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Judith Supine is “Too Much for One Man”

Judith Supine is “Too Much for One Man”

September 5, 2012 , , , , , , , , ,

Bloated heads, severed limbs, plump and luscious lips; these are the fruits harvested from art, fashion, and porno magazines, carefully cut from their previous contexts and precisely reconfigured to reveal new ones that mock, shame, and cavort in glorious dayglow blasphemy out here in public. It’s probably more than most men can handle but Judith Supine keeps slashing  forward with a sideways smile.

Judith Supine. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Thoughtfully arranged and stained fluorescent hues, the pretty collage chaos that is Judith Supine pops monstrously from these new canvasses. As he preps in studio for his solo at Jonathan Levine Gallery in Manhattan this week, the somewhat anti-social and highly admired Street Artist whose funhouse wheat-pastes twisted the sensibility of street art in the mid-2000s is now pouring a thick toxic gloss on what’s happening these days. “It’s really fucking boring. It just looks like shitty graphic design a lot of the time,” he says with a flippant derision that he almost pulls off.

The new huge gallery slabs here piled in the messy former living room facing the street are covered in an inch of drying clear resin, ensconcing the portraits, freezing them in place for decades, if not centuries. Despite the lickable and alluring effect of this material when finished, these fumes could kill him before he’s finished embalming the painted lips and bobbing heads. The last time he poured a batch of pieces like this he was preparing for a huge show in LA and the experience left him bleeding through his pores.

Judith Supine. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I got really sick from it. It triggered an autoimmune disease and I was in and out of the hospital for three or four months. I got really sick from it…it made all my blood vessels explode but I kept using it and I was still doing drugs,” he remembers aloud as we sit on folding chairs atop a silver coated Brooklyn roof in the sun. The rotten experience left him weak and feeling like a punched out headlight but he hasn’t completely found a production solution and says it’s slightly stressful as we talk in the open air on the roof while his studio is a cloud of fumes below us.

Brooklyn Street Art: So when you describe it, it sounds self-destructive.
Judith Supine: Yeah. I would pass out and fall asleep in the room with the windows closed ’cause I didn’t want dust to get in. It would be a bad idea to sleep in resin.
Brooklyn Street Art: It’s bad to sleep in a resin-plume in an enclosed environment?
Judith Supine: Yeah, it was probably.
Brooklyn Street Art: And to do drugs that make you pass out?
Judith Supine: Yeah, probably people should be aware of that.
Brooklyn Street Art: “This is a public service message…”
Judith Supine: “..To all the kids out there; if you are going to huff resin, open a window.”

Judith Supine. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

So it’s good to see new Judith, even if he’s not on the streets, and it’s brilliant to witness the sharp mind and hear the articulate and sometimes lacerating banter that has not been dulled by the addictive behaviors that he’s been working on.

BSA: Did it improve your art?
JS: Getting sick? No.
BSA: How about getting high?
JS: No. It just made me lazy and dysfunctional.
BSA: Yeah sometimes it makes you lethargic and apathetic. You don’t care.
JS: I mean drugs are, I don’t know, sometimes they are – there’s like a certain point where they could be inspiring, kind of help you relax.
BSA: Yeah
JS: Get in kind of a childlike state, right?
BSA: Loosen up your inhibitions
JS: Yeah, but I wasn’t good at doing that though, in a moderate way. So it’s not effective. It’s like you are just constantly fucked up all waking hours.
BSA: Well moderation is not a word I would normally associate with your work.
JS: Yeah, well I’m not into it so much, I’m not very good at that.
BSA: I mean it’s extreme, it’s pungent.
JS: But now I’m at the other end of the spectrum.
BSA: And how do you feel about that?
JS: I feel healthier, physically and psychologically.
BSA: That sounds good.
JS: Yes, so I’m gonna stick with it.

Judith Supine. Detail of a piece in progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In fact Judith Supine has pulled off a pretty strong collection that he’ll be showing this week, and he credits the new sense of depth to the techniques he’s been teaching himself to build up his work. One piece even brought him back to his lino carving days that pre-date his collage work, but he’s unsure of showing that one.

BSA: What inspired you to do these pieces for the show?
JS: Money. Actually it is getting more exciting – especially making these pieces I’ve been getting more excited about the idea of working back into something?
BSA: When you say “working back into” the painting…?
JS: Like I probably repainted each painting three or four times. I pull the image out and repaint the same image.
BSA: Put it back in, draw out certain aspects of it..
JS: Yeah,
BSA: So how much time would lapse between iterations?
JS: A few hours. It’s pretty immediate the way I’m using multiples and xerox machines and shit. I can have lots of stuff painted to draw from.

BSA: Do you get the room ready first and then begin, or do you discover en route that you needed more stuff?
JS: It’s all pretty haphazard. I’m not like … I make a small-scale collage. That’s what I enjoy making – the actual collage – those tiny collages from books and magazines. To me that’s the most enjoyable part and creative part. And that’s become a kind of compulsive behavior. It’s something I do every day and I’ve done every day for the last 10 years. And then, from those I’ll edit out and I’ll pick one out of 20 of them or 30 of them to make into a painting. And then half the time I don’t like it when I start painting and I just abandon it.

