Over 75 artists took over an abandoned housing building in north London and transformed the morose shell of once-utopian urban architecture into a living art installation.
March 2010
RETNA “Desaturated” at New Image Art (LA)
“DESATURATED”
new works by
RETNA
Retna was born in Los Angeles, California in 1979. Since first creating a name for himself in the early 1990s, Retna has become an “eternal broadcaster” of sorts, shining a light to the kinetic urban soul of Los Angeles. The name RETNA itself evokes the timeless power, movement and visual vibrancy behind the artist’s acclaimed work. His work merges photography with graffiti style and paint, time with color, couture with street culture, the spiritual with the sensual, and fluidity with grit. Whether his paintings hang in a gallery or wall on the streets of Los Angeles, they serve as a retina through which we view the urban journal of contemporary art.
At an early age, Retna was introduced to L.A.’s mural culture. While still in high school, he led one of the largest and most innovative graffiti art collectives the city has witnessed. He is perhaps best known for appropriating fashion advertisements and amplifying them with his unique layering, intricate line work, text-based style and incandescent color palette reflecting an eclectic artistic tradition. RETNA became just as notorious for his ornate painting technique as his timeless style: he used paintbrushes mixed with the traditional spray can. Many of his pieces synthesize the line between fine art and graffiti, between power and opposition, between tradition and advancement.
Today, Retna traverses between the galleries and streets with ease. Retna is a member of the Art Work Rebels and Mad Society Kings Art Groups. In December 2007, he contributed to a large-scale mural project with El Mac and Reyes called “La Reina del Sur” at Miami’s Primary Flight during Art Basel. His most recent projects include an exhibition titled “Vagos Y Reinas” at Robert Berman Gallery and a mural called “Seeing Signs” at the Margulies Warehouse for Primary Flight
New Image Art
7908 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
(323) 654-2192
www.newimageartgallery.com
Brazilian Street Artist Mundano has first Solo Show
From SÃO PAULO, here are a few pieces from Mundano’s first solo show, “Cidade Reciclável”(Recycable City)
Mundano likes to use street art as a way of a social revolution. He says his characters are imbued with messages so people can see and think about the problems he addresses.
“Cidade Reciclável”(Recycable City)
BSA Exclusive: How to Catch LISTER Painting on the Street
Brooklyn Street Art got a little hotter yesterday – thanks to spring time temperatures and the wildly talented Anthony Lister, who is working on this new mural.
In between his installation at PULSE art fair last week and his solo show “How to Catch a Time Traveler” next Friday, we had a really great time watching him painting this new face in the neighborhood.
Tune in to Sunday’s “Images of the Week” on BSA where we’ll feature the finished piece.
Anthony Lister “How to Catch a Time Traveler” at Lyons Wier Gallery
ANTHONY LISTER
How to Catch a Time Traveler
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present Anthony Lister’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, How to Catch a Time Traveler. The exhibition follows directly on the heals of Lister’s 50-foot, site-specific mural, “Red Dot”, created specifically for the Pulse Art Fair, NYC (2010), showcasing Lister’s undeniable signature style that has garnered him international acclaim.
Known in the Low Brow movement for his intriguing, playful hybrid of street art,expressionism, and cubism; Lister’s new body of work shows the tongue-in-cheek frivolity of his earlier pieces developing (or decaying) into a more mature and disturbing direction. The deformities and un-done aesthetic resolve of Lister’s work provides viewers with a concretization of contemporary societies’ psyche – or, as the artist himself states, “making the obvious more, well, obvious”. In his latest series, Lister continues his examination of pop culture and how a generation raised on American television processes and interprets the symbols and imagery of their youth. The result is gender bending cartoon characters, and superheroes such as Wonder Woman and Bat Girl, that uncover the unconscious sexual desires and repressed taboos embedded in these seemingly innocuous popular icons. The work contains a circular perspective, one that shifts between, even confuses the non-rational inner workings of the child and adult mind. Yet this inescapable paradox of the human condition, wherein we are at all times evolving from and dependant upon the experiences of youth, is unlocked by Lister’s painterly antics, and revealed to be the utterly serious and impossibly ridiculous condition it is. Lister’s practice is indeed about reality. A reality his work does not claim to resolve, but rather to question, loudly.
Anthony Lister has shown widely internationally in solo exhibitions at Metro 5, Melbourne; K Gallery, Milan; Spectrum Gallery, London; Criterion Gallery, Hobart; and the Wooster Collective, New York; among others. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Artforum, Australian Art Collector, Vogue Magazine, Modern Painters, Paper Magazine, Art in America and VICE Magazine. Lister’s work is present in many reputable collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the David Roberts Collection, the TVS Partnership and the BHP Collection.
Lister is the receipient of the Prometheus Award (2009, 2005), the Dobell Prize for Drawing (2008) and the ABN Amro Art Award (2007).
Gallery Hours: Monday – Saturday 11-7, Sun. 12-6 • Subway: C, E exit 23rd @ 8th Ave. 1, 9 exit 23rd @ 7th Ave.
Exhibition Dates:
Opening:
Friday, March 19th, 2010
6:00 – 9:00 pm
Lyons Wier Gallery
175 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10011
The Dress Made the Trip from Brooklyn: Armsrock & Imminent Disaster ‘Refuge’
Andrew Hosner at Thinkspace Gallery could have gotten a little nervous when he saw pics of the new 3-dimensional back skirt that Imminent Disaster was making in Brooklyn for the show that opens tomorrow in L.A.
