"I draw what I see, what I feel ... and what I
eat," she e-mails on a break from installing her current Fouladi Projects
exhibit, "Bad Smell." "I get inspiration from music and 'trash
television,' from video games, comics and quotes from movies, sometimes from
real life and other times not."
Her approach mixes punk irreverence, pop-culture iconography
and millennial/pre-apocalyptic preoccupations in a blender, filters the lot
through a dark, personal prism and delivers it with a comic-book splat on
paper, in animation, as part of an installation or in the form of figurines.
It's a world populated by enraged and electrified kitties,
slashers in search of Smurf victims, flatulent marmots and the many decapitated
noggins of cute cartoon characters.
Finding meaning in the seemingly random pop vortex, she
plucks out characters and icons like Spock or the Sex Pistols' queen-bedecked
Union Jack and gives them a strange or sick kick that boots them into her own
continuing narrative.
"I think that the people should see my pieces all
together to understand my work," the artist says. "They are like a
puzzle."
"Bad Smell's" installation, video animations,
drawings, paintings and neon work draw mostly from her consumption - pop or
otherwise - from the past year.
"There are a lot of different characters as junk food,
mutant animals or celebrity and famous artists," she says. "All these
characters are represented in an ironic and funny way, because it is a joke
about our mad world."
What lies behind the madness? The Rovereto, Italy, native
seems intent on hiding behind the fantasy realm she's created, asserting on her
website that "She now lives in Duckland, a small town in the universe. She
doesn't want to make serious art!" while her "How to Kill the
Artists" series puts Basquiat, Dali and others in her gross-out, gorehound
sights.
Yet when pressed these days, Paperina is a bit more
forthcoming.
"Behind all those bizarre and colorful creatures hides
my view of life and death," explains the artist, who adds that she adores
street culture, comic books and graffiti art. "So what could I say to
represent this exhibition? 'Hell, yeah!' of course."
Through Oct. 27. Noon-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Fouladi
Projects, 1803 Market St., S.F. (415) 621-2535. www.fouladiprojects.com.