User:EdiOnjales/My Big Sandbox

XVALA with his Big Sausage Pizza sculpture

Jeff Hamilton (born 1970), better known as XVALA, is an American contemporary artist who is known for using controversial celebrity images, artifacts, and references in his work and for his focus on loss of privacy and other effects of technology on individuals and society.

He has cited concerns about the public consumption of personal information in the Internet Age as the driving force behind much of his work. In particular, he has stated that his infamous Fear Google campaign embodies "the idea that technology is gaining momentum on our everyday activities. There is a growing inability to disconnect from the Internet and social networking, and in the post-PC era, we all are bytes of data. We exist as information, and all our information exist to be used and reused." He does not, however, believe in censorship of online information.

In more recent years, XVALA's interests have become focused on the ways the tools, content, and user interactions of the internet are transmitted memetically through society outside of the control or consent of any individual human. This has led to several meme-based works, as well as an entire project known as Meme Ranch, which consists of several phases and collections.

Identity and personal life

Although some sources have stated or implied that his work is anonymous and some have even guessed that the name is an acronym, XVALA's identity is well known and documented as Jeff Hamilton He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and graduated from Langston University in 1994.

The name "XVALA" is an internet tag created by the artist purely for the purpose of exclusivity. It purposely has no meaning. It was chosen because the character string was not tied to any URL or email address and generated zero search results at the time. XVALA gave the name meaning by connecting it to unique content that was eventually dispersed across the internet through the function and use of search engines. In 2002, he trademarked it.

XVALA lives in the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, area, but he has worked extensively in Southern California.

Artistic style and influences

XVALA frequently describes his work as belonging to the "Post-PC era". He produces many types of art, including paintings on canvas, various types of sculptures, wheatpasted posters with provocative captions, and more. His canvases tend to be quite large, usually hung vertically, with bold, colorful images and occasionally lighted accents. He uses a variety of media including (but not limited to) oil sticks, acrylic paint, collage, and stencils. His sculptures are commonly made from either a mixture of recycled resin and plastic porcelain or cast metal, but other materials are sometimes used. He has a particular penchant for using found objects in his sculptures, especially when they have a celebrity connection.

For both positive and negative reasons, XVALA has been compared to a number of prominent artists. Due to his tendency toward appropriation art, he is often compared to Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Richard Prince. He is on record as being a fan of Prince, and has said that he is inspired by Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, as well.

XVALA has been compared to Banksy for his forays into street art, but doesn't consider himself to be a street artist. He has said, "I put some of my art in the street, but I’m not a street artist." Despite this denial, he does have a history of dabbling in graffiti and other classic forms of street art, and even his work on canvas has been described as having "street art sensibility".

Notable work

XVALA jeans button detail

XVALA's first public creative work, and the origin of his pseudonym, was his venture as a clothing designer. In 2002, working through Oklahoma City-based clothing designers Cultural Persona, he launched a line of designer jeans that were marketed toward a young, hip audience. The jeans were also pitched to, and worn by, a number of performers and other celebrities. At that time, he conceived and trademarked the brand name, XVALA. He continued to use this branding as his own name as he moved into the more traditional art world.

Unlike many well-known artists, XVALA spent most of the first 15 years of his working life in other pursuits and did not work as a professional artist until the 21st century, well into the age of technology. The first significant public display of his visual art was at the December 2006 "Emergent Artists" exhibit at the Mainsite Contemporary Art Gallery in Norman, Oklahoma. At this event, he displayed four large, mixed-media paintings and several photo-serigraphs, all on canvas, and dubbed his work "tabloid art".

His interest in controversial celebrity artifacts gained widespread notice in 2007 when he found online a photo of Britney Spears, taken by noted paparazzo Frank Griffin, shortly after she famously shaved her own head. He had the image printed on archival aluminum dibond and placed in a hand-sculpted, Italian tabernacle-style frame, and titled it Crazy Bald Britney Spears: The Appeal Of The Loss Of Desirability. The piece has since been displayed in many shows and mentioned in a number of articles.

Brangelina house

In 2008, XVALA joined in a collaboration with the sculptor Daniel Edwards to build a 4,000-square-foot, $480,000 house in Edmond, Oklahoma, inspired by the relationship of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Based on the name the couple was popularly called in the media, the project was called The Brangelina. The artists considered the house "lifestyle art" but they also want it to be a functional home. In addition to immortalizing the celebrity relationship, they also sought to honor Pitt’s mission to help rebuild houses in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and to pump optimism into the failing housing market after the crash of 2008. Like both of the artists, Pitt is from Oklahoma, and the house is located only about 35 miles from his hometown.

