Category: Gallery/Museum Shows

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Shepard Fairey’s May Day

News is starting to surface about Shepard Fairey’s solo show at Deitch Projects in New York City. Most importantly, the show is called May Day and runs from May 1st through the 29th. This flag piece looks amazing, which is particularly good news since a few other pictures from the show have been surfacing lately, and the portraits that Shepard is painting look to me like he’s just phoning it in.

Here’s the press release:

Deitch Projects is pleased to present May Day, an exhibition of new work by Shepard Fairey, as its final project. Titled not only in reference to the day of the exhibition’s opening, the multiple meanings of May Day resonate throughout the artist’s new body of work. Originally a celebration of spring and the rebirth it represents, May Day is also observed in many countries as International Worker’s Day or Labor Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations coordinated by unions and socialist groups. “Mayday” is also the distress signal used by pilots, police and firefighters in times of emergency.

With energy and urgency befitting the title May Day, Fairey captures the radical spirit of each of his subjects, using portraiture to celebrate some of the artists, musicians and political activists he most admires. Says Fairey, “These people I’m portraying were all revolutionary, in one sense or another. They started out on the margins of culture and ended up changing the mainstream. When we celebrate big steps that were made in the past, it reminds us that big steps can be made in the future.”

Many of the steps Fairey refers to involve the advocacy of the working class, put forth in the songs of Joe Strummer and Woody Guthrie and the writings of Cornel West, and among the works of other heroes portrayed in May Day. International Worker’s Day celebrated in nearly 100 countries throughout the world, commemorates the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago when a peaceful rally supporting workers on strike was disrupted by a bomb, and then a barrage of police gunfire. Because of negative sentiment surrounding the incident, U.S. President Grover Cleveland decided it was best to avoid celebrating the day, but it is precisely such sentiment that Fairey believes must be voiced: “It’s a day to express frustration with the powers that be, but also a day for activists to pursue ideals.” In May Day, he does both, with images supporting free speech and bemoaning the U.S. two party political system, pushing for renewable energy and critiquing corporate propaganda.

In Fairey’s mind, the persistence of difficulties across all of these arenas—political, environmental, economic, cultural—points to that third meaning of May Day: a distress signal. “By now we thought we would be in post-Bush utopia, but we’re still having to call attention to these problems,” he remarks. Like any mayday call, however, the sounding of the alarm also brings hope for help on the way. “If we stay silent, there’s no hope,” Fairey muses. “But if we make noise, if we put our ideas out there, then maybe we can make a change like the people in the portraits have done.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND INQUIRIES ABOUT PURCHASING ARTWORK PLEASE CONTACT

DEITCH PROJECTS
p: 212.343.7300
e: info@deitch.com
www.DEITCHPROJECTS.com

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Roa at Pure Evil Gallery

Roa‘s got a solo show opening at Pure Evil Gallery next month. Should be quite something. Roa’s recent solo show in Paris was practically sold out in less than 48 hours and looked awesome. Oh, and I hear that Roa will be in town for the show, so that pretty much guarantees lots of new street pieces. The guy is super prolific.

Solo Exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery 8th APRIL – 2nd MAY 2010

ROA’s eagerly anticipated UK solo debut opens in London this spring to exhibit his unique portrayal of large scale urban wildlife, disquietly cohabiting city streets, hand painted in his distinctive black and white style.

ROA started painting abandoned buildings and warehouses in the isolated industrial outskirts of his hometown – Ghent, Belgium. Fixating on the animals he found there; the wildlife became the central subject matter of his work, inspired by their clever ability to adapt into scavengers in order to survive. He used the dilapidated, coarse interiors and exteriors of the unyielding landscape as a canvas to portray his large-scale creatures.

Roa filled a vast abandoned warehouse complex of different chambers and exteriors with a menagerie of large-scale animals, creating an impressive spray painted zoo of city scavengers.

His obsession went global when he took to the streets of New York, London, Berlin, Warsaw and Paris, prolifically painting his trademark cross sectioned animals wherever he went, locating them where they naturally invade the main city streets with their quiet yet powerful presence.

Pure Evil Gallery is proud and extremely excited to present a new body of original artwork by ROA this spring, complete with street works in the local area. Look out for a new ROA city fox appearing on a street near you.

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Living Walls

An exhibition and conference focused on street art and its role in engaging public space.

