Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts

Mashing Up the Mundane: Steve D. Stones’ Deconstructed Pop Dreams

A mixed media artwork featuring a pink convertible driven by a grim reaper and a three-eyed Martian. The background is filled with comic-style clouds and a yellow moon, while the ground is covered with a collage of torn paper fragments, adding texture and depth to the scene.

Steve D. Stones, “Death & the Three-Eyed Martian Drive Up & Down My Neighborhood in a Convertible,” 2024, 30×40 in.

You may have seen Steve D. Stones’ work at the Ogden Farmers Market: the flaming Barneys and fish-headed Edwardians alongside video game icons like Pikachu and Mario hanging out in trippy, offbeat worlds, all tangled up with Halloween masks and comic book chaos. Stones’ art is a mashup of pop culture craziness, surreal vibes, and a cheeky attitude. And he’s bringing that same energy to Gallery East at USU Price with Ad-Libbed Art: Pop Deconstruction.

Stones’ paintings and collages pull apart familiar images from both classical art and mass media, and reassemble them into something vibrant and strange. Characters you may recognize from childhood are thrown into new, bizarre contexts where their usual charm becomes part of a much bigger, more chaotic commentary. In these works, the familiar isn’t comforting—it’s strange, fragmented, and a little bit haunting.

In “Death & the Three-Eyed Martian Drive Up & Down My Neighborhood in a Convertible,” a grim reaper and a three-eyed alien cruise through a bright, Pop-art dreamscape. The whole scene feels absurd—like death and aliens are just as everyday as your average trip to the mall. In “Snakes in the Bedroom #1” and “Snakes in the Bedroom #2,” the artist takes the familiar comfort of a bedroom and disturbs it with ominous elements like large snakes slithering on the floor and unsettling collage work in the background. The contrast between the “Home Sweet Home” sentiment on the wall and the chaotic, almost dream-like presence of the snakes creates a feeling of dissonance as Stones captures the eerie intrusion of anxiety or danger into the places we associate with comfort and safety.

Two pop-art collages on a white gallery wall. The left painting depicts a sleeping man covered in blankets with green snakes at the foot of the bed, framed by a 'Home Sweet Home' sign and a photo of a band on the wall. The right painting shows a surreal mix of faces, mechanical gears, and a landscape, combining collage elements with detailed linework.

Installation view with “Snakes in My Bedroom #1” (2016), left. Image courtesy of Gallery East.

 

A colorful and chaotic pop-art-style painting featuring an eclectic mix of characters. At the center, a horse holds a brush painting a nude woman, surrounded by a cast of cartoon-like figures, including a boy in overalls with a toy chest, a woman in lingerie, and animals. The scene is set on a checkered blanket with intricate black-and-white detailing on the ground.

Installation view of Ad-Libbed Art: Pop Deconstruction. Image courtesy of Gallery East.

In several works, Stones channels the vibrant energy of pop art icons like Roy Lichtenstein and Tom Wesselmann, while keeping his own cheeky, rebellious edge. In “Reclining Figure,” for example, the human form is rendered in broad, graphic lines reminiscent of pop art, but the chaotic background, filled with torn pieces of advertisements, disrupts the otherwise peaceful pose. In “Confrontation #V,” where two figures are caught in a tense moment, Stones’ bold lines and vivid colors give the piece that classic pop art punch, while the torn-up ads bring a gritty, fragmented feel to the whole thing. The artist says he’s fascinated by the “overlooked world of advertising and its impact on consumer behaviors” and fills much of his background with these torn-up advertising mailers (see his Youtube video explaining the process).

The most striking works in this exhibit are those where Stones inverts his classical-pop dialectic, populating compositions that call to mind Baroque paintings with images from his  Gen X-childhood—like the scene of a naked Betty Boop being carried away by Wolverine and a leering Bullwinkle, in a strange, back-street comic book version of “Rape of the Sabine Women.” Christian (and specifically Mormon) imagery mixes with B-movie ghouls and fast-food advertisements in “Jesus, Betty & the Shark,” a surreal, crowded boat journey through a cartoonish sea filled with pop culture references. We could read it as a metaphor for the flood of media we consume daily, with these characters representing the flotsam and jetsam of our collective consumer consciousness. But that might add a little too much weight and sink the whole enterprise.

Across Ad-Libbed Art: Pop Deconstruction, Stones keeps the tone lively and irreverent, using humor and absurdity to deliver his critique of mass media. Like the pop artists before him, Stones blurs the line between high art and low culture, inviting viewers to dig deeper into the images we take for granted every day. If you want to dive into this surreal, pop culture playground, catch Stones at Gallery East in Price for a closing reception and talk on November 1st. Can’t make it? You can also see his work at the WSU Faculty Exhibit at the Shaw Gallery.

A vibrant mural filled with iconic cartoon and pop culture figures, set against a backdrop of an Asian cityscape with traditional temples. Characters like Betty Boop, the Michelin Man, and a menacing shark populate the scene, accompanied by smiling emojis and floating currency symbols in a chaotic, surreal river scene.

Installation view with “Confrontation V” (2024), left and “Jesus, Betty & the Shark” (2009). Image courtesy of Gallery East.

Steve D. Stones’ Ad-Libbed Art: Pop Deconstruction, Gallery East, Utah State University Eastern, Price, through Nov. 1

2 replies »

  1. At the risk of stepping on your coattails, Shawn, isn’t Confrontation V a revision of John Singleton Copley’s “Watson and the Shark?” Between your early murals and these wonders, you’ve added a glorious new chapter to Utah art history . . .
    5 stars!

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