“Making Faces” is as much about mix mastery as it is happenstance – kind of like walking on the street in New York. The boldly unmatching collection of portraits on view at Opera Gallery in Soho is sometimes thrilling, even challenging in it’s dismissal of category. There is this new crop of many of the Street Artists you’ve seen in the wild these last few years hanging with stars of the Chinese new wave, early 20th century European revolutionaries, an historic leader of impressionism, a surrealist – you know, a gamut. You could call it cleaning out the closets, or you could call it “Girl Talk curates the gallery”.  Either way, it can be thrilling to see these pieces in this context; sparring, harmonizing, both.

The divine madness of Street Artist Judith Supine loses none of it’s wild energy here. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Art springs at you when you are in ratty decayed lots in Bed Stuy, and similarly here you have rely on your own intellectual strengths to process the work in it’s surroundings, analyzing and imagining the coupling, or tripling.  Is this a master or a pretender? You’ll figure it out eventually but the stimulation lies in your ability to let go of hard classifications and surprise prejudices to re-assess the faces and appreciate an occasional revelation at this New York mixer.

b. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

b. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yue Minjun (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alexandros Vasmoulakis (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lita Cabellut (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Paul Insect (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kid Zoom (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ron English (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rostarr (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artists include Yasmina Alaqui, Marco Guerra, Karel Appel, B., Jean-Michel Basquiat, BAST, Simon Birch, Bernard Buffet, Lita Cabellut, Marc Chagall, Sas Christian, Mauro Corda, Dinorah Delfin, Jean Dubuffet, Lori Earley, Ron English, Paul Insect, John John Jesse, Kid Zoom, Li Tianbing, Bengt Lindstrom, David Mach, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Phiippe Pasqua, Pablo Picasso, Gerard Rancinan, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Rostarr, Judith Supine, Alexandros Vasmoulakis, Tom Wesselman, Yan Pei Ming, Zhang Xiaogang.

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