A note from RJ: Augustine Kofie, Jerry ‘Joker’ Inscoe and Christopher Derek Bruno will be showing together this month at Breeze Block Gallery in Portland, Oregon in the show Three The Hard Way, curated by Sven Davis. I saw that lineup and was curious and excited for the show, but I knew there was someone out there with much more knowledge about these artists than I’ve got, so I asked my friend Remi Rough to write something about the importance of this show. He kindly obliged and offered to interview all three of the artists involved. Three The Hard Way opens on Thursday and through the end of November. Do check it out if you’re in Portland, and keep an eye on all four of these artists careers as they continue to take what they learned in graffiti and push beyond its boundaries. Here’s Remi…
Three artists, three very differing aesthetics and three extremely good friends of mine…
Two of these three artists also happen to be fellow Agents Of Change… I have shown work and painted alongside all of them at one point or another and I have work by all three hanging proudly in my home. This show is an important step for them all.
The work these three artists make is important! They are artists in the mid strides of their careers, producing work that signifies an intense shift from the street art or graffiti style that so many people seem to connect with.
It’s not simply abstract as some seem to call it. Their work is constructivist, minimalist and, in Derek Bruno’s case, verging on the sculptural.
Work like this is not mainstream. It swims against that with every fibre of it’s being. It struggles for a lager acceptance because people opt for the safety and reassurance of the obvious. This isn’t only the case with the viewers and art fans, it’s largely the case within the whole graffiti movement itself… But the fact that these 3 have managed to command the respect they so rightly deserve from the more traditional fraternity only goes to secure their places in the future of the art world.
I asked all three a set of tailored questions and asked them all to supply one image taken by Android phone. My thoughts were that in modern society we all have at least 3 points to make everyday and all use our phones as visual reference on a daily basis.
Continue reading “Three the hard way: Triple interview with Kofie, Joker and Derek Bruno”
