Wes Lang Says ‘Be Happy’
Tonight at Half Gallery, Brooklyn-based artist Wes Lang will unveil a body of work that presents his familiar, tattoo-like sketches in new light. “They’re all pretty signature ‘what I do,'” explains Lang of the Grim Reaper-, skull-, and girl-covered drawings, “but this time, I’m presenting different kinds of work to express my mantra in a new way.”
The eight new works—on canvas, on steel, and a series of text heavy, iconography-filled sketches that Lang describes as “very positive and just all over the place”—range from intricate, hyper-realistic renderings of “pretty, not porn-like” Penthouse models on paper to sloppy, self-described “terrible looking” drawings of skeletal figures, and “everything in between.”
“My work is really about a repetition of things,” says Lang. “Now, I’m handling the subject matters in a bunch of different ways, and they’re all blending together.”
They also serve as a visual lesson on “getting what you want out of your life,” explains the artist. “The text on the drawings just tells you how to keep your mind clear and how to be happy essentially. It’s a celebration of living. That’s all it really is.”
This summer, Lang will show new work in Montauk. He’s also developing a series of girl drawing with Purple‘s Olivier Zahm, as well as a line of custom Rolexes that will come out next fall.
