All posts tagged: Ad Hoc Art

Aakash Nihilani “Tape and Mirrors” at Eastern District – Ad Hoc

September 11, 2009

TAPE AND MIRRORS

"Tape and Mirrors" by Aakash Nihilani at Ad Hoc & Eastern District

Eastern District and Ad Hoc Art are pleased to announce their newly featured joint effort exhibit: “Tape and Mirrors” by artist Aakash Nihalani. Tape and Mirrors, the artist’s third solo exhibition in New York, will open on Friday September 25th, 2009.

Note, the Press/VIP Preview is from 6-7pm, followed by a public reception from 7-10pm. The exhibition will be on view weekly Thursdays through Sundays from 2pm-8pm until October 25th, 2009.

Eastern District is a contemporary exhibition space located at 43 Bogart Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn. They pride themselves on the merging of all creative artistic practices and presenting the community with art exhibitions as well as ongoing performance and event-based programming. Eastern District is excited to be presenting Tape and Mirrors with Ad Hoc Art. Ad Hoc, formerly located at 49 Bogart Street, is a staple in the Bushwick art community that has dedicated itself for years to being more than a gallery but a passionate creative fulcrum, showing work that is often marginalized by the larger New York art scene. This collaboration will undoubtedly be the first of many to come and will hopefully continue to build the local art community to another level.

Burly Worm Gets The Bird
Creative Commons License photo credit: Poster Boy NYC

Aakash Nihalani’s street work consists mostly of isometric rectangles and squares. Using brightly colored tape, he selectively places these graphics around New York to highlight the unexpected contours and elegant geometry pre-existing in the city itself. All execution of his street level tape work is done on site, with little to no planning.

For however brief of a time, Aakash Nihalani’s work offers people a chance to see a different side of New York, and momentarily escape from routine schedules and lives. “We all need the opportunity to see the city more playfully, as a world dominated by the interplay of very basic color and shape”. He tries to create a new space within the existing space of our everyday world for people to enter freely and unexpectedly “disconnect” from their reality.

Playing off of the metaphor ‘smoke and mirrors,’ meaning an illusion created out of an elaborate distraction, Nihalani’s Tape and Mirrors exhibition aims to create a magical experience out of the mundane. By implementing mirrors in key positions throughout the space, the viewer is given an opportunity to step ‘into,’ and view themselves within, Nihalani’s signature tape installations. Creating a playful interruption to the regular gallery schematic, the viewer is prodded from a bystander into a participant, not only interacting with the space and materials around them, but also with their own reflections.

Let Nihalani’s Tape and Mirrors open up a new portal of reality and experience yourself between dimensions at Eastern District gallery in Brooklyn.

Original prints and paintings by the artist will also be on view and for sale throughout the gallery.

To find out more information about Aakash Nihalani’s Tape and Mirrors exhibition, and more about Ad Hoc and Eastern District’s collaboration please go to adhocart.org and eastern-district.com.

For more information on Aakash Nihalani and his art visit aakashnihalani.com.

Refreshments generously provided by Asahi.

Thank you! We hope to see you out here at Eastern District Gallery, 43 Bogart Street, on September 25th from 7-10pm.

Best,

Ad Hoc Art & Eastern District
info@eastern-district.com
Hours: 2-8pm Thursday-Sunday

EASTERN DISTRICT
43 BOGART STREET – L TRAIN TO MORGAN AVENUE.

www.Eastern-District.com

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Street Signals 08.29.09

August 29, 2009

Skewville Unveils New Website

After being in development for 13 years, Droo says the new Skewville site is ready to roll!

Actually, that’s not how long it took to build the site – just it’s content.  This roll-through left-right scroller is a quick primer for the uninitiated on the history and accomplishments of Skewville and the multiple projects they have embarked on over the last decade plus.

Or, as Ad and Droo say, “If you don’t know – now you know.”

