For sheer fun, few exhibits I’ve seen this summer surpass “Cause and Effect” at 211 Franklin Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Curated by UR New York (2ESAE & SKI) and Tone MST, it features works in various genres by a range of artists whose works are seen on NYC streets. Graffiti and street art meet here and fuse seamlessly – sometimes within the same pieces. Here are a few more images:
The exhibit continues through August 22nd.
Photos by Lois Stavsky
Deep In The Cut, the two-man show with Joe Iurato and Chris Stain, opened last week at Mighty Tanaka in Brooklyn. It runs through September 7th.
As recently as June both artists worked within eyeshot of one another for the Welling Court mural project. With this familiarity, visitors may think that they’ve seen every iteration of the Stain/Iurato pairing. However, both artists have gone above and beyond the labor required for a typical gallery show and the results are astounding.
On the surface, Chris Stain and Joe Iurato appear to be tied together because of their stylistic choices. Both typically work in minimalistic color palettes, with the occasional pop of color thrown in for good measure. Both depict relatively realistic portraiture.
However, when put side by side in a gallery instead of spread out over blocks, it is the outstanding differences of these artists that makes the work of Iurato and Stain that makes viewers’ knees buckle in awe. Stain is known for depicting the everyday man. Drawing upon his working class background, whether it is a former student of his or someone else from his life, the artist renders portraits of people that are highly relatable.
In contrast, Iurato takes what would look like your average person walking on the street and adds hints of the divine. Many of the pieces that the artist created for Deep In The Cut show his hooded modern day saints, emblazoned with halos. By placing modern day saints in conversation with working class hero, Mighty Tanaka has created a dialogue that has to be seen for the full impact to come across. As with many ethereal things, words cannot do it justice.
Photos by Rhiannon Platt
Opening this evening from 6-9pm at Bushwick’s stylish Low Brow Artique is You and Me, an intriguing exhibit of collaborative pieces in a range of textures and styles. Curated by Rhiannon Platt, it features works by Cash4 & Smells, OCMC & This Is Awkward, Veng & Sofia Maldonado, Chris & Veng (RWK), EKG & Dark Clouds, Matt Siren & Fenix and Royce Bannon & Russell King, The exhibit continues through September 1 at 143 Central Avenue. Here are two more pieces:
Photos by Tara Murray and Lois Stavsky
Caroline and I are out in Colorado this week with my family, so art is coming second, but luckily it looks like it’s been a slow week. Here’s what I almost missed…
Photo by Nolionsinengland
There are a bunch of shows open now or opening in the next month that I’d like to mention, but there are only so many hours in the day. So here’s a bit of a round-up:
Photo by Susan NYC
Vintage typography with a sarcastic edge is perhaps the best way to describe Max ‘Ripo’ Rippon‘s art. Stylish and elaborately drawn, single words or short phrases seek to maximise the aesthetics of both the letters and the textured surfaces onto which they are drawn. Quirky and highly interesting, Ripo has become one of my favourite artists around at the moment.
Now based in Barcelona, Ripo returns to his country of birth for a solo show, ‘Signs, Fines, & Cheap Wines‘, at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco. Judging by these preview shots, this show is going to be fantastic and well worth viewing in person. The opening party is on Thursday 9th August and remains open until 1st September.
More after the jump… Continue reading “Ripo at White Walls”
Last week, a small show by everyone’s favorite set of identical twin graffiti artists opened at the ICA Boston. The show is not the massive, playful and immersive installation you might expect from Os Gemeos, rather it is a much more traditional show in a white-walled room. I went to Boston hoping for an installation to rival their museum shows in Brazil or at least comparable to their 2008 show at Deitch Projects. But, in its own way, a white-walled show makes sense.
Curator Pedro Alonzo described the show as an attempt to show that Os Gemeos’ work could hold up in a traditional museum setting with just a few paintings being hung on walls and plenty of space between each picture. Another person suggested to me that hanging a white-walled show is a way to prove that Os Gemeos’ work will continue to be interesting long after the twins are dead and no longer make new installations. I think they are right, but I just wished that Os Gemeos picked another time to prove themselves, perhaps a time when I wasn’t taking six hours of buses to see their show.