The artwork of 18 infuential street artists from around the world will food the streets of Atlanta as part of a coordinated effort to engage the public via street art. Living Walls, The City Speaks, a conference set to take place on the weekend of August 13, 2010 at Atlanta’s Eyedrum Gallery, has put out an international call for artists to submit posters to three locations on three continents. These posters will ultimately be sent to Atlanta to be wheat-pasted on public walls and at Eyedrum. With many more artists expected to take part in this event worldwide, come August, Atlanta’s urban landscape will have a more vibrant, international feel. Along with changing the urban landscape by fooding the streets with art, the Living Walls conference has set out to highlight a number of problems facing the city. Living Walls is not just a showcase of art, but also an attempt to provoke much-needed dialogue. The organizers of Living Walls have also put out a call for speakers, attempting to provide a platform for local people to speak out about their neighborhoods and the use of public space. The conference will also bring in provocative keynote speakers, like Jordan Seiler of the Public Ad Campaign, famously known for committing the largest single act of anti-advertising to date. Atlanta’s Beltline has drawn the attention of developers and new urbanists nationwide. So much so, in fact, that the largest annual conference on urbanism, the CNU18, is scheduled to happen here in Atlanta in May. Living Walls seeks to provide a counterpoint to the CNU, whose expensive entry fee insures a limited audience of developers and academics. Living Walls is addressed to the public. It is completely free of charge, open to participation, and destined to be a thought-provoking event. In the truest sense, Living Walls is a grassroots colloquium recognizing that local people’s perspectives need to be heard on these issues and not just that of developers. Our intentions are simply to broadcast to the attendees a wide spectrum of ideas about public space. We hope that everyone leaves the event looking at the city, its walls, and how we interact with space differently. Furthermore, we hope to make Atlantans aware that they share challenges with urban dwellers across the globe. More information, along with a list of artists and speakers confrmed for the event can be found on: http://livingwallsconference.com

Check out their Facebook page, Twitter, and website. Should be an amazing event, can’t wait!


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Escif at POW

Escif has a solo show at Pictures on Walls coming up on April 16th. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while and as Escif has promised an installation composed of hundreds of little drawings (including the ones above and below), there will be something for everyone to take home!

Hopefully, he’ll also paint some murals during his stay in London – his outdoors pieces keep getting better, both in technique and originality.

– Elisa

Thanks to Escif for the images.

PS Read Sebastian from Unurth’s first interview with Escif here. Part 2 of their conversation is in the March issue of The Art Street Journal.

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Vertigem: Os Gêmeos in Brasilia

I have no idea why there’s been no noise anywhere about the Brasilia installment of the Vertigem show so far – everything Gustavo and Otávio do is amazing and should be promoted as widely as possible. I’ve been eagerly awaiting pictures to post since February and by the time the show opened on March 2nd, I was busy in New York prepping for our Re-Creation II show. But enough excuses: here are some pictures now, plus two short videos of the twins working on their installation.

The show is up through May 16th if you’re passing through. Let me know if you’ve been and what your thoughts are if so – I’m sure it looks great, but I’m not getting a sense from the images I’ve seen so far of how it compares to the Rio and Sao Paulo shows.

– Elisa

First image by Paulo Vergolino, others by Pablo França, who has a few more pics here.

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Make It Fit

Specter and Various & Gould have a show opening on Saturday at Brooklynite Gallery. The opening is on March 20th from 7-10, and the show runs through April 17th. Specter is one of the most interesting street artists working today in New York, and I can’t wait to see what he has made for this show.

From Brooklynite Gallery:

The concept of “work” can be interpreted in many different ways depending on whom you hit up. Brooklyn-based artist, SPECTER and German duo VARIOUS & GOULD have each located discarded materials, used skill and ingenuity and re-conceptualized things in pulsating ways you might never have imagined.  All this done in effort to turn the concept of “work” on its ear in an exhibition appropriately titled, “Make It Fit”.

Cart-pushers, delivery boys and slave-laborers – take the spotlight in much of the work created by the artist who goes simply by the name Specter. With all of his portraits based on real people living at the bottom of the capitalist barrel, Specter forces the general public to see what they might rather not – those who got left behind. Collecting materials in much the same fashion his subjects do, Specter incorporates shopping carts, bicycles, and crates along with engaging images of your everyday worker, paying special attention to what makes them tick. His work is hand-crafted, retro-fitted, clever and fresh.

For the creative team of Various & Gould the concept of “work” means looking well beyond the vigor of the everyday tasks one has to perform for a paycheck and instead focusing on the surprisingly graceful interaction between a laborer and his tools. Imagine peering into the cut-out holes we often see at a construction site and being exposed to a vibrant world of multi-colored uniforms, enlarged tools and graphic text.  A world where workers trade body parts depending on their needs, moving in tandem while performing their repetitive tasks in a choreographed “workers waltz”.  Using found objects, work related symbols and their refined silkscreen techniques, the line between work and play becomes blurred inside the imaginative minds of Various & Gould.

