Concurrently on view in the Thinkspace project room are new works by Glenn Arthur in Opulent Anomalies. A self-taught talent, originally from Orange County, Arthur creates beautifully detailed works in a variety of media. Influenced by popular visual counter culture, and inspired by the stylization of tattoo art, Arthur’s unique surfaces deliver fantasy and cool. In this new series of paintings, Arthur interprets the exaggerated grotesque of the circus side show. Creating beautifully teratological characters, and looking to a nostalgic series of freak show “types”, Arthur captures the scintillating strange of the sideshow’s legacy.

As beautiful and seductive as they are aberrant, these enticing paintings of oddities capture our visual fascination with spectacle and fetish. Opulent Anomalies seizes upon the visual desire of curiosity, and the powerful draw of the anomaly. Beautifully graphic and illustrative, Glenn Arthur’s paintings arrest us with their luxurious deviance.