Dr. Lakra
Born in Mexico City, 1972
Lives and works in Oaxaca, México.
Dr. Lakra is an artist and tattooist with a style distinguished by often flippant and seductive images that disregard the status quo, confronting the spectator in a space between attraction and disgust. Although he is best known for intervening by painting or drawing directly onto his extensive collection of found posters, erotic magazines and postcards, his practice expands to mural painting, tattooing, collage and sculpture, through which he explores a keen interest in anthropology and ethnography. Framed by an obsession with taboos, fetishes, myths and rituals of different cultures, his configurations bring together historical references with more contemporary images, entwined with various sources of religious and social iconographies to depict a wide variety of content. The manner in which he juxtaposes and reimagines the disparate elements that come to form the final piece reveals his deep understanding of the history of art, as well as his subversive sense of humor. Focusing on the comparison of the new and old, his themes often include vulgarity, religion, evil, repression, sex, and violence.
Dr. Lakra’s solo exhibitions have taken place at Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (IAGO), Oaxaca, Mexico; Kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Mexico; Museo Mario Testino MATE, Lima, Peru; White Columns, New York, USA; Akvarelle Museet, Skarhamn, Sweden; Museo de los Pintores (MUPO), Oaxaca, Mexico; Hostelbro Kunstmuseum, Hostelbro, Denmark; Nils Staerk Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK; Museo de la Ciudad de México, Mexico City, Mexico; marco - Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico; Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico; The Drawing Center, New York, USA; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, USA; among others.
His works are held in the public collections of the MoMA, New York, USA; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA; among others.
Images 1 & 2: Installation view, Dr. Lakra, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico, 2011. Images 3 & 4: Installation view, Dr. Lakra. Monomito, kurimanzutto, Mexico City, 2015. Images 5 & 6: Dr. Lakra, Museo Mario Testino MATE, Lima, Peru, 2016.