BSA: So it’s like the thrill of that initial creative process …
JS: Yeah it’s like sifting through all these images and kind of finding these other hidden images – that part is really interesting and exciting to me. I’m trying to figure out ways to make the other end of the process, the actual painting part, more interesting to me where I’m like building up more layers of the resin and doing more like hand-painted shit so it’s not like “paint by numbers” – it’s boring.

Judith Supine. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

So that’s it. No more work in the public sphere from Judith Supine, right? Not quite.

If he’s not into the Street Art scene that flourishes, at least in part, in his wake these days, it doesn’t look like he is completely out of it either, at least not just yet. While the thought of wheat pasting seems boring and uninspired and he has harsh words to describe the current scene, and the rise of organized “Street Art” events in cities around the world leave him feeling cold, he might just conjure up a new idea for sculpture one of these days.

BSA: So, you wouldn’t want to associate yourself with shitty graphic design and a bunch of derivative stuff?
JS: (laughing) What I like about Street Art is the feeling of the transgressive part of it and the illegal nature of it. That’s what’s exciting to me about it. You know, what qualifies as street art now is like legal murals and that shit just seems kind of boring to me. It’s kind of just like in the style of… it just kind of loses its power.

BSA: Well, that’s because it’s art whose installation has been approved. There’s no risk involved, it isn’t transgressive. You’re not breaking any rules.
JS: Not that there’s really a lot of risk involved anyway. It’s like fucking jaywalking, or something. You know, or maybe more. I mean on a daily basis, especially while using drugs, I was breaking more laws doing other shit that I could get in a lot more trouble for. It’s really not a big deal. It’s fucking slap on the wrist.

BSA: Some people have said that they’ve had really bad experiences when they’ve been arrested.
JS: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m still interested in doing things out doors. I guess it still needs to be illegal for me, for it to be fun.
BSA: To get you hard.
JS: Yeah, and I don’t have very much interest in putting up wheat pastes and posters – so maybe more site-specific sculptures – it’s kind of more interesting to me, more exciting. I’m more like excited about how to like plan something and get away with it than, a lot of times, the actual final result.
BSA: So it’s like the process of the heist. Planning the logistics, executing the plan..
JS: Yeah, that part is intriguing to me. It’s not anything really exciting about walking around fucking gluing some Xerox to the wall. It’s pretty simple to do it and not get caught.
BSA: I wonder if there is an age element involved with the “fun-ness” of this?
JS: Probably. I don’t know what I want to do. I’d probably like to stay home and fucking read a book.

Judith Supine. Detail of a piece in progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Judith Supine. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Judith Supine. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Judith Supine. Studio shot with a detail of a piece in progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Judith Supine. A sketch/study for a piece. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Judith Supine’s solo exhibition “Too Much For One Man” opens this Saturday, Sept 08 at the Jonathan Levine Gallery. Click here for more details on this show.

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Agnes B Presents: “Public Display” A Group Exhibition (Manhattan, NYC)

September 3, 2012 , , , ,

Public Display

AGNèS B. PRESENTS: PUBLIC DISPLAY
A GROUP SHOW THAT LIVES SOMEWHERE BETWEEN DISNEYLAND AND PEEP WORLD.

FEATURING:
FAILE * D-FACE * INVADER * MISS BUGS ASVP * GAIA * QRST * HELLBENT * ND’A

OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, September 8th, 7:00-9:00PM

September 8th-October 14th, 2012 agnès b. | 50 Howard Street | NYC 10013

Agnès b. is pleased to announce the opening of Public Display, a group exhibition curated by New York-based artistic team ASVP. The exhibition will feature printed works by nine international street artists; D*Face (London, UK), Faile (Brooklyn), Gaia (Baltimore), Hellbent (Brooklyn), Invader (Paris, FR), Miss Bugs (Bristol, UK), ND’A (Brooklyn), QRST (Brooklyn), and ASVP (New York).

Inspired by graffiti and street art, agnès b. has been taking pictures of artworks in the streets of her native Paris, Manhattan and Brooklyn for many years. This is how she first noticed works by ASVP and was intrigued and compelled to work with the duo. The exhibition will feature some well known names from the Street Art world as well as a number of up-and-coming artists that are showing strong promise with collectors and critics alike.

ASVP began working together in 2007. Since then, the team of two has created paintings, murals and poster art that has been displayed in major cities worldwide including: London, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Zürich, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Varanasi India, Florence Italy, Istanbul as well as New York City. The duo’s work often marries eastern and western imagery from multiple influences including retro advertising, pop and comic book culture, often mixed with bold typographic elements. The team’s dramatic multi-layered compositions regularly include bright tones of pop inspired color. In addition to curating Public Display, ASVP is currently collaborating with Agnès B. on an number of projects scheduled to release in 2013. ASVP was recently selected as one of only two emerging artists to be included in Doyle New York’s Inagural Street Art Auction scheduled for October 16th, 2012.

