FAILE
BEDTIME STORIES
November 4 – December 23, 2010
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
527 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011
T 212.627.8000
F 212.627.6336
info@perryrubenstein.com
www.perryrubenstein.com
November 4 – December 23, 2010
Opening Reception, November 4, 2010, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
New York, October 18, 2010 – Perry Rubenstein Gallery presents Brooklyn-based multimedia artists FAILE. The artist collaborative returns on November 4th with Bedtime Stories, an exhibition of new works that feature imagery mined from FAILE’s singular visual archive and that emphasize the painterly dimensions of their frenetic visual tapestries.
Following on the heels of two major projects—the interactive arcade of Deluxx Fluxx and the haunting, allegorical suite, Lost in Glimmering Shadows—Bedtime Stories is a return to fundamentals that pushes questions of form and process to the forefront. Each of the twelve works’ compositions are assembled from numerous painted wooden blocks and they emerge as unified paintings. They reveal FAILE’s relentless assimilation and refinement of the vast visual vocabularies of both the urban environment and their own decade-long practice. The grids of these paintings are at once modular and fixed, tactile and graphic. On their surfaces, iconoclastic characters fluidly intermingle with adroit deconstructions of commodity culture. The re-combinations of carefully constructed texts and images provide a glimpse into FAILE’s rigorous and organic process, and draw attention to painting’s inherent materiality.
Works such as Addicted & Alone and Faile Launch reshape painterly traditions of pointillism and the affichistes, while simultaneously suggesting newer media that draws on the pixelation of digital technology and the improvisational roots of collage and street art. Bedtime Stories presents works of a neo-baroque ilk yet they are aggressively beautiful while underscoring FAILE’s continued exploration of formal and aesthetic inquiry and evolution.
Perry Rubenstein Gallery
527 West 23 Street
New York, NY 10011
T 212.627.8000
F 212.627.6336
E info@perryrubenstein.com
W www.perryrubenstein.com
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM
BSA guest writer Robin Grearson talks about herself, the Street Artist Quel Beast, and the unknowable beast within.
I headed to Bushwick’s Wreck Room last week to talk to Quel Beast about art and see how he’s doing. He’s pasting up some work indoors this week, at Kings County, and a new street piece was almost ready for Chelsea. The Wreck Room is an unpretentious spot where secrets flow easily, and so, over beer and fried pickles, Quel Beast confided to me his frustrations, some obsessions, and what he would do if he couldn’t make art. But he remained quiet about the street piece, which made me nervous.
Until today, I hadn’t seen it. It’s a woman; full length, but cocky. She taunts passers-by to check her out once, maybe twice. She’s not wearing much. That much I remembered. She’s like his Chelsea kiss, or, postcard: Dear Art Crawlers. With love from Brooklyn, Quel Beast.
He shows me on his iPhone some of the portraits for the show, called “Back That A$$ Up,” after the Juvenile/L’il Wayne song and video. It’s hours, many beers, two more locations and some wine later, before I ask about the Chelsea girl. Quel Beast answers offhandedly that she’s…weird. I’m sure he knows a better word because he says it like it’s a question. He’s into the piece, and says it exemplifies the direction he sees his style heading. But his question mark says, maybe I’ll hate it, a possibility I hadn’t considered.
I posed for the photo he’s working from to create her. So she’s me, and she’s not. I start wondering if, while painting testosterone-soaked me, her sneer has maybe gotten to him. But then, art is supposed make you feel something, which is the conversation we’ve been having. And I wonder what I will feel when I see her.
Quel Beast compares art to music, harshly. Placed side by side, art gets its ass kicked. “Art isn’t good enough,” he says, with reverence for music’s power to evoke feeling, stir memory and stir senses. People quickly filter out tags and stickers as visual noise, he points out, adding, “You don’t have a personal experience with someone’s name, the way you can with music.”
“I hate art. Art sucks,” Quel Beast declares, and we laugh. He’s describing his exasperation with the impossibility of art to realize his ideal of it.
