(Photos: Angelica Frey)
If you thought Bronies were ruining My Little Pony, wait till you see Wizard Skull’s new show at Cotton Candy Machine.
The Brooklyn-based artist took original 16” x 12” animation cels depicting the innocent, puppy-eyed characters of your youth and put them in racy situations by adding drawings of his own. Yes, that’s Incredible Hulk sodomizing Pikachu from Pokémon.
Wizard Skull (who says he goes by the name because “I don’t want anyone to know who I am”) got his start making zines with acetate covers, and creating art on acetate-covered McDonald’s bags. “I started buying the animation cels because I wanted to take the actual things I was referencing and grew up watching and inject my own art directly onto them,” he writes in an email.
Original cels can be hard to get hold of, since collectors drive up the prices — but Wizard Skull isn’t necessarily looking for the prized ones where He-Man or Fat Albert are front and center. “For me, it’s best if the character is off to the side, giving me space to add my own things into the cel,” he says.
When it comes to choosing which characters to use, he pays attention to “the expression of the character in the original — that gives me something to create a reaction to,” he says. In one work, a pair of Care Bears seem a little freaked out by a twerking companion who resembles a fluffy Nicki Minaj.
This isn’t the first time Wizard Skull has tweaked pop-culture icons to outrageous effect: prior to “Re-Animator,” he created a series called “The Mutations of Pop Culture,” turning Super Mario, Mickey Mouse, Snoopy and Spongebob into creepy mutants.
And his hunky Ronald McDonald — who also appears in this series — is plastered all over Williamsburg.
Why would he give Ronald the beefcake treatment? According to Wizard Skull, “Burgers make you strong, fries make you sexy.”
“Re-Animator” through Nov. 20 at Cotton Candy Machine, 235 S. 1st St., Williamsburg