Ugly American, New Works by Chet Zar

If anyone is familiar with monsters, it is American artist Chet Zar. He explores them every day. They are part of his life, both professional and private. As a designer, special effects make-up artist, sculptor, and 3D animator for major Hollywood studios and rock bands such as Tool, he sketches, creates and builds them on a day to day basis – if you know the movies Hellboy, The X-Men, The Ring, or the Oscarwinning Guillermo del Toro film Pan’s Labyrinth, you have seen his creatures come alive.

As a painter, Zar portrays them as they are: ugly. When you look at Chet Zar’s paintings, you will realize an inescapable truth: We are the monsters.

Zar’s creations represent how we all occasionally feel on the inside but rarely admit to the outside world, and despite their ugliness, his monsters retain a certain degree of sensitivity, even humanity about them, a vulnerability that is unexpected and thus only discovered by those allowing themselves to look beyond the surface. The artist’s intimate relationship with his subjects is revealed by overcoming our own initial resistance: If we can move beyond our revulsion and dive into our – and Zar’s – subconscious, we may be surprised to find that ugliness does not ultimately have to lead to rejection. We may come to find that we feel compassion for these creatures who smoke, cry, smile, and play like humans – in short, we may discover the Other in ourselves.

Using different, more vivid colors than his usual earthy tones such as blue, purple and pink, Zar’s latest body of work titled Ugly American is politically motivated – as Zar says, the metaphorical Ugly American never looked uglier to the rest of the world. Thanks to the policies of the Bush administration, the once good standing the Americans enjoyed in the world community is gone.

Keeping this in mind, it seems only natural that the Ugly American show premiers in London and not his native Los Angeles, although the era of Bush’s tight grip on public American opinion has weakened significantly as his presidency is drawing to a certain close, and Zar’s criticism of current American politics would be more likely to find whole-hearted support than anything else.

Strychnin Gallery London – 65 Hanbury Street – London E1 5JP

Web: www.strychnin.com