What a Mess (Beautiful/Decay)

What is it about making a mess that is so gratifying? As a kid I loved nothing more than tearing up magazines, creating giant forts in my bedroom, and generally wreaking havoc all over my house. There is something youthful in the process of making a giant mess, and something liberating about walking away after. Take little kids’ artwork: they make a drawing by pouring a gallon of glue and handfuls of glitter onto construction paper. They take a pile of macaroni and create tribal masks out of paper plates. They color drawings but stay strictly outside the lines. It’s like they have this massive amount of creativity that they can’t harness or control. It ends up pouring out of them in waves, destroying all surfaces in its path.Now that I’m much older I still enjoy messes but with a dash of restraint tossed into the mix. I’m still attracted to looking at and making work that borders on chaos. Amazing results can be attained when the youthful “I make my own rules" energy is exploited in the right way. It’s a matter of balancing the two to get it right.

The artists our "What A Mess!" release all create messes in their own way, whether through multiple sourced collages, loose paint handling, disorganized methods of displaying work, or rough-hewn styles. But the mess doesn’t stop there. Others artists employ “political” messiness, whether creating works that cause public outrage, or manipulate taboo imagery or themes.

In the spirit of the theme of this release, we got a little messy ourselves, crumpling photos, using a playful approach to our page layouts, andcreating a custom typeface out of childhood favorite construction materials: googly eyes, popsicle sticks and puff balls, crumpled photos, and used a playful approach to our page layouts.

Amir H. Fallah is an artist and designer living and working in Los Angeles, CA. He started Beautiful/Decay in 1996 as a small black and white zine and has grown it into an internationally distributed brand focusing on emerging art and design.