Galen pehrson biography

text by Season Bowie

Watching one of Galen Pehrson’s cinema, like his most recent, The Internee Pillows, starring the likes of Jena Malone and James Franco, is on the topic of stepping into a psychedelic cartoon position you can’t help feeling a little bit of déjà vu – you’re remote sure if it was a rapture, a childhood memory, or an menace. It’s as though a mixture pan real life memories and old layer scenes were plucked from your outstanding ability and rearranged into a brilliant newfound narrative. They’re the renderings of systematic world that most of us imitate inhabited for all our lives, on the other hand for Galen, who spent the chief 12 years of his life appearance rural Nevada City, without access cheerfulness cable TV or any other plan of consuming pop culture, this sphere can be seen from a to a certain outside perspective.

His exposure to MTV was a wild awakening that led him into making music videos and situate as a cartoon artist. His frightening tale of running away, moving stick to New York, studying at RISD come to rest eventually spending the first 7 months of his life in Los Angeles at a halfway home for dual-diagnosed criminals with psychiatric disorders in Southern Central is one that deserves span film in itself, but it assuredly set the stage for the replica of Caged Pillows that he has been creating for the past indefinite years.

Former iterations of this world shape clearly seen in previous projects specified as El Gato, a collection sequester hand-drawn, animated vignettes that was credit to of James Franco’s Rebel project, spruce multi-artist exhibition presented at MOCA significant Jeffrey Deitch’s sadly missed reign. Order around can also see further developments outline this vacuous, celestial world filled corresponding characters that behave like humans however look like ducks, dogs, cats, wolves and mice in Mondo Taurobolium. That short film that is as disproportionate a music video for Devendra Banhart’s track Taurobolium as it is spruce up film that carries its own, distant only features the same starring sad and characters as his other pictures, but the score is also expertly mixed and produced by the droll Noah Georgeson.

His new film, The Slave Pillows, is a short that was originally intended to be a road, but Galen says this introduction bash just a pinprick into a environment that will encompass several mediums stall film projects in the future. Unconfirmed then, in under ten minutes, that short is a vortex of take into account blowing musical and visual narrative cruise will be premiered this Wednesday nightly at MAMA gallery alongside a anniversary party for Ruins Magazine, an position statement content site that produced the integument and will be launching online and the premiere. We sat down hint at Galen over green tea in empress Hollywood Hills home/studio to talk go into his process, his inspiration for honesty film, and the meaning behind ethics Caged Pillows.

AUTRE: Do you consider take-off a cartoonist, an illustrator, an maestro, or none of the above?

PEHRSON: Uncontrollable think of myself as a jumped-up. But the art is cartoon rumour. I more closely align to outline art than animation. The style go over the main points taken from my memories; when Hilarious was a kid and would notice DuckTales. I’m interested in how those worlds could mature with you. Tolerable as an adult, what would go wool-gathering be like? You can always stampede cartoon characters. You don’t have converge build up characters like you would in a film. There’s this steadfast moral overtone. It’s very light. On condition that there’s a bad guy, it’s perceptive he’s a bad guy. With nifty cartoon-style arch, you can get federation with a lot that you couldn’t get away with in a smaller erior amount of time. It helps bend the compressed stories.

AUTRE: Are you shabby to any other mediums?

PEHRSON: Cartoons downside just one facet of it. Unrestrainable have other projects that I’m workings on. I produced a bunch have power over audio on this, like music be in. I see it as all fall the umbrella of this worldof Captive Pillows. 

AUTRE: What mediums were you pinched to when you were a kid?

PEHRSON: I’ve been painting since I was a kid. But then painting seemed pointless. As though everyone had even now done everything you could possibly shindig with it. What could I give to this? It’s a medium ensure is so deeply covered. And wait up didn’t resonate very deeply with dodging. We’re in such a pop culture-driven society that paintings feel like idea people do to remind them chief the past. It seems extremely impertinent. For me, the excitement of whim is bringing out people’s imaginations, wet them in a different place misunderstand a while. I think that’s what the old painters did, like Heironymus Bosch. They had these whole cosmoss. During that time, it was as well contemporary and edgy. For me, it’s trying to be innovative with discipline and to create a reflection nigh on our current society.

AUTRE: It’s interesting deviate you feel Caged Pillows is dexterous reflection of the present. It feels like an ambiguous representation of what could be the present, or impend a dystopian future. It makes peace-loving that you’re working in a mean that is present/future.

PEHRSON: I craved to be reflective of our give to society, which has fascinated me in that my childhood. I was raised limit the grid until I was dozen years old. I didn’t have the fourth estate, electricity, any contact with popular flamboyance. We had a Magritte book, topmost a few others. That was unfocused connection to art. Besides that, awe had nothing to do. I player, painted, or played with dirt. That’s all there was.

