Roa at Pure Evil Gallery

Roa‘s first London solo show opened on Thursday night at Pure Evil Gallery. In short, it lived up to the hype. Roa is the man. Is he an artistic genius? Who knows (after all, he still hasn’t given a proper explanation for why he paints his animals and prefers to let the work speak for itself)? I just know I can’t get enough of his art. Here’s from the show (apparently Babelgum’s videos aren’t currently working in some RSS readers or the daily Vandalog email, so you may need to visit the blog to watch this video):

And here are a few photos:

Photos by unusualimage

London art-world weirdness

Most of the time, despite all the politics and whatnot, people in the street art world seem to get along. But there have been two incidences in London recently that have shocked me a bit.

Photo by unusualimage

First is what is currently happened to Jon Hammer (aka Elate). Jon believes that for a past few months he has been stalked and intimidated by people who presumably don’t like him and his artwork for whatever reason. This has even gone so far as somebody putting a virus on Jon’s computer and attempting to break into his home. The full story can be found on his blog.

And at the Pure Evil Gallery, two artworks were bought using stolen credit cards. One was by Herakut and the other by Pure Evil. Images of the artwork and more information can be found at Crack For Your Eyes.

Roa at Pure Evil Gallery

Roa‘s got a solo show opening at Pure Evil Gallery next month. Should be quite something. Roa’s recent solo show in Paris was practically sold out in less than 48 hours and looked awesome. Oh, and I hear that Roa will be in town for the show, so that pretty much guarantees lots of new street pieces. The guy is super prolific.

Solo Exhibition at Pure Evil Gallery 8th APRIL – 2nd MAY 2010

ROA’s eagerly anticipated UK solo debut opens in London this spring to exhibit his unique portrayal of large scale urban wildlife, disquietly cohabiting city streets, hand painted in his distinctive black and white style.

ROA started painting abandoned buildings and warehouses in the isolated industrial outskirts of his hometown – Ghent, Belgium. Fixating on the animals he found there; the wildlife became the central subject matter of his work, inspired by their clever ability to adapt into scavengers in order to survive. He used the dilapidated, coarse interiors and exteriors of the unyielding landscape as a canvas to portray his large-scale creatures.

Roa filled a vast abandoned warehouse complex of different chambers and exteriors with a menagerie of large-scale animals, creating an impressive spray painted zoo of city scavengers.

His obsession went global when he took to the streets of New York, London, Berlin, Warsaw and Paris, prolifically painting his trademark cross sectioned animals wherever he went, locating them where they naturally invade the main city streets with their quiet yet powerful presence.

Pure Evil Gallery is proud and extremely excited to present a new body of original artwork by ROA this spring, complete with street works in the local area. Look out for a new ROA city fox appearing on a street near you.

My Thursday Night

This week there were a number of great art openings in London. My friend and I went to 3 of them.

First was Charming Baker‘s show “The Meaning of Everything” at The Gallery on Redchurch Street. I know they say to save the best for last, but we decided to mix it up and start where I thought we would see the best work. I was right. Charming’s show was extremely cool. For me, his paintings either click and I think they are just fabulous, or they don’t click at all and I think they’re boing. Not much middle ground. Luckily, this show is full of pieces that really click with me. And the prints are extremely well made, which is always nice. I even went back today to check it all out in more detail. My only real criticism would be that the prices seem a bit high, even though the pieces are big. I saw a few works have already sold, so I could be wrong, but I don’t expect the show to sell out. Here are a few of the paintings. Photos are from S-Butterfly, and here is the rest of her set:

Charming Baker Panda Print

Charming Baker Train

Charming Baker Airplane

After the jump, my visits to Stella Dore and The Pure Evil Gallery… Continue reading “My Thursday Night”

Linking it up

So it’s 11:40 and I’ve been too wrapped up in what’s to come with Vandalog and almost forgot to post today. I’ll make it up tomorrow, but here’s a few links that I’d like to share:

  • Meeting of Styles London has changed the dates on us at the last minute. The great sounding graffiti event at the Sclater Street car park will now be held on the 5th and 6th of June. Head down to see some real quality graffiti being created.
  • Barry McGee has released some really expensive t-shirts ($99). When an artists shirts are out of my price range, I don’t even want to think about originals. Still, McGee’s work is sick.
  • Stopped by the Pure Evil Gallery today only to hear about an opening this Thursday. “Je T’aime” is being done in conjunction with Gallery Nosco. It features a number of artists I’ve never heard of (French artits Dran, Bom.K, Remy Uno, Jaw and Heng), but Pure Evil showed me one piece this afternoon from the show which looks very nice.
  • The Revs article from yesterday got a great response and some recommended links including this video clip from the film Bomb It sent in by Frankie at Camp Barbossa and this photo from Depoe of a piece Revs actually sold publically. Thanks guys.
  • I think these prints are new from London wheatpaster ACE. Yeah, he’s obviously influenced by Bast, but I’d probably prefer this one from ACE at £55 than Bast’s latest at Pictures on Walls for £285. I just don’t like that particular image from Bast, plus, I’m living on a student’s salary. I’ll have to include these if I do another 9 prints under £90 post.

So that’s my slightly last minute summary of awesomeness in street art today.

Last Night’s Openings

Last night my friends and I made it to four gallery openings.

Pam Glew Flag

We started at Pam Glew‘s show at Stella Dore. There are a few pieces that are pretty cool and her bleeching technique is interesting, but I think I’ve become a bit jaded by street art. I couldn’t keep from thinking: “portraits from a one-layer stencil” And of course, those seem to be everywhere these days. My friend who doesn’t obsessively follow street art didn’t have that same bias, and really enjoyed everything. Continue reading “Last Night’s Openings”

My Plans for Thursday

This Thursday is going to be, as it always seems to be, a very busy night for me. I’ll be visiting up to 4 galleries with a traveling brigade of my artsy friends. Here’s the plan:

1. Start at White Cube Hoxton Square for the Marcus Harvey exhibit “White Riot” for the portrait of Thatcher made out of sex toys and the bust of Churchill with a mohawk. Get there around closing time so that we can be unceremoniously tossed out at 6pm.

2. Next it’s off to Stella Dore for the Pam Glew show “Noir”. I’m not yet sold on her work, but I’m definitely open to seeing what she’s doing and the painting pictured on the advert they gave me is pretty sweet.

3. Perhaps the most surprising show of the evening will be at the Pure Evil Gallery. Panik, a member of London’s ATG crew, will be trying his hand a gallery work. I give this a 75% chance of not working out but just being a fun experience. It seems like graffiti artists usually can’t make that jump to the gallery. Panik’s work is awesome on the street, but the gallery is a completely different world. If it works though, as I’m hoping it will, it should be great.

panik

4. And to cap off the evening, Part2ism has his show at The Art Lounge.

Part2ism