Meet Michael Reyes: Lowbrow Pop Surrealism Artist, Writer & Musician

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michael Reyes and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michael, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
It’s hard to answer that question because it’s a bit like asking me why I choose to breathe or walk. It’s kinda like the way a Green Lantern is chosen because the ring understands they’re able to handle the burden of that power and latches onto them. Art is a spiritual mind virus that has completely overpowered my will or ability to do anything else in life other than feed the monster that is a creative mind. If choosing to pursue a creative career was a choice, no one in their right mind would ever choose it. You’ve gotta have a few screws loose to be deluded enough to pursue non-commercial art.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?

My career as an artist is just the latest creative burst from a sentient space bacteria species growing on a molten grain of sand in the deep vacuum of space, experiencing a shared hallucination passed down for thousands of years. I’m really not sure what separates me from other artists, but maybe the content? It’s not often you can look at a piece of art and see Guy Fieri euphorically waiting in line to be guillotined for his crimes against humanity alongside a man with a toilet for a head shooting Adolph Hitler’s face off, among literally hundreds of other fiends stabbing each other’s guts out, chugging whiskey and smoking DMT with a family of tuxedoed raccoons.

I can say I’m really proud of how far I’ve come in my lifelong attempt to create a visual representation of what it’s like inside my broken ass head at all times. I’ve got a long way to go but I make such substantial leaps every year that I can almost guarantee there will be a definitive point in my art career where I can accurately portray the visionary part of my brain, which is picking up way more channels than anyone’s ever should.

Without getting too into detail about whatever hellscape I’ve lived through, because I find it absolutely gratuitous when an artist can’t stop spiritually masturbating about their suffering as if every single other person on the planet doesn’t experience pain and loss at some point, I will always be grateful that I got tired of destruction before it was too late. At some point, I realized I’d lost my way, and decided to stop touching hot stoves and expecting different results. The lightning bolt did strike, but I also reached for it, and in a singular moment I couldn’t believe I’d wasted so much time. I’ve been an artist for as long as I could walk, but I lost that part of me for too long. It was like Robin Williams in Hook, where he suddenly remembers he’s fuckin’ Peter Pan, and he starts fucking everyone’s shit up, and then he chops Dustin Hoffman’s fuckin’ head off and leaves it in his widow’s bed. Or something like that. Maybe I don’t remember that movie very well.

Anyway, if you’re reading this and you’re an artist hellbent on giving authoritarianism a baseball bat to the dick, as in you won’t ever get your fix unless you bash the living shit out of some right-wing, white supremacist power structures during your human trip, I need you to take a minute and really take these words to heart because your work is too important to not realize your vision.

There is no time to waste.

There are people that will see that you’re doing something important, and they will compulsively try to jam a stick in your bike spokes out of a pathological need to sabotage others. Streamroll the fuck out of them and anyone else that gets in your way and get to it. If your friends aren’t hyping you up to everyone as the next coming of Christ in the art world, are they even your friends? Get new friends that recognize your ability, because you can’t do it on your own. We need you more than ever.

The last thing I’ll say is that it’s not going to happen unless you make it happen. Discipline doesn’t just happen one day, and if you didn’t already know, you’re in a competition against people with far more discipline, resources, connections, time and money than you. You might hit the lottery and your opportunity might show up, but if you didn’t do the work, you didn’t become disciplined like Batman tripping balls with fuckin’ ninjas in the snowcapped mountains, you never skipped some nights out getting drunk to stay home mastering your craft, guess what? You won’t be able to do a god damn thing if that opportunity actually arrives. You’ll see the train, but it’s too late to go back and get your ticket. Do everything you can in life to get that ticket, because chances are the train probably won’t come, but if it actually does? Do you want to be that jackass mumbling about what you could’ve been every time you have too much to drink? FUCK. THAT.

Chances are you’re like me, and you want Art to know that you were here, and went as hard as anyone ever could.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.

Barney’s Liquor on Monte Vista and Avenue 50.

York Square Liquor.

Any other liquor store where they still sell $1 tallboys and loosies.

The Offbeat.

Dino’s Burgers in Lincoln Heights.

The sketchiest Punk/Metal show we can find in South Central.

La Cita.

Jumbo’s Clown Room.

The Short Stop.

One of my Art shows.

LAPD Metropolitan Division Station on Temple.

The nearest Arco that sells black coffee.

Passages Malibu.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I probably owe the good folks of the Catholic Church the most for teaching me such predatory ass backwards ideologies and behavioral patterns before I was old enough to recognize indoctrination and problematic belief systems. Without them I’d likely have learned how to properly function in society and would be designing canned food labels for some corporate asshole’s Poison of the Week instead of drawing elaborate cartoons of Ronald Reagan and the Reverend Jim Jones getting their heads ripped off and intestines chewed up by demons in hell. Consider us square in the eyes of God, Pope Francis.

I also owe Iggy Pop for that set at FYF in 2017 where I got his sweat on me, M**ntribe, and that MSTRKFT show in Downtown LA that blew out my hearing for a week.

*Shoutout to Reptilian shapeshifters, for choosing to prop up my art career through low stakes money laundering operations.

*Extra special shoutout to my favorite verse in the Holy Bible that has gotten me through dark times, the abortion recipe from Numbers 5:23-28 which states:

“23 The Priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. 24 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. 25 The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the Lord and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse.”

Powerful words to live by. I think of scripture often.

All human behavior is a coping mechanism for dealing with the knowledge of our own mortality, are you coping well?

Website: instagram.com/culturallyhandicapped

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@culturallyhandicapped