During construction, XVALA stenciled a pattern of large smiling hearts on the roofing, as well as quotes and facts related to the family (such as their children's names and birth dates) throughout the framing. Most of this stenciling and other art was covered by shingles, masonry, drywall, etc., but the artists said the purpose was to infuse the house with happiness. XVALA later applied artwork to the finished interior walls as well, and the house contained two sculptures created by Daniels. The first, in the foyer, portrayed Jolie nursing her twins, and the other, attached to the bedroom ceiling, depicted Pitt and Jolie, nude, in an intimate moment.

The home took 14 months to build and was completed in December of 2009. Media reporting on the house construction indicated that it would be sold with a contract stipulating "honorary ownership" for Pitt and Jolie. This would require that the actors be allowed free use of the home upon request when they were in the area.

Street art

In 2010, XVALA made a poster of Lindsay Lohan making an obscene gesture with the caption "thanks for the memories" [sic] and posted it in Los Angeles near the site of her well-publicized 2005 car accident involving paparazzo Galo Cesar Ramirez. The gesture was a reference to Lohan's actions during a probation hearing on the day before the image was posted, when she had the phrase "fuck u" [sic] written on the fingernail of her left middle finger. The intent was ambiguous but the position of her hand at various times suggested the epithet might be directed at the court.

Later that year, XVALA created a stir in Oklahoma City when he painted graffiti on the side of the historic Hadden Hall building. The image was a stenciled face of a chimpanzee with bright pink spray-painted lipstick. It was accompanied by the caption "I'm not trying to be slutty," which was a Miley Cyrus quote from a recent interview with the Associated Press. Around this same period, XVALA was posting salacious images of Cyrus at various locations in Los Angeles. The posters bore the label "FEAR GOOGLE" in large lettering and were intended to illustrate the danger of trusting digital storage or transfer of personal information and images. The photos, showing Cyrus in the shower wearing only a long, white t-shirt, had been stolen from her email by a hacker and posted online.

Banksy's Caveman

Early in 2008, Banksy painted a caveman carrying a tray of fast food on a wall near the historic New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Almost immediately, other graffiti artists, including XVALA, began adding tags and artwork to the site. XVALA's main contribution was a parody of Banksy's famous Laugh Now chimp. By 2010, the wall was covered with graffiti and, in an effort to protect Banksy's work, the area of the wall bearing his art was covered with plywood and then removed altogether; because of the position of XVALA's art, it was fully included in the removed section. The section of wall was then taken to a gallery and in 2018 was auctioned with XVALA's artwork intact, thus combining their works permanently in a single art piece.

Fear Google

"Fear Google" graffiti and tag in Los Angeles

XVALA returned to controversy in 2010 with his Fear Google campaign, which was meant to "strengthen the ongoing debate over privacy in the digital era" by highlighting the ways in which we expose ourselves to the world, often unwittingly, through the indiscriminate use of technology. The campaign comprised several phases.

Scarlett Johansson

The first phase of Fear Google that inspired media attention occurred in September 2011 when nude photos of Scarlett Johansson that had been hacked from the actress' phone were leaked publicly online. XVALA became aware of the photos and accessed them by way of a simple Google search. Over the next several days, he pasted poster-sized copies of the images in public areas across Los Angeles with large "Fear Google" stickers covering Johansson's buttocks and breast. The stickers themselves were developed in 2010 for use throughout the project. At the time, XVALA said that it was the "first street art sticker designed for the Post-PC era, [launched in] the same year as Apple’s iPad and other Post-PC devices."

XVALA called his use of these types of images a "disruptive innovation" and said that it should be regarded simply as art. His representative stated that he did receive a cease and desist letter regarding their use but that neither he nor XVALA was concerned about any legal action. They felt that they were on solid legal ground because they did not hack or leak the photos themselves, they found and accessed the photos through a normal Google search, the photos were being used for an artistic purpose (which is potentially protected by law), and they weren't making any direct profit from the photos. Some attorneys were less confident but did concede that a lawsuit against the artist would have an uncertain outcome.