All the round the whirl
All the round the whirl with Skewville irony

From launching galleries to launching thousands of pairs of their wooden dogs over wires around the globe, to offering shows to their peers and participating in shows internationally, and always adding their smart-aleck commentary about the street art “scene” to the discussion, these brothers have piled a sizeable stack of HYPE.

Complexity and mastery comes with practice. Blah Blah Blah
Complexity and mastery comes with practice. Blah Blah Blah

This must be the place. Skewville actually was a physical location and a lifestyle for the middle class and unfamous.
This must be the place. Skewville actually was a physical location and a lifestyle for the middle class and unfamous.

No strangers to sarcasm, the brothers have conceived and built a number of contraptions to get their message out.
No strangers to sarcasm, the brothers have conceived and built a number of contraptions to get their message out.

Currently the Skewville Corporation is participating in Nuart, a festival in Stavanger, Norway that celebrates the contributions of Brooklyn Street Artists.

See the New Site HERE
See the Gallery Factory Fresh HERE
Brooklyn Street Artists at Nuart Festival Sept 10 – Oct 11
Check the Tubeness below to see a piece that MTV Brasil did – After the first minute in Portuguese, Ad DeVille pretty much takes the show!


Vandalog’s RJ Hard at Work on “The Thousands”

His first “Pop-Up” is taking shape this November in London

The Thousands

An open and sincere voice in the street art blog world, RJ Rushmore is a stone cold street art lover.  Albeit still in his teens, this guy posesses a maturity and modesty that many of his peers may not develop for another 10 years. More significant; his industry is matching the size of his dreams.

This time the dream is a “Pop-Up” show featuring the big names in street art today, exposing a larger audience to the genre that has captured the imagination of the youth culture.

RJ has been planning the show for many months methodically and feels secure about it’s ultimate success but he is very aware that he is taking a big leap to undertake this labor of love, where most of the work won’t even be for sale.

So far the 40 pieces in the show are from most of the big names in street art – Adam Neate, Banksy, Barry McGee, Jenny Holzer, Bast, Swoon, Kaws, Os Gemeos, Shepard Fairey, Herakut, Blek le Rat and others.

People are jumping into “The Thousands” every day as word spreads, and RJ’s been sorting out the details that come along with this kind of show – Artists, Collectors, Permissions, Love.  In addition he’s working on a companion coffee table book to be published by Drago in November with photos and bios and a few guest contributors like Gaia and Panik.

His first exhibition includes some of the better known names and he’s looking forward to doing a future show with more emerging artists, but he’s smart to limit the scope the first time out. “The purpose of my efforts is to bring street art to the attention of a wider art community, and the best way to do that is to take the very best street artists’ artwork instead of all the emerging artists that I might love and think are promising”, says Mr. Rushmore.

The Thousands will be open from November 18th through the 22nd of November at Village Underground in London. Keep up on the details at the blog for “The Thousands” HERE

Vandalog is his street art blog

AD HOC Forms Alliance with Eastern District

Curating a Quick Show that Opens Today!

Eastern District, a 400sf gallery opened for about a year in Bushwick is looking to extend it’s reach by asking street art veteran gallerists Allison and Garrison Buxton to curate a new show in the ED space next door.  Most people know that Ad Hoc Art recently announced it’s downsizing it’s square footage due in their 49 Bogart space and stories of ED’s impending closure have been swirling around also.

Well, this is how neighbors do it in Brooklyn: by reaching out and working together. If either one of these parties had been the snooty white-box types, it never would have worked. But this is an arts community that knows that the resulting strength is greater with two.  When asked by ED to partner on shows, Ad Hoc Art happily and quickly accepted the invitation to curate and bring their peeps too.  Now they are looking at ways to bring more great shows to ED. That’s very good news for the nascent Bushwick gallery scene, not to mention the artists who get to show there.