Brooklynite Gallery is located at 334 Malcolm X Blvd., Brooklyn, New York 11233.  We are open Thursday thru Saturday from 1pm – 7pm or by appointment.  We are located 2 blocks from the A or C subway to Utica Ave. stop.

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Kill Pixie Solo in Brisbane

Kill Pixie/Mark Whalen is one of the most talented Australian artists connected with the street scene, so I’m always interested when he does something new. Brisbane isn’t exactly my favorite city in the world, but I wouldn’t mind making a quick trip there next week to check out Observatory at Edwina Corlette Gallery, which from the preview looks like it will be another great show from KP. It even looks better than his last two shows, and I enjoyed them. Take a look at some of my favorite pieces below (with Kill Pixie, I think the trippier and busier the work is, the better) and, if you’re in Brisbane, head over to the gallery and let me know what things are like in person. I’d like to review it in the April issue of The Art Street Journal.

Here’s a studio shot that helps give a sense of size for some of the pieces.

Pics via Kill Pixie and Edwina Corlette.

– Elisa

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Sneak Peek: Nina Pandolfo at Carmichael Gallery

I’ve loved Nina Pandolfo‘s work ever since Seth and I showed it in our first show here in LA in 2006. Having her as the first artist to exhibit in the new Carmichael Gallery makes the experience of settling into Culver City even more special for me and the work she’s made for the show is her best ever, in my opinion. It’s always so good to see artists you respect push themselves to more innovative usage of media and develop deeper thematic layers within their imagery. Nina’s mural along the main wall of the gallery builds upon the piece she painted for Deitch Projects x Goldman Properties’ Wynwood Walls in Miami (pics here and here) with her husband and brother-in-law osgêmeos and friend Finok, while the piece in the progress shot below is a multi-layered combination of acrylic on linen and glass with metal, light and artificial flowers. “Mixed Media” doesn’t really describe the end result, which is simply incredible; I’ve never seen anything like it before!

Nina has made another of these pieces that, in place of flowers, incorporates little beads that look like candies, plus a piece made entirely from Swarovski crystals, a series of large canvases and three hand-made fiberglass sculptures that are perhaps my favorite works in the show. Here’s a progress shot of one, hanging out with her kitty while her friends were in hair and makeup (if she were a real girl, she’d probably kill me for posting this).

Below is one of Nina’s canvases. Before I post it, I’d like to talk briefly about the connection between Nina and osgêmeos. It’s something a lot of people understandably wonder about, seeing as they’re family and have painted all over the world together for so many years. From my perspective, as a fan of both, it’s the simple magic that exists in their work that draws us in. All three possess an innate ability to transport us to a place that, whilst drawing upon the life we live, is much happier, brighter and devoid of the pressures that so often weigh us down. This place is one we can escape to and immerse ourselves in simply by gazing at their pieces, then come away with a more tranquil understanding of why things are the way they are.

The three Pandolfos are intelligent without affectation, kind without condescension, and positive without pretending that there aren’t things wrong with the world. I think that’s why people are so floored by shows like Vertigem (osgêmeos’ touring exhibit), Too Far Too Close (their 2008 Deitch show), the castle they and Nina painted in Kelburn with Nunca, the Wynwood Walls mural, and what I hope they’ll see in Nina’s show here – these artists touch a very tender nerve in us.

This, for me, is the connection between the Pandolfos, and yet at the same time, I feel their work couldn’t be more different. Nina’s characters and landscape have a very different flavor (that’s actually the title of the show, Life’s Flavor). When I look at what she does, what I admire most is her sophisticated melange of surrealist motifs, craftmanship that is as polished as the best in the Asian contemporary movement, and her passionate acknowledgement of Brazil’s colorful street scene.

Then there are the trademark children who populate her work. Unlike the frankly disgusting amount of work in the world that employs imagery of pretty girls to appeal to the viewer’s erotic fantasies (it’s obviously not hard to understand why this work is popular, but (and I’m no feminist) I simply think it’s wrong and I struggle to respect it), Nina’s presentation of youth and the female form could hardly be more different. Her preoccupation is with the return to innocence, to the core of our natural, dreamlike state. Close to bursting with exuberance, her young figures and their world capture a lightness that exists in all of us, even if we can’t always reach it.

Anyway, if you live in LA or will be in town this weekend, come say hello to us all and see Nina’s work in person at Carmichael Gallery, 5795 Washington Blvd, Culver City.

– Elisa

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There Is No Such Thing As A Good Painting About Nothing

CircleCulture Gallery’s group show There Is No Such Thing As A Good Painting About Nothing opened on Friday evening. The show includes work from three artists: Marco “Pho” Grassi, Holly Thoburn and Katrin Fridriks. Holly knows I’m not her biggest fan, though her paintings are nice as decorative pieces, but Pho’s art is very interesting, and I’ve heard amazing things about what Katrin does and can’t wait to see some of her paintings in person.

