The Dismembered Visions of P. J. Filder

Let’s get the short biographical information out of the way first. P. J. Filder is a thirty-something originally from a “small white trash central California town” who now lives in LA. Most of his works appear to be paintings, although he does so some writing and video work. He is also part of the Broken Wrist Project.

A couple themes tend to reoccur in his surreal and hallucinatory paintings. The first one is dismemberment. A red devil missing limbs riding a blue deer without hind legs. Various dismembered arms, heads and torsos.

The other is floating objects. The aforementioned dismembered body parts floating in a space filled with abstract scribbles and splotches of color, what looks like vintage children’s book and advertising imagery. Raining cones and grass islands.

Filder’s art can be read as an exteriorization of many of the feelings and experiences we have in this electronic age. The dismembered body parts reminds me of a McLuhanesqe autoamputation, as our organs, limbs and central nervous systems extend through technology and the floating object as the increased lightness and virtualizations of our work, play and relations and interactions, becoming more information transferred between machines than meat transactions.

Though this is no techntopian dream. It’s one that’s bizarre and disturbing, but occasionally awe inspiring in its strangeness.