Thanks to My Plastic Heart, I got the opportunity to meet Dust for his solo opening “Surreal Minds.”

Before I go into my thoughts about the body of works, I feel like I need to reflect on something. I’ve mentioned time and time again, that MPH is my favorite shop EVER. A lot of it has to do with the owners of the place, but mostly, I appreciate that they’ve introduced me to many artists I wouldn’t have known about if they didn’t feature their works at their gallery.

Dust, now joins the list of some of my favorite artists. It’s obvious that I’m into cute/kawaii stuff, and therefore, when I entered MPH’s gallery, I instantly connected with the artwork that featured the mouthless bears (below). Well, I didn’t realize they were mouthless at first– but when I was introduced to Dust we began conversing about his pieces. It began with the question: How do you go from this (referring to the piece below) to the piece located lower?

The differences are so prominent, you’d think it was two different artists, wouldn’t you? I kind of didn’t believe that he could go from cutesy to visceral so successfully, until he explained the background story to his pieces.

His works really focus on; mother nature, our world, our planet, our existence. With the mouthless bears, he captured our need to destroy our planet without thinking about the ramifications. We as humans are so selfish, that we only think about our needs and never bother to ask the animals if they’re okay with us destroying their homes, or if they want to be relocated. Since we don’t ask, we never listen to them and therefore; they’ve got no voice. That alone made me connect with his pieces even more.

When we moved on to the piece right above– he explained that these focused more on the microscopic beings. It could mean us, animals, plants, the world– but ultimately, it showed the uglyness of what we’ve become. They focus on the truth.

Now, I assumed I’d want to purchase one of his bear pieces, but I found that the pieces I fell in love with were the visceral ones. There were three pieces in particular that I favored, and their price was very moderate (some serious art collectors would argue that they were practically free!)– and yet, my lack of funds allowed for only one purchase.

All evening, these three pieces kept calling my name. I was even more impressed when I found out that dust did these with spray paints, and did some touch-ups with acrylic paints. Wow!! In the end, I chose “BN:226″ but, someone showed interest in all 3 and I chose to keep them together rather than separate them, I gave it up.

At first, I was crushed, but that wore off when I spotted this piece. This piece wasn’t part of the show, but I happened to love it as much as the triplets he produced. I suggest you click on the image to see the larger format and see some of the details.

His “human-comb” characters were my favorite, so it’s no surprise I chose the piece that I did. He’d created a mural on MPH’s wall, and when I pointed out the little characters, he said he was so tired of humans he wrapped them up in honeycombs to punish them. =D

Take a look through my flickr set for more images from the opening evening. Although it took me forever to post this, I recommend anyone who’s in the city check the show out. It’s amazing! Again, he did most of these with spray paints and acrylic. He also displayed some hand-made figures, some of which are still available. The ones I wanted were sold out already, so I’m passing on them.

Check out MyPlasticHeart for available pieces, and head on over to the gallery to really enjoy all of the pieces.

p.s. Thanks to the Mr. (GrimSanto) for all the hardwork he does on the videos for IHCS. I realized I haven’t given him a proper shout-out.