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.
Anthony Lister (courtesy Lyons Wier)
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).
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.
A protective blanket guards the hem during installation (photo courtesy ThinkSpace)
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.
One of Armsrocks’ pieces is also a sculpture of sorts; “Weight of the World”, Ink & graphite on paper affixed to a globe. (image courtesy ThinkSpace)
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.
Found wood pieces strung together with twine frame this cut paper piece by Imminent Disaster (image courtesy ThinkSpace)
Of the transformation of the gallery, Hosner says, “Man, they are going to town. The space looks epic.”
“Laura Reclining” by Imminent Disaster, Hand cut paper hand sewn to quilted fabric (courtesy ThinkSpace)
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”.
If you flick this lighter you’ll see all the diseases and ailments that come from smoking cigarettes – cataracts, gangrene, loss of hearing… “I don’t think everyone makes a connection sometimes between seeing people who are ill and smoking cigarettes,” says NohJ
– 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.”
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 CAKE sign at the entrance of Marketplace
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 .
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
“I was working on these just before sunrise while off in the distance from many different directions. You could hear the chanting of monks and holy men coming from ashrams all while wild monkeys watched me from above and crows cawed as small black birds with brilliant orange specs ate at my excess drips of wheat paste.”
“Further down the river banks bodies are cremated or floated down this holy river.”
“Note the orange splatters on the face – This is from the Holi festival which is celebrated by splashing colored water on each other – and on my wheat paste.”
“The temple here is slowly sinking into the river.”
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.
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.
March is here but don’t put your woolens away laddies and lasses.
BSA predicts at least two more snow storms before you can work on the tan line. Because, you know, we are weathermen too. Our weekly interview with the Streets
Spring is already in the air and on the streetswith brand new shoots and stems popping through the tundraby some of the new crop from the last couple of minutes.
This week we clocked none less than Poster Boy, Shin Shin, Oopsy Daisy, Primo, and Tazmat on the frozen streets of this most loved city of ours. The Poster Boy pieces in particular are a brand new direction – more focused and concepted – but after a minute of study you know they’re his and they are just as wacky as ever. Maybe they’re related to thenew book coming out this month .
As the scourge of financial immorality continues to sprint at top speed through the hallways of power the street artist commentaries are addressing the issue in a concrete fashion.
Here Street Artist Ronzo installs a “Credit Crunch Monster” in a film reminiscent made in the style of silent films during the Great Depression.
.
Saturday Night Live Brings Back Previous Presidents to Talk to Obama
“I’ve come back from the dead to tell Mr. Reach-Across-The-Aisle here to grow a pair,” Reagan says.
These are not heady times, but neither are they maudlin. We’re just getting really focused on some things that are a bit more consequential.
If the Whitney Biennial 2010 is taking hits for being restrained due to budgetary cuts and the Armory is criticized for being overblown, you could say the Fountain show is optimized for impact. Now in it’s 4th year, there wasn’t any fatty hype that needed to be trimmed. With some of the machine-fog of a bubbled art market clearing, it’s not surprising that there are some strong voices here.
Fountain for me is a kind of raw, dense, and measured survey of the moment, and curator David Kesting steers this 10,000 sf. ship of serious mis-content with an uncanny skill for cutting out the flim-flam. Herding cats can be easier than directing artists, and a fair number of these felines may border on feral, but the bow is pointed in a surprisingly assured direction. Because of it’s outsider billing you could expect anarchy here but in many ways this collection of 20 or so galleries, collectives, and projects can be rather unified.
And it couldn’t possibly be more thoughtful – Whether it is a Swoon benefit rep speaking earnestly about sustainable communities, La Familia’s co-founder Jennifer Garcia explaining their nearly 50-member collective’s contemplation of the definition of family, Gregg Haberny’s hyper-wrought stabs at oil oligarchy and hypocrisy in general, street artist Zeus’ dripping corporate logos, or Dave Tree’s shovel-blunt criticisms of agribusiness’s seedless produce, you get the idea that somebody is actually studying the underbelly. All this frankness is refreshingly hopeful and many pieces are downright fun. But if these are the artists in the margins that portend our future, we may be heading for a cultural awakening and radical realignment of society.
The projects in Fountain New York 2010 include NYC based collective The Art Bazaar, Christina Ray – Swoon Benefit for the Braddock PA Studios, Leo Kesting Gallery from New York, Galerie Zeitgeist from Paris, the Brooklyn based project Open Ground, Baltimore based Nudashank Gallery, We-Are-Familia artists collective which will be displaying their keep-sake boxes with work from Whitney Biennale 2010 artist Rashaad Newsome, LA based website ArtSlant, Shelter Island Projects Boltax Gallery and Sara Nightingale Gallery, CREON gallery, UK based Holster Projects and artists installations by: Alison Berkoy, Miguel Parades, Seth Mathurin, Temporary States and Gawker Artists.
Fountain NY 2010
Pier 66 at 26th St in Hudson River Park NY, NY 10011 Telephone: 917.650.3760 Email: info@fountainexhibit.com Website: http://fountainexhibit.com Dates: March 4-7; 11am–7pm
In her latest mural, Faring Purth delivers a powerful reflection on connection, continuity, and the complexity of evolving relationships—a true …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