But even as he’s describing most art as dismissible in contrast to music, he is a little distracted, scanning stickers and tags on the tables and walls, naming the artists. “Why can’t art do what music can do?,” Quel Beast wonders, and lays down a gauntlet. “An artist has a responsibility to reach out and grab someone the same way a ridiculously awesome song does.”
So it’s natural that Quel Beast’s portraits would have music in their souls; for him, “Back That A$$ Up” is the track that conjures the flow and energy of shared experience that he aspires to render in his paintings. But the series is no fan letter: Quel Beast is looking through the video’s lens at his own agenda. He’s retrofitted his painted subjects as though they were plucked from frames of the video, undressed them, and reversed the gender roles.
He designed the portrait series as his inquiry into the source of our judgments. Where do conclusions come from, for instance, about a two-dimensional woman who may be posturing instead of pouting but in other ways remains unknowable? “Why is it that just because you put your body into certain positions, people will assume anything about you, your identity or your sexuality?,” Quel Beast asks, without knowing the answer.
Juvenile and L’il Wayne provide Quel Beast with audio inspiration for his paintings, but their lyrics tow the misogyny-and-hetero line. Quel Beast reveals only a cool nonchalance about this apparent collision of cultures. By co-opting the rappers’ revelers in an effort to unlock an insight or two on identity politics, won’t Quel Beast ostensibly alienate those fans who would be drawn to a show inspired by hip hop? The more secrets he tells me, the more a picture emerges of someone who doesn’t mind making people uncomfortable.
Early this morning, Quel Beast showed me the Chelsea girl. She has my straight, boyish hips, and a casual, male confidence that is impervious to judgment. Within that masculinity, though, something remains defiantly feminine. He looked at me and said with a shrug, “If there’s one thing I learned from rap, it’s how to deal with haters.” —Robin Grearson
“Portraits” by Sten + Lex with Gaia at Brooklynite
This is a hot shot straight to Number Uno on the charts Ladies and Germs. Italians with their own understated stencil technique and UES wild-eyed jerkin chicken man. Read more on this show here from yesterday on BSA.
Dan Taylor “Notes from the Inside”
Pandemic is reliably snarky, eclectic, and often on the money. Keep your eye on them because they also think. A lot.
From The Philadephia Mural Arts Program, an animated mural handed back and forth amongst several artists, in the style of Exquisite Corpse.
Artists: Eve Biddle/Joshua Frankel, Rodney Camarce,Bonnie Brenda Scott, Seth Turner, Mauro Zamora. Curated by Sean Stoops.
Ben Eine at The Moniker Art Fair
“Hell’s Half Acre”
Kind of like going to Macys!
Launched in October 12th and produced by Lazarides in collaboration with Tunnel 228 and off-site exhibition of Dante’s “Inferno”.
Via Babelgum.
Visitors explore a unique interpretation of the nine circles of hell through the vision of artists including Conor Harrington, Vhils, George Osodi, Antony Micallef, Doug Foster, Todd James, Paul Insect, Mark Jenkins, Boogie, Ian Francis, Polly Morgan, Jonathan Yeo.
David Choe Goes to Hell
Here’s his creation of his piece for Lazaride’s “Hell’s Half Acre”.
Two different approaches to portraiture are working side by side in Brooklyn right now- and the styles are distinct.Comparing the two in the charged energy of an October day, you’ll agree the contrast is pronounced – drawing attention to individual techniques and influences. Sitting with the portraits for a few minutes, one sees that their similarities may lie in something weightier.
Sten and Lex began working in mundane portraiture on the streets of Rome in 2001 – a romance that continues almost a decade later. Drawing their inspiration from black and white images of European businessmen and the women who love them in stilted studio photos from the 1960’s and 70’s, they have plundered successive decades of posed formalized faces that are at times stoic, frank, and slyly droll.
Gaia is a study in energy, with increasingly loose lines thrown out and reigned in to wrap around the subject, whether man or animal. With visions of historical painting and European masters dancing in his head, Gaia is honing a vocabulary of symbols and signifiers while cross-shifting between painterly color layering and kinetically charged line drawing. It all accumulates in character more weighted than you might expect.