So I went into the show with expectations that could never be met, but I did find something else there. Alonzo’s bet has been proven right: As hundreds or perhaps thousands of collectors around the world already knew, now the world too knows that an Os Gemeos painting may look great when put into one of their installations, but it can be absolutely brilliant just hung on a wall by itself too.
The two weakest pieces in the show are actually both pieces that are just the sort that might shine as components in an installation. One was made for Viva la Revolución: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape, a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego also curated by Pedro Alonzo. The story that Alonzo told about the piece turned out to be a lot more interesting than the work itself. The twins were in San Diego prepping for the show when they saw a bunch of tablesaws and similar tools that aren’t as widely available in Brazil, and they were inspired to use material that would have otherwise been discarded (including bits leftover from Swoon’s installation) to make something. Only problem is, the result of their recycling just doesn’t look like much alone on a white wall and without the story.
Thankfully, most of the paintings work well in a traditional gallery, and a few are absolutely brilliant. In particular, I practically couldn’t look away from Upside Down Sunrise and an untitled painting of vandals on the New York subway tracks (which happens to be owned by Lance Armstrong). For any graffiti nerds out there, it is probably worth seeing the show just to see how many names you can recognized painted into the subway piece.
Of course, there’s also the sound installation, a corner of the gallery filled with brown and yellow faces shouting and singing, if the right buttons are pressed on the accompanying piano. I just hope there’s someone there during the show’s run to play it, since I doubt that visitors will be allowed to.
And for those of us who wanted a little more, the twins did not disappoint outside. They painted two murals (and a van) in Boston.
The smaller of the two murals is on the Revere Hotel, and features two writers tagging the wall. It’s a great little piece to be surprised by. I think I overheard one man trying to contact the police about just what the hell was going on, but most of the people whom I saw come across the mural were loving it.
Both in scale and awesomeness, the piece on the Revere is nothing compared to The Giant of Boston, Os Gemeos’ largest mural in the United States by painted surface area, but it’s been causing a bit of controversy. The Giant of Boston is located at Dewey Square, and you really can’t miss it. But just what it is has proven to be not very evident to people who are not already familiar with Os Gemeos. The masked is most likely a protestor or a vandal, as the twins have painted in the past, but at least hundreds of Boston residents have looked at The Giant and seen a “terrorist” or a “towel head.” A photo of the mural was posted on the Facebook page of a local Fox station, and literally hundreds of people have posted similar ignorant/racist responses. Bostinno has more on this controversy.
I do not think that this show is what most Os Gemeos fans were hoping for, and it certainly wasn’t what I was hoping for, but damn it I couldn’t stop smiling the entire time I was in the gallery or looking at either of their murals. There’s some good work, and Alonzo isn’t wrong to want to show that the work can hold its own in a white-walled space or brighten up the streets of Boston. Now, I’m just hoping that both murals stay up for the full 18-months that they could potentially be around for. Os Gemeos’ show is open at the ICA Boston through November 25th.
Photos courtesy of Arrested Motion and the ICA Boston and by Lois Stavsky, Weeklydig and RJ Rushmore
It’s a mega link-o-rama this week because I’ve been traveling from last Saturday until Thursday morning.
Photo by Awer
I made it over to Woodward Gallery last week to check out its current exhibit, Summer Selections. Described as “a selection of work by legendary and new contemporary masters,” it features some of my favorite street artists, along with such masters as Jasper Johns, Paul Gauguin and Robert Rauschenberg. And what a treat to discover an original vintage Alexander Calder lithograph with drawings by LA ll! Here are some more favorites from the exhibit that continues through this Saturday, August 4th at 133 Eldridge Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side:
Photos of Calder & LAll, Kosbe, Darkcloud and Buildmore, courtesy Woodward Gallery; Celso photo, Tara Murray & Stikman, Lois Stavsky
I’m off for a few days of traveling. Expect lots of pictures. Here’s what we missed on Vandalog this week:
Photo by Rub Kandy
