DABS MYLA: MIDNIGHT FANTASY is an eye-poppingly vibrant monograph that takes you inside the world of Dabs Myla, a collaborative duo that spends every waking moment conjuring joy with a brush and a spray can, inspired by their life as a married couple, their perpetual travel around the world, and the beautiful pandemonium of everyday experience. With an introduction by street art historian Roger Gastman and an essay by Amanda Erlanson, and featuring 122 color plates, including many vivid photographs spanning the book’s entire 22-inch spread, this sumptuous volume showcases an impeccably curated selection of Dabs Myla’s paintings, art objects, gallery installations and murals. Each turn of the page brings a fresh evocation of the unique blend of passion, playfulness and virtuosity that distinguishes the work of Dabs Myla as unparalleled in its field.

About the artists
Melbourne natives Dabs Myla have lived and worked in Los Angeles since 2009, when they fell head over heels for the city’s glorious weather and superlative donuts. Inspired by travel, food, cartoons, graffiti and the wonderful chaos of their life together as a couple, their paintings juxtapose Dabs’ mischievous and sometimes ribald characters with Myla’s meticulous cityscapes, innovative fonts and playful patterns. Dabs started painting graffiti in 1995, and began teaching Myla the ropes of writing about ten years later, after they met while studying illustration in art school and fell in love. Soon afterward, they decided they preferred their collaborative pieces to their individual work, and from that point on, they worked together exclusively, as Dabs Myla. Ever since their move to California, their schedule has been booked solid with gallery installations all over the world. Outside of galleries, their artistic output includes poster designs for bands including Blink 182 and Pearl Jam, marketing concepts for brands like Adidas and Sanrio, and collaborations with the legendary Seventh Letter artist collective. In recent years, they have been invited to paint walls in places as diverse as Rio de Janeiro, London, Detroit, Norway and Tahiti, but wherever you might find them, there is one thing you can always depend upon—Dabs and Myla will be side by side, savoring whatever life sends their way.

About the authors
Amanda Erlanson is a writer, art collector and editor of the art blog Erratic Phenomena. She grew up in backwoods New Hampshire without electricity or television, her nose buried in dusty old books, where she discovered a passion for Golden Age illustration. While slacking off from her job shelving books in the art history library of Dartmouth College, she learned most of what she knows about art. After earning her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth, she headed west to pursue graduate studies at California Institute of the Arts. She now lives in Los Angeles, where she divides her time between the entertainment industry and the art world, and delves into the hearts and minds of her favorite artists through her exhaustively researched interviews. Recently, she co-authored the books Andrew Hem: Dreams Towards Reality, Edwin Ushiro: Gathering Whispers, Chris Berens: Mapping Infinity and Heroes & Villains, and contributed essays about Mark Ryden to his Rizzoli collection The Gay ‘90s and his massive Taschen monograph Pinxit.

Roger Gastman began writing graffiti as a teenager in Bethesda, Maryland, and later parlayed his love for it into a legitimate career, becoming a trusted mediator between the underground art scenes and mainstream culture. He founded and published two respected pop-culture magazines—While You Were Sleeping and Swindle (co-publisher with Shepard Fairey)—as well as more than 30 highly sought-after art books. Gastman served as consulting producer for Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop, which earned an Academy Award nomination for best documentary. In 2013, HarperCollins released Gastman’s The History of American Graffiti—the definitive story behind the most influential art form in the last 100 years—and Jeffrey Deitch asked him to co-curate Art in the Streets at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, which is the first comprehensive U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art. He curated PUMP ME UP: D.C. subculture of the 1980s at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2013 and produced the companion documentary narrated by Henry Rollins, The Legend of COOL “DISCO” DAN, an educational film about D.C. culture and their most prolific graffiti artist.

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