There lies the commonality of this combination – for such youthful protagonists, a certain weight, whether psychological or spiritual, anchors their explorations even as each is scaling new heights. It’s a highly charged, playful, and smartly grounded combination that reflects the serious times we are in.
When you ask them about their influences, Sten and Lex quickly call up old Italian films that pre-date them by Fellini, Pasolini, Rossellini, and Visconti. They also draw inspiration from photographs and portraits from magazines and from vintage photos found in outdoor flea markets in the many cities that they visit. They love the feel of the grain on those vintage photographs and it is that grain that comes across in their work with stencil.
Using a stencil technique they created called “Hole School”, faces appearing as dots and lines are selectively removed from the image. The resulting grey-scale is striking as if they had blown up everday men and women from vintage photos in magazines or daily newsprint.
More recently they have introduced another reductive technique, which they call the “Stencil Poster”. The duos’ work begins by wheat pasting a poster on a surface then cutting the stencil directly on the board. The pieces are removed and the stencil remains on the board, where it is painted black and then removed to reveal the final product underneath. Oftentimes pieces of paper are left on the final portraits like adorning ribbons that also convey a sense of decay and an ephemeral existence.
As they start a new decade they are toying with the idea of using more contemporary images, perhaps their own photographs of friends and ordinary people. But they’ll stay in love with the past and as they put it: “Contemporary art is too difficult to understand”
Gaia talks about his progressing ease and excitement with painting in flame tinged color that he began this year on the street and continues to challenge his creative skills, versus his black and white pieces.
“Logistically is easier to paint free hand in color. Painting in color is layering, free hand. With Black and white I need the projector because each line is very specific. Color work is always more vibrant and uplifting. Black and white work can be morose and dark. I enjoy black and white in my own personal work. The color work is more fitting for a community art because is more palatable and more exciting. People are initially sort of turn away by the black and white work on the street. Not to say that street art’s only merit is to uplift people. If the work is more permanent perhaps it would make more sense to make the art more accessible but if the art is not on a legal wall then the art is more making a statement. The intention is not necessarily happiness but more message or communication or contention,” says Gaia.
New Mural in Williamsburg Pays Tribute to Beatles Just In Time for John’s 70th
The Spanish twins really could have used a Yellow Submarine as the rain was sloshing around their small band during the installation of this one. For four days they set out to paint their new mural, titled “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds”, an updated psychedelic bouquet sprading across a corner building in Williamsburg housing the infamous Rock Star Bar, where many a hair raising band has fought to break the sound barrier.
This year the Autumn weather in New York city has ranged from constant deluge to glorious days of sparkling gold sunlight and the smell of wood burning from the neighbor’s chimney. How and Nosm climbed ladder after ladder with R Robots as soon as the rain would stop. Unfortunately, they had to spend a lot of time standing in the doorway waiting for it to clear. As they told me “As long as the wall is dry we paint, and it’s OK if we get wet”.
Every time I went by to see how they were doing they were scurrying up and down ladders and balancing on scaffoldings. Once in a while each guy had to walk across the street to look back and check on the progress. Everpresent in the shadow of the Williamburg bridge was the roaring of traffic above, the screeching of trains, and the raucous noise of heavy trucks on Kent Ave. Occasional pedestrians stopped to say hello and ask questions, but mostly this part of town is unfettered by interruption. Unless you count the rain.
Featuring the artwork of Katie Decker, FARO, Hellbent, Marlo Marquise, John McGarity, Don Pablo Pedro and Ellen Stagg
Beyond the lights, glitz and glamour of New York City resides an artistic underworld that resonates in the shadows of this great metropolis. This creative element encompasses many disciplines and methodologies, demonstrating a wide range of artistic interpretation. Cimmerian Shade, the latest show from Mighty Tanaka, highlights a darker side of art for the witching month of October. Featuring the artwork of Katie Decker, FARO, Hellbent, Marlo Marquise, John McGarity, Don Pablo Pedro and Ellen Stagg, they each provide their own unique vision from the shadows.
