Punk Rock Bedroom

Punk Rock Bedroom Exhibition Catalog
Author: Bob Rob Medina
Editor: Sonny Kay
Pages: 72/120 lb paper
Full-color
Robot Enemy Books

Punk Rock Bedroom is an installation piece that features a collection of fifty new ink drawings that center on the use of lines and color to transcribe and express music in a visual format. The setting replicates a typical punk rocker's bedroom from the early eighties. In addition to furniture, the space will also include ephemera from that era, such as flyers, music, clothing, and essays. The first-person narratives reflect the influence of friends, family, bands, films, and personalities within the music scene that helped shape my teenage experience.

In the summer of 1981, between sixth and seventh grade, my best friend, Jimmy Lopez, returned from visiting family in Southern California armed with several mixed tapes his cousin had made him. Jimmy asked me if I liked punk. I offered a blank look; I had no idea what he was talking about. Once he hit the play button on his living room stereo, set the trajectory of my life.

It's fair to say that Punk Rock Bedroom is a homage and tribute to the people of that era in my life. Furthermore, this project is dedicated to the folks who documented the music and scene through a lens. Their photographs captured the uninhibited nature of those creating and responding to the music. Those pictures on album covers and in pages of fanzines were a portal into a world that felt out of reach living in middle America. Desperately wanting to experience those captured moments firsthand, Jimmy and I obsessively poured over and vicariously lived through those images.

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