Calvin Marcus

Narrator: In these paintings, Calvin Marcus intentionally creates five very distinct narratives, which we’re left to tease out for ourselves.

Calvin Marcus: It's really supposed to be this disjunctive thing where you actually have to interpret each painting as a complete world. And then as you move on to the next one. It's this jarring shift to a completely different place and sentiment, and theme.

It's like this unobtainable desire for every painting to be suggesting a new direction, and instead of actually following each path, it starts and stops with each painting. And then you're forced to deal with another narrative.

The one of the donkeys in the circle at night is called the Conspiracy of Asses. It's about these creatures having an awareness, and a desire to conspire in the middle of the night. The painting is supposed to be this outside observer peering in on this mysterious happening.

The car windshield is like an apocalyptic painting, because of the representation of the red is supposed to be like this world on fire space. But I intentionally painted it in this Ed Ruscha style―I guess Los Angeles-style painting.

The alien flipping the quarter is supposed to be essentially discarding the currency because he has no use for it, in the sense that he's from another planet.