Pop culture art on display

One wouldn’t normally depict Barbra Streisand with a microphone for a nose or Homer Simpson with donuts for eyes. Artist Hanoch Piven creates his portraits not with brushes or pencils but with common everyday objects, from buttons to banana peels to light bulbs and matches.

Piven has created strikingly accurate caricatures of celebrities from Madonna to Fidel Castro for the past 20 years. A culmination of his caricature career will be displayed at the Skirball Cultural Center until July 18. The free exhibition is called Making Faces: Playful Portraits of People You Know.

Born in Uruguay, Piven lived in Israel until, at age 25, he moved to New York City to attend the School of Visual Arts. Although Piven works in Barcelona, he has been commissioned for his caricatures by such publications as Rolling Stone, Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times.

“A big chunk of my work comes from the United States. I studied in the United States, I lived in the United States for 10 years. The base of my work, the base of my clients, where my career emerged and got started is in the United States,” Piven said.

Looking at Piven’s work, it is apparent that he has mastered the art of “drawing with objects”. Piven creates a collage of common objects that come together to convey meaning and capture his subjects’ appearance and personality.

“A caricature is a portrait with a point of view, with an opinion, with an idea behind it. For me, the way to put my idea and point of view is through objects and my choice of objects … the point of view is built in by the objects that I’m using.”

Using trial and error, Piven says he goes through an average of 100 objects per caricature. The artist’s innovative yet simplistic style allows anyone to pick up a couple of objects and see what he or she can create.

“At Skirball we try to make art a part of everyday life and that’s what his work is all about,” said Tal Gozani, Skirball curator and UCLA alumna. “Both the work that he does, in terms of the portraits he creates, but also the workshops that he leads all over the world. This is really our approach to art at the center, so we wanted to highlight that as well.”

Piven’s style may be easily accessible, but looking at his wide array of caricatures, it is clear that few have Piven’s talent. Unlike the common portrait that captures the subject as is, Piven is able to capture both the looks and the personality of a subject.

“He kind of gets the essence of people in a very simple way which is quite brilliant. He is able to deconstruct their personality or celebrity persona and reconstruct it through everyday inanimate objects,” said Gozani. “I think college students are very much interested in pop culture and I think this exhibition is a fun way to get at pop culture.”

During his two week tour of Southern California, Piven will be visiting universities such as UC San Diego and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He will also be conducting workshops in collaboration with a non-profit organization called Piece by Piece to teach his style of “drawing with objects.” Although Piven is hoping to familiarize himself with Los Angeles, meet new people and get exposure for his work, there is a much bigger picture behind it all.

Piven’s tour is sponsored by the Israeli consulate in an effort to expose Los Angeles to the Israeli culture.

“It was initiated by (the Israeli consulate); he is a top artist in Israel. Our idea is to bring Israeli culture (to Los Angeles) to show the diversity of the Israeli culture,” said the Los Angeles Consulate General of Israel, Jacob Dayan. “We have a lot of amazing artists in Israel, whether it is dance, music or painting. I think that by exposing them to people here it’s really exposing the beautiful face of Israel and the amazing culture we are producing.”