Not Very Well Hung Hangers

Mark Zuckerberg's Not Very Well Hung Hanger

The next noteworthy phase of Fear Google began in November 2011, after XVALA found the home addresses of tech industry pioneers Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, and Jimmy Wales through Google searches. He then went to each of their homes and took items from their outdoor trash containers for use in making sculptures. He stated that he had "mined" their trash for art to represent his belief that their platforms mine users' data for profit. Each piece was intended to represent its former owner's work and perceived flaws in some way, and the exhibit was called "The Not Very Well Hung Hangers of Silicon Valley". The name of the exhibit comes from its cornerstone piece, a wire hanger from Mark Zuckerberg's trash that XVALA bent into a vaguely phallic shape and painted Facebook Blue. He explained the idea for the piece, titled Mark Zuckerberg's Not Very Well Hung Hanger, by saying, "I wanted to expose Zuckerberg like he exposes Facebook users daily."

In 2012, XVALA mixed plastic waste from Steve Jobs' trash with recycled resin and plastic porcelain and put it in a 9-inch-tall mold of the Apple CEO wearing his classic turtleneck and jeans and holding an iPhone 5. The mold had been created by the Chinese company M.I.C. Gadget to create plastic figures of Jobs for retail sale, but they had been forced by Apple in 2010 and again in 2011 to cease production.

XVALA produced most of his copies of the figure with an Apple White glaze, along with a limited number that had an Apple Black glaze. The black figures were intended to represent each of the Foxconn employees who died by suicide in 2010 and 2011 as a result of the extremely poor working conditions at the Apple-contracted electronic manufacturer's plant. The figures, titled Think Different, were shown and sold for $150-200 at an exhibit of the same name. The artist hoped the symbolism and the title would encourage Apple to "think different" about their labor practices.

Slammed and Dunked

In addition to targeting tech pioneers, XVALA also appropriated trash items from outside the homes of celebrities. He created art from Kim Kardashian's trash in 2012, transforming a deflated basketball and resin recycled from bits of her plastic waste into a sculpture he called Slammed and Dunked. The piece was inspired by Kardashian’s failed marriage to NBA player Kris Humphries and was displayed at an exhibition that also included a collection of her selfies, taken from her Twitter and Instagram accounts. The portraits were mounted on aluminum that also came, in part, from Kardashian's trash.

Later in 2012, he took a trash can from Justin Bieber's home and a milk crate from a cafeteria at Facebook, attached them together, and painted them silver to create Bieberbot. The piece was intended to represent the singer as "a monster with technology like Dr. Frankenstein and Google". His stated goal was to present a visual metaphor for the loss of control of personal data that occurs when technology is used indiscriminately. XVALA was quoted in a related interview as saying, "We make our trash public domain, not realizing that our trash defines us more than social media." The exhibition included entertainment by Flula Borg, who had previously made a YouTube video to promote Bieberbot and the show, and a display of two of XVALA's original paintings.

"No Delete" exhibit

XVALA's most notable controversy to date occurred in 2014 when he announced his plan to use hacked and leaked nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton at his "No Delete" exhibit in St. Petersburg, Florida. The name of the exhibit was intended to be "a comment on the inability to erase private information from the Internet's collective memory once it is exposed".

Crazy Bald Britney Spears: The Appeal Of The Loss Of Desirability on display in Oklahoma

The women's photos were originally stolen, along with many others, from storage in Apple's iCloud and posted on the 4chan image-sharing website. Representatives immediately issued public statements warning that "authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence" and that Kate Upton intended "to pursue anyone disseminating or duplicating these illegally obtained images to the fullest extent possible". The FBI was "addressing the matter", and Apple was "investigating" as well. XVALA, however, believed that he had the right to display the photos because he had not stolen or leaked them, he was using them as art, and he was not profiting from them. Therefore, just three days later he announced plans to exhibit them, life-size and unaltered, printed on canvas, at an exhibition that would also include his Britney Spears photo and the lightly censored Scarlett Johansson posters.

