Bozeau Ortega Contemporary Arts, an online commercial art gallery that sells and exhibits virtual artworks, sent two of their artists to the imageboard of the anarchic virtual hinterland that is 4chan. Specifically, to the unsavory but occasionally hilarious meme generating /b/ forum, for a two-month residency. After, no doubt, witnessing some terrible retina-burning horrors they emerged relatively unscarred and set about created portraits of Facebook users in the MS Paint style beloved of meme artists the world over for a series called Drawing on Anonymous.The result is a series of what look like crudely drawn pictures drawn in a style that brings to mind Beavis and Butthead, warped forensic sketches, and comic books, that they say, “offer a unique melding of the Internets' two competing dynamics: onymous vs. anonymous.” The self-promotion of Facebook juxtaposed with the—sometimes nasty, sometimes arrogant, sometimes raging—anonymity found in comments sections and forums, epitomized by 4chan’s use of anon for every user.You can make up your own mind about what you think of the series, some are above and the rest can be found (and bought) here. But they are in stark contrast to the folk art of the utilitarian rage comics from where they take inspiration, and in their uniqueness, individuality and rigidity they almost become an anti-meme even though BOCA says, “We believe these drawings (devoid, unlike Troll Face or Foreveralone.jpg, of narrow emotional content) thus offer a unique basis for the generation of a potentially universal meme: a meme representative of all the confusing and complex emotions of the human user.”
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