And that brings us to today.  Garrison says, “AHA & ED have a Bushwick-focused show opening specifically highlighting very local talent from the hood where it all started.” Included are AHA/Bushwick favorites like like Destroy and Rebuild, LogikOne, Michael Allen, Molly Crabapple, Pagan, and Robert Steel”

Ad Hoc Art’s is now planning a fall exhibition featuring the work of Joe Vaux and Gilbert Oh to open in November at Eastern District and more shows planned into the winter, such as veteren British/French street artist Jef Aerosol in January.  For now, it sounds like the Ad Hoc extravganza and shenanigans will continue!

Prepare for exciting art extravaganzas and shenanigans in the present and continuing into the near future, for Bushwick and beyond.

And of course the current show at Ad Hoc:

Chris Stain, Armsrock, and Ezra Li on Display till September 6th.

SuperDraw Keeps Developing – Now it’s an Iphone App

Remember BSA’s Projekt Projektor last year at the Dumbo Festival, full of new projectionists stretching the definition of Street Art?  Remember the projectionists at the end of our Street Crush Show in February?

Then you’ll remember Josh Ott, or SuperDraw.  Dude developed an interactive interface for people to project their own art through a project with their iPhones, and at our shows he eagerly transferred it to your phone for free so you could slap your work all over the Manhattan Bridge.

True, GRL keeps setting some of the standards, but we firmly believe that the future of street art may be vibrating in your front pocket right now.  There is a whole crop of projectionists and video and multimedia artists that are sharpening their skillz for that Brave New Street Art World as we chase the wheat-pasters.

SuperDraw

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Willoughby Windows Walkby – Street Art on Display in Downtown Brooklyn

July 14, 2009

It’s a great idea to go window shopping these days —as opposed to actual shopping.

Since 70% of the American economy is fueled by shopping instead of manufacturing, we’re all supposed to be doing our patriotic duty accordingly. But sometimes the wallet is bare, bro.  And sometimes the local dollar doesn’t stay local.

In yet another case of Street Art improving a community, the Willoughby Windows project in downtown Brooklyn officially opened this weekend with 17 artists, babies, scooters, costumed dancers, a sidewalk DJ, and inquisitive mildly bewildered citizenry slowing down to peek through the glass into artists’ clever minds.

Artist Logan Hicks leans into his piece comprised of collaged crowds of New Yorkers on the street. (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Artist Logan Hicks leans into his multi-layered screenprint piece depicting crowds of New Yorkers on the street. (photo Steven P. Harrington)

A stupendous 3-D installation of printing expert Dennis McNett (photo Steven P. Harrington)
A stupendous animal centric 3D installation utilizing the full space of the display window by print expert Dennis McNett can only be appreciated fully in person (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Garrison and Allison Buxton, anchors and workhorses in the Brooklyn
Garrison and Allison Buxton; anchors and visionaries, bring Willoughby Windows to Brooklyn  (photo Steven P. Harrington)

In a joint effort with Ad Hoc Gallery and the local BID (Business Improvement District), Garrison Buxton and Allison Buxton and all the Ad Hoc interns have worked tirelessly for a few weeks with artists to install this show behind glass and to revive a moribund block in this sector of retail Brooklyn.

A highly detailed storyline from Cannonball Press (photo Steven P. Harrington)
A detailed storyline from Cannonball Press also features a giant old -style cash register (not pictured) that reminds you there once were real businesses and customers here (photo Steven P. Harrington)

At the very least, it’s not so friggin depressing to pass this block on the way to work.  At most, it can inspire creative impulses and conversations. Friday’s opening featured many children, gawking families, kooky creative types, chalk games on the side walk, even a feeling of “community”.  Huh.

Willoughby Window gazer (photo Jaime Rojo)

Willoughby Window gazer (photo Jaime Rojo)

In a window display that once featured
In a window display case that featured bagels and home-baked goods, the late afternoon shadows slide across photographs of shadow-tracing by street artist Ellis G.  (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Ironically a neighbor to bailout-happy JPMorgan Chase, whose skyscraper casts a shadow over this district of mom and pop businesses displaced by developers, the Willoughby Windows Project gives creative stimulus to the community with a fresh way to think of the shop window.

