Eric Yahnker – Factory Reset

Posted by Fabio 13 December 2018

From his home in Desert Hot Springs, CA artist Eric Yahnker has elaborated in pastel drawings across large swaths of sandpaper a vision of America today and a culture in need of a “factory reset”, erasing all content and settings, wiping the memory, rebooting the corrupted system.

The title piece in the show (above) kicks things off by making us hold up a (cell phone) mirror to our participation in what has gone wrong. The celebrity, vanity and vacuousness of Warhol’s aluminum foiled-“Factory” is seamlessly updated to integrate with celebrity-influencer social media selfie culture. Were Warhol Superstars an analog version of the digitally-assisted disaster of now? The pieces in the show look at both how we got here and urgently ask how do we get the hell out of here.