From CircleCulture:

A new vanguard emerged in the early 1940s, primarily in New York, where a small group of loosely affiliated artists created a stylistically diverse body of work that introduced radical new directions in art – and shifted the art world’s focus. Never a formal association, the artists known as “Abstract Expressionists” or “The New York School” did, however, share some common assumptions. Among others, artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Mark Rothko advanced audacious formal inventions in a search for significant content. Breaking away from accepted conventions in both technique and subject matter, the artists made monumentally scaled works that stood as reflections of their individual psyches – and in doing so, attempted to tap into universal inner sources. These artists valued spontaneity and improvisation, and they accorded the highest importance to process.

The exhibition “There is No Such Thing As a Good Painting About Nothing“ focuses a comparable artistic habitus finding its provenance in graffiti and street culture. It is interesting to observe, that approximately 70 years later, in the early 21st century, three artists located in different countries developed their work independently from each other as a new form of abstract expressionism. They build upon the paradigms of graffiti writing and street art but distance themselves radically from established clichés. Ultimately, by doing so, they generate an avant-garde direction within the genre of urban art.

Marco “Pho” Grassi (Milan) translates his background as a bomber to his vast abstract paintings by referring to graffiti writing’s traditional elements: the word, the rhythm of the line and a performing dynamism. By recovering elements from the daily life like torn manifestos and wooden pallets he postulates an hommage to the street.

Katrin Fridrik’s (Paris) works bring a third dimension, which modernizes abstract expressionism and reinstates it for our times.  She invents a new pictorial language: the “human-generated” computer images. And she shows us that the human still produces better than the machine.

Holly Thoburn (London) has traveled the world extensively, photographing street art, graffiti, derelict walls, alleys and doorways – all of which find their abstracted way back into her work as themes and motifs of urban living.

Katrin Fridricks
Holly Thoburn
Marco Pho Grassi

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James Jessop at High Roller Society

James Jessop‘s latest solo show, Beauty and The Beast, opens this Friday (March 19th) at High Roller Society in London. I’m very bummed that I’ll be out of the country for the opening of this show (more on that in a few days). Honestly, I don’t care for the painting that HRS has put in the press release, but usually I really enjoy James’ artwork. Demonology and Subway Ghosts are two of my personal favorites. Beauty and The Beast will only have four paintings in the entire show, but James’ paints on a pretty huge scale.

From High Roller Society:

After recent solo exhibitions in São Paulo and Copenhagen, four of James Jessop’s finest works will see their UK debut at High Roller Society, the newest gallery to London’s progressive East end. Titled BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, this solo show reveals Jessop’s trademark style: large-scale spoof horror paintings that present a visual feast of transcribed B-movie posters, 60s sex/sleaze paperback book covers, and 1980s New York subway graffiti. The exhibition launches on Friday, 19 March 2010, with the release of a limited edition 5 colour screen print based on his notorious King Kong painting series.

Jessop burst into the London art scene in 2004 with terrifying impact at Charles Saatchi’s infamous New Blood exhibition which featured an epic 5 metre-long panoramic painting entitled Horrific. Since then, Jessop‘s repercussions have continued with bigger and bolder studio work and a consistently strong dual street presence through his own rigorous dealings in graffiti. “My whole life has been mixing up graffiti with high art,” he states, “the message in my work is to make a painting that has huge impact”. Jessop feeds off of his obsession with certain sub-cultural movements, such as graffiti and drum n’ bass, the energy of which fuels his work, regardless of where it is executed. “It is never ending, I love this way of life, painting everyday, doing graffiti at night… I am living my dream.”

A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Jessop’s energy is nonetheless skillfully controlled and highly focussed. Every minute area in each of his paintings is considered in order to achieve the best visual effects. Varied impasto textures, fluid brush strokes, vibrant colour combinations, and delicate glazing techniques are executed differently throughout each piece, and help to emphasize the texture of every element in the composition. Jessop’s painting approach and many of his intertwined components are clearly influenced by key movements throughout art history such as the Renaissance, the Baroque, and Futurism. Yet, like a B-movie needs junk food, Jessop’s cross-movement style integrates Uni Posca paint pens, spray-can effects, and the familiarly bizarre imagery of popular culture.

Jessop’s big-screen works were recently part of the Animals Contemporary Visions exhibition held at the Martini Arte Internazionale in Turin, where he was subsequently invited to be the 2010 Artist in Residence at the Cultural Centre Cesare Martini, in Cavagnolo, Italy. Before undertaking this venture later in the year, James Jessop’s frightfully astonishing selection of works to date will be showcased at High Roller Society until 24 April.