WHAT WE’RE READING
62 SPRING 2019
BOOKS
We Ate The Acid (61)A3HT3TA3):
The Art of Joe Roberts
“We Ate the Acid is my attempt at sharing
my experiences with psychedelics,” says Joe
Roberts, aka LSD Worldpeace. “The art used in
the book was all made during a period of my life
when I was experimenting with psychedelics
and the paintings and drawings are my attempt
to integrate and make some sense of those
experiences." It’s premature to categorize Joe
Roberts’s work as childish, far too simplistic
in describing Roberts, not to mention a
tremendously narrow description of children.
Roberts, who has gained a huge following on his
Instagram @lsdworldpeace, is a San Francisco-
based painter whose work dips into psychedelic
imagery, pop iconography, rural and suburban
landscapes, as well as a bizarre agglomeration
of aliens, dungeons, and smiley faces. Within
his paintings, viewers can experience the full
range of human emotion, and more importantly,
what lies between it, the equally confusing
realm of reality within the endless corridors of
the psyche. Whether an image depicts serene
nature or Ninja Turtles, each is endowed with
Roberts’s unique take on reality, appearing
both very natural and very bizarre. Through his
work, Roberts returns to what most children
already know, that whatever is experienced and
imagined really is reality, and sometimes there’s
no need to muddle it up. In that way, he refutes
the idea that childish is synonymous with simple,
it’s that childish is more akin to infinite.
—Eben Benson
Anthology Editions, anthology.net/booksThe Mash UP: Hip-Hop
Photos Remixed by Iconic
Graffiti Artists
Collaborations between photographers and
artists are always intriguing. Hat & Beard’s latest
art book, The Mash Up, takes this concept
further by effectively bringing you back to
a special time in hip hop. Participants don’t
just accompany their work with a photo from
photographer Jeanette Beckman’s archive, but
also share their personal stories from back in the
day. “Part of the project,” Beckman states, “was
to have them say why they were drawn to that
particular photo.” Beckman’s hip hop imagery
shines light on an era when the culture was just
beginning to define itself, back when rappers
were already living the dream in the insular
world of street cred, back in the gestation of the
genre that might take them mainstream. Graffiti
pioneer Cey Adams, who is considered one of
the Godfathers of hip hop graphics, curated the
roster of artists and chose a top-shelf collection
of wall and train writers across several eras,
giving them free reign to infuse their straight
butter styles back into past. The book also
creates a broader picture of what it means to
be an adolescent on the brink of honing their
creative passion. An honest, intimate report on
the artists’ humble, toy-box beginnings, Adams
and Beckmann also ask each writer to show
current work, bringing the reader a better grasp
of their aesthetic. “I love it,” says Beckman.
“Legendary artists remixing photographs that
I shot back in the day. It's very hip hop.”
—Joey Garfield
Hat & Beard Press, hatandbeard.comDadara: Open Your Mind So We
Can Use Your Data
Upon putting Dutch artist Dadara’s now
infamous “What The Fuck” venn diagram
painting on the Juxtapoz Instagram, it took
about three minutes to realize that it was going
to be on our greatest hits list. For the last few
years, the pulse of our contemporary lives has
thrumbed with the tone of “WTF”; politics,
communication, celebrity and art are evolving
so rapidly that Dadara’s image summed up the
current mood. And yet, for almost three decades,
Dadara (born Daniel Rozenberg) has been
working in performance art, painting, sculpture
and even graphic design, culminating in various
projects at Burning Man and interactive works
throughout Europe and the United States. Open
Your Mind So We Can Use Your Data chronicles
the breadth of his output over 196 pages, where
projects travel, morph and are destroyed as
part of a greater story of his practices. From
Checkpoint Dreamyourtopia to Exchangibition
Bank, Dadara asks of the audience to follow his
creative vision, to participate in not only art, but
these mirrored examinations of our collective
reality. The fact that his father, Grzegorz
Rozenberg, is a famed computer scientist seems
to have set the stage for Dadara’s career in art—
intricate, methodical and full of chance. Open
Your Mind So We Can Use Your Data is a long
overdue monograph, and a chance for all of us to
try and catch up to the mind of Dadara. —EP
Kochxbos Publishers, kochxbos.nl