Tag: kaws

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The Hole heads to LA – Facemaker

Ben Jones

Get ready for some irony: Jeffrey Deitch closes Deitch Projects and leaves to be director at MOCA in LA, Kathy Grayson aka Deitch’s right hand woman at Deitch Projects opens The Hole in NYC to fill the hole left by Deitch’s departure and now The Hole has a show opening in LA this Wednesday night to coincide with MOCA’s Art in the Streets show.

The Hole are putting on a show, Facemaker, at Royal/T in Culver City. Basically, Facemaker is a portraits show. Despite one of the silliest press releases I’ve read this month (“The show will explore interpretations of the most universal element of human perception: the face.”), the show looks to be something worth seeing. The line-up is beyond impressive. Here it is:

Ben Jones, Barry McGee, Kenny Scharf, Joe Grillo, assume vivid astro focus, Tomoo Gokita, Eric Yahnker, Jane Moseley, Olaf Breuning, KAWS, Ted Mineo, David Shrigley, Shepard Fairey, Eddie Martinez, Taylor McKimens, Francine, Speigel, Avery Newman, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Robert Lazzarini, Aurel Schmidt, Kembra Pfahler, Rivas & Tullie, Aaron Johnson, Brian Belott, Matt Leines, Swoon, Allison Schulnik, Clare Rojas, Jules de Balincourt, Michael Williams, Takeshi Murata, Anders Oinonen, Justin Samson, Misaki Kawai, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Dennis Tyfus, Katherine Bernhardt, Todd James, Matt Greene, Stefan Bondell, Spencer Sweeney, Nate Lowman, Mat Brinkman, Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, Billy Grant, Adam Tullie and FriendsWithYou

So regardless of a crazy press release, this is still something to get excited about. I’ll be there Wednesday at the opening (8pm-midnight) and the show runs through June 30th.

Image courtesy of The Hole

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Edible Genius goes to the NY fairs

Since I couldn’t be in town last week for the New York art fair extravaganza, Edible Genius (recently interviewed on Brooklyn Street Art) took some photos for Vandalog. Here are just a few of the highlights from the fairs. For more in-depth coverage, I would suggest Arrested Motion and Hyperallergic.

Rebaroque Artist Series Sound Wall at Scope
Kaws
Faro at Fountain
R. Robot at Fountain
Todd James at The Armory Show
How and Nosm at Contra Project's booth at SCOPE

Photos by Edible Genius

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Some NY art fair suggestions

EVOL will be at the WILDE Gallery booth at Volta

With two midterms exams tomorrow, I’m rushing this post, but here’s a simple list for some of what to check out at the art fairs in New York this week.

I won’t be in NYC for the fairs myself, but I’ll hopefully have some photos to post. Otherwise, the places I will be getting my art fair news will be Hyperallergic and Arrested Motion.

Photo courtesy of Volta Art Fair

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KAWS X Bape

The latest KAWS toy is available today at 1pm Eastern time. This three colored edition figure is nowhere near some of the artist’s best figurative and the whole idea reeks of shameless self-promotion, but it’s still a cute addition to any toy collection. It reminds of the Hello Kitty Dunny’s or a surprisingly well done McDonald’s toy. I would much rather this than a Scooby-Doo kaleidoscope.

MILO can only be purchased at http://www.kawsone.com. Well, at least until it goes on Ebay tomorrow.

 

Photos by KAWS One

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New Kaws Companion up for Sale

Three color variations of the latest Kaws companion are up for sale on the artist’s site. Designed in conjunction with Robert Lazzarini, the 8″ toys retail for $180 and will surely sell out. The melting design is really innovative, and in my opinion, are some of the best sculptural work I have seen yet. Certainly a bit more interesting than a play on a Disney or Looney Tunes characters.

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Weekend link-o-rama

ARGH LHR in London

Well I’m on my way back to Philadelphia this weekend. I can’t wait to get there and back into the swing of things. Random comment about Philly: If anyone knows of any photographers who are actively documenting street art and graffiti there, please let me know. Anyway, here’s what we missed this week:

Photo by nolionsinengland

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Miami Madness

In a lot of ways, Hargo sums up Miami's art fair week

With so much of the art world migrating to Miami this week in a frenzy, there seem to be too many events and parties (and I promise not to blog about the parties in detail. This isn’t a gossip site) and exhibits and festivals and everything else to keep track of. Here’s a roundup of some of the things that I’m most interested in seeing (or not seeing).

