Someone terribly clever once said that if you’d put a thousand monkeys in front of a thousand typewriters and force them to hammer the keys for a thousand years straight, eventually one of them will accidentally write the complete works of Shakespeare. Handing us brush and canvas is quite the same: if we scribbled incessantly for, say, a gazillion years, eventually we’d probably produce a perfect version of Guernica. Sadly, there are two catches: first, a gazillion years take way too long. Second, we’re way too lazy.
So for the second batch of our house-brand decks and t-shirts, we’ve once again delegated the creative work to someone who’s way better at producing art than we could ever hope to be: Frankfurt-based artist Marta Espinosa. Marta’s art regularly explores the harrowing beauty of the morbid; as a result, her eerie collages mix symbols of death and decay with symbols of life and creation. If you don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about, just go and watch the first couple of minutes from David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Marta’s work has a Lynchian twist in the sense that it’s defined by dualities: the collage she did for us integrates a blooming rose into the image of a broken, bleeding nose (the latter being a still frame captured from the film The Gates of Hell by the infamous Italian horror movie director Lucio Fulci). Bringing life and death so closely together Marta’s collage emanates an uncanny vibe that is further compounded by the phonetic similarity of “nose” and “rose”, and we love it. We could dig even deeper into the collage’s layers of meaning, but part of the fun of art is uncovering them by yourself. Also, make sure to check out Marta’s other works by following @martaespinosagil on Instagram or by visiting her website.
The Bonkers x Marta Espinosa decks and t-shirts will be revealed during our Nike SB x Bonkers Pop-Up Store opening party on August 19. Come one, come all, and have a beer on us. The artist will be present.