D*Face a.k.a Dean Stockton, grew up in London and had a childhood interest in graffiti. He credits this to Hanry Chalfant’s coverage of New York subway graffiti in Spraycan Art and Subway Art. His humorous and nihilistic work brings together the generation who don’t give a fuck. It fuses both traditional and contemporary graffiti, independent comic book art and good old-fashioned vandalism. D*Face is best-known for putting up hundreds of provocatively ‘defaced’ ten and twenty pound notes. Working with a variety of mediums and techniques, D*Face uses a family of dysfunctional characters to satirize and hold to ransom all that falls into their grasp a welcome jolt of subversion in today’s media-saturated environment. D*Face held his first major London solo exhibition, Death & Glory, at the Stolenspace gallery, followed by an exhibition at Eyecons, at O Contemporary in Brighton. In 2010, he collaborated with Christina Aguilera, on her album cover of Bionic.

FAILE is a Brooklyn-based artistic collaboration between Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. Since its inception in 1999, FAILE is known for their pioneering use of wheatpasting and stenciling in the increasingly established arena of street art, and for their explorations of duality through a fragmented style of appropriation and collage. FAILE adapted its signature mass culture-driven iconography to a wide array of media. Their work has been included in numerous exhibitions around the world at the Museum Hetdomein, Sittard, Netherlands, TATE Modern, London, UK, Break Beat Science Showroom, Tokyo, Japan, NeurotitamHausSchwarzenberg, Berlin, Germany. Their works were also featured in numerous solo exhibitions at Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York, NY, LilianBaylis School-Lazarides Gallery, London, UK, to name only a few.

Gaia currently lives in Baltimore and was born in 1988 in New York City. His name derives from the Greek designation for ‘earth
goddess’. He uses animal imagery to underscore his interest in bringing nature to the urban landscapes. A rising star in the street art community, his work can be found pasted from Brooklyn to Europe and back. According to the artist himself, much of his early work was inspired by a sense of looming environmental calamity. In 2011, he stated; “I want to express this strange un-locatable feeling of fear about the end of the world –
my generation’s zeitgeist of global warming.” He uses a very large scale to depict his subjects and always captures delicate emotion.

Hellbent is a Brooklyn based artist whose work has appeared on the streets of New York for over 7 years. His work has also appeared in major cities across the US and Europe. Although he works in various media (wheat paste, straight spray paint, rollers and stencils) he is predominately known for his hand carved drawings on panels of jawbones, skulls, and various animals ranging from attacking snakes and dogs to serene hummingbirds affixed to any wooden surface. These “plaques” as he calls them always include his signature stenciled floral backgrounds.

Invader is a French street artist who pastes characters from and inspired by the Space Invaders video game, made up of small colored square tiles that form a mosaic. He does this in cities across the world, then documents this as an “Invasion”, with books and maps of where to find each invader. Invader started this project in 1998 with the invasion of Paris – the city where he lives and the most invaded city to date – and then spread the invasion to 31 other cities in France. Cities around the globe now invaded with his colorful characters in mosaic tiles. Since 2000 Invader has shown in many galleries, art centers and museums, from the 6th Lyon contemporary art biennale (2001), the MAMA Gallery in Rotterdam (2002), at the Paris based Magda Danysz Gallery (2003), at the Borusan Center for Culture and Arts in Istanbul, Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles (2004).
In 2010, he was one of the featured artists in the Banksy film Exit Through the Gift Shop. In 2011, he took part in the exhibition “Art in the Streets” at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA curated by Jeffrey Deitch.

Miss Bugs is a creative U.K. street art partnership from Bristol. Formed in 2007, the duo is a working collaboration between Missum and Bug. Their part-photo collage, part-art statements are big, graphic and visually inspiring artworks and stunning limited edition prints, each hand finished by Miss Bugs with a wide range of materials including gold leaf, ink, aerosol and even magazine cuttings. Miss Bugs prints include dark and humorous themes, mixing religion with pornography and taking a swipe at the established art world (most recently Damien Hirst). They use iconic symbols such as Bugs Bunny, He-Man, Wonder Woman or King Kong re-mixed to represent a personal idea or cultural stance. Miss Bugs is well known within the street art scene and with recent exhibitions in New York at the Brooklyn Nite Gallery in 2011 and at ink-d Gallery in Brighton, UK they are a creative force turning street art on it’s head.

ND’A is a Portland native turned NYC illustrator hit the streets running with a strong and unique style. His heavy-handed brush work and comical characters nestle within many of the forgotten grooves of Brooklyn. Unlike the typical graffiti characters found on the street, his work is like a troubled second cousin. One can’t help but be fascinated and slightly repulsed. Not to say they are grotesque but that they are grotesque, as the word was originally intended to be used.

QRST creates oil paintings and hand-made prints depicting the strange environments and subjects he imagines, and while working out his ideas,
he often makes wheatpastes to further inspire himself and share his process with the public. QRST’s public work often includes unusual hand-drawn illustrations of playfully tussling rat fights, wide eyed cats, and frumpy birds along with his series of everyday people (sometimes with wings).

