What do you get when you put Swoon, Gaia, Dalek, Shepard Fairey, Imminent Disaster, Oliver Vernon, PISA73 and EVOL all in one show? I’m not sure, but it sounds like a recipe for awesome. And that’s just what Irvine Contemporary are doing in DC next month. And remember, Swoon is involved, so it’s not going to be your plain old group show. The show, called Street/Studio, is going to have a gallery component and an outdoor bit as well where the artists cover the alleyways near Irvine Contemporary. Can’t wait to see photos from this show. The only artists I’m doubtful about are Oliver Vernon and PISA73, but hopefully they make it work.
And don’t miss the panel discussion at American University on June 19th with the artists and the curator of Shepard Fairey’s show at the Boston ICA. Hopefully there will be video for those of us who can’t be there.
The press stuff after the jump:
Street/Studio will present works by artists who use the street and urban space as extensions of their studios, and who bring the street and urban sites into their studio practice. Artists include Shepard Fairey (LA), Swoon (NYC), Gaia (Brooklyn), Imminent Disaster (Brooklyn), Oliver Vernon (Brooklyn), James Marshall (Dalek) (NY and Raleigh, NC), EVOL (Berlin, Germany), and PISA73 (Berlin, Germany).
Exhibition Program
Opening reception with the artists: Saturday, June 20, 6-8PM. Preview and viewing exterior installations in progress: Friday, June 19, 1:00-4:00PM. Public panel discussion: Friday, June 19, 6:00PM, Katzen Arts Center, American University.Curatorial Statement
Conceived as a continuous installation of interior and exterior works, Street/Studio will include both the gallery interior space and the exterior walls and alleys behind Irvine Contemporary. This continuous installation will create a unified view of works created as works for a gallery art space as well as exterior public street murals that work with the location of the neighborhood and the urban environment of Washington, DC.Many artists today consider the urban space a source and a site for new artworks equal to art history and the canonized works of art institutions. The generation of artists going through art schools now have never known a world without the artists in the Beautiful Losers group. Warhol and Basquiat are art history; the styles and genres of street art are now part of the story. For many working artists today, it’s not only about appropriating “art history,” but the history of every mark, sign, and image left in the vast, global, encyclopedic memory machine of the city. Even more, the urban environment of mass public spaces, historic and aging built environments, and the walls and surfaces of the streets are seen as an extended art site, a counter-studio, a canvas of practice, a zone for intervention to be worked out and worked with, and then brought back into studio art making. The street and studio continually intersect and presuppose each other. Combining street and studio sources is now a normative practice, not an art form requiring special explanations, exceptions, or taming for the sanctioned institutions of the art world.
Street/Studio features the work of artists who have developed their work in this evolving environment, where boundaries, walls, and physical spaces aren’t limits but variations for interpreting place, location, and space, activities that artists have always negotiated for making enduring statements.
–Martin Irvine
Public Program
A panel discussion on the impact of street art in the contemporary artworld with curators and artists in the exhibition will be hosted by the Katzen Arts Center Museum, American University, June 19, 6:00PM. Invited guests: Pedro Alonzo, Independent Curator (Curator of the Shepard Fairey Retrospective, Boston Institute of Contemporary Art) and visiting artists in the “Street/Studio” exhibition. Moderator: Martin Irvine.