thought that, in itself, had a statement. I wasn’t capitalizing on Kanye’s popularity and status; I was presenting an image which was contradictory or ironic and perhaps conflicted with Kanye’s own ideas of his self-importance."
Matthew Ryan Herget
Instagram: @mrherget
"What I’m looking for, when I paint, is how little can be there and still get the essence of the subject. So, in this portrait series, Kanye was the first one I started. Pure black and white. Lots of palette knife scraping and manipulation of those two simple colors. I was really excited about how it came out and discovering his essence from that process.
I learned a lot about the invisible spirit of someone when trying to capture it in that way. It’s one of those things that can’t really be discussed as well as it can be felt, but it’s something I try to explore on a day to day basis. The more I think about him and watch others’ reaction to him, the more I learn about people in general."