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100 Story House: A Public Art Project by Leon Reid IV and Julia Marchesi (Brooklyn, NY)

September 3, 2012 , , , ,

The Hundred Story House

The Hundred Story House will be open to the public on September 8, 2012!

WHERE: JJ Byrne Park, 5th Avenue btwn 3rd & 4th St. Park Slope, Brooklyn.
WHEN: Saturday, September 8, 2012. 11am-4pm

TRANSIT: G or F Train to 4TH AVE. R Train to 9TH ST.

BRING the books you no longer need. TAKE the books you want to read.

STATEMENT:

Brooklyn is very bookish. If you walk the streets on a fair weathered weekend in certain neighborhoods, you will notice a system of informal and anonymous book-sharing. You will see piles of books lying on sidewalks or stacked on brownstone steps, available to any passersby looking for a good novel, or a cookbook from 1972.

This tradition is a testament to the limited storage of our homes, but also to the distinctly Brooklyn spirit of small-scale community interactivity that can be possible in a huge metropolis. It also speaks to a shared love of the written word — as do our many bookstores, public libraries, and coffee shops filled with famous (or soon-to-be) writers at work.

But in our increasingly digitized age, the form that books take has changed, and so has the nature of ‘community’. Our laptops and phones and e-readers allow us to withdraw into our insular spaces, changing the way we interact with each other — and how we experience the written word.

The 100 Story House is a piece of interactive public art. It is a miniature Brooklyn brownstone whose windows open upon shelves of books (about 100 of them), which can be borrowed by the community. House is a tiny lending library open to all and operating on the honor system — take-a-book, leave-a-book.

This is an effort to celebrate the BOOK as a physical object, and the pleasure of holding it in your hand. Or better yet, placing it in someone else’s.

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Brooklyn Museum Presents: GO See Art in Brooklyn: A Community – Curated Open Studio Project (Brooklyn, NYC)

August 30, 2012 , , , , ,

GO

BROOKLYN-BASED ARTISTS OPEN THEIR STUDIOS TO THE COMMUNITY SEPT 8-9

FOR “GO See Art In Brooklyn,” sponsored by Brooklyn Museum

Vote for Your Favorite Artist & Two or More Artists will be included in BROOKLYN MUSEUM Exhibition

Put on your walking shoes and come visit the studios of Brooklyn’s vast array of artists over the weekend of September 8-9, 2012 from 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM.   Come meet the artists and watch them work in their medium, from sculpting and painting to photography, textile arts, print making and illustration, among others.

“GO See Art IN Brooklyn” is sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum.  During the open studio weekend, voters will visit artists’ studios and check in using text messaging, the GO mobile app, or the GO mobile website.  After votes have checked in, they will be eligible to nominate three artists from their visits for inclusion in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

The ten artists with the most nominations will receive studio visits from Brooklyn Museum curators. Two or more nominated artists will be chosen by the curators to have their work displayed as part of a Brooklyn Museum group exhibition opening at TARGET FIRST SATURDAY on December 1, 2012.

Brooklyn Museum Invites Brooklyn Artists to Open Their Studios for Community Members and Curators to Collaborate on an Exhibition

The Brooklyn Museum is launching a borough-wide initiative in which Brooklyn- based artists will be invited to open their studios, allowing community members to visit and nominate artists for inclusion in a group exhibition to be held at the Museum. Brooklyn Museum curators will visit the studios of top nominated artists to select works for the exhibition. The open studio weekend for GO: a community- curated open studio project will be held September 8 and 9. The exhibition will open during Target First Saturday on December 1, 2012, and will be on view through February 24, 2013.

Web and mobile technology will be a central component bringing artists and community together to share information and perspectives on art. All participants (artists, voters, and volunteers) will be able to create a personal online profile at the project’s website, www.gobrooklynart.org. Artist profiles will include photos of each artist and their studio, along with images and descriptions of their work. Volunteers will be connected with their respective neighborhoods online, and voters will have profiles that track their activity during the open studio weekend and provide a platform on which to share their perspectives.

The project organizers are Sharon Matt Atkins, Managing Curator of Exhibitions, and Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology. GO: a community-curated open studio project is inspired by two predecessors: ArtPrize, an annual publicly juried art competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the long tradition of open studio events that take place each year throughout Brooklyn.

GO is sponsored by Deutsche Bank.

The L Magazine is media sponsor.

“GO is a wide-ranging and unique project that will transform how Brooklyn communities engage in the arts by providing everyone with the chance to discover artistic talent and to be involved in the exhibition process on a grassroots level. Through the use of innovative technology, GO provides every Brooklyn resident with an extraordinary opportunity to participate in the visual arts in an unprecedented way,” says Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman.

The Brooklyn Museum is located at 200 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, NY. For more information go to: https://www.gobrooklynart.org/participate

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Citizens of Humanity Presents: FUZI UV TPK. Free Tattos at The Hole Shop (Manhattan, NYC)

August 30, 2012 , , , , ,

FUZI UV TPK


FRENCH GRAFFITI LEGEND FUZI UV TPK VISITS U.S. FOR THE FIRST TIME;
OFFERS FREE TATTOOS

Saturday, September 1, 2012
12 to 5 p.m.

