Strawberry Icing Head

Yosiell Lorenzo’s work fits into that saying: “never judge a book by its cover”. At first glance, his artwork is all cuteness: cupcakes, cherries and candy. But beneath the facade of frosting and the rainbow sprinkles camouflage, a sadness is stirring. Yosiell uses sweetness to reel us in. Once he has us in his saccharine net, we settle and see beyond the surface: these are cheerless creatures. They are all searching for love. The Sicklings are a troop of Yosiell’s recurring characters who are particularly mopey and needy. Rendered in sexless simplicity, the Sicklings function like anthropomorphic feelings: Frustration, loneliness, despair…Often the Sicklings wear masks. Yosiell uses masks as a device throughout his paintings and three dimensional work. The masks represent dual and hidden identities, as well as society’s attempts to label individuals who resist categorization. Yosiell has dealt with these identity issues first hand. As a gay, Puerto Rican artist, he was often told that he didn’t “look gay” or he was a “fake Rican”. Yosiell was introduced to art in his youth during a time when hip hop and graffiti defined urban culture. Growing up in Bridgeport, CT, he’d hop the train to New York and absorb it all. In The toy is based on a rabbit figure with distinctive tubular ears. The origin of the name Dunny came from a combination of street slang and one of the early "Devil Bunny" prototypes. The Dunny is sold in four sizes - 3", 5", 8" and 20". The toy has three points of articulation; a 360 degree rotational head and two arms. An artist card or sticker is also included with the 3" Dunny from a series. Most 3" Dunnys and some 8" Dunnys are normally sold as "blind assortment"; the figure is packaged inside a sealed foil wrapper, such that the buyer is not able to see which figure and accessories they are buying. Sealing the figure prevents people from opening and peeking in the boxes and buying only the figures they want. Most Dunnys are packaged inside a clear plastic bag in addition to the foil wrapper. In the second-hand market, this assures the buyer that the article was never on display and is in a "new" condition. With the success of vinyl toys as a medium for expression, many fans and artists have put their own design onto blank Dunnys.