A Fool's Gold

In his second book with D&Q, Vancouver artist Chris von Szombathy expands on his obsession with advertising iconography and the media at large. He takes the everyday objects around us—like soda-pop bottles, ketchup containers, and hamburger wrappers—and (almost) turns them into things of beauty. In paintings and sculptures characterized by bright, primary colors, von Szombathy has created an ode to fast-food culture and the society that supports it. His imagery veers from simple line work to meticulously detailed pastiche, occasionally with a “Wacky Packages” quality about them. From the crude cartooniness of pieces like “Hotdog Runner” to the skillfully reconstructed day-old doughnut in “The Shape of Things to Go,” the everyday vulgarity of our disposable culture has never looked better.