The Hole Shop
312 Bowery
New York, NY 10012


On Saturday, September 1, French graffiti writer and tattoo artist FUZI UV TPK will make his first-ever trip to the United States, where he will tattoo at The Hole Shop in New York. The tattoos will be provided to the public for free, courtesy of Citizens of Humanity.

FUZI is a veteran graffiti writer, who dominated the trains and subways of Paris for more than a decade. He imposed his “ignorant style” on the masses, a style that is instantly recognizable for its ironic twist and self-confident assertion.

Passing with ease from one medium to another, FUZI taught himself how to tattoo and brought a freshness to his designs that were inspired by his brutal lifestyle: direct black lines with devastating punch lines. “I did my first tattoo on the arm of my friend and graffiti partner RAP,” says FUZI. “It’s maybe my favorite tattoo ever, and I have maintained that self-taught style throughout my practice because I want to be without influence and learn from my own errors.”

FUZI chooses to tattoo in unique locations, using streets, subway tunnels and art galleries as his ephemeral tattoo studios. “I want to develop my vision of tattooing outside of the traditional tattoo studio,” FUZI says. “Each of my tattoos is unique, never duplicated, and I execute them in unusual places, because it leaves a mark on the memory, not just on the skin.”

The Hole Shop is the perfect venue for FUZI’s first time in the United States. The Hole is an influential, avant-garde gallery and creative project space, and its shop is directed and managed by the New York Art Department, which curates, produces and promotes emerging, cutting-edge cultural content.

For the event, FUZI will create 50 unique tattoo flash designs, inspired by New York. “I created these drawings as I do each time. I use a strong theme, and the idea goes directly from my brain to the paper, without corrections,” FUZI explains. “This time, NYC influenced my ideas, but the city and its lifestyle has always been an enormous influence on me and is an integral part of the symbols I use in my flash. You’ll find violence, graffiti, women and money, but humor is present also.” People selected for appointments will choose from one of these flash designs, and FUZI will tattoo them free of charge.

In addition to the tattoos, FUZI and Citizens of Humanity will release a limited-edition Ignorant People T-shirt, and 100 shirts will be given away at the event on a first-come first-serve basis.

This event is part of Citizens of Humanity’s ongoing commitment to support arts from around the world, which also incudes sponsorship of Miss Van’s exhibition at Copro Gallery in Santa Monica, and Barry Mcgee’s retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum.

“Coming to NYC for the first time is an important step for me,” FUZI says. “I left my train line in the suburbs of Paris so that I could present my art to the world, without compromise, and being able to do that in New York will be a powerful experience for me.”

The event will take place on Saturday, September 1, from 12 to 5 p.m., at The Hole Shop, 312 Bowery, New York, N.Y. 10002. FUZI’s books Ma Ligne and Flash Tattoo Collection N°1 will also be available to be purchased at the shop, and can be signed by FUZI.

Email explore@citizensofhumanity.com for a chance to win one of the appointment slots. People selected for appointments will be notified no later than August 24.

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Jonathan Levine Gallery Presents: Jeff Soto “Decay and Overgrowth” (Manhattan, NYC)

August 30, 2012 , , , , ,

Jeff Soto

Jeff Soto
Decay and Overgrowth
Solo Exhibition

September 8—October 6, 2012
Opening Reception:
Saturday, September 8, 7—9pm
Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to announce Decay and Overgrowth, a series of new works by Southern California-based artist Jeff Soto, in what will be his fourth solo exhibition at the gallery.

Expanding upon the themes explored previously in Lifecycle, Soto’s solo 2010 exhibition, works in Decay and Overgrowth deal with the passage of time, early man and life after death, as well as primitive myths and legends attempting to explain the unknown.

Two of Soto’s grandparents passed away within the last year, prompting the artist to research how different cultures explain life and death. Attempting to celebrate their lives rather than mourn their deaths, he has been working these ideas into his paintings. A connective thread of mortality runs throughout the work, conveying themes such as the transient nature of life, brevity of the average lifetime and inevitability of death.

Soto selected symbols of hope and growth to symbolize the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Organic shapes and elements such as mountains, plants, flowers, rocks and crystals are juxtaposed with manmade objects such as cell phone towers, weapons, polished gems and modern architecture. The resulting imagery combines a bit of magic, unanswered questions and a glimpse into the unknown.

In the words of the artist: “I’ve been thinking more than ever about how our lives are short, fleeting and unexpected. I’ve been researching man’s migration across the planet, our domestication of plants and animals and the slow evolution of different cultures. I find it interesting that each generation adds their own small part to our collective human experience. I’m continually fascinated by mankind’s relationship to nature and how humans have been bending the environment in good and bad ways for tens of thousands of years.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jeff Soto was born and raised in Southern California, where he currently resides with his wife and daughters. In 2002, he graduated with Distinction from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Soto’s distinct color palette, subject matter and technique resonate with a growing audience: inspired by childhood toys, skateboarding, graffiti, hip-hop and popular culture. His bold, representational work is simultaneously accessible and stimulating. Soto has been featured in numerous publications and published two monographs: Potato Stamp Dreams in 2005 and Storm Clouds in 2008. In 2008, his work was the subject of an exhibition at Riverside Art Museum in Riverside, California. He has painted multiple large-scale public murals in addition to exhibiting his artwork in galleries and museums around the world.

