Talenthouse

working on portrait of a musician who s a friend of mine

Location Switzerland, Kanton Basel-Stadt, Basel

Bio David Levi Onica (*February 25th, 1961 in Jacksonville, Florida) is a well-known graphic designer, artist and photographer, who had his greatest career highlights in the 1980s. Between 1987 and 1991 he spent a lot of time with the notorious literary brat pack surrounding Bret Easton Ellis and Mark Lindquist. This is when his excessive lifestyle started to become a major influence on this work. He often spent many months in several drug rehab centres but never finished a single program in these clinics. The novel “American Psycho“ and its success marked a turning point in David Onica's life. After its publication in 1991 he started to paint again. In this novel the writer Bret Easton Ellis gives a detailed description of Onica's painting “sunrise with broken plates“. After an almost four year long break Onica started selling individual prints of “sunrise with broken plates“. He finally managed to recover financially but the critics didn't praise his work at all. The artistic taste has changed over time and what used to be called “purposefully superficial“ in the 1980s was now called “clumsy“. In the following ten years David Onica spent his time looking for relatives in Switzerland, Romania and even in Israel. After the major success of “American Psycho“ dozens of art students travel to Onica's new home in Basel (Switzerland) were they find the art group ONICAINE (the spokesman of this group was Julien Schneid, who would soon become his manager). Officially Onica teaches the students in art history and practical art but former members of ONICAINE speak of sect conditions with absurd songs and surreal costume parties. There are even reports of Action Painting sessions which often crossed the line between art and sexual exploitation. David Onica sells his work on eBay since 2004. His favorite model at that time (2004-2007) was Gio, a young man from Milan. Onica often portrayed him in the style of hyperrealism in oil and acryl on canvas. The artworks were photos in high resolution. Since 2008 David Onica works as a designer of CD covers (the cinnamint monkeys-“mentalismo“, 2008) especially for the independent and underground industry. He also works on various film projects as art director for music videos, as a storyboard artist for independent movies and even as a creative consultant on short film projects, probably in order to reach a new, younger audience. (Yoram M. Bloomberg, Author of the unpublished biography: \"David Onica - Fragility Of Superior Talent\")

Influences Andy Warhol, Majid Farahani, Greg Simkins, Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella, Klaus Kinski, Salvador Dalí, Acid, Gottfried Helnwein, Cindy Sherman, Cocaine