Dark art is a term that applies to the ghosted image of a thought or an idea that transcends the ubiquitous and exists within a realm all its own. Neither wicked nor nefarious, this artistic expression thrives in a world beyond that of typical society, providing an outlet for our altered obsessions. From the overt to the subtle, Cimmerian Shade offers a glimpse behind the veil into a world overlooked by everyday exploration.
With an arsenal of inspiration at their disposal, the artists provide a personal interpretation of life and experiences into their artwork. Through a variety of mediums spanning photography to woodcarvings, carbon transfers to oil paint; Cimmerian Shade exhibits a plethora of methods that translate well for both home and gallery.
This week, K-Guy primates appeared in the urban jungle of NYC while Vango, in Kiellarny, Ireland touched on American pop culture and Brooklyn’s own Faile gifted NYC with an amazing Prayer Wheel.
Experimental show space 17 Frost in Brooklyn tonight hosts the opening of a show that summons Woody Guthrie from the ethers to talk about a time when average working American citizens were asserting their right over resources from multinational companies. An unconventional mashup of NYC graffiti and Hudson River School this show boldly challenges you to make connections where you didn’t know there were any. Reconciling urban abstract with pastoral landscapes can’t be easy, but when both are your influences you are bound to find the is a germ of something new.
Ride ‘Em Cowboy – Beast & Berlusconi
Furious Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has ordered in inquiry after 16 giant posters showing him riding young models like horses sprung up overnight in Milan.
The faked images – some showing the playboy PM beating the girls’ bottoms with a riding crop – are said to be the work of a local Banksy-style street artist called Beast.
In another politically engaged Street Art take on graphic messaging in the public sphere, Brazilian Street Artist Mundano is re-styling posters for the Presidential elections currently taking place in Brazil.
Know Hope in Toronto Tonight
Street Artist Know Hope is currently in Toronto for tonight’s opening of his solo show “There Is Nothing Dear (There Is Too Much Dear)” at the Show and Tell Gallery. “I’m really excited about this show and the pieces in it. Toronto is also a really cool city,” says the artist.
Skewville charms the French
Or at least that’s what Adam says he did.
FAME Wrap Up Video
Italy was once again treated to some of the best worldwide large scale installations of work by Street Artists in one place for the FAME festival. Here is a summary of the scene.
This Land Is My Land
Erik Burke & Cahil Muraghu
Opening Friday, October 8th between 7 – 11pm
Burke and Muraghu’s collaborations are vivid representation of the American landscape. The show’s title, This Land is My Land, taken from Woody Guthrie’s landmark song, embodies the artists’ intent behind both the work and their own lifestyle. Guthrie describes the disenfranchised American staking a hypothetical claim to the landscape, reiterating native American concepts of land ownership. Their work inspired by the New York City graffiti movement and the Hudson River school not only attempts to document the American experience, but lay claim, even if only for a moment, to enlivening our relationship to the landscape through abstraction.
Gallery Hours
Fri, Sat, & Sun, 3:00pm – 7:00pm or by appointment.
A lady, perhaps in her late 60’s or early 70’s with small wire-rimmed glasses stood on the pavement grinning in front of our flickering video projection time-lapses of Street Artists putting up work. She only turned from the screen once to make sure that her posse was also watching. When the video ended, with shoulders pinch up toward her grey fluffy hair, she clapped her hands quietly in front of her smiling mouth, and went back to the sidewalk to talk to her friends about it. She asked them if they had seen it. They had. A bit of wonder for us, her excitement.
We like to think that all of the artists involved in the first ever Nuit Blanche festival in New York received a similar experience for all of their efforts. As artists, few things make us happier than when we get to see the faces of the public enjoying the art being presented.