Jonathan Levine Gallery is located at 529 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information, please visit: www.jonathanlevinegallery.com, call: 212.243.3822, or email: info@jonathanlevinegallery.com.

 

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Jonathan Levine Gallery Presents: Judith Supine “Too Much for one Man” (Manhattan, NY)

August 30, 2012 , , , , ,

Judith Supine

Judith Supine
Too Much For One Man
Solo Exhibition

September 8—October 6, 2012
Opening Reception:
Saturday, September 8, 7—9pm
Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to present Too Much For One Man, a series of new oil paintings on panel by acclaimed Brooklyn-based artist Judith Supine, in what will be his first solo exhibition at the gallery.

Using his mother’s maiden name as an alias to keep his identity anonymous, Judith Supine has become renowned in the street art scene for his distinct style, unique wheatpastes on building façades and impressive placement of public interventions in daring locations throughout New York City. In 2007, he hung a 50-foot figure off the side of the Manhattan Bridge, in 2008 he left a piece floating in the East River and then in 2009 he left one in a Central Park pond, one in a Queens sewer and another on the highest point of the Williamsburg Bridge.

In recent years, Supine has focused more on studio work and elaborate gallery installations. His process involves a pastiche of printed ephemera. Supine describes the collage technique as “combining seemingly disparate images to reveal something that wasn’t previously apparent.” Procuring visuals from found materials such as salvaged books and magazines to form his inventive assemblage, the artist uses a photocopier to create figures with odd proportions and dramatic scale in high-contrast black and white. He then applies vibrant washes of his signature color palette in psychedelic fluorescents (mainly neon greens, pinks and purples) before finishing with a seal of high-gloss resin.

There is a poignant quality to Supine’s surreal subject matter, likely the result of his effective skill in manipulating and combining image fragments—altering them so far beyond their original intention that they transform completely. These visual contrasts highlight class issues, twisted ideals and culture clashes. Supine turns airbrushed fashion and cosmetic beauties into monstrous creatures. Subverting sexy into scary, innocent into depraved and privileged into pornographic, children’s faces are superimposed onto adult nude bodies as luxury brand supermodels merge with the world’s impoverished. Supine’s work exposes the grotesque vulgarity of its advertising sources yet also manages to touch upon core truths of humanity, posing profound questions that resonate.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Judith Supine was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1978. He did not speak until he was seventeen years of age, during which time he used drawing and collage as a form of communication. The artist spent years traveling throughout European cities including London and Amsterdam. In 2005, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he is currently based. Supine’s work has been featured in numerous publications, including books such as: DELUSIONAL: The Story of the Jonathan LeVine Gallery, published by Gingko Press in 2012, TRESSPASS: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, published by Taschen in 2010,  Beyond The Street: The 100 Leading Figures in Urban Art, published by Gestalten in 2010 and Street Art New York published by Prestel in 2010.

Jonathan Levine Gallery is located at 529 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information, please visit: www.jonathanlevinegallery.com, call: 212.243.3822, or email: info@jonathanlevinegallery.com.

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SEE ONE Merges Graffiti and Street Art Abstractly with Flying “Shards”

SEE ONE Merges Graffiti and Street Art Abstractly with Flying “Shards”

August 30, 2012 , , , ,

New Video Debut and Interview with the “GEOMETRICKS” artist See One

A New York native, See One is a self-taught visual artist with a big imagination which was electrified as a kid in the city seeing graffiti growing up in the 1980s. Constantly drawing for hours on end as a child, he was also inspired by the characters, cartoons, and comic books of the time and he began creating his own world at a young age in sketchbooks and on walls. His initial pieces on the street were character-based and paid homage to that earlier New York traditional graffiti style, and he still likes that too.

Around 2009 See One began to experiment and develop a more abstract style for his works on canvas and on the street, using a recurring symbol that he now refers to as “Shards”. As his style evolved, a new world opened before him as his swift and swooping hand and arm movements produced fluid and jagged abstract graffiti patterns that fly and flow, evoking broken shards of glass that inhabit a third dimension, making the art pop off the wall. With this new practice, See One effectively opened a door for himself to combine graffiti and Street Art influences into one distinctive vision.

Beginning September 22nd new work by See One will be featured in the GEOMETRICKS show curated by Hellbent and presented by BSA.

See One. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: You have evolved through graffiti and more character based work in your painting to something that seems newly abstract. How is the experience different when working with more abstract forms and shapes?
See One: It’s a totally different world.  All the rules that apply when drawing characters or environments are thrown out because none of it applies to the style. I’ve learned that my abstract work bends and breaks all rules that I try to implement. With each new painting the style grows and evolves and is far different from doing illustrations – It’s a wild style on its own.

 

See One. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Is it important to have a label for the kind of work you do on the street?
See One: No, but I think the public’s need to give it a label is high though. People don’t know what they’re looking at when they see a wall or painting. My Shards are a hybrid of styles so it can be tough to put it in any certain category.  I don’t see a need to label it.  It should just be.

