Swampy, one of the craziest writers/artists/travelers in North America as far as I can tell, has a solo show opening next month at UpperPlayground’s Fifty24SF Gallery in San Fransisco. In My Room opens June 11th, and I can’t express how excited I am about this show. That’s all for now, but hopefully I’ll have more news soon.
Photo by Rebirth Cycle
A few days ago Couture Gallery in Stockholm opened their latest show Strange Fables. The exhibit features new works by the likes of Herakut, Saddo, Labrona, Other, Ruskig, and Angest. Here are some shots sent to us by Labrona that I thought I would post.
Two new solo shows open next week at Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York that I could not be more excited about. The first is a solo show by Miss Van entitle Bailarinas, which I believe means “dancers” in Spanish. The second is Gais‘s Succession. Both will open simultaneously on May 26th for the gallery’s private reception.
Photos via Jonathan Levine Gallery
If you looked at Vandalog this week, you’d think it was a slow week in street art. That’s not so, but I’ve been locked down working on Up Close and Personal (opening pics here). So here’s some of what I missed covering this week:
Photo by Sabeth718
Thursday night was the opening of Up Close and Personal, and it was a pretty great (although my opinion is biased since I helped curate it). We’re open through Sunday evening, so if you’re in New York, please stop by and check it out and let me know what you think. Up Close and Personal is taking place at an apartment on the Upper West Side; it’s not the traditional setting for art, but trust me, buzz and somebody will let you in. We’re at 217 West 106th Street, Apartment 1A, New York, between Broadway and Amsterdam.
Here’s some photos from last night:
Photos by Michael Pearce and RJ Rushmore
Ignore its pathetic excuse for a title (I’m sorry, I know that sounds bitchy, but who the hell thought that one up?! Seriously.), because there are some good artists in this show about to open at the Portsmouth Museum of Art in New Hampshire and you should go check it out if you can. In addition to the on-site installations and individual artworks Bumblebee (above), Andreas von Chrzanowski, Herakut, Shark Toof and Alexandros Vasmoulakis created for the museum’s walls, all of the artists are/have been in town painting up the streets of Portsmouth. I’ve only seen a couple, not very good photos of the murals, etc that definitely don’t do the artists’ work justice, so if you know where to find good ones, leave a link in the comments section! I’m sure the museum will have photos up online soon, though, as will the artists.
The Portsmouth Museum of Art exhibition opens May 11 and closes September 11, 2011, but if you’re on the West Coast of the US, you can check out its sister show at LeBasse Projects (featuring works by all of the aforementioned artists) through May 28, 2011. You can view the work from that show here.
Image courtesy Bumblebee.
Blurring the Lines, the current show at Corey Helford Gallery in LA curated by Roger Gastman, features graffiti legends Freedom, Risk and Crash. Nothing against Risk and Crash, but Freedom, maybe best known for his work in NYC’s Freedom Tunnel, is by far my favorite of those three. Here’s some of Freedom’s contributions to the show. Thanks for Hi-Fructose for the images. Check out more of the show on their blog.
Photos courtesy of Hi-Fructose
Jaz sent over these photos from Fuera de la linea, a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rosario in Argentina. Some great South American street artists have installations and canvases in this show. All the info can be found here. Here’s some photos of the show from Jaz:
Photos by Jaz
When I last visited the Dorian Grey Gallery, a relatively new space in NYC’s East Village that has already featured solo shows by such artists as Crash and LA II, I was drawn to a few images — almost hidden from view — lying on a desk. I discovered that they are the work of the Parisian street artist, Ugly Kid-Gumo. Working in a New York studio with chips of concrete from the walls of Paris, Gumo has been fashioning some riveting portraits. They will be featured, along with other recent work, in the upcoming Kid-Gumo solo exhibit, “Oz, Nothing Makes Sense.” Curated by Marianne Nems, it is scheduled to open on June 23 at the Dorian Grey Gallery, 437 East 9th Street.
Last Friday I got to check out the opening of Sweet Toof’s new show, Dark Horse, at Factory Fresh in Bushwick. (Unfortunately, I didn’t arrive early enough to get one of the paper Sweet Toof smiles mounted on popsicle-sticks, which were given to the first visitors.) The gallery was transformed, inside and out, by large and small oil paintings, hanging woodcuts, and painted walls in the gallery’s courtyard.
Sweet Toof’s oil paintings were dramatic in a different way than his walls, like some strange version of the Old Masters, with bony horses and dogs and nobly-dressed skeletons all outfitted in his pearly whites. Some of his large rectangular canvases dominated the interior, but he also had smaller circular canvases grouped in series throughout the space. Skeletons did battle with paint rollers, in groups and one-on-one, sometimes in front of rural backgrounds, other times in some type of apocalyptic-type cityscape.
He played with using pseudo-gilded frames and sparkly paint backgrounds for smaller works, and I have to say, he may be the only artist I know of that can use glitter and horses in the same piece and still have it look amazing. More than that, though, his paintings were the type of thing you can look at for awhile and continue to see more in—aesthetically and art historically speaking, definitely, but also in the sense of morbid, symbolic hilarity.
Factory Fresh even got its own tube of Toofpaste—(artists typically use up most of the wall space in the gallery’s courtyard, but it was the first time I had ever seen anyone incorporate the vent into a piece.) All in all, a great show, and one of my favorites that I’ve seen at the gallery. Dark Horse stays up until May 22nd, and is Sweet Toof’s first solo show stateside, so be sure to check it out.
Photos by Frances Corry