Chris Stain's stencil invokes imagery from his working-class roots (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Stencil artist Chris Stain invokes the imagery of Brooklyn neighbors (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Josh MacPhee

Josh MacPhee brings his Celebrate People's History poster series to this window, creating a patchwork of text and images (photo Steven P. Harrington)

In the wake of boom-era blustery press conferences and erect Powerpoint bar-graphs that fell limp, this project doesn’t bring back the businesses or feed their families, but it does invite a conversation about what a locally created economy means to the people who live here.  Pedestrian?  Yes, actually. Moribund? No way.

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Gaia & Imminent Disaster at Ad Hoc

June 10, 2009 , , ,

Gaia & Imminent Disaster

Front Gallery

Hiro Kurata & Tommii Lim

Project Room

Nancie Yang

Alcove

June 26th – July 26th

Opening Reception: Friday, June 26th 2009

Choosing a moniker after the Greek goddess of the earth, Gaia uses animals, folklore, fairytales and stories from other cultures to convey a narrative within his pieces. Having first been exposed to street art by Cheekz, Gaia’s awareness of street art came as a truly momentous direction for his artistic endeavors. Gaia continues to experiment with different processes as he brings his works to the galleries and the streets of NYC and beyond.

Imminent Disaster first started doing street art as a way of culture jamming. Since then she has gradually been developing pieces that explore the tensions between present day and historical New York. From bits of cobblestone and defunct tramlines to old warehouses gutted and resold as hip condos, Imminent Disaster turns a classical eye toward modern urban life, and reveals what has been lost.

IN THE FRONT GALLERY

Image
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Willoughby Windows presented by Ad Hoc

April 13, 2009 , , ,

Ad Hoc Art presents Willoughby Windows

Friday, July 10th, 2 – 7pm = Ad Hoc Art presents “Willoughby Windows”

An ambitious creative venture featuring 14 storefronts on an entire block of downtown Brooklyn which will highlight installations by 15+ artists. The opening will be a street party on Friday, June 19th, from 2-7pm. Some of New York’s artistic finest will be representing to the fullest.

Confirmed participating artists include:

Cannonball Press (Mike Houston & Martin Mazorra)
Chris Stain
Cycle
Dennis McNett
Ellis G
Gaia
Greg Lamarche
John Ahearn
Josh MacPhee
Lady Pink
Logan Hicks
Carlos Rodriguez {Mare139}
Michael De Feo
Morning Breath
Nathan Lee Pickett
Tom Beale

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Posterboy! Posterboy! Oh and there were four other artists next door.

April 5, 2009 , , ,

April showers only slightly dampened the mood in Bushwick Brooklyn

at two openings Friday night. AdHoc featured 4 fine artists from outside New York in their various gallery spaces, while Eastern District devoted their room entirely to the first solo show of Posterboy that drew an excited inquisitive crowd.

Ekundayo & Joshua Clay shared the front gallery, where their complimentary illustration styles and sordid-themed murals easily took over and called the space home.

Hawaiin born L.A. native Ekundayo’s contorted curmugeons and malformed miscreants sang a song of sixpence, saliva, and silly – in a well formed cast of characters that could be called a family (but you may want to pack a crucifix in your picnic basket on reunion day). In fact one looks kind of like my Aunt Marge.

Lookout, Cannonball! (Ekundayo at AdHoc Art) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Lookout, Cannonball! (Ekundayo courtesy AdHoc Art) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

A well regarded talent in the current post-pop L.A. scene, Joshua Clay, easily opens the door to dark dens of iniquity with playful flair.

Ekundayo
Whisky and wayward women are a sure way to run afoul of the church. One of the murals in the gallery (Joshua Clay courtesy AdHoc Art) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Elisabeth Timpone held down the alcove with her own mini-show called “Tails of the North”. The collection of finely inked animals and creatures read like shaker drawings, but closer my dear pretty, come closer, and see friendship, fear, and feral savagery.