In New York there aren’t many venues where both the artists and the public get to mingle and talk directly with each other in an open and unrestricted environment: No VIP rooms, no PR handlers, no spokespeople, no velvet ropes, admission tickets, no one looking down their nose. The organizers of “Bring to Light” made this possible for one glorious night in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Perhaps 10,000 art lovers got out of their homes to enjoy one evening of free enlightenment without restriction.
With a five-hour convulsing light carnival by 60 artists, many of whom are well known for avant garde innovation, “Bring to Light” brought to life this former maritime hub of North Brooklyn that once blustered with lumber yards and rope factories. Now a rusty hopscotch of weathered industrial architecture, burned out lots, and faded hopes, Greenpoint in recent years has bloomed with the lifeblood of artists overflowing from neighboring Williamsburg. Aided by a crisp autumn night and Greenpoint’s Open Studios weekend, where artists open their doors to the public, “Bring To Light” was suddenly pulsating with the feet of thousands of art fans. All manner of projectors blasted on the walls with myriad images, forms, and shapes, some breathtakingly beautiful. Other artists created sculptures and installations that worked as light vessels and amorphous creatures while collaborative dancers entertained groupings of appreciative observers.
The show’s organizer DoTank:Brooklyn, calls itself a public vessel for interdisciplinary exploration, and Nuit Blanche seemed like the perfect showcase for everything these (mostly) urban planners are about. More interested in taking action than talking about it, their collective sense of focused urgency is like a refreshing gale of cool October air. Since they actually know how to plan and work with local civic and citizen groups, they were able to pull off New York City’s very first Nuit Blanche event in less than 3 months, and on a shoestring budget.
While DoTank had the initial idea, the Nuit Blanche ball started rolling when festival producer Ethan Vogt got involved to steer the effort in late July. DoTank had experience organizing participator events in public space and Ethan brought his background in film production and a passion for creating cinematic experience outside of traditional venues.
DoTanker Ken Farmer, originally from Memphis, Tennessee usually is riding his bike around the city or working as a consultant at Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit planning, design and educational organization. He likes to ride his bike around the city and scope out cheap places to eat, or “blue collar hollas”, as he calls them.
A Boston born New Yorker since ’02, Ethan Vogt is a filmmaker who makes documentaries for organizations, music videos with found footage, and has produced three feature films with Andrew Bujalski. Now developing a masters thesis about Media in Performance and Architecture at NYU, Vogt hopes to produce Nuit Blanch for at least the next couple years in New York.
Brooklyn Street Art spoke to both guys about the success of their first Nuit Blanche in New York.
Brooklyn Street Art: How do you feel about the event, now that you are a few days on the other side of it?
Ken Farmer: We could not be more excited about how things turned out. Great weather, great crowd, great support from the community and a great response from both people who attended as well as those who have seen post-event coverage.
Ethan Vogt: Yeah, we are all just thrilled with how it came together – I’ve heard nothing but positive things from artists, visitors, and Greenpoint residents. I would say it exceeded our expectations and we were just in awe of what we had “organized” and “produced.”
Brooklyn Street Art: How long has this event been in the planning?
Ken Farmer: The idea began in July and planning really began in August. We were on pins and needles until the last minute getting the permits approved due to apprehension about an event with no prior history in NYC. Luckily, some key leaders like Councilman Stephen Levin and Borough President Marty Markowitz really believed in the event and helped us get over the hump.
Brooklyn Street Art: Would you call yourselves artists?
Ken Farmer: I’d say…artist and organizer…maybe that’s a curator?…of public spaces.
Ethan Vogt: Sure, I’d say I’m an artist and creative producer. I actually was going to do a projection project for the festival before I got too busy producing. You can see some of my projections and photography online. I feel like my art-making allows me to be a better producer, I often think about what I would want from a producer if I was the artist and then try to be that kind of producer.
Brooklyn Street Art: Who had the idea of launching New York’s first Nuit Blanche, and why did you think it was important to pursue and execute?
