It’s a bit of a chilly night on Hollywood when I stumble into the narrow, pockmarked concrete alleyway leading to De La Barracuda, a trendy upscale salon/clothing store/art gallery on Melrose (ah, you gotta love L.A.). An eclectic bunch stands gathered on the back patio — hipsters, hip-hoppers and hippies alike, interweaving under umbrellas and climbing over tables, Red-Bulled vodkas in hand. It’s almost as if all the high school cliques you avoided have banded together just to witness a truly multi-talented artist who adequately captures the edginess of their generation. Which makes sense: just judging by the amount of visitors and gawkers, Michael Lau looks to have tapped the mainstream pulse in a huge way.

It’s a body of work that extends back over more than a decade, and is comprised of a staggeringly diverse blend of mixed media: paint, from acrylics to oils; every conceivable pencil, from mechanical to plain ‘ol #2; markers, from sharpies to Prismacolors. And of course, plastic and vinyl– his weapons of choice for making those infamous Gardener figures. It all helps retain Michael’s visionary approach, and a one-of-a-kind conglomeration of East-meets-West style.

Speaking through a translator, Lau says that the pieces and figures comprised “10 years worth of work. I began these pieces in 1999.” Encased in glass and placed on wooden stands on the pebble floor, I glance over rows of assorted thugs, hoods, skaters and snowboarders posing, reclining, standing on their heads. “I constructed action figurines out of parts of action figures,” adds Lau. In a Frankenstein-type manner, Mr. Lau would literally mix-and-match figure parts. He looked to classmates and acquaintances for inspiration, modeling his figurines’ wardrobes based on friends’ respective clothing styles. “In 1999, there was a big boom in street culture in China,” Michael explains. “This was when the Western hip-hop style and fashions were moving to the East.”

A series of comic strips, created by hand, ink and marker and without the aid of computer graphic design programs like Photoshop were among the exhibition’s most impressive, and possibly overlooked, features. Here Lau has mixed ink and marker with penciled drawings and comic book panel layouts, many of them presented collage-style and with different photographs. Looking at the comic drawings, I noticed that a major component– the comic book word balloons– were empty. Michael laughs.”I drew those for a major magazine,” he says. “And they might have wanted to put something in there.”

“I constructed the 12-inch figurines out of plastic,” says Michael. “Pretty difficult to make. And then a series of smaller, six-inch figurines out of vinyl.” Many of these figurines are already highly-prized collectors’ items, worth–believe it–almost a grand each.

In addition to the 100+ collection of figurines, assorted comic drawings, and character sketches, there’s a variety of paintings lining the back walls of the gallery. Lau says this is how he began– from traditional roots and technique. Many appear to be well-proportioned, gesture-based drawings which highlight Lau’s technical discipline and closely resemble his cartoonish character designs. A few of the others appear to have been painted particularly in oils and acrylics, or whatever Michael seems to have– they’re almost Pollock-esque abstractions, with the paint draped and slathered anarchically across his huge canvases.

Some of the figurines looked almost demented in their caricatured appearance: the Prefontaine-ish, handlebar-mustached long distance runner; Jex, the inked and tattooed meathead taking a picture of his unnaturally long penis with a tiny, painfully-constructed camera, cigarette hanging from between his lips. Then there’s the demonic-looking caricature figurine of Barack Obama, which creepily resemble Shepard Fairey’s famous propaganda-styled paintings.

Overall it seemed to be a hugely successful night for Lau, who celebrated the gallery opening with both family and a few intimidating bodyguards hovering around him– I guess at over $500 a figure, there’s a reason for them…

Words by Jeff Nau, Photos by Sidney McMullen