I discovered the East Village’s Dorian Grey Gallery last spring when it exhibited a wonderfully diverse selection of LA 11’s artwork. LA 11 is just one of many artists in Dorian Grey’s current exhibit, GroupeGRAFF, featuring work by an eclectic array of artists who have impacted — or certainly reflect — much of what has been happening on the streets during the past 30 years. Here are a few images from the exhibit:
GrafterRichard HambletonCrashDolkSee One
Included too are works by: Aiko, ERO, Keith Haring, Jeff Henriquez, Mau Mau and others. Distinct pieces by Banksy and Swoon are also featured. A particular favorite — as it’s literally a piece of graffiti history — is a segment of a door from the legendary Mudd Club tagged by the likes of Keith Haring & Fab 5 Freddy:
Tagged fragment of door at the legendary Mudd Club
An opening reception will be held tomorrow evening, April 28th, 5-8 pm. The exhibit continues through May 16th at 437 East 9th Street near Avenue A in Manhattan’s East Village.
Swoon. Photo courtesy of Open Walls BaltimoreNever2501 and Pixel Pancho. Photo by Martha CooperInteresni Kazki. Photo courtesy of Open Walls BaltimoreNick Mann aka Doodles. Photo by Martha CooperNick Mann aka Doodles. Photo by Martha Cooper
Exciting week next week: Troy Lovegates and Labrona will be coming to Haverford to paint a mural here, so look forward to some pictures of that… If I find the charger for my camera. Also, I’ve taken the plunge and I’m finally on Instagram. Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:
I’ve mentioned this before, but here’s a reminder that No Longer Empty is hosting a talk about the Fashion Moda this Sunday moderated by Joyce Manalo and including Stefan Eins, Lisa Kahane, Crash and Lee.
I know I already posted about Lushthis month, but he’s worth another update. These recent sketches by Lush once again show that nobody is safe from his wrath.
This one, I'll be sending to my mom, who has had to go into a graff shop to buy paint for Burning Candy
Last weekend, as I was walking down Eldridge Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I was lured into GHOST, a café/bar that recently surfaced on the block. It wasn’t the food and drink — though certainly enticing — that lured me in, but the art that I glimpsed from outside. Among the works on display are a series of signs designed by Matt Siren — all featuring his signature ghost — in collaboration with some of NYC’s most prolific street artists including Dark Clouds, Celso and Royce Bannon. Particular standouts include huge pieces by Richard Hambleton and by Japanese-born Boston-based Kenji Nakayama. It soon became apparent that GHOST is an extension of one of my favorite galleries, Woodward Gallery, that will be presenting Kenji’s first NYC exhibition. (More on that in a later post!) Meanwhile, if you are anywhere in the vicinity of of 132A Eldridge Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, GHOST is certainly worth a visit.
Here at Vandalog, we get some pretty ridiculous press releases from publicists, galleries and artists themselves. Some not in English, invites to shows opening in foreign lands, many not having anything to do with art, and my personal favorite- that this artist is the new Banksy. We pride ourselves on hardly ever posting these, but when they are as funny as this one we think we will make the exception for our audience. Here’s the first in this new (and hopefully infrequent) series…
Threesome Anyone?
From online gallery 1xRun comes the work of Ryan McCann, a former college football player who was drafted by an NFL team and uses a blowtorch to create his artwork. How badass is that picture? The naked twins and flame only add to this guy’s aura.
The current release is Abe Lincoln’s burnt face in the vein of The Social Network. How gritty and clever. And guess what the artist has to say? Nothing about the work except where he took the font and size of the piece from:
ARTIST STATEMENT: This piece was inspired from the Social Network movie poster that had a similar saying regarding getting to 1million friends. That is why the original piece is 40×27 inches, the standard movie poster size. These multiples are burnt into a 3/8 inch wood panel with a blowtorch, and then have 2-color silkscreened letters applied before they are sealed in polyurethane. Each piece is hand branded with my signature on the front and will be signed and numbered in ink on the back. – Ryan McCann
There is even a sick promo video to accompany the release. Enjoy!
Roa’s 2-part solo show Hypnagogia is on now in London. Half of the show is at Stolenspace, and half is down the street at The Stone Masons. Here are some photos from the portion of the show at The Stone Masons. Check over here for photos of the portion at Stolenspace, and over at Arrested Motion for more photos from The Stone Masons.
If that is the case, they aren’t hiding very well these days.
I suppose you could blame TNT’s popular TV cop drama Southland for some of that. The group’s “Painting the Painters” mural was prominently featured in a recent episode titled, oddly enough, “Risk.” In addition, UGLAR member Evan Skrederstu was commissioned by The Wende Museum (the same institution that commissioned RETNA, D*face, and Herakut to paint portions of its Berlin Wall) for the L.A. Chamber Orchestra’s “Play Me, I’m Yours” Project to paint a piano to stand across from LACMA, next to the wall segments.
The group has also completed two murals with ZES (including one in collaboration with PUSH for L.A. Freewalls), and features in the upcoming La La Gallery show.
The word is out, it seems. So who are they?
UGLAR stands for Unified Group of Los Angeles Residents and consists of five members: Evan Skredertsu, Christopher D. Brand, Steve Martinez, Espi, and Jose A. Lopez. They recently added ‘works’ to their name in honor of the great public works projects that were once commonplace in Los Angeles during the era of Rivera and Siqueiros. Originally, however, the group took their acronym from the Ulysses Guide to the L.A. River when they created a book celebrating the river and its inhabitants in 2008. This culminated in a show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art that featured Chaz Bojorquez and others. Perhaps what is most remarkable about that show is that the group fabricated and installed the entire exhibition by hand and brought the feel of the concrete L.A. riverbed indoors by obliterating the white gallery walls.
And yet, just a glimpse of their work shows it to be incredibly diverse. Martinez paints, photographs, and is the only member to use Photoshop in conceiving his pieces. Lopez graduated from graffiti lettering to abstraction years ago, even taking to etching some recent works on copper. Espi adds a spiritual element to the group it seems, but what else would one expect from the Art Director of the Los Angeles Friends of Tibet?
As a group, they do far more than walls. They are kings of scale, from the huge to the tiny, from murals to bugs. Yes, bugs. The story goes that Skrederstu and Brand were painting in the L.A. River a decade ago and accidentally sprayed a cricket blue. What grew out of that happenstance is amazing to see. Yet, what I find so fascinating is they do more than simply paint, and they don’t work exclusively with aerosol. Brand also sculpts, and is capable of some incredibly lifelike pieces similar to those of Ron Mueck. By way of example, check out the severed head below.
At a time when many are asking if street art can transition indoors (obviously the techniques can, but how well, and to what effect?), it is fascinating to watch contemporary street artists adapt to new spaces after having few limits. I can’t help but wonder which artists will transcend such labels by producing regardless of venue, and which will be limited in new environs. Considering the breadth of UGLAR’s skills and polish, it seems reasonable to conclude that they have all the potential necessary to effectively make that leap. Perhaps most importantly, they don’t seem satisfied to work exclusively on the street, but anywhere their creativity takes them.
Especially given my distaste for Supreme’s annual destruction of graffiti and street art through flyposting (I believe they call it an advertising campaign), I was pleased to see these parodies of their ads by Kidult.
