D*face’s first solo show with Metro Gallery in Melbourne, Australia is open now through November 11th. It looks like pretty much what you’d expect from a D*Face show: Extremely well executed pop-art paintings and sculptures. It’s not going to convert any new fans, but D*face fans in Melbourne will probably enjoy this chance to see a full solo-show from the British artist.
Photos courtesy of Stolenspace Gallery
Best known for his iconic red and yellow ‘Temples’ sprayed onto walls and wheelie bins worldwide, Sickboy returns this Thursday (November 3rd) with only his second major London solo show. Personally I’m quite suprised it is only his second!
Inspired by semiotics and symbolism, Renaissance paintings and the surreal landscape workings of artists like Hieronymus Bosch, this new body of work promises to demonstrate “a deeper development of the artist’s visual vocabulary.”
A celebration of earthly sins and heavenly fantasies, the show is to be comprised of four major major installations, including a walk-in confessional booth and an additional exhibit of confessions from members of the public anonymously revealed before the show.
But for me I am most looking forward to seeing Sickboy collaborating with a who’s who of eminent artists on a third element; D*Face, Eine, Anthony Lister, Paul Insect, Vhils, Conor Harrington, Xenz, Word to Mother, Will Barras, Eelus, Mudwig and Hush.
With the final surprise installation to be unveiled on the opening night, this show sounds like one not to miss. But be quick as it only lasts 3 days, located at Dray Walk, 91 Brick Lane, and ends on Sunday 6th November!
For a bit more info about the show and for those of you who would like to know more about Sickboy then I recommend 3 interviews he has recently completed with Londonist, The Playground and Zeitgeist Magazine.
Video courtesy of Sickboy. Photos by Viktor Vauthier.
Faile are back at Lazarides Gallery and this time it’s going to very different. After a 3 year London hiatus, they return to the city with a solo show that “strikes out in a sophisticated new direction.”
Fragments of Faile sees the artist’s work stripped down to its bare essentials, promising to explore the “archetypical structures” beneath their decade of remixed mass culture artwork.
As Lazarides Gallery states in it’s elaborately worded press release, “Assembled from the artists’ own archive, Fragments of FAILE represents not a radical departure, but a rare opportunity to see their iconic practice anew.”
It certainly sounds interesting, but I’m a little puzzled as to how the work is ‘new’ whilst also assembled from the their archive. I’m imagining single layered images that hark back to Faile’s roots and go some way to forming the multi layered work we are used to seeing from the duo – a bit of image recycling maybe. Although that view could have something to do with the following picture.
Images of the work are currently being kept underwraps, literally, but here’s a little sneak preview thanks to Steve Lazarides…
The show is open to the general public at Lazarides Rathbone from 4th November and runs until 3rd December, Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 7pm.
For more details about the show, including the press release, head over to the Lazarides website.
Photo courtesy of Lazarides Gallery
It took nearly two years for Gajin Fujita to create work for “Made in L.A.” at the L.A. Louver recently, but it was definitely worth the wait.
Hailing from Boyle Heights, Fujita mixes elements of his Japanese heritage with the cultural influences he absorbed growing up in East Los Angeles as a member of K2S. His new pieces consist mainly of three structural layers. The bottom-most layers usually feature extensive use of gold, white gold, and platinum leaf; often, he uses repeating squares in background design much like those seen in hinged-screen (byōbu) painting. The second layer consists of tagging or throw-ups, though occasionally these will make their way to the top layer as a title, and will share the piece with two-dimensional characters (reminiscent of ukiyo-e) from Japanese history and mythology. Of these, samurai feature most prominently.
At times, Fujita uses this second-layer lettering to stand-in for the chaos of battle, as in “East vs. West,” yet he never allows the graffiti to overwhelm–or even become–the main focus of any piece. His third-layer characters are always foregrounded, and it has to be said that the use of textile details (particularly the flow of the kimono in “Fearless”) has been elevated from his previous work: where a print might have been repeated from head-to-toe in the past (as in “Fatal Match”, 2006), regardless of how the fabric might have been sitting on the character.
Fujita’s compositional style has grown as well. His one-panel pieces (“Fearless” and “Loyal”) use a similarly cropped frame to 2007’s “Loca”, but also utilize larger, more active characters, and a more dynamic color scheme–particularly with the strong primary colors of red and blue in each, as well as the patterned title lettering. The style used for “Fear” in “Fearless” appears to be an homage to local artist RISK.
Interestingly, Fujita’s two-frame pieces (“Dynamic Duo” and “Getting Harey”) are guided by the diagonalization of the leafing in the background layers. In both cases, the rectangles have been turned on their ends to highlight the action. In “Dynamic Duo,” only four rectangles are preferred, drawing one’s eye to the center point, where the hero sits astride a tiger. This same technique is employed for different reasons in “Getting Harey,” where the smaller tiling guides one’s eye from the woman’s face, down the spear, and to the rabbits in the lower left corner.
