JUXTAPOZ 2

Juxtapoz Vol. 1 No. 2 from Spring 1995 feels like the magazine fully discovering its strange heartbeat, blending pop surrealism, underground photography, skate culture and psychedelic art into one beautifully disoriented package. The issue is stacked with future lowbrow icons, including Mark Ryden whose eerie dreamworlds of rabbits, children and psychological unease already feel completely formed here, and Spencer Tunick capturing naked bodies flooding city streets like living installations. Hope Urban’s writing threads through the issue with a sense of wonder and weirdness, while Aaron Rose’s interviews give the whole magazine the feeling of a downtown conversation drifting between galleries, skate spots and all-night diners.

The issue digs deep into the roots of underground American art culture through tributes to psychedelic legend Rick Griffin and a revealing interview with Mike Kelley, whose obsessions with stuffed animals, UFO paranoia and suburban trauma perfectly match Juxtapoz’s fascination with damaged Americana. Michael McMillen’s miniature installation worlds, Rita Ackermann’s fragile chaos and Lance Dawes’ aerosol art coverage push the issue further into outsider territory, while Ed Templeton and Isabel Samaras appear in the exhibition section before becoming defining figures of alternative art culture themselves. The whole magazine feels handmade, unpredictable and deeply connected to a moment when skateboarding, punk, comics and fine art were all mutating together in the same underground ecosystem.

Small tear on seam.