Timpone
Elizabeth Timpone courtesy of AdHoc Gallery (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Timpone

Elizabeth Timpone courtesy of AdHoc Gallery (photo Steven P. Harrington)

To curvaceously round out the show with 60’s pop poster colors and buxom babes was TheDirtyFabulous. A sort of cherry on top, you might say.

TheDirtyFabulous courtesy Ad Hoc Art (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Peter Max, the Grateful Dead, & Juggs Magazine all Come Together Over Me (TheDirtyFabulous courtesy Ad Hoc Art) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

And just steps away, the subway slicing superhero/s stirred the minions of inquisitive fans into Eastern District Gallery for Posterboy‘s first solo show.

Adbusters all (courtesy Eastern District) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Adbusters all (courtesy Eastern District) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

The show consisted of two very large expanses of billboard grade vinyl stretched along facing long walls and loosely affixed pieces creating a new story with the same material.

From the vinal were cut familiar shapes from Picasso paintings and a troubled-looking Obama under the lettered banner “Hype?”. Tongues wagged about meanings, motives, and make-believe, as gallery goers read into the wall pieces and donated $5 for a sticker stencilled with “Posterboy ?”.

Don't believe it (Posterboy courtesy of Eastern District) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Don’t Believe It (Posterboy courtesy Eastern District) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

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Nathan Pickett is Killing it in the Back Room

March 10, 2009 , ,
Carnal Lexicon Carnivorous (Nathan Lee Pickett)

Carnal Lexicon Carnivorous (Nathan Lee Pickett)

Breathe Like You Mean It

Nathan Lee Pickett is from Virginia, yet another incredible transplant to Brooklyn.  I was already revved up and excited by the Morning Breath/Cycle show up front gallery at Ad Hoc that is running until March 22, but Mr. Pickett left me kind of stupified.

No pictures do it justice, so try to hit it this weekend – the paper cutting alone is so intense and detailed that to use it for a stencil almost seems beside the point – the pretty chaos that ensues from layering rich dense color, a calligraphic hand, and pulling the screen back from the wall so it’s shapes cast intricate shadows on the wall… Pickett’s new work is a revelation.

Detail

Detail (Nathan Lee Pickett)

AdHoc Art Gallery

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Fountain Art Fair Rocks the Boat

March 7, 2009 ,

Brooklyn Galleries are in the House(boat) on the Hudson

From the moment you jog across the roaring West Side Highway and dodge the racing rollerblader lane

to step onto the lurching dock, the Fountain Art Fair let’s you know that it’s not going to be a typical ride. In it’s third year, the unofficial Anti-Armory floating fair on Pier 66 features independent and non-traditional and street artists and their works.

Ahoy, Matey!

9 galleries are participating this year, including a Glowlab fund-raising mini-gallery that’s helping street artist Swoon mount a new floating spectacular exhibit in the sea, this time it will navigate the Adriatic Sea from the Karst region of Slovenia to Venice, Italy in May of 2009.  Artist Greg Haberny takes over the entire McCaig Welles booth with a cacophonic explosion of patriotic symbolism and corporate indictments in a decidedly not tongue-in-cheek installation called “The Donkey Party Game”. And AdHoc uses their wallspaces to spread the love of color, pattern, symbols and the police state with floor to ceiling installations done by Peripheral Media Projects (PMP).

Sure to entertain, the fair, mounted on a floating barge with an insecure-looking infrastructure, is by turns perplexing and powerful, frank and beguiling… just what you might expect from places that favor the art renegades.