In fact, even Miss D. wasn’t sure how she was going to ship it when we saw her making it in the studio.
But, new pictures reveal that the cut-paper sculpture made it and today’s progress looks like the show will open tomorrow night with no hitches or stitches.
Armsrock and Imminent D. have been taking over the gallery with their theme of refuge, referring to the millions of people on earth who are pushed from their homes by political persecution or war or environmental disaster.
Looking at some of the first images, one cannot help think of the temporary housing that we have seen set up for victims of recent earthquakes.
Of the transformation of the gallery, Hosner says, “Man, they are going to town. The space looks epic.”
See Imminent Disaster’s preparation in the studio HERE
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Armsrock & Imminent Disaster ‘Refuge’
Thinkspace Gallery
4210 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90029
#323.913.3375
Thur-Sun 1-6PM or by appointment
NohJ Lights Up at “East Williamsburg” show at Eastern District
Here’s a sneak peak at a brand new piece by NohJColey for tomorrow nights show at Eastern District. It’s called “every maveRick meets it’s match”.
Click here to see a simple low-res video demo of using the lighter to illuminate the piece
Friday the show “East Williamsburg” opens at Eastern District (in Bushwick)
Coming Up Friday: Gore B. and “Stokenphobia” at Pandemic Gallery (NY)
The long awaited return of Gore B.
– don’t know why I say it that way but it seems that the streets had a few more historical references and sudden intricate storylines when Gore B. was around. His new “drawing” show opening at Pandemic Gallery in South Williamsburg tomorrow features densely layered elements in black white and silver – all of his favorites: painted portraits from early photos, symbols from science, religious and maybe astronomy textbooks, ornate filigranic linework, and an ongoing fascination with type styles and letter faces.
But Gore B. will not be alone at Pandemic by any means on Friday – “Stokenphobia”, a show about two geometric shapes, will feature the work of around 40 street artists and friends in a show of community love for signage.
For the non-eggheads reading this – stokenphobia is fear of circles – so Pandemic has provided small rectangular shaped metal signs to a number of people to create a piece on.
Says Robbie D. of Pandemic, “It’s kind of sporadic. There was no real theme except ‘Just do whatever you feel on the objects we give you.’ We provided the metal signs and basically everybody is allowed to do what they want. So there’s no real theme to the artwork – it’s just about the shapes.”
Speaking about the makeup of the group who was invited to participate in the show, Robbie D say, “Mainly they are street artists but there are a lot of friends and artists who don’t work on the street but work in a studio. So it’s really just acquaintances and other street art people we respect and have known for a while now – kind of a close group of people that we know.”
On the opposite side of the room, are a number of large frightening circular shapes that are used as canvasses.
Abe Lincoln Jr., Armer, Avoid, Becki Fuller, Bloke, Buildmore, Cahbasm, Celso, Chris RWK, Chris Campisi, Dana Woulfe, Darkcloud, Deuce7, Dickchicken, Droid, Enamel Kingdom, Egg Yolk, Faro, Gaia, Infinity, Keely, LA2, Luna Park, Matt Bixby, Matt Siren, Moody, Morgan Thomas, Nate Hall, Paper Monster, Plasma slugs, Royce Bannon, Sadue, Shai Dahan, Stikman, Skewville, Ski, Swampy, Tony Bones, Veng RWK, Wrona, 2esae
CAKE Rises from MarketPlace Gallery’s Ashes in Albany
This past weekend a new show at MarketPlace Gallery opened – which is remarkable in itself since an electrical fire badly damaged it last summer.
New York Street Artist CAKE, Brooklyn illustrator Travis W. Simon, and Albany’s RADICAL! took over the expansive space, run by brothers Samson, Alex and Max Contompasis.
The gallery, one of the capitol city’s few that support emerging and street artists from New York City and around the world, was also home to the brothers, who lost a lot of art, personal belongings, memories – and most importantly, Max’s bulldog, Xena.
CAKE, known for one of a kind illustrations and paintings wheat-pasted around town, created an abstract backdrop for a small collection of realistic line-drawn portraits .
Test Your Art History Knowledge With This Video by “Hold Your Horses”
Every want to act in your own Video? How about acting in a painting?
The Group is called “Hold Your Horses” comprised of French and American members.
Song is “70 Million”
Hugh Leeman in India
Street Artist Hugh Leeman, whose work you may have seen in Lower Manhattan, is currently in India, and he sends this dispatch about some wheat-pasting he’s been doing there: “These pieces I recently put up in Varanasi, India just as Holi festival began. They are on the ghats near the Ganges river.”
CLICK THE IMAGES TO ENLARGE
Street Layers from Paris, Berlin and Vienna
From the Editor:
In the past I breezed by destroyed posters and flyers that amass on construction worksites and abandoned buildings with little thought. Thanks to the work of photographer Vinny Cornelli I have learned to see them entirely differently – like Earth Science, like strata; a layer of text or design or photography with internally consistent characteristics that distinguishes it from contiguous layers. The destruction and consequent revealing of shapes, color, and texture create haphazard new compositions. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but hell yeah, some times it does, and Vinny is always on the lookout.
From photographer Vincent Cornelli:
After my recent trip photographing street art in Hamburg, it brought me back to some of the photos I took last summer in Paris, Berlin and Vienna. I thought it would make the perfect follow-up piece for my bi-weekly posts for BrooklynStreetArt.com. I think I would rather let the pictures speak for themselves. Hope you enjoy them.