Matt Furie

I remember seeing Matt Furie's work in a postcard show at The Lab in San Francisco several years ago. He filled the box with postcard sized color pencil drawings of unique human/monster/alien beings that could have worked well as either Pokemon or Magic playing cards. His cartoon style wasn't completely polished yet but the draftsmanship and sheer number of original creations was impressive. He now seems to have a small army of defined characters that he uses to play out small narratives of everyday life. Some of these characters are appropriated from 80's pop culture such as a Terminator, Skeletor from the He-Man cartoon, or Falcor the flying luck dragon from The Never Ending Story. The role of the character is changed in Furie's narratives. Falcor becomes a ravenous flesh-eating monster, Freddy is a loving father, and Skeletor just wants to kick-it with his buds and ride BMX bikes with well-designed pads and pegs. The actions of a grade-schooler in the 80's are played out by his heroes from TV in a paralell universe. Sometimes these characters dabble in the actions of adults (mostly sexual). Furie's creatures are not limited to pop-culture associations though. He has countless creatures that are loosely based on any variety of animal/human/robot/plant life mixture. Cartoon characters are made with more detail and characters from life are drawn more simply, creating an in-between physiology. It seems that the characters more interesting to him make returns in his drawings and begin to form lives and personalities of their own. Overall, his work mirrors a human population that loves having fun, being with family, copulation, and the occasional person that literally wants to rip your head off and eat it with a smile. Furie shows with Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco. He has exhibited at the Cartoon Network studios, New Image Art Gallery in LA, Adobe Books in San Francisco, and Giant Robot in NYC. Matt is from Columbus Ohio went to the Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio.