XVALA

Jeff Hamilton (born 1970), better known as XVALA, is an American contemporary artist known for using controversial celebrity images, artifacts, and references in his work and a focus on loss of privacy and other effects of technology on individuals and society.

Personal life Jeff Hamilton was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1970 and graduated from Langston University in 1994. but has worked extensively in Southern California. XVALA had a late entry into the art world, having spent most of the first 15 years of his career on other pursuits.

Identity There is some dispute as to whether Jeff Hamilton and XVALA are one and the same. XVALA has at times claimed not to be Hamilton, or that another artist was using the name, but no other artist has publicly claimed use of the name. However, the link with Jeff Hamilton is fairly well established. There has been some speculation as to whether XVALA is an acronym. However, the name "XVALA" was chosen for its uniqueness. In 2002, it was trademarked by the artist.

Artistic style and influences XVALA frequently describes his own work as belonging to the "Post-PC era". He has produced many types of art, including paintings on canvas, various types of sculptures, graffiti, wheatpasted posters with provocative captions, and more. He uses a variety of media including (but not limited to) oil sticks, acrylic paint, collage, and stencils. His sculptures are commonly made from either a mixture of recycled resin and plastic porcelain or cast metal, He has also been compared to Banksy for his forays into street art. XVALA has said that he is inspired by Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, as well.

Notable works

Cultural Person Jeans XVALA's first public creative work was his venture as a clothing designer. In 2002, he launched a line of designer jeans with Oklahoma City-based clothing designers Cultural Persona. The jeans were worn by a number of performers and other celebrities such as Beyonce. thumb

Mainsite exhibition The first significant public display of his visual art was at the December 2006 "Emergent Artists" exhibit at the Mainsite Contemporary Art Gallery in Norman, Oklahoma. At this event, he displayed four large, mixed-media paintings and several photo-serigraphs, all on canvas, and dubbed his work "tabloid art".

Brangelina house

In 2008, XVALA collaborated with the sculptor Daniel Edwards to build a 4,000-square-foot, $480,000 house in Edmond, Oklahoma,

During construction, XVALA stenciled a pattern of large smiling hearts on the roofing, as well as quotes and facts related to the Pitt-Jolie family (such as their children's names and birth dates) throughout the framing. XVALA later applied artwork to the finished interior walls as well, Media reporting suggested the house would be sold stipulating "honorary ownership" for Pitt and Jolie, allowing them free use of the home upon request when they were in the area. The gesture was a reference to Lohan's actions during a probation hearing on the day before the image was posted, when she had the phrase "fuck u" [sic] written on the fingernail of her left middle finger.

Later that year, XVALA created a stir in Oklahoma City when he painted graffiti on the side of the historic Hadden Hall building. The image was a stenciled face of a chimpanzee with bright pink spray-painted lipstick. It was accompanied by the caption "I'm not trying to be slutty," which was a Miley Cyrus quote.

Around this same period, XVALA was posting salacious images of Cyrus at various locations in Los Angeles. The posters bore the label "FEAR GOOGLE" in large lettering and were intended to illustrate the danger of trusting digital storage or transfer of personal information and images.

Early in 2008, Banksy painted a caveman carrying a tray of fast food on a wall near the historic New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Other graffiti artists, including XVALA, began adding tags and artwork to the site. In 2010, to protect Banksy's work, the area of the wall bearing his art was covered with plywood and then removed, including XVALA's art in the removed section. The section of wall was then taken to a gallery and in 2018 was auctioned.

Fear Google In 2010, XVALA introduced his controversial Fear Google campaign, which he said was meant to "strengthen the ongoing debate over privacy in the digital era" by highlighting the ways in which we expose ourselves to the world, often unwittingly, through the indiscriminate use of technology. The campaign comprised several phases.

Scarlett Johansson The first phase of Fear Google campaign to attrach media attention was XVALA's poster of Scarlett Johansson. In September 2011, nude photos of Scarlett Johansson were hacked and poster online. XVALA accessed the photos by way of a simple Google search. Over the next several days, he pasted poster-sized copies of the images in public areas across Los Angeles with large "Fear Google" stickers covering Johansson's buttocks and breast.

Not Very Well Hung Hangers In November 2011, after XVALA found the home addresses of tech industry pioneers Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey, and Jimmy Wales through Google searches. He then went to each of their homes and took items from their outdoor trash containers for use in making sculptures. He stated that he had "mined" their trash for art like their platforms mine users' data for profit. The mold had been created by the Chinese company M.I.C. Gadget but they were forced by Apple in 2010 and again in 2011 to cease production.

XVALA produced black and white versions of the Steve Job action figures. The black figures, he said, were intended to represent each of the employees who died by suicide in 2010 and 2011 as a result of the extremely poor working conditions at the Apple-contracted Foxconn plant. The figures, titled Think Different, were sold for $150–200 each.

Later in 2012, XVALA took a trash can from Justin Bieber's home and a milk crate from a cafeteria at Facebook, attached them together, and painted them silver to create Bieberbot. The piece was intended to represent the singer as "a monster with technology like Dr. Frankenstein and Google". The work was intended to be visual metaphor about the loss of control of personal data when technology is used indiscriminately. XVALA was quoted in a related interview as saying, "We make our trash public domain, not realizing that our trash defines us more than social media."

"No Delete" exhibit In 2014, XVALA announced his plan to use hacked and leaked nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton at his "No Delete" exhibit in St. Petersburg, Florida. The title of the exhibit was intended to be "a comment on the inability to erase private information from the Internet's collective memory once it is exposed".

XVALA, however, believed that he had the right to display the photos because he had not stolen or leaked them himself, and because he was using them as art and announced plans to exhibit them on canvas. Attorneys also questioned whether XVALA's use of the photos in their unaltered state was transformative enough to qualify as fair use. and prompted multiple protests, petitions, and boycotts. Various celebrities spoke in support of the women whose images were stolen, with Andrew Garfield specifically asking, "What fucking right does [XVALA] have to do that?" and calling the exhibition "absolutely revolting". The exhibit did, however, have some support.

XVALA denied that the exhibit was intended to be exploitative and argued that, on the contrary, it was meant to foster discussion about the nature of fame and celebrity, especially with relation to questions of privacy, security, and content ownership.

Meme Ranch XVALA's most recent focus has been on memes, particularly their origins and impact on society, in an ongoing project titled Meme Ranch. The project consists of a number of collections and individual works.

Big Sausage Pizza A key piece from the project is an 80-pound, solid high-chromium stainless steel sculpture titled Big Sausage Pizza. The sculpture which was made from a mold of an open Pizza Hut pizza box. The piece was apparently inspired by the work of Jeff Koons, particularly the latter's Rabbit sculpture. XVALA has suggested that the reflections cast by the box represent the distortion and reshaping of culture by the memes that it adopts and transmits. Examples include bots, Karens, pizza delivery, and the Kim Jong Un death rumors. To express the idea that the world's wealthiest people amassed more wealth during the pandemic XVALA highlighted increasing luxury from societal breakdown through large, elaborate paintings with titles such as Show Me the Money: Ultra Luxury Edition and GUCCI Gang, combining luxury items and designer goods with a street art-inspired style. It has since been displayed at other conservative political events, including the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Even the executive vice-president of the development company restoring a historic building targeted by XVALA's art said, while also decrying graffiti as vandalism, "We're flattered such an acclaimed artist decided to perform his or her art on our property."