Art by William Emmert

Feb 19, 2010 | Comments 2

V Neck, Art by William Emmert

Immediatley struck by it’s sense of fun and color is what first lured me into to the art of William Emmert, but as I looked closer I found there is more than meets the eye. His work has a multitude of complex layers and a pleasingly disturbing quality to it.

Emmert’s work leaks a subtle backdrop of childhood. Games, spacemen, baseball cards, collage elements and his bright colors build trust and a sense of familiarity with the user. But within this trust there is something that is disrupts the ideals: The mask.

Mask and disguise drape over the identity of all the characters. The faces of the childhood, hero’s, and athletes covered and there bodies rendered over in a pattern inferring camouflage fatigues. These people you are so used to seeing smiling and portraying Americana have now become faceless, hunter types.

There is also a reoccurring theme of suffocation, choking and human defect in the work. Faces almost seemed as if they were peeled back, pictures of tubular like creatures, choking or suffocating their victim. This was difficult to see at first because his work disguised so well behind the cheerfulness of his colors and subject matter. He has reversed the order of self, the inner self exposed on top, and the outer self rest underneath. Very, Very Cool stuff.