Ric Ocasek

Teahead Scraps marks Ric Ocasek’s first art exhibition in New York and features never before seen drawings selected from a body of work that spans the last 30 years. Like the music of his beloved rock band The Cars, his drawings are unabashedly pop- and yet unlike his music’s super sleek veneer, these works are a bit more raw and unedited, revealing meditative moments of a Zen-like drawing practice. Never intended for public view, these works on paper are fluid and unselfconscious abstractions made with colored pencils, pens, and markers. Ric’s spontaneous, rhythmic mark-making is completely musical and explores repetition and patterns with psychedelic colors and sinuous lines.

While The Cars as a band were perhaps the perfect embodiment of pop art and pop music (Andy Warhol even directed an amazing Cars video), the art of Ric Ocasek can easily be seen as another extension of this union by one of its pioneers and constant practitioners.

Ric Ocasek is an artist, musician, writer, and former vocalist and guitarist for The Cars. He has produced countless records during his career including seminal releases by such pioneering bands as Suicide and the Bad Brains as well as pop sensations such as Weezer and No Doubt. He currently lives and works in New York.

I saw his show at Cinders Gallery on Havemeyer St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

by Monica Casanova