Ken Farmer: DoTanker Ted Ulrich organized a similar event in Atlanta and other team members had experienced Nuit Blanche events in other countries. We knew that it provided such a creative transformation of public spaces. Given our interest in short-term interventions to transform the way public space is experienced…we had to try.
Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about one of your favorite projections or performances from Saturday night?
Ken Farmer: We had some pretty well known light artists like Chris Jordan and Ryan Uzilevsky, but the thing that amazed me was the way the art, performers and crowd coalesced into a seamless experience. It wasn’t about individuals or feature pieces, it was about the transformed landscape that emerged collectively. This was our curatorial goal, but the reality far exceeded our expectations.
Ethan Vogt: So many of the pieces were amazing, it is hard to choose. I loved the percussion performance, “Scaffolding” by Tom Peyton with Terence Caulkins, Eddie Cooper, Lily Faden, Leo Kremer, and Mike Skinner, I also thought that the way that crowds were interacting with “A Small Explosion” by Kant Smith, “Light & Glass Dance” by Miho Ogai, “Oculus” by Nathaniel Lieb & Sarah Nelson Wright, and “Untitled (Drums, Lights) by Peter Esveld & Philippo Vanucci was remarkable and a very vibrant way of people connecting to artwork that I haven’t seen very many other places in my life.
Brooklyn Street Art: What role does public art play in the life of a neighborhood or a city?
Ken Farmer: It should be a manifestation of its surroundings showcasing the local identity. And it should compel us to appreciate our surroundings–aesthetically, whimsically, critically. But it is frustrating how often it falls short.
Ethan Vogt: I’m no expert on this but I think public art should encourage reflection, debate, and connection. New public spaces like the “High Line” in Chelsea are the kind of thing that I believe embodies this and I would love to someday be involved in producing a project like that.
Brooklyn Street Art: We’re always talking about the intersection between Street Art, Urban Art, Public Art, Performance, Projection Art – do you think that there is a growing interest among city dwellers in reclaiming public space for art?
Ethan Vogt: Yes, Yes, Yes! – I think this festival really struck a chord and that people looking for an authentic, non-consumer, artistic, participatory, and community experience.
Ken Farmer: I think there is a growing interest in authentic, and interactive public art. We are in a beautiful era of D.I.Y. culture. The big, corporate commissioned public art pieces in lifeless lower Manhattan plazas are old news. People want something more relatable and more dynamic. We are seeing a proliferation of low-cost, pop-up elements in public spaces. Some may see it as art, others as amenity, either way…its terrific.
Brooklyn Street Art: Were you surprised how difficult it could be to pull this off?
Ken Farmer: The difficulty lies in the need to do everything by the books. We intend to make this an annual tradition that gets better every year. So we dotted the “i’s” and crossed the “t’s”, which was costly, fiscally as well as temporally, but essential to building community support.
Ethan Vogt: It was extremely difficult to get all the pieces together to make this work but the reward of the experience was well worth it and things will certainly be easier next year.
Brooklyn Street Art: Do you think most people who see the show have any idea the amount of work that goes into it?
Ethan Vogt: I’m not sure if they have a sense of the work but I don’t care, I’m just glad they came out and had a night to remember. Hopefully they might continue to support us next year.
Ken Farmer: Hopefully they don’t know how much work goes in. I think the biggest barometer of the event’s success was how calm it felt. It was amazing to have that big of a crowd, with that many artists and that much excitement, yet have things seem so orderly.
We are extremely appreciative of how the crowd received the event…Thank You New York!
DoTank:Brooklyn is always looking for new partners. Please contact them at info@dotankbrooklyn.org
“Bring to Light” was organized by: Do Tank: Brooklyn Michael Doherty, Ken Farmer, Aurash Khawarzad, Tom Peyton, and Ted Ullrich
Produced by: Ethan Vogt, Furnace Media
Co-produced by: Pepin Gelardi, Jacquie Jordan, Annie de Mayo, Anna Muessig, Stephen Zacks
Please visit the Bring To Light site and click on their Kick Starter Campaign. They are only a few hundred dollars from reaching their fundraising goal. They need your support!
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