Cool Stuff: Mondo's 'Eyes Without A Face' Gallery Show By Jason Edmiston

The essence of every character is the eyes and nowhere is that better seen than right this moment at the Mondo Gallery in Austin, Texas. Their latest exhibit is called Eyes Without A Face by Jason Edmiston. Edmiston is an unfathomably talented painter who can capture the likeness and emotion of a character in ways you didn't think were possible. He takes that ability to the next level with this show, where he painted the eyes of over 150 different pop culture characters. It's a unique and fascinating exercise to prove you can almost instantly pick out any character, just by seeing a few inches of their face.

And, just to make things interesting, he did each painting in actual size. So King Kong is several feet long while characters from The Lego Movie are less than an inch. Below, find out more about the show, see images from inside and just a fraction of the amazing art in Eyes Without a Face at the Mondo Gallery.

First up, here's a bit of what the gallery itself looks like. You can see it in person through April 4 at the Mondo Gallery, 4115 Guadalupe St. Austin, TX. Photo credit for these goes to Nick Simonite.

And here are just a few close up scans of some of those images. It's truly a remarkable show:

Here's the official info on the show. What do you think of these? Can you pick out who is who?

Mondo presents "Eyes Without A Face," the next gallery show, featuring artist Jason Edmiston and an eye-opening collection of original art based on 1:1 representations of some of pop culture's most iconic peepers. The show will kick off with an opening night reception, open to the public, on March 13 from 7 -10pm and will run during regular hours until April 4. Mondo Gallery is located at 4115 Guadalupe Street in Austin, TX.

"Eyes Without A Face" will feature approximately 150 portraits of eyes culled together from film, music, comics, video games, toys and more. Each piece will be presented ata 1:1 ratio – from tiny plastic toy people, humanoid actors, to giant beasts and more. The concept allowed Edmiston to curate a wide spectrum of characters for the gallery in a way that made thematic sense. Part of the fun will be trying to figure out all 150 characters at the show.

Discussing the genesis of the show's concept Edmiston said, "I had the idea for the show when I was working on my last solo exhibition for Mondo Gallery. I was driving around town with my wife bouncing concepts off of her. I checked my rear view and had the idea. The shape of the mirror made me think of just using a tight cropping of eyesfor the basis of a show. I also kind of wanted to see what it would feel like to be in agallery surrounded by eyes staring at you. It should be quite an experience to stand in the center of the gallery and slowly rotate 360 degrees, creating a feeling of being watched by your heroes."

Edmiston has become well known and highly sought after for his eye-popping and colorful acrylic paintings of pop culture figures. His most jaw-dropping pieces, like The Hand of Ming, have always been incredibly expressive and successful in drawing out the emotion of the character. "Eyes Without A Face" is allowing Edmiston to hone in theeyes, the most expressive part of any body – real or imagined.