PASADENA, CA.- Although often pretty and pink, Mark Ryden’s paintings are not for the faint of heart. In his dazzling mix-master universe, symbols of truth and innocence intermingle with signs of adulteration and dark mystery. Wondertoonel opens today at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. It is Ryden’s first solo museum exhibition. Thirty of his paintings, including works from Bunnies & Bees, the Meat Show, and Blood, will be on view.

Among Ryden’s visual spectacles are fuzzy white bunnies ripped in half and gushing red blood; Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ juggling raw meat and parading balloons; and prepubescent girls languidly posing. At once disturbingly funny, nightmarish, and obsessive, this strange vision lands this Los Angeles’ artist squarely in the camp of the Carnivalesque—a strain of visual culture found throughout art history in works by artists including Hieronymous Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, James Ensor, and Richard Hamilton. Mark Ryden’s paintings stand tall in this eccentric canon.

In an atmosphere of revelry and with impertinence towards authority, the Carnivalesque (like the Carnival) encompasses irreverent juxtapositions of popular and elite, spiritual and material, young and old, male and female, daily identity and masquerade guises. But, the Carnivalesque also aims to confront—to show the viewer his or her mortality and that all is not quite right with the world. Laughter is invoked to trigger anxiety. Ryden has said, “Things I find to be ‘strange’ I also often find to be elevating.”

According to the exhibition’s curator Debra Byrne, “Ryden entices by setting the center stage with cotton candy colors, juvenile vixens, and cuddly plush pets. A closer look unearths alchemical symbols, religious and political emblems, traces of past and current popular culture, as well as arcane literary and art references. He reminds us that both purity and existence are fleeting and ephemeral.” His work provides unique and engrossing journeys and thoughtful reflections on culture, time, life, and death.