You can immediately identify a Mel Odom artwork. His vision is as sharp as a plastic surgeons scalpel, mixing bold, sensual figures with extremely delicate details.

Luis Venegas

Mel Odom Gorgeous! presents a selection of paintings and drawings shaped by the American artists desire, a pageantry of bold, sensual figures and pop superstars cast in Odoms trademark precision. I drew who I wished I was, he says, a transplant from the rural South enamoured with the shirtless clones of New Yorks Christopher Street. Edited by Luis Venegas in collaboration with Odom, this monograph spans the entirety of Odoms career to date, charting the evolution from his early commissions for Time and Playboy to his most recent works.

Odoms sensual images are accompanied by reflections from the artist himself taken from an interview between Odom and Venegas, a close conversation between friends that reads as a series of tender epiphanies. Memories of first love and acid-soaked discos are weighted by the loss of the AIDS crisis at its peak, a backdrop for Odoms life in New York and a notable influence on his creations: I thought I was somehow living on borrowed time That tends to make what you do with your time very important. I would do these drawings and know that these were going to remain once I was gone. Once I was dead, this would be what people thought of me.

Mel Odom Gorgeous! faces this legacy with the artists insistence on pleasure, indulging in a lovers touch, a porcelain brow, a celebritys glittery appeal. This monograph, which pairs the hardback design of a traditional artists book with the flair and attitude of a fanzine, is the first in a new series edited by the Spanish publisher Luis Venegas, originally featured in issue #18 of Apartamento magazine.