Brooklyn Street Art: How has the work of Jose Parla impacted you or inspired you? Why is he good?
See One: Jose Parla is the man! Long before I started doing my abstracted works, he inspired me.  I always like the way he builds history in his paintings; Some of them literally look like uncovered walls from the 1980s, which I find fascinating. Now that I am doing abstract work he stills inspires me because we are both working in layers, texture and depth – in two completely different ways. Jose Parla is great at capturing the feeling of an era in one of his paintings and his eye for detail is amazing. I hope to meet him one day.

Here is the new video of See One at work on this wall –  produced and created by

 

See One started his engagement with graff and Street Art with a character he continues to dig. This week we found him  merging all his styles in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Looking at the bending undulating flying shapes, or shards, in your work, a person could think that there is a mathematical equation happening, a sort of infographic. Does this style of painting feel like math to you?
See One: I’m terrible at math! I think there is a type of visual math or “style equation” to my paintings in that certain parts of a painting need to be in the right place, or doing the right thing. I know it looks like a lot of chaos flying around, but there is a method to the madness. The colors have to be balanced and the composition and placement of each shard is also important. If the flow is off, the painting is off.

Brooklyn Street Art: What is your favorite jam to listen to when painting?
See One: It always changes. Lately, I’ve been listening to Flosstradamus. It’s high energy dub-step. It’s what one of my paintings would sound like. I’ve been known to listen to cinematic soundtracks, hip hop, and some rock while working.  I’m a fan of instrumental hip hop mixes as well, anything that I don’t have fast-forward through is great.

 

See One. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: You have sited graffiti artist Futura as an influence on you. He is one of the original graff guys who bravely evolved his style and brought it into the gallery setting. Can you see yourself exclusively on the street or in the gallery?
See One: Both. I couldn’t be exclusively in either. The streets are the biggest galleries in world and I think the streets are driving the art that is now getting into galleries. Being in a gallery is great – it allows the artist to have a platform to engage an audience and sell artwork. But the street is where the excitement over that artwork begins.

Brooklyn Street Art: You have participated in venues where you were painting live in front of an audience. How much of your process is improvisational, how much is planned?
See One: It’s about 60/40. I like to have an idea of where I’m going even if I don’t know where I’m going to take it and just let it flow. That’s how my abstract style came out. I was painting life at a lounge, I sketched the profile of a cute girl I saw on the train as I was heading to the lounge. When I was there, I painted the profile and wasn’t sure what to with the other half of the canvas and these sharp jagged shapes came out and people loved it. Too much planning can ruin great art.

 

See One. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: What would be the most perfect compliment someone could give your work?
See One: If I’m walking through a show and watching people stare at my paintings and discussing my art and hear them wonder how it was done. The look of wonder and inspiration in someone’s eyes is exciting, that’s what you want to see in a good painting. Your eyes need to move and take in all that you’re seeing. If they also bought the painting, that is the ultimate compliment because something I made is now hanging proudly in someone’s home, office or business to be shared with their friends and family.

Brooklyn Street Art: When you create these grand swirling layered storms of strikingly hued shards, do you think of them as graff letters or shapes or waves of energy or something else?  Are they a mirror of anyone?
See One: When I first started in this style I used to think of them as abstracted letters only because I could see something letter-esque in the shapes. But that really stopped me from keeping the style in the abstract realm of my imagination because I was putting the style into an already pre-conceived form of something familiar. While Shards are reminiscent of letters, they aren’t quite there yet.

Later, I realized that Shards are jagged alien forms of wildstyle burners in motion on a smaller scale. Imagine what a wildstyle would look like if it exploded in slow motion. Broken down beyond chunks of 3-D letters are blocks of colors ripped apart from each other into broken pieces. The fills, the outline, forcefield and most importantly, the energy of wildstyle is broken down in the molecules. Colors and shadows fly around each other, almost fighting for space amongst themselves..a sort of “get in, where you fit in” type of fight for the right place.  That’s what Shards are.

Brooklyn Street Art: How do you know when a work is finished?
See One: It’s a feeling I get, I have to be visually satisfied with what I see. I set a high standard for my work and if I don’t see the finish line then I know its time for more coffee, because there’s more work to do.

See One. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

See One is one of the 11 participating artists in GEOMETRICKS

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Klughaus Gallery Presents: LUSH “Shitty Drawings in New York City” (Manhattan, NYC)

August 21, 2012 , , , , ,

LUSH

 

 

LUSH
Shitty Drawings in New York City
Curated by Michael Hunt

Opening Reception: Saturday, August 25 from 6-10pm
Location: 47 Monroe Street New York, NY 10002
RSVP: rsvp@klughaus.net
The Australian so-called “graffiti artist” LUSH is having his debut New York solo exhibition at Klughaus Gallery on Saturday, August 25, 2012. Following successful shows in Australia and London, LUSH is going to be bringing his “Shitty Art” to the Big Apple! Love him or hate him, be sure to swing by to show your support (or disapproval.) For his upcoming show, LUSH will be showcasing a bunch of witty illustrations that mainly “take the piss out” of his graffiti roots. There will be limited copies of a new zine by LUSH released at the opening. As always, I’m sure the show will be full of surprises!

