Tim Slowinski is not a realist painter, but his work is grounded in familiar reality; he is not a surrealist painter, but his images are built on ironic juxtaposition; and he is not a pop artist, but his paintings are intensely colored and lampoon smirking American self-satisfaction with an unmistakably popular contemporary tone.

So what is he? These paintings are the product of a young life lived in regimented suburbia, nestled in the heart of a huge family struggling with recent immigration, fear, and the American Dream. Slowinski perceived early on in his life the dichotomy of the happy nuclear family who are all public smiles and private torment, fixing everything with food and worshipping a white collar Christ. His work is the autobiography of an entire nation.

Slowinski paints what he knows, loves and hates. He sticks his hand down the throats of his subjects, and jerks them inside out. The grotesque and terrible inner life of American stereotypes and icons is revealed, debunking assumptions

about the good people at the foundation of American society. He knows what they are made of-shit, sex and aliens; narcissism, capitalism and illiteracy; perversion, anxiety and drunkenness.

His is not necessarily an apocalyptic vision for our culture, however. Revelation, honesty and a sick sense of humor are the weapons he uses in the fight against the frightening monsters advancing in droves from the evil kingdom of Middle America.