McCaig Welles and Rosenthal is pleased to present My Other Robot is a Donut, a solo exhibition by award winning painter Eric Joyner. Fresh from a successful show in September in Los Angeles and the August release of Robots and Donuts, a monograph of the artist’s work, Eric Joyner comes to McCaig Wells Rosenthal in Brooklyn with an invitation into indulge in his vibrantly colored world of confectionaries and robotics. An opening reception for the artist will be held on Friday, November 14, 2008 from 7 p.m. – 10 p.m., with the exhibition on view through December 8, 2008. An artist book signing event will take place during the opening reception.

Until now, donuts and robots have complacently resided in separate realms. For My Other Robot is a Donut, Joyner is excited to join these two worlds together and explore the surprising commentary they have to offer. Joyner has had an avid fascination with robots and donuts for some time now. As a long time collector of robots at street fairs and antique shops Joyner appointed these subjects as the focal point of his work in 1999. Like Pop artist Wayne Thiebaud before him, Joyner is fascinated with the artistic depiction of popular confection incorporating heavy pigments and saturated colors into his work. It?s no wonder that after viewing the superbly imaginative and artistic film, Pleasantville, an interest in painting donuts (as rich in taste as they are in texture and design) sparked inside the creative mind of Joyner. Through his juxtaposition of robots and donuts, Joyner reminds us of the post World War II era, a time when society was satisfied with simple pleasures, but lurking beneath the bright and shiny surfaces were deep psychological distresses.

Joyner’s style, though depicting a whimsical world, is decidedly realist and what the artist describes as ‘Rockwell on mushrooms.’ In his new works, Joyner layers his canvases with acrylics, oils and varnish to produce a seamless marriage between the contrasting textures of gooey donuts and shiny metallic robots. The paintings can be simultaneously humorous and poignant. The fantastical setting and juxtaposition of robots and donuts is playful, but often in his work the robot becomes dwarfed by the landscape making one feel a sense of loneliness and isolation. In Drowsy Bot, Joyner shows a robot wondering through hazy pink fog rising off a mountain range while sipping bleary eyed from a bottle of brown liquor. Another large work depicts a robot with a dinosaur head wandering through a deserted snow-covered Rome, reminiscent of Joseph Mallord William Turner?s The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire. The massive scale of the painting and the intriguing combination of the meticulously rendered city with the toy robot show Joyner’s ability to be both amusing and touching, saccharine and tart. By incorporating influences of pop culture, science fiction, and art history with his own imagination, Joyner creates an enchanting world that one cannot help but devour.

Eric Joyner is an American painter based in San Francisco. He has worked as a freelance illustrator for over 23 years for major companies such as Mattel Toys, Levis, Showtime and Hasbro. Eric has won two gold medals from the San Francisco Society of Illustrators. He has had solo exhibitions at the Corey Helford Gallery, The Shooting Gallery and Mmodern Gallery. He is deeply influenced by Japanese toys and the Brandywine artists and illustrators of the early 1900s. This is his first solo show with McCaig Welles and Rosenthal.