DJ LEON: SUPERMAN, BATMAN, AND THE AMERICAN WAY: A ten year retrospective

6 November - 19 December 2020
  • Madelyn Jordon Fine Art is thrilled to present Superman, Batman, and the American Way a 10-year retrospective dedicated to artist DJ Leon, from November 6th through December 19th, 2020. The exhibition will explore the remarkable trajectory of the self-taught artist whose complex, thought-provoking compositions explore our national love for superheroes and American cultural icons. 

  • DJ Leon, Superman: Truth, Justice, and the American Way, 2013

    DJ Leon

    Superman: Truth, Justice, and the American Way, 2013

    (This is a lenticular print. Click the image to see the work in action.)

  • Superman, Batman, and the America Way will survey the 10-year evolution of DJ Leon’s work since retiring from Wall Street in 2009 and transitioning to a second career as an artist.  Included in the exhibition will be 15-20 works representing the various mediums in which Leon works – photography, collage, lenticular prints, and 3D digital prints. 

  • 3D BACKLIT PRINTS

    Click for video and 3D images
  • The Process

    DJ Leon's intricately crafted collages dissect and reexamine American Culture.  His time consuming process begins with appropriating, curating, and combining hundreds of found images into collage format, adding proprietary images, text, and commercial memorabilia to the finished piece.  The next steps include transformation of the image into his preferred format.  Focusing on multigenerational symbolic icons such as Batman and Superman, Leon offers an exploration into our national nostalgia, the phenomenon of personal experience, and the translation of memory into image.

  • DJ Leon

    Gotham City, 2015

    3D Backlit digital print 

    28 x 45 in.

    (Click for 3D images)

  • DJ Leon, Superman, 2013

    $2,500.00 (Click on image to see details)

    DJ Leon

    Superman, 2013

    “I believe my art is summed up by what the great musician Sly and the Family Stone wrote in the song---'It’s all about everyday people,” said Leon. “Collage themes are originated inside my head primarily with things I think people enjoy talking about, things that create controversy, and things that are meaningful to me and are identified as American icons.”

  • Dye Sublimation Prints on Aluminum

  • Lenticular and 3D Works

    The multi-sensory, interactive experience of Leon’s practice is heightened in the Lenticular and 3-D works, which create composite, animated images, made by the superimposition of lenticular screens.  Lenticular images move as the spectator shifts his position, creating an illusion of movement.  The lenticular technology activates Leon’s fluid, unexpected image bank, engaging the viewer in the production of meaning of the piece.

  • Click on the images to see them in action!
  • Each thematic work contains interlacing aphorisms, cultural adages and disjointed phrases, creating a new narrative that allows for humorous and revealing reflections on ourselves and society.

  • DJ Leon

    Superman...It's a Bird, it's a Plane, 2015

    Lenticular Print

    24 x 36 in

    (Click to see more images)

  • Biography

    Born in 1948, DJ Leon graduated from Boston University and spent 38 years on Wall Street before devoting his time exclusively to a photo-based practice in 2009.  Although not formally trained, Leon is a longtime avid photography enthusiast and art collector.  Over the past decade, his artistic practice developed into multiple forms, from making images with a camera, to combining images into collages, and then altering them into 3D and Lenticular prints. Since 2012, Leon has exhibited his work throughout the United States as well as internationally.  Recent exhibitions have included American Embassy, Ankara, Turkey, Madelyn Jordon Fine Art, Scarsdale, NY, Lawrence Cantor Gallery, Los Angeles, Scope Art Fair, Art Miami/Context, Miami and New York.  His work is included in the Superman Museum, in Metropolis, Illinois, as well as in private and corporate collections across the United States. Leon’s beach and lifestyle photography, a separate and distinct body of work, has also gained significant recognition, and has been exhibited nationally including at Surf Lodge, Montauk, and Market Art Fair, Bridgehampton. 

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