Domald Trumpf if am Affhole!: The political art of Christopher Sperandio

September 23rd / November 11^th 2023

Overview:

This exhibition comprises three threads from my ongoing artistic research based on a leftist resistance to fascism. Those threads are printed comics, Risograph prints and a daily drawing practice.
Active Shooter is a comedic reflection on the gun violence epidemic in the United States. It takes the style of British tabloid comics from the 1950s and 1960s. The ink drawings for Active Shooter are the foundations of a newspaper comic first produced for Rotland Press, based in Detroit, Michigan, and reproduced and translated into Portuguese for this exhibition at Tinta Nos Nervos. The exhibited drawings are the five drawings employed in the comic and an unused alternative drawing for the pull-out poster page in the center of the comic.
The Risograph prints are, for the most part, less overtly political, instead reflecting on the history of American comics. Many of my Risograph prints are parodies of a ubiquitous 1970s series of advertisements in comic books for Hostess products using characters from Marvel and DC Comics.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I began a daily drawing practice, posting the results at least once per day, and usually twice or three times daily, on Instagram. More than 3,000 drawings later. The selection of 48 tiles is unique prints produced from those daily Instagram posts.