For its first artist edition, Cartoni turns to Anthony Ausgang.
A Los Angeles painter and one of the founding figures of the Lowbrow movement that emerged on the American West Coast in the early 1980s, Ausgang built a world that is the opposite of Cartoni's: psychedelic, figurative, alive with the colour of cartoons, hot rods and West Coast pop culture.
That contrast is the point. Three of his works have been translated into round wool rugs, high-fidelity printed so that every detail and gradient of the original painting survives the change of medium. A collision of Dutch restraint and Californian colour — of sculptural object and painted surface.
Each rug is produced in an edition of fifty per design, numbered and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
Born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1959, Anthony Ausgang has lived and worked in Los Angeles since his studies at the Otis Art Institute. He is recognised as one of the founding painters of the Lowbrow, or pop-surrealist, movement that rose out of the American West Coast in the early 1980s.
His paintings are populated by wide-eyed, anthropomorphic cats — psychedelic, mischievous, set against fields of flame and saturated colour. Beneath the cartoon surface lies a deliberate command of palette and composition, and a knowledge of art history that he turns back on itself. His work has appeared in Juxtapoz and Hi-Fructose and is held in private collections internationally.