4. Alex Podesta, Self-Portrait as Bunnies (The Bathers)

“In all of my recent work I have culled the rich fantasies, daydreams, misconceptions, and experiences of childhood and re-contextualized them through the filters of adulthood, experience, and education. This effort has been made in an attempt to plumb the depths of the creative and comprehensive naiveté of youth—to illustrate, in engaging and serio-comic ways, the role of fantasy, “othering,” and conflict in nascent self-awareness; and, through the time-honored tradition of solipsistic navel gazing, to pick gently at the loose thread of wistful escapism inherent in a quiet, downhill slide into maturity.

The central character in my works is usually lost in a reverie of industriousness, paired with doppelganger or other machinations of his childish imagination. In concert, these figures toil at understanding, through experimentation or illustration, existential perplexities ranging from surmountable commonplaces—e.g., what is loneliness and how is it combated?—to metaphysical impossibilities—e.g., who is this god dude? And is he a hero? Like Superman? Or soldiers? Or knights on horseback? And what does hero mean anyway? Of course, no traction will really ever be gained with these pursuits. These boys and toys and bunny/man chimera will be forever locked in the Sisyphean toil of misapplication, miscomprehension, and misunderstanding.”  Alex Podesta, New Orleans, Louisiana