Artist Daniel Bonilla is 34, youthful and athletic, and buried deep in the 1980s.
Although the Washington Heights native was born late in the aughts, Bonilla appreciates all the creative chaos that went into MTV, the 24-hour music channel that “killed the radio star” in 1981. The video era inspired him to conjure up a project at Kuro Kirin Espresso & Coffee in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood.
Owners promised him gallery space on the coffee shop walls between December 2021 through February 2022. Bonilla, a full-time artist, brainstormed on what to make and sell.
He decided to paint a series of split-second images taken from ‘80s music videos, all curated from YouTube. Each piece would feature Home Depot house paint on a square 8 by 8 inch canvas. “It’s what I had around,” he explains of his square composition choice.
For $30, coffee shop customers could purchase one of these works of nostalgia and win a free cup of coffee, any kind of coffee, on Bonilla’s gift card.
“They’re cute,” he says of his renderings. Each took about 30 minutes to an hour to paint, after hours and hours of viewing YouTube. He aimed to finish 74 — “it was a number I picked out of my head” — but completed 48, just before the exhibition ended mid-February.
It’s Saturday, the last day of the exhibition, when I meet Bonilla. Over 6 feet tall, he is dressed in running clothes, a Sanskirt tattoo peeking out from the neck of his sweatshirt. He’s wired, ready to meet the Dyckman Running Club for the weekly long run that starts nearby. He’s also exhausted, having stayed up till 3 AM watching The Tinder Swindler on Netflix with his “girl.” He surveys his work on the white walls, nearly 10 paintings each resembling a mini album cover.
“All of this came because I needed something to put up,” Bonilla says laughing. “One day I was watching videos, and I was like, ‘Whoa.’ I ended up finding songs I actually like. I know the songs of everything here.”
If he’s sad about taking down his art, he doesn’t show it. He springs into demolition mode, hopping onto a wooden bench to reach above the refrigerator. Here, he keeps a black gym bag filled with other paintings, replacements, for when customers make a purchase and the staff need to fill the empty spot.
Ingenious!
As Bonilla takes paintings off the wall to put into the bag, he sings bits from various songs, including Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher.”
“Hot for Teacher” is what made me reach out to Bonilla.
I bought “Hot for Teacher” from Bonilla on Christmas morning because I was bored. No other businesses were open, due to the holiday and fear of the omicron variant. I was also looking for a last-minute present. When I walked into Kuro Kirin, I was greeted with a familiar scene: four guys under a disco ball dressed in salmon-colored prom suits.
I knew that scene and some of the awkward dance moves frozen in time! As a feminist, I am offended by the reference of a teacher stripping for 13-year-old boys. Wrong on so many, many levels.
Yet I’m in my late 40s and have a level of understanding, even appreciation for MTV’s Wild West beginnings. In the ‘80s, I rode my 10-speed bike to my best friend’s house several times a week to watch MTV at her house. She had it. My family didn’t.
Production quality was low in those early videos. Dreams were high. And before Instagram and TikTok, we could focus on one medium. We studied, studied, everything Cindy Lauper or Madonna did. With just one glance, Bonilla’s pictures took me back to my pre-adolescence.
Bonilla’s contact as Artman Dan hung in one corner of the coffee shop. I reached out through email. “Love your paintings,” I wrote in the subject line.
I then proceeded to ask a series of questions, including: What is a nice person like you doing getting all up and into these 1980s videos?” I repeated the same question in another way later on in the email. “Why on earth are you so hell-bent on revisiting the 1980s?
“HAHAHAHA, I'm loving these questions,” he wrote back, adding that the “Hot for Teacher” painting was “super dope.”
Now meeting in person, I introduced myself as his target demographic. And yet again, I asked what made him so obsessed with the 1980s.
“It’s such a cool time I guess,” Bonilla says. “Too much was happening in music.”
“Blondie was never a disco person,” he says while holding a painting of a severely blond woman against a harsh blue background. “But she was into punk rock. Very free and loose.”
Grandmaster Flash, featured on another painting, wowed mainstream viewers, many of them like me who were new to rap. And Guns N’ Roses, represented by a painting of Axl Rose, set a high standard for heavy metal and Reagan-era angst.
One painting, across from the front counter, is a closeup of a green-eyed feline. The title, “Maneater,” makes me slap my forehead. Of course. This is from the 1982 Daryl Hall and John Oats video. Mulleted and permed, Hall & Oats jam in wide-shouldered suits. Their background is a grouping of mirrored pillars, a popular effect of the time.
Daniel’s brilliant rendering captures the exact moment when the woman’s face turns into a real panther’s, just before the saxophone solo.
Another painting, “Mediate,” shows the late Michael Hutchence of INXS holding up worded signs. Another depicts Abba’s “The Day Before You Came,” what Bonilla calls a “sad album” marking the end of their disco popularity — for a little while, at least.
His favorite paintings are “Last Christmas” and “West End Boys,” a nod to British bands like Wham! and The Pet Shop Boys.
Now Bonilla has removed the paintings from the walls. He stacks the canvases and begins adding them to his bag. He sold about 20 and now has to take the rest home. “We don’t have room for this,” he jokes
I’m about to buy one more, Flock of Seagulls’ “I Run So Far Away.” I remember the video as avant garde. Yet my 2022 heart knew it was another video featuring mirrored pillars, like in the “Maneater” video.
Bonilla is thrilled.
If you want to buy one of these visual hits, stay tuned by visiting Bonilla’s website and following him on Instagram.
For now, I leave you with this parting shot of a follicle explosion, as modeled by the lead singer of Flock of Seagulls. Notice all the mirrored pillars!