oh, hey there internet....

i must admit that i have been letting my internet presence lack. my website has been out of date for a couple years now, and my blog, which sort of ended up taking over the website has been neglected as well. I've been out of town quite a bit (thats a whole 'nother entry) and i let my web hosting lapse and i think i lost my whole old website. but its more of a blessing than a curse as i desperately needed to start fresh with a new format. I'll be getting together a new site in the coming weeks focusing on just my later works and illustration projects. it needs to be done.





but for now heres my latest painting:






for the INLE show at gallery 1988 this friday (march 11th), curated by greg 'craola' simkins, its gunna be a great show and i'm proud to be a part.

REP THE WEST!

RONIN.GALLERY PROUDLY PRESENTS
WEST COAST HAND PENDANT by ZOSO
rep the west! big and beefy, about 2 1/2 inches long, solid cast
white bronze. choose to rock it on a 30″ chain or a keychain.

click the pic!

on point with the ballpoint

recent scribblings in tha ol sketchbook:

































in other news, i'm brainstorming on my next solo show. it will be late 2010 or early 2011... just in the concepts stage right now... stay tuned for more info...

"spirit trifectum"

first oil painting in a while, i'm pretty happy with it:

showing at the cave gallery 5/4

shanty installation

for the ronin gallery's NEX GEN show.


stage one:






















stage two:

NEX GEN 2010

been working towards this for a while... the grand opening of ronin 2.0.
should be a great show, make sure to come out and join us!

skritch skratch sketch

select scans from the sixteenth sketchbook.


















more here.

RONIN 2.0

dear internets:

sorry for ignoring you lately. i will be making a conscious effort to keep you posted a little better on my happenings.

since i last posted, a lot of things have happened. india blew my fucking mind, came back, worked a lot, traveled a bit more; texas, new york and virginia mainly. visited close friends and had some times to remember. been working on some great little projects, mostly playing with pen n ink. life's been busy, but its been good. 2010 is already beating the pants off 2009.

the BIGGEST news in my life right now, the most exciting, comes in the form of a partnership with my homie, mr. peekaboo.

he as run the Ronin gallery in echo park for about a year and a half now, and i've partnered up with him to re-locate it to a great location in silverlake, currently housed by Thinkspace gallery. the space is a huge upgrade, and along with my involvement is a perfect opportunity to re-invent what ronin means and who we work with. we are working on putting our first show together right now, its right around the corner.

here it is:




go to the website and sign up for emails to keep posted!

peace, be back soon I PROMISE

So I'm off to China in a few hours. I'm really excited! its my first time to Asia. I'll be in Shanghai, then New Delhi and a small town in the Himalayan foothills. possibly Kathmandu also. I'll try and update a bit from the road, but i dont know if i'll be able to post pics...


In other news, i'm in a couple more group shows coming up, bot are great lineups and i'll be showing alongside some great artists and long time friends.

Philly at the end of august:





but since i know if your reading this there's a better chance you in the LA area, so i also got a piece in this show at Ronin in echo park:



peace!

SF show at PUSH gallery

i'm on my way to China and India next week! I've become addicted to travel.

finishing up a few pieces to represent myself while i'm gone in this great little group show up in san francisco :

spotted in an Eels video!

EELS - In My Dreams - from HOMBRE LOBO


look! at about the 1 minute mark!
thanks to "josh" and "prince parise" for pointing this out to me.

Flatteryx1000!

a friend pointed this out to me:



http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6191&Itemid=121

made me all warm n fuzzy for a second.

i'll be throwin some paint around at the culver city artwalk:



check sour harvest for details

i just got back from a medical missions trip in Ecuador. the following is a letter to a friend that had asked me to tell him all about it. i figure it sums up my trip pretty well so i just did the ol' copy n paste, and added a couple photos for effect.








yeah, shits crazy down there. it was a very surreal trip, an amazing experience. many moments i'll keep with me forever. it was hot and sticky, torrential downpour about every other night, blazing sun every day. the city, guayaquil, is a pretty big one, the biggest in the country but not the capitol (and also not very touristed). just a big polluted grimy mess basically. lots of poverty everywhere, chaotic traffic (whats a lane?) (4 guys on a pile of plantains in the back of a jerry-rigged pick up with a rope tailgate and one odd tire), basically straight up 3rd world shit. the first weekend we were there fell on the presidential elections, so shit was extra crazy. (also included a liquor ban which we worked around). i only exaggerate slightly when i say it felt like martial law. lots and lots of army guys with their m-16s posted everywhere, and throngs of people at demonstrations and polling places. and beyond the election madness, there were security and military people posted up outside of shops and places everywhere, with the flack jackets ammo belts and massive assault rifles or stockless shotguns.








so thats the vibe. and what made it surreal is that we were staying at a 5 star hotel and eating at fancy restaurants every night. bourgeois living while we are surrounded by all this poverty and social messiness. oh also i was hanging out with mel gibson's son... kind of a mind fuck.



not to mention the actual mission we were on, giving heart surgery to little kids. we (they) did 20 open heart surgeries and as many cath procedures (where they go into the heart with a device through an artery and are able to fix certian types of holes). i was able to sit in on a couple open heart surgeries. THAT was a trip. way more intense and fascinating than i expected. a little 6 year old girl, you see her ribcage sawed through and ripped open, and they use whats basically a soldering iron to do most of the cutting. it instantly cauterizes it so it doesnt bleed, but it also smokes and smells of burning human flesh. ...didnt expect that... then they get to the actual heart, thump thump thumping away. you can see all the way inside this child, and then (after putting the blood through an oxygenating machine and a million other steps), they stop the heart by literally spooning ice onto it, then they take the heart apart and tinker with it. they cut off a membrane from the outside and treat it with a chemical and use it to make a patch to repair a hole inside the heart.






on and on. a million steps that i only understand half of them. crazy shit. then you see this child a little while later in the ICU semi concious, you see her eyes and her face and just 40 minutes ago you were looking at the inside of her heart. mind fuck.






another moment was being able to tag along while we dropped this kid off. he lives in the slums. i seriously saw the kind of crooked ass shanty shit that i draw all the time. dirt roads, shacks made of warped planks and corrugated rust, the whole nine. no cars either. but the whole hood came out and greeted little miguel, checked out his scars, there were a ton of kids and by the end of the hour or so we were there they were crawling all over me. not sharing a language but laughing and playing anyway. the vibe was super laid back and happy there. no possessions, no worries. the kid to adult ratio was a little out of hand, which makes you think a little. its the same trend here of the poor/ uneducated breeding at 5 times the rate as the people that can actually afford to raise a kid, but amplified a lot. lots of things on the trip made me think along those lines.












some of our people got robbed at gunpoint in a cab one night, it was a crazy dramatic ordeal that involved one girl biting this fuckers face off. they fought the robbers off (but still had everything taken) but were separated from each other and stranded way outside of where the hotel was, in a dark deserted industrial neighborhood in the pouring rain with no money. everybody eventually made it back but for a long time we didnt know where 3 of the 5 were. thats the very abbreviated story of a very dramatic evening for everybody. scary shit.









more photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoso1/sets/72157617755640414/

i'm leaving america again for a minute, i'm really really excited. going down to Ecuador, but its for a philanthropic cause this time not just dustin' off the ol' ramblin shoes.

so while i'll be out of town, i'll be here in spirit in the form of a couple group shows:





peace!