Painted Rooms:  Chor Boogie and Maya Hayuk

www.mayahayuk.com

Chor Boogie: Though Chor Boogie uses spray cans to create his art, he insists that he is worlds away his days of tagging for street cred—whether or not that stance appeals to the hipsters who view his art. He describes the evolution as a movement away from vandalism to the “fine arts of aerosol,” a world that creates rather than diminishes, proposing a positive approach to the world rather than a negative one. Never a letter form man, Chor Boogie’s characters range from soulful, deftly shaded portraits to happy, smiley flowers, with geometric elements adding up to half-hidden faces, and a huge eyeball or two to encourage you to see. Titled “Cellophane Symphonies” because “you want to wrap it up, and take it home in your pocket,” Chor Boogie’s work blasts away the apparent limits of the project to claim the window frames and walls of the courtyard outside his room. There is no color he doesn’t use, he says, as he creates a wide range of forms using an inverted spray can technique, which slows the pressure of the paint and creates denser, richer tones. And though it would seem that not limiting his color palette could result in an almost violent barrage of hues and forms-within-forms, Chor Boogie has developed a sense of order in his layers of work. The unity of the room and courtyard spring from what he calls a “spiritual love for what I do,” an approach based more in feelings than in thought. Unlike some other artists, Chor Boogie didn’t find the room project daunting at all for its scale; one of his first professional gigs was to paint a three-story mural on a ropes course for motivational speaker Tony Robbins. Before his recent move to San Francisco, Chor Boogie worked on several city projects in the San Diego area as well as a show at the MOCA that was named “Best Show of the Year.” His upcoming Bay Area projects include live painting events at Alcatraz and Google.

Maya Hayuk: “Fecalface.com named my room ‘The Vortex’ because during the opening you just entered and could never leave—myself included,” says Maya Hayuk. “During the project we referred to it as ‘The Kingdom of Awesome,’ I think it’s because it was black lit. Everybody’s reaction was to sit down and be a part of the room, to be inside the room. That was my intention, for people to be in that space, to trip out, and to notice all these elements that they wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s another dimension, another universe.” Hayuk’s big, hairy love pile is consistent with her approach to the project itself, which she tackled in collaboration with other artists. One painting partner included Tom Greenwood, a musician who plays in JOMF, an avant-psych band from Portland, Oregon. Kyle Ranson, Hayuk’s “oldest and best friend who lives in San Francisco,” painted the closet. And finally, Craig Gransfield, an artist from Columbus, Ohio, adorned the bathroom with characters called “log jammers.” “I could have done it all myself, but why?” Hayuk says. “The idea of collaborating goes back to another one of the analogies of music—making sound together, music together, we’re playing in a band and jamming. There was no dictation on my part as to what to do. The three other people just picked up materials and did what they had to do.” Hayuk sees the communion she shared with her fellow collaborators as extending to the strangers who will eventually occupy the room. “My biggest influence is love,” Hayuk says. “I’m hoping that people find love in that room. The hairy mountain is like piles of people gettin’ it on . . . that’s more just straight-up erotic, and not as much about love as it is about sex. The symbol of it became the hair, wrapping around and through. Hair comes out of the two towers at either side of the room, and the hot tub is a hub of solace and peace. The two towers are like radio towers, based on how we communicate with each other. Out of that comes this hair, which is love. It argues and battles, but has all these elements.” With the help of her collaboraters, Hayuk achieved her desired effect: “a room, but also an expansive landscape, and the room falls away. It feels like the hair mountain is enveloping you.”