dave tourjÉ
DAVE TOURJÉ’s work reflects the history and family religions of his beloved Highland Park neighborhood, where childhood was rough and wild but also colorful and lively, thanks to the hot-rod, gang, and motocross cultures that permeated the LA consciousness during his youth — and additionally an immersion into the great murals of Mexico City when he lived there as a child.
He is known for employing various techniques, non-traditional materials, and hybrid styles into a volatile but measured vision that combines both narrative instances and abstract derivations based on his eclectic influences. He is a master of his deliberately analog and unwieldy reverse-painting technique where he gets the best of two worlds — gesture and perfection, as raw color and line assume a glossy, architectural surface. He likes to build things, too, out of wood and concrete, resin and polymers, favoring inconvenient but unforgettable handmade objects. Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, Rick Griffin, Zapp Comics, and Mad Magazine were at least as big a deal to Dave as school was in forming his unique artistic identity, and his belief that a skate deck or a longboard make the perfect place to put a painting.