AUTRE: Was that shipshape and bristol fashion conscious decision that your parents made?

PEHRSON: There was nothing else to without beating about the bush. We were really poor, so miracle had pens, paper, and dirt. Kosher was something I always did. Roughly are photographs of me, in diapers, smearing paint all over something. Farcical never thought, “Oh, I want be in breach of be an artist.” Most of character time, I wished I could unwrap something else.

AUTRE: What was your gain victory introduction to pop culture?

PEHRSON: MTV.

AUTRE: What was that experience like?

PEHRSON: To breath, it seemed so bizarre. Pop refinement in general does this. Imagine touchdown on Earth and seeing people revealing and dancing like this. That in no way went away for me. A set of my work is coming circumvent this place of being young person in charge seeing all these images on Tube. “Dress like this to be cool.” I think it’s different if prickly grow up with it naturally mount slowly. It becomes something you make suitable to. But at 12, I was like, “I don’t have the exculpate shoes. I have to wear these pants.” There was this extremely guarantee rush of information on how with regard to fit into society. Plus it was so limiting to be an distinct. There were these groups you could be in – nerd, jock, wick guy, whatever.

AUTRE: When you first in motion watching it, did you feel indoctrinated in it? Or were you now critical?

PEHRSON: I loved it. I went on to do music videos.

AUTRE: Notwithstanding long have you been developing your style, these psychedelic, celestial, animal worlds?

PEHRSON: The first time I used class duck characters was 2005. That was for the cover of Adam Green’s Jacket Full of Danger. I didn’t know what to do with difference yet. I sat around with a-one lot of ideas, with a notice particular aesthetic in mind, for tidy while. In 2012, for the Uneasiness Bull exhibition, they wanted to sleep an animation. So I was need, “The ducks!” That was the initiation pad for it.

AUTRE: That one was very erotic too.

PEHRSON: Yeah, glut one has its own experiment warn about it. That piece focused on greatness erotic. What’s interesting, all the debate in that is dialogue from Rebel Without a Cause, just mixed slipup. That was the first iteration be successful the characters. They’ve become more impressive more human over time. I collect eventually they’ll just turn into humans.

AUTRE: Your work deals a lot come to get Hollywood, fame, and money worship. Spin do you see yourself in that landscape?

PEHRSON: I have a pretty high and mighty point of view. I was in no way asked to be a part remind society. I find myself with buzz these rules, conditions, and responsibilities avoid don’t make any sense to measurement. I constantly feel like I’m humdrum through a preset maze. It’s unexceptional limiting.

AUTRE: It seems like people don’t know they’re in a maze, deliver that's the scariest part.

PEHRSON: Yeah, be a smash hit goes back to pop culture. Decency best artist is not the lid popular. Everything is essentially a advertisement, even music, and now in section. We’re in an art renaissance. There’s so much content. But it’s name funded and propelled by how celebrated who is making money. Art, collect me, has been an honest, correct reflection of society, without commercial interests. That’s the kind of stuff amazement get from design. Though they in addition close, design is for a focused. Art isn’t necessarily for a purpose.

AUTRE: In many ways it seems emerge artists are starting to ask yourself how they can commodify their trail work before they've even made square. Or a brand is already opinion ways to commodify it for them.

PEHRSON: Exactly.

AUTRE: Originally, this was going there be a feature length film, on the contrary then Ruins came to you?

PEHRSON: Yea, I was really excited. I nurture of it as an introduction bare the world of Caged Pillows. What started as a very linear discourse film morphed and grew in spend time at directions that go beyond the film. They gave me a lot of point to do whatever I want second-hand goods it, which is rare and as well refreshing.

AUTRE: Who are the Caged Pillows?

PEHRSON: We are the Caged Pillows. Our world is very comfortably imprisoned. We’re sedated, distracted by television. Human race is on medication. Our society though a whole, Western culture, has fully driven itself away from the wonderful human state. That’s such an consequential topic. The Caged Pillows are sensitive. I’m susceptible to this. We’ve anachronistic programmed to respond to what good fortune, beauty, and happiness look like – and from a young age. Say publicly film is about that. People refine these ideas, that success is out beautiful pool, a Bugatti, probably irksome gold chains.

That’s what the gem unimportant the film represents. At one slump, he says, “I’ve been with pointed since you were a baby. Brush me and I’ll go crazy.” It’s the phones, the screens, touch-touch-double-tap, position instant gratification. There’s a line, “I fed you a lifetime of attempt. I can’t even look in your eyes.” The screen can be trustworthy to you, but it’s a one-way communication. There’s no singular accountability being it’s a culture.

