Dr. Lakra´s has been exhibited widely over the past three decades, but rarely in New York: this exhibition will be only his second solo show in New York City, after a 2011 project at the Drawing Center.

In White Columns, Dr Lakra will present some recent, never before-seen collages. Throughout his practice, which encompasses drawing, sculpture, collage and tattoing, the artist has created a deeply personal and visionary language out of the collision of his predominant interests in anthropology and popular culture, to create often disturbing works that revel in taboos and myths.

Dr. Lakra is an obsessive collector of objects and all kinds of printed ephemera, a tendency that is evident here (and also in his extraordinary artist’s books). Dr. Lakra draws from this encyclopedic range of found materials and imagery to create his recent collages, which include fragments excised from comic books, vintage anatomy manuals, lifestyle magazines, and much more besides. 

Starting with a found portrait image, typically sourced from a historical volume and of a notable male subject, Dr. Lakra subsequently subverts the original image’s intent – i.e. to celebrate and aggrandize its subject - through an often sardonic reconstruction (or de-construction) of the subject’s identity.

In these collages, Dr. Lakra invokes the ghosts of Arcimboldo, Dada and surrealism while reverberating with the contemporary work of artists as different as John Stezaker, Linder Sterling and Frida Orupabo, among others, crating new ´portraits´that walk the line between comedy and the grotesque.