Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"Wes Lang is a man of appetites. He likes motorcycles, beer, tattoos, and women, though not in that order. Lang is an individualist who has heroes: Philip Guston, Walt Whitman, Waylon Jennings. He's fascinated with American history, and its champions and villains migrate through his work. Everything is in play for Lang, and he draws no distinction between the exalted and the depraved." David Coggins, excerpted from Wes Lang: The Man in Full in The Paradise Club.
Published by PictureBox/Half Gallery. Text by James Frey, Arty Nelson.
Wes Lang’s (born 1972) first monograph focuses on his works on paper--complicated arrangements of his typically American iconography, expertly rendered in ink and paint and juxtaposed in riotous combinations. These images, selected from a decade’s worth of material, range from the artist’s covers for a 2012 Grateful Dead box set chronicling their epic 1990 tour (fulfilling a teenage dream of Lang’s) to precise classical drawing reminiscent of a nineteenth-century illustrator, in a dizzying mix of American history, biker culture, tattoo iconography, ornament, Native American art, pin-ups, newspaper headlines and Taoist texts. This book--the only Wes Lang monograph in print--contains an essay by author James Frey and will undoubtedly appeal to both Lang’s substantial online following and to fans of Americana.