This announcement was met with immediate and vehement backlash. Beyond questions of legality, it was denounced by the media and prompted multiple protests, petitions, and boycotts. Various celebrities spoke in support of the women whose images were stolen, with Andrew Garfield specifically asking, "What fucking right does [XVALA] have to do that?" and calling the exhibition "absolutely revolting". XVALA denied that the exhibit was intended to be exploitative and, on the contrary, said it was meant to open discussions about the nature of fame and celebrity, especially with relation to questions of privacy, security, and content ownership. However, a week later XVALA relented and announced that he would not use the stolen photos after all "on moral grounds" and "empathizing" with the exploitation of women. Instead, he substituted self-shot, life-size photos of his own semi-naked body in the exhibit.

Meme Ranch

XVALA's focus in the 2020s has been on the idea of memes, especially their origin in and impact on society. His ongoing project on this topic is titled Meme Ranch. The project includes a number of collections and individual works. A key piece from the project is his 80-pound, solid high-chromium stainless steel Big Sausage Pizza sculpture, which was made from a mold of a real Pizza Hut pizza in its (open) box. The piece was inspired in part by the work of Jeff Koons, especially his famous Rabbit sculpture. Boxed pizza was chosen as a subject because of its connection to various memetic aspects of society, such as the use of technology to subvert traditional rhythms of home and family. XVALA has also emphasized the fact that the reflections cast by the shiny, polished medium are distorted by the irregular shape of the pizza. To him, this represents the idea that culture is distorted and reshaped by the memes that it adopts and transmits.

The Pandemic Paintings

Beginning in 2020, XVALA created a collection called The Pandemic Paintings, representing the period-distinctive aspects of life that spread across the world in a memetic way during the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples include bots, Karens, pizza delivery, and the Kim Jong Un death rumors.

As a result of various factors during the pandemic, the world's wealthiest people, on average, amassed huge amounts of wealth. XVALA expressed this memetic idea of a life of luxury growing from a partial societal breakdown through large, elaborate paintings with titles such as Show Me the Money: Ultra Luxury Edition and GUCCI Gang. The works depicted luxury items and designer goods while maintaining XVALA's typical street art-inspired style.

MAGA hat

XVALA's gold MAGA hat

During the election cycle of 2024, XVALA created a sculpture from a real MAGA hat as part of the Meme Ranch series. He scanned the original cap (which had been signed by Donald Trump), 3-D printed it, then used the printed copy to create a mold. He then cast a bronze copy of the cap and plated it with 24-karat gold. His intention was to combine the general MAGA meme, the memetic form of the cap itself, and the meme of classic bronze sculptures. It is also intended as a response to Maurizio Cattelan's America, a functioning toilet made from solid 18-karat gold. Because the hat is a perfect copy of the original, it, like America, is functional, albeit inconvenient. But while Cattelan envisions America as a place to dispose of waste, XVALA's MAGA cap encourages the viewer to think of America as great.

The work was unveiled at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C.. It has since been displayed at other conservative political events, including the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and an event at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Criticism

Reactions to XVALA's work are wildly varied, but rarely lukewarm. His harshest criticism came during the week following the hacking and release of nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, when he was planning to use the photos in his "No Delete" exhibit. One of the most measured responses came from Haley Blum of USAToday, who wrote, "We get the idea [of the photos being used as art], kind of, but we can't shake the creepiness of it all." More outspoken writers called the idea "the nastiest reaction... tabloid trash", a "ridiculously terrible idea", weak, gross, unoriginal, "stunt art", and one of the angriest called it "a shameless bid for attention and relevance, and probably money... exploitative, opportunistic, misogynistic, voyeuristic nonsense masquerading as art... [and] totally uninteresting". Even then, however, XVALA did have some defenders, albeit sometimes reluctant ones. Lennie Bennett of the Tampa Bay Times pointed out that Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp created highly shocking and even offensive pieces at times too, and that "[it] might be lousy, irritating or offensive, but intent establishes its categorization and the intent of these works is art."

XVALA's work receives accolades, as well. One gallery called his work "dystopian [but with] a future-facing aesthetic to represent both the here and now and all that remains beyond". A reporter on his Bieberbot show said XVALA's work "might make you scratch your head at first, but then it becomes the work of genius". The writer went on to say of one painting, "[It] burned my mind with the shape of aliens and the future yet to come. I think this piece will be important one day." Even the executive vice-president of the development company that was restoring a historic building when it was targeted by XVALA's art said (while also decrying graffiti as vandalism), "We're flattered such an acclaimed artist decided to perform his or her art on our property."

See also

• Imagery of nude celebrities
• iCloud leaks of celebrity photos

External links

• Official XVALA website