Things that have already been mentioned on Vandalog:

And things that I haven’t already blogged about:

  • Elisa Carmichael has her list of Miami must-sees, which includes a Dan Witz book signing and a Trespass book signing with Marc and Sara from Wooster Collective and Carlo McCormick.
  • Sorry to bring this up, but Sanrio’s exhibition of Hello Kitty art is just annoying. They got some great artists like Jim Houser to paint Hello Kitty characters. I’ll be avoiding this show like the plague.
  • I mostly go for Ryan McGinness’ really abstract work and this isn’t that, but McGinness fans will probably want to check out his solo show.
  • Barry McGee will be showing work and signing books at Ratio 3’s book in Basel Miami.
  • Jonathan LeVine Gallery has a pop-up show as part of Wynwood Walls. Some of the artists include AJ Fosik, Judith Supine, Doze Green, Dan Witz and WK Interact.
  • FriendsWithYou are filling a park with giant blow-up sculptures.
  • Last year, OHWOW Gallery’s It Ain’t Fair show was one of the most interesting shows in Miami. Once again, they have a killer line up for the show including José Parlá, Rey Parlá (José’s brother who is, I believe, a filmmaker), KAWS, Phil Frost, Barry McGee and Neckface.
  • OHWOW Gallery are also opening a bookstore at The Standard Hotel in Miami.
  • New Image Art’s pop-up show includes Neckface, Judith Supine and Os Gêmeos. Probably going to be a must-see.
  • Tristan Eaton and his partners are launching Contra Projects with a wide-array of events this week including a tent/lounge space, a mural (by Mr. Jago, Tristan Eaton, Ron English and others) and a TrustoCorp carnival aka TrustoLand. More info on the Thunderdog blog.
  • Carmichael Gallery, Joshua Liner Gallery and others will have booths at SCOPE, and I think Maya Hayuk is painting a mural there, which should be awesome if I’m remembering that correctly.
  • And of course there’s all the fairs I haven’t mentioned, because there are just so many. So many. Too many. It’s gonna be art overload. But if I’ve missed anything that you think is particularly special, please leave a comment.

Photo by Hargo

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Weekend link-o-rama

Some friends came over today and we had a bit of a photoshoot for the upcoming line of Vandalog t-shirts. More about that in the next few days. Here’s a teaser of the shirts. So next week is going to be an exciting one on Vandalog. In the mean time, here’s what I wish I’d spent more time covering (it’s kind of Swoon and Retna heavy this week though):

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The art market makes no sense!

The nice thing about street art is that, for 99% of the people who look at it (the people who see it on the street and not on blogs like this one), there’s not market consideration about “how much is that worth?” or anything like that. But then there’s the 1% of us (the people who follow blogs and write and forums and so on) who do see the art market side of street art. Sometimes the art market provides opportunities for Boxi, Steve Powers and other artists can show up in London and paint walls with permission and free paint. Other times, the art market makes me want to cry.

This week, Philips de Pury had a few pieces in their London day auction by low-brow and street artists. Street Art Is Dead notes that two Mr. Brainwash pieces sold for £42,000 and £75,000 even though the estimates were already a seemingly insane £7-9,000 and £15-20,000 respectively. What makes those results even more disgusting is when you compare them to other results in that same sale:

  • A massive and beautiful Ryan McGinness which has been shown in The Saatchi Gallery sold for just under £19,000. A collector could have 4 of those paintings, or one crappy Mr. Brainwash.
  • The Kaws piece pictured above sold for £13,750. Not my favorite, but you would think that Star Wars fans would be all over that one.
  • And then the two most surprising results were that both a Margaret Kilgallen cluster and an old Barry McGee piece failed to sell at all! While this particular Kilgallen cluster has been floating around for quite a while, it’s not a bad piece and Kilgallen’s art is almost impossible to find for sale.

Similarly, while it doesn’t outrage me quite as much, I don’t exactly understand why this Banksy sold for $75,000. It’s just not a strong image.

The art market makes no sense and sometimes I wish it would just go away.

Photo courtesy of Phillips de Pury