Stream of Consciousness: Todd Gray

Untitled (Duck Diptych) (120k)

Untitled (Breasts with Feet) (66k)

Todd Gray is "...curious about the moment artifacts and ideas from pop culture such as innocence, desire, pornography, entertainment enter the dialogue of fine art." A graduate of California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Gray has long been interested in examining the psychological and political underpinnings of mass-produced popular culture. Monumental and heavily shadowed, his images merge the familiarity of childhood toys with their phantom doubles. Gray's subjects originate as plastic toys, Disney characters, like those found in Untitled (Duck Diptych), 1994, and others created for an adult market. In his massive black-and-white photographic prints, these figures embody social stereotypes of women, of the bourgeois, of lone men. These photographs belie the popular belief that popular culture is innocent and empty of meaning, revealing its complex base and functions.