Perhaps it’s easy to write Fujita’s work off as simple juxtaposition of graffiti and classical art. It’s true that these aren’t so much harmonious pieces as collisions of different styles and cultures, but it would seem that is precisely Fujita’s point, and precisely the type of environment that multi-ethnic neighborhoods in Los Angeles (as well as everywhere else) foster. Yet it’s also worth pointing out that these pieces don’t just feature Japanese imagery and predominantly Chicano-inspired lettering styles, but the pervasive use of the English language as well. As a result, these visual mash-ups don’t just comment on cultural influences, but also on how well the preservation of the ancient can fit with the present in an entirely new context–which is something all transplanted people, regardless of background, must learn to navigate in a new place.
“Made In L.A.” shows through November 12th at L.A. Louver, 45 North Venice Boulevard, Venice, California 90291. See it with your own eyes if you can. These pieces are far more impressive in person than they are in photographs.
Photos by Ryan Gattis
I don’t think it gets much better than this: Troy Lovegates aka Other and Stinkfish have a show together coming up at New York’s Brooklynite Gallery. For all the talk these days about the end of street art due to rampant commercialism and Johnny-come-latelies, these two artists buck the trend and show that true energy and love of art is still alive and well on the street. Their show is called Thinkers of This. It opens November 5th and runs through the 26th. This will almost definitely be one show that should not be missed.
Happy almost Halloween. It’s been a week of wasted energy, or so it seems. A potential legal wall that I was organizing has fallen through for the time being, but hopefully things are just delayed rather than cancelled. Here’s some of what I should have posted about this week:
Photo by Bust
This Friday sees the opening of Savant at London’s High Roller Society. Moving away from the direction of recent shows at the gallery; Ludo, Malarky & Billy, and Skewville, this event brings together seven artists who are all fueled by the passion and precisioned techniques of Old Master painters and sculptors.
Showcasing these multinational artists together for the first time, Savant is an exhibition of New Gothic Art at its finest – a mix of some of the most bizarre images a twisted mind can conjure, extremely subversive, often offensive.
Curated by participating artist Joe Becker, “Savant’s subject matter lives up to its word, promising to make your eyes pus and your jaw drop off completely.”
For more information about the show and the artists pay a visit to the High Roller Society website.
Images courtesy of High Roller Society.
This weekend sees the opening of Berlin Bandits, a collection of paintings by Billy, Low Bros and Mr Penfold, at NeonChocolate. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the show, but here’s a reminder, with some sneak previews of the work, for all you lucky folk that can make the opening.
Photos by Billy, Low Bros and Mr Penfold
K-Guy put out the above “carpet bomb” last week at Occupy London, which is taking near the London Stock Exchange. While Nolionsinengland has some nice things to say about K-Guy and the piece over on Graffoto, I’ve got a major problem with it. Is the “carpet bombing” idea a bit funny upon first hearing it? Yeah, I guess. Is K-Guy’s pun worthy of being on a protest sign? Sure. I like it. But there’s a funny story about how I hear about this piece… The above image was emailed to me by the woman doing PR for K-Guy’s upcoming solo show at London West Bank Gallery in the hopes that I would post about this piece and, in the process, also mention that K-Guy just happens to have a show coming up next month where he will be trying to sell a lot of artwork in a short amount of time.
In the past, I’ve defended the practice of street artists getting up in order to build hype for a show, so long as the work isn’t overtly advertising a show (such as putting the gallery name and date of the opening on a poster). Particularly when an artist isn’t from the city where the show is being held, it’s a way to get their artwork out on the street when it otherwise wouldn’t be there, regardless of any advertising angle. That’s not what happened here.
It seems like K-Guy has gone too far here. He has made what is (likely) a very temporary piece, put it right next to a legitimate protest about putting people over profits, and then used photographs of the protest and his artwork in order to immediately turn around and try to sell something. He is blatantly trying to make a buck off of these protestors, which seems to me to be quite disrespectful the Occupy movement, even if the spread of K-Guy’s image may potentially raise some awareness for Occupy London. For me, his PR campaign delegitimizes this piece by K-Guy, and it will likely make me think twice about any of his politically-charged work in the future. The whole incident reminds me a bit of this Levi’s ad.
Oh crud, I guess the PR machine worked anyway. Didn’t Warhol say something about not reading your press, but weighing it?
Photo courtesy of K-Guy
Ema and Kid Acne worked together on an installation that is running right now in Niort, France. Unclear ground/ Terrain vague is put on by Winterlong Galerie is open at the Pilori Museum now through October 29th. Here are some photos, but you can find even more here and here. The installation also includes this video by JiPÉ Corre.
Photos courtesy of Kid Acne
