Downtown Los Angeles’ Corey Helford Gallery is proud to announce its next major solo show. Costume Obscura, featuring new works from Canadian artist and illustrator Ryan Heshka, is set to premiere February 1st in Gallery 3. Heshka’s surreal and dreamy paintings--associating comic books, science fiction, pulp magazines, old advertisements, and his strong references to pop culture and Hollywood’s B-movies--has earned the Vancouver-based self-taught artist international recognition. Costume Obscura marks the artist’s third solo show at CHG, following Vile-O-Vision (Feb. 2022) and FREEKS (Aug. 2019), which featured the complete comic book art from his new comic (at the time) Frog Wife, as well as the artwork from his graphic novel Mean Girls Club: Pink Dawn.
Regarding his new series, Heshka shares, “The paintings in Costume Obscura had their origins in a backlog of fashion-curious drawings I had created over many years, which accumulated in my sketchbooks, and rescued ideas. Exploring my visual inventory while gathering ‘seeds’ for the exhibition, vague paper doll-like collages of clothing and characters began to reveal themselves. The new works became an outlet for my ‘costume morgue’: a folder of rejected, nebulous but expressive fashion (or anti-fashion) sketches which also included figures, accessories, and environments. Lighting, textures, patterns, shoes, attire, backdrops…all obsessively grouped and posed, with enigmatic models carefully matched with suitably odd ensembles. Paintings became the equivalent of staged studio shots for this fantasy capsule collection. It is a love letter to the inspiration of fashion and designers, past and present, famous and obscure, intentional and unintentional. At the same time, it is a blissfully bizarre peeling back of our secondary skins which simultaneously express and veil us.”
