John O’Connor’s enticingly colorful drawings at Pierogi Gallery’s Chelsea popup take viewers down the rabbit hole into surreal scenarios told with endlessly inventive typography and icons. Here, the eye-grabbing ‘Car Crash’ pictures a fictional multi-car pileup in which cars of lesser value crash into increasingly more expensive vehicles, starting with a Honda Civic and reaching a Lotus and continuing with fictional cars (Dukes of Hazzard, Flintstones). O’Connor explains that the spiraling drawing represents the transfer of kinetic energy from car to car, a stand-in for a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. At the center of this dynamic, pulsing vortex is a worm hole, ready to transport cars, viewers and all into another place and time. (On view at 524 West 19th Street through Feb 10th).
