JUNE 9TH, 2021

There are four phases to Bulging Idiot’s art.

Phase 1: Annoyance. Just looking at this is irritating, it hurts my eyes.

Phase 2: Indignation. I can’t believe someone is trying to pass this off as art! They’re just throwing something up as a NFT to see if it will sell.

Phase 3: Doubt. Is it possible I’m wrong? Let me watch the video of him drawing it. 

Phase 4: Holy shit, this is incredible. 

The perfect medium that best suits Bulging Idiot’s art is not a digital screen. His true canvas is concrete and his tools to airbrush. 

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls

Simon and Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence

Imagine a blank cinder block wall attached to a corner shop in a crowded city.

Imagine growing up in that part of the city. Walking by the corner shop every day. This shop that has seen better days but has remained open despite a lack of investment into the community around it. The sign has yellowed and been sun-bleached. The lettering styled from a popular font decades old. The metal gate that is pulled down to lock up the front of the store each night has been rusted for so long even the owner doesn’t remember what it looked like new.

There have been good years and bad years. Kids spending their whole lives in the neighborhood. Throughout the years, those kids pass the time tagging the wall out in the cover of night due to boredom but also from a lack of outlets for expression.

Now the wall has been painted over when the tags became an eyesore. It becomes a blank canvas again.

Add a tragic story associated with this shop like the killing of a man out front.

Give that blank canvas to an artist that understands the context.

An artist that knows the stories they didn’t experience personally like the assassination of Malcolm X, the massacre on Black Wall Street, the killing of Fred Hampton.

Let that artist show what it means to be alive when Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Ahmad Aubery and George Floyd are dead. 

The artist for this piece is Bulging Idiot.

Now give Bulging Idiot some time. Let him feel the weight of generations and centuries of pain and torture. Let him express the feelings of a block, of a community, of a generation.

Let him speak for those who cannot because they are not here; for those who cannot because they are afraid; for those that are broken and tired. 

Let the sharp edges make you uncomfortable. Let that discomfort in and explore it. Let that turn to self-reflection. Ask why the artist wants you to feel this, why is this important. Why would an artist want others to understand this? Why does the artist feel this strongly?

Now step up to the wall. Touch it. Feel the cool, slight stickiness of a freshly painted wall. Let those emotions, memories and spirits in. 

Stand back. Watch others experience it. Watch others mourn. Watch others take it in. Watch others pay tribute. 

That concrete mural is now digitized. You no longer need to travel to see it. You no longer need to be a member of the community to feel it. It is here, now, to benefit those in this space. 

Now open your eyes. 

Look again.