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Low Brow Artique Presents: “You & Me” A group exhibition. (Brooklyn, NYC)

August 8, 2012 , , , , ,

You and Me

Smells . Cash4 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Low Brow Artique is proud to present You & Me, which examines the collaborative element within the street art community. The exhibition will be open to the public from August 11th to September 1st, with an opening reception on August 11th from 6 to 9pm. The gallery presents the work of Cash4 & Smells, Chris & Veng (RWK), EKG & Dark Clouds, Matt Siren & Fenix, OCMC & This Is Awkward, Royce Bannon & Russell King, and Veng & Sofia Maldonado. Inspired by the stylistic changes that occur when two artists create work together, You & Me brings together duos that can naturally be seen in the streets of New York as well as a few who have come together specifically for the show.

The collaborative element of the street art and graffiti scenes are constantly developing. Sometimes inspired by friendship, sometimes by a piece an artist sees while putting up their own work, this element has the power to change the way both artists think about their styles, use of space, and other factors in the art-making process. By coming together to create one piece, the artists also provide a unique experience to those who take notice of their work in the streets. For You & Me, Low Brow Artique is recreating that elated feeling you get when you see two of your favorite artists working together.

Over the past decade, Veng has collaborated with numerous artists, including members of his crew Robots Will Kill. When working with fellow crew member Chris, a palpable change can be seen in how both artists paint. Flowing back and forth between the realistic and cartoon-like, this work is contrasted by how Veng’s work evolves when painting with Sofia Maldonado. For example, when creating art together live for an event, the pair’s art takes on a hard-edged feel as Sofia’s bold shapes and outlines define the background. By placing the work of Veng collaborating with two different artists, You & Me depicts how sharing a canvas with two distinctly different artists can influence one artist’s practice.

However, probably the most ubiquitous partnership in the world of illegal art is none other than Cash4 and Smells. While the direct influence the two artists have on one another may not be as apparent as it is with others in the show, it is the cohesive vision that Cash4 and Smells display that makes them memorable. In addition to this vision, their roller tags can be seen from most above ground trains while their stickers, tags, and characters permeate every space within reach of the ground. With their carefully designed fonts and strong presence, Cash4 and Smells are a definitive partnership in New York City.

By representing artists from both the street art and graffiti worlds, You & Me gives viewers a taste of the partnerships that are seen in the streets. While there are plenty yet to still be discovered, we hope you will join us in celebrating a few of our favorites.

Low Brow Artique

143 Central Avenue

Brooklyn, NYC 11221

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Icy and Sot “Made in Iran” At the Openhouse Gallery (Manhattan, NYC)

August 7, 2012 , , , , ,

Icy and Sot

 

ICY AND SOT: MADE IN IRAN
Klerkx Art Agency (Amsterdam, Holland) and Neverheard Inc. (Brooklyn, NY) are proud to announce: MADE IN IRAN, the highly anticipated New York debut of the young Iranian street artists (and brothers): ICY AND SOT.
MADE IN IRAN is a groundbreaking display of the internationally acclaimed street art duo, featuring new stencil works and site-specific installations. The exhibition will be open to the public from the 23rd to 25th of August at Openhouse, 379 Broome Street. An opening reception will be held on Thursday the 23rd of August from 6 to 9 PM with a live musical performance by the Iranian punk rock band Yellow Dogs  (facebook.com/theyellowdogs).
Hailing from the city of Tabriz in North West Iran, brothers ICY AND SOT continue on their creative crusade to traverse pre-conceived perceptions of traditional Iranian art’s brevity through their highly intricate yet striking stencil artworks. Despite Iran’s cultural flourishing since the 2009 uprisings in Tehran, creative visual expression is still a constant struggle for its’ artists and society today. It is an oppressive force that provokes the Iranian art scene to fluctuate between an inhibited elegance and raw underground energy. This ambiguity is reflected in the vulnerable yet hopeful deep-set imagery of ICY AND SOT’s street art.
Using western street art approaches, the artists’ polarized themes of love and hate, war and peace, and hope and despair are manifested into the spectral faces of the innocent.
ABOUT ICY AND SOT:
ICY (born 1985) and SOT (born 1991) are stencil artists, skaters, best friends and brothers from Tabriz, Iran. ICY AND SOT started their professional career in 2008. They have made paramount accomplishments in Iranian urban art culture, creating an international buzz by playing it anyway but safe. Their prolific stencil work can be seen on the streets of Paris, Turin, Sao Paolo, New York and many other international cities. The brothers have been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications throughout Iran, Europe, South America and the US. Following New York, MADE IN IRAN will be making its way over to Amsterdam, Berlin and Milan.
In conjunction with the exhibition, American Iranian musician Ali Eskandarian will be performing an acoustic set in the gallery’s garden on Saturday, August 24th at 5 PM.
Openhouse Gallery
379 Broome St.
NYC
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