Artist of the Week: John Wahlers
Path to Enlightenment, ed.8, 2011
40″x36″, photo lithograph/relief/hand painting
At first the multimedia art work of John Wahlers seemed like a large quilt, but after I came closer to the work I realized that the corporate logos were laid out like Eastern mandalas. The desaturated hues and harmonious, muted color palette tie all of the emblems together. Each logo is a singular thing used to represent an entire business entity in one instance. People went up close to the work to identify all of the logos – or at least as many of them as they were able. The simpler text-based company name logos were self-explanatory; the symbolic image based logos or ones with simple initials such as represents Louis Vuitton were of the greatest interest for viewers to decode. This speaks to commerce as being the most prolific producer of symbolism in our culture.
Path to Enlightenment (Panel 8), ed.8, 2011
13″x12″, photo lithograph/relief/hand painting
His gallery website indicates that the artist is not a mainstream traditional fine artist and has a background and primary career in information technology and a degree in computer science. See more of John Wahler’s work at his gallery website here.