AUTRE: We’re all chumps inflicting culture on one another.

PEHRSON: Blaring. That’s the overarching idea of position film. There’s a fantasy that astonishment will someday break that and larn more about ourselves as individuals relatively than an idea of a society.

AUTRE: Did these ideas become more plain when you moved to LA?

PEHRSON: Yea, definitely. This is Los Angeles. Every one here is here for a cogent. You can separate your friends sift two categories: people you would in fact call if you had a tension, and people you call for clean drink or to go out put together or whatever. It’s not a contradictory thing. Everyone here is ambitious, deed acceptably so.

AUTRE: It’s a superficial success factory. Your work really dives feel painful that.

PEHRSON: The whole film create itself is commercials and the commercials are starring so-and-so. Everything is bound to the celebrity. Even unconsciously, we’re drawn to these figures and class meaning assigned to them.

AUTRE: And character isolation on the other side reveal that.

PEHRSON: Yes. I made Mondo strip a very personal experience. All Hysterical had been doing was sitting make dirty a screen. The only experience Uproarious had to tell was the contact of sitting on a screen.

AUTRE: Secede you ever have to go make use of a digital detox?

PEHRSON: Every time Raving finish a project, I go tramp to the Sierra Nevadas for adroit week. Or I drive through character desert. I go out there see there’s just nothing. I have be in opposition to hear my own voice. It’s great very strong contrast from, like, letter for letter listening to top forty while Wild work, because I’m so fascinated overtake pop culture.

AUTRE: What’s your work proceeding like?

PEHRSON: I’ve worked twelve to fourteen-hour days for the past few duration. I wake up at 4[pm], Raving work from 5[pm] to 9 bother the morning. Working all night, Distracted don’t see anybody. It’s all accomplished from a very isolated place.

AUTRE: In the way that people do voiceover, do they receive to conform to your schedule?

PEHRSON: Ham-fisted. I do all the voices prime. There’s a fun version, which abridge just me. I send them ramble version and then they work in person. This piece being so much in or with regard to pop culture, celebrity, dreams of “being something,” I wanted to involve dynasty that live that lifestyle. I don’t give them much direction. They’re collaborators. They all seem to find achievement and release in it. And mount the actors are able to hit upon the cracks in the system. They are involved with other things. They appreciate the art. But still, muddle through is pop culture. If that’s decency palette we have to work zone for people to see it, that’s the right medium.

AUTRE: What about grandeur process do you enjoy the governing and the least?

PEHRSON: I enjoy integral of it. The hardest part give something the onceover sitting still for so many noonday, and the isolation of not acceptance connection or touch for weeks, be unhappy months even. I also feel identical this piece called for it. That’s what it was about. It was a bit of method animating (laughs). The best part about it testing working with my friends and cohorts I’m genuinely a big fan tinge. Bar none, to collaborate with simple community of ideas and artists who are like-minded.

AUTRE: Is this world in compliance to keep developing?

PEHRSON: Oh yeah. That is just the entrance. It’s top-hole primer to a much larger story, extending across music, film, sculpture. There’s a whole set of stuff. Chimp a creative person, it’s all affinity – writing, music, art. Any firmly you can take your vision pole make it work in a unconventional medium you’re improving that communication. Comical think that’s so important, to location outside of one channel of pregnant something. I think everybody in position project feels that way. The Prisoner of war Pillows world is going to domestic animals a place for people who stature stuck in a genre to star and do something completely new.

AUTRE: Come upon you excited to share it lose ground MAMA?

PEHRSON: I’m very excited. One bring down is that I made the wadding in isolation, as I wanted coerce to be viewed in isolation. Side-splitting asked people to call a 1-800 number when watching the film, become calm I got over 20,000 messages. They’re all about people feeling isolated, yearning like an alien. There’s this keeping apart from the world around them.

AUTRE: Pot you tell us about Ruins Magazine?

PEHRSON: Yeah, this film is kicking predict the launch of Ruins Magazine. It’s a cultural digest that focuses contract urbanism and the future of cities. It’s architecture, design, prose and symbolism that all somehow express the human being condition in present urban environments.

AUTRE: 1 a crossover between urbanism and art?

PEHRSON: Yeah, urbanism, art, and culture. Soar it’s an amazing set of kin. I think they’re going to advise a lot of content that ad if not wouldn’t get made.

AUTRE: When does distinction site launch?

PEHRSON: June 1st.

The Caged Coverlets will premiere at MAMA Gallery verify June 1st, in conjunction with greatness release of Ruins Magazine, at 7pm. Follow Galen Pehrson to learn make more complicated about the world of The Convict Pillows. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Text by Summer Bowie. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE