Wes Lang - The Studio

American artist Wes Lang (b.1972) works with icons within the visual universe of American biker culture, such as pin-up girls, motorcycles and tattoos. From drawings to paintings, motorcycles to Rolex watches, he draws on iconic references to rock n' roll, tattoo aesthetics, life on the road, and American history and uses these in both a personal and a national identity project.

The overall concept of the exhibition is that ARoS is transferring Wes Lang's entire studio - or 'atelier', as he calls it - to the museum. The walls of the large factory hall in LA that Wes Lang uses as his studio are plastered with drawings and objects that tickle and scribble from floor to ceiling in both large and small tableaux pasted together with leftover paint. The walls and the room become giant collages where stains on the floor, playboy magazines and the armchair merge with robed skeleton drawings, Indian paintings, horse hair, flags, flower bouquets or cow horns.

The exhibition gives visitors a unique opportunity to peek into the artist's 'private space', the studio, which has always been surrounded by beliefs and myths. The studio is often articulated as the place where artistic identity is conceived, as the place where art is made. It is where the artist creates and maintains his or her self-understanding, and it is a place where you can experience getting close to both the art and the person behind it, in this case 'Wes Lang'. But it's also a place where the artist, gallerists and other art experts help maintain and reproduce the myths about the artist's role and creative identity.