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REVIEW: BLACK RUST
Reviewed by Jonathan Ellis

Click For Larger ImageBy Chad Michael Ward
Mature Readers
9x12, 96 Page full colour trade paper back.
U.S $18.95, Published by NBM
ISBN 1-56163-363-1

This is the first for me, as it's the first time I've ever reviewed an art book. Along the lines of SPECTRUM or a BILL SIENKIEWICZ collection, BLACK RUST is a luscious gallery of various conceptual symbiotic images. Rather then jump into the book I should tell you about the artist, Chad Michael Ward.

Chad is a Los Angeles based artist whose work has appeared in numerous magazines including SKIN TWO, SPECTRUM, TATTOO SAVAGE, CARPE NOCTEM, GALLERY, DARK REALMS and THE THIRD ALTERNATIVE. He has also done album art for several music groups including Collide, The Blank Theory, Soilwork, Pissing Razors, Naglfar, and Darkane.

I want to describe his style as a mix of Ashley Wood and Richard Kern but it really is so much more then that. Chad draws from a variety of influences, from a number of era's, art styles, and stimulus. Everything from Bettie Page to The Creature From The Black Lagoon is evident in just a few images of his work, as is Giger, Paul Booth, the original Bizarre Magazine, Bela Lugosi, a steampunk version of Heaven and Hell, futuristic movie posters telepathically e-mailed into the present, and it wouldn't surprise me if you could group the bible in there as well. Even still, these few influences only begin to scratch the surface of his work. You'll find it very easy to become jealous of this man.

I want to see Chad profiled on KINK. I want to see Chad send nuns to confession. I want to see Chad spit digital ink, and I think most importantly, I want to be a fly on the wall during one of his photo sessions.

The contents of this book range from cyberpunk to urban angels, dying gods to warrior peasants, the grotesque and intensely beautiful all in one. It's been a while since I've been so enthusiastic over a single artist, but Chad has a unique eye for splendour and an artistic ability so intense it threatens to burst forward and bleed across gallery walls.

BLACK RUST is not a story, except it is, but it sorta isn't. BLACK RUST is a fractured juxtaposition of the inventive desires that leak from the grail that is Chad's head. It's FAUST and PARADISE LOST and a thousand other works but without the words... so why buy it?

Because it's fucking pretty and because I fucking said so.

Ya Fuckers.

This collection has been a long while in it's culmination, I'm glad to see it here.

RECOMMENDED.

And as a bonus treat, More Preview Pages!

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Jonathan Ellis is Co-Editor in Chief for PopImage


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