Artists like Maya Hayuk, Royce Bannon, and infinity are part of the

Artists like Maya Hayuk, Royce Bannon, and infinity are part of the Swoon flotilla benefit. Raffle tickets are being sold to win a custom Swoon piece. (photo Steven P. Harrington)

The Donkey Party Game installation really rocks the houseboat. Artist Greg Haberny

The Donkey Party Game installation really rocks the houseboat. Artist Greg Haberny (photo Steven P. Harrington

Police, Crowns, Purple Heads... the unusual fair (Peripheral Media Projects) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Riot police, Crowns, Purple Heads... the unusual fair (Peripheral Media Projects) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

For more on Fountain take a look at NY1’s local news story

Fountain Art Fair

Participating Galleries

Ad Hoc Art – Brooklyn
Definition Gallery – Baltimore
Front Room – Brooklyn
Glowlab – New York
Leo Kesting – New York
McCaig-Welles – Brooklyn
Soundwalk – New York
Stuart Shepherd – New Zealand
Vagabond Gallery – New York

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The Dirty Fabulous comes to Ad Hoc

February 10, 2009 ,

TheDirtyFabulous

April 3rd through May 3rd 2009

Opening Reception: Friday, April 3rd, 7pm-10pm

TheDirtyFabulous was born in the year of the Dragon and travels the windblown highway of Interstate 40.

This body of work actually began in 1997 – in a small, run-down house on some wooded land. The place has since been deserted. Working in that place helped bring into focus the narratives I would continue to work with. Over the years, the work has been slowly accumulating. I see this as an ongoing project – a book of fables, with large paper drawings as pages. These drawings have no set sequence of images or reading. The word fable is derived from the Latin word fabula, meaning “story”. I repeatedly explore themes such as myth, psychology, philosophy, apparition of beauty, eroticism, machines of fate, human folly, nostalgia, mortality, history, consumer culture, industrialization, loss and regret. Imagery is used from many sources and typically a work is generated in response to readings or in reference to life experiences. I use nineteenth century mechanical relics, sequences from dreams, vintage pin-ups, scientific historical images, anatomy and nostalgic panoramas as symbolic references. Combined in the work, they allow for commentary, connection and invention on many topics and ideas.

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Life is Like a Box of “Delineations”

January 29, 2009 , ,

Ad Hoc is currently hosting a chocolate box full of delectables:

An array of mostly hand-drawn early renderings by a number of artists (street artists and not) – graphite, ink, colored pencil, charcoals, acrylic, paper, cardboard and wood.

“Delineations” is a tastily curious assortment that, upon close examination, reveals what you may have already known: there is a very healthy collection of talent taking over the scene, and their roots are in the drawing tradition. Drawing may not be the new painting, but it’s definitely part of the process!

"USA 19" by Cycle (photo Steven P. Harrington)

"USA 19" by Cycle (Photo Steven P. Harrington)

(Toofly) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Superfly Mama deftly drawn (Toofly) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

"Remarks" by Miha (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Oh this old ratty lions head scarf? It's nothing, it's a hand-me-down. "Remarks" by Miha (photo Steven P. Harrington)

"Illegal Tender"

Okay, this is as hilarious in real life. Check out the gold leaf! "Illegal Tender" by EZO (photo Steven P. Harrington)

Logik ONe

Logik One is rocking the jams (photo Steven P. Harrington)

The first Brick Lady

The First, the Original, Brick Lady (Lady Pink) (photo Steven P. Harrington

The show “Delineations” runs through February 15.

Ad Hoc Gallery

More details in our Calendar

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“Going Postal” Book Release and Sticker Show with Martha Cooper at Ad Hoc

January 11, 2009 , ,
Going Postal
by Martha Cooper

Book Release and Sticker Show

Going Postal
by Martha Cooper
Book Release and Sticker Show
Opening Reception: Friday, February 20th, 7-10pm
Sticker Show on view for 2 more days: Sat Feb 21st, Sun Feb 22nd (1-8pm each day)
Grafitti photography legend Martha Cooper has compiled a collection of photographs shot in numerous cities, including New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Tokyo, Berlin and Amsterdam, featuring postal-sticker art created by FAUST, STAIN, C.DAMAGE, GET2, COSBE and many more.

Going Postal documents how an old-school method has burgeoned into another rich facet of the world’s graffiti cultures.

Ad Hoc Gallery

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