Like Gas

" …the world we inhabit is increasingly-as a product of man- more artificial than natural. The most common part of our environment consists of a series of artifacts called "symbols", apprehended through our senses- once processed intellectually- these condition the majority of our daily toils. In such a way these inform and determine human action-or the consequences of our collective artifice. Such artifacts are nonetheless foreign to mankind, who incorporates and adapts them for his own purpose. In any case, the "artificial" should be understood as that produced by art in place of nature - that made or fabricated by man- and that besides is distinguished from the synthetic in that the latter is constructed to embody certain desirable properties…"      

-Raul Bejar Navarro

I discovered the work of the Mexican artist Gelsen Gas when I was around 11, my parents' old bank used to give out special encylopedic onthologies of Mexican art and architeqture once a year- and my parents would give them to the kids-

Although I couldn't get Amanda to scan the images out of said encyclopedia, and I hardly had any luck finding his work on the internet- I did find a little book of his work hidden in the back of the MSU arts library (it has been checked out twice before me: Mar 15 '88 & May 24 '89)

I'm not going to pretend like I had an elevated sense of aesthetic taste as a child- what I really liked about Gelsen Gas' art was that it was both lewd and colorful (his surreal paintings)- unfortunately none of what I have gathered here speaks for that side of his work. Nonetheless I was extremely excited to find that he experiemented with bauhausesque grafic design- AND ALSO PLEASANTLY SURPRISED when I found out he has worked with Alejandro Jodorowsky on BOTH comic books (Los Insoportables Borbolla) and a film(anti-climax [?!])- most of the work I have uploaded is from the 1977 book falacias...y no: ENJOY! 

a lot of his work reminds me of M.C. Escher too... dunno his fonts are amazing- all the human forms are self portraits, and all the words are his initials or his name.. I'm sure that sais something- right- as you might have guessed Gelsen Gas is a psuedonym- the Gas is real but his first name is Angel. 

-MJJ