OPENING RECEPTION
Saturday, April 2, 5-7PM
Press preview with curators: 4-5PM
Exhibition runs April 2-17, 2011
LOCATION
chashama/Donnell Library Building
20 West 53rd Street, b/w 5th & 6th Avenue
New York, NY 10019 (across from MoMA)
ARTISTS
Abe Lincoln, Jr., John Ahearn with Rigorberto Torres, Adam VOID, Cahil Muraghu, Cake, Darkclouds, Droid, El Celso, Ellis Gallagher, Faro, John Fekner, Freedom, Gen2, Abby Goodman, Goya, Groser, Richard Hambleton, infinity, Ket, Don Leicht, LSD-Om, Matt Siren, NohJColey, OverUnder, Oze 108, Quel Beast, Royce Bannon, Sadue, Jordan Seiler, Skewville, Stikman, Toofly, UFO, and Vudu.
NEW YORK – On Saturday, April 2, 2011, 35 graffiti writers and street artists will unite to reclaim the former Donnell Library as a repository of visual information on the growing world-wide phenomenon of street art. This exhibition will present an art historical timeline that is a part of New York City’s unique legacy. The artistic contribution of these cultural catalysts and preservationists from the 70’s to the new millennium will address the ever-changing urban landscape and alternative modes of producing art in the streets.
Graffiti and street art are at the crossroads of historicism.
In the last five years, museums have organized exhibitions that present graffiti and street art in a broader scope; Brooklyn Museum’s, Graffiti in 2006; the Museum of Modern Art’s laser-tagging demonstration by Graffiti Research Lab in 2008; the Bronx Museum’s, Street Life Street Art in 2008; and the Tate Modern’s, Street Art in 2008, to name a few. Although these exhibitions have legitimized graffiti and street art as an art form, this genre has not been fully resolved by the art world. At present, this contemporary art zeitgeist signals a symptomatic dystopia created between the institutionalization of this art form and its anti-institutional tenets.
PANTHEON aims to maintain the aesthetic diversity of the genre.
The forthcoming exhibition at MoCA Geffen Contemporary, Art in the Streets, will be a worldwide survey of graffiti and street art and Los Angeles’ role in the movement’s evolution. Despite its focus on Los Angeles, New York City’s graffiti and street art cognoscenti partake in their exuberance. Outside the institutional framework of museums, PANTHEON is situated within the DIY fundamentals of alternative art spaces. It is important to call attention to this space as the convergence of public and private spaces, because it informs an innovation of contemporary graffiti and street art in terms of medium, content and style.
The axiom of this movement is its ubiquity in the streets of New York City. During its nascency, John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres’ casts of everyday people adorned buildings, John Fekner’s simple large-scale text stencils politically charged brick walls, Freedom’s representational art graced tunnel cathedrals, Richard Hambleton’s silhouette paintings emotionally moved sidewalks and alleys, and Ket’s prolific tags saturated NYC’s subway cars. These artists established the tone for style, medium and content in this genre. The radical style, guerilla approach and ephemeral aesthetic of this subculture have been challenged since the 80’s and today’s artists are exploring
new ways to respond.
chashama is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Anita Durst in 1995. The organization’s mission is to support creativity in New York City by repurposing vacant properties enabling artists a space to create. PANTHEON: A history of art from the streets of New York City was awarded the former Donnell Library as an exhibition space, which is part of chashama’s Windows Program. PANTHEON is Co-Curated by Daniel Feral and Joyce Manalo along with Debra Anderson and Royce Bannon of the Advisory Committee and the collaboration of dedicated and talented individuals, most notably, Abe Lincoln, Jr., Francesco Alessandra, Maura Barry, Jennifer Diamond, Valentin Farkasch, Karla Henrick, Ebi Kagbala, Luna Park, Ashlene Nand, Dan Nguyen and Mariette Papic. Thank you to Brooklyn Street Art (media partner); Gothamist, Hyperallergic, The Street Spot, Streetsy (media sponsors); Cresent Artists (exhibition sponsor); and WM Dorvillier & Company, Inc. (structural design consultation). Image credits courtesy of the artists. Special thanks to the Woodward Gallery, NYC for the loan of Richard Hambleton’s Fountain of Youth, 1982.
For more information, please visit pantheonnyc.com or chashama.org.
For further exhibition details, media relations, Kickstarter campaign, sponsorships, and partnerships please email info@pantheonnyc.com or visit www.pantheonnyc.com. For more information about the Windows Program, please visit www.chashama.org.
While Nick Walker is in town hitting up all kinds of fancy, he spent a little time with BSA to make this new stencil in The People’s Republic of Brooklyn, above. Coming from the printers to check on the progress of the new release tomorrow (see below), Nick and his merry cluster of “assistants” rolled through the BK to poke his head into a couple of windows. Full process pics and the installation come up Sunday on BSA’s Images of the Week.
Nick Walker will be releasing a print in collaboration with Opera Gallery, 115 Spring Street, New York, this Saturday, February 26th, 2011 at 3pm EST. A lottery has been set up making 50 prints available for collectors in the UK. In order to apply for a print please email info@theartofnickwalker.com with New York TMA lottery in the subject box.
Nick Walker’s “Morning After New York” print release at Opera Gallery Tomorrow at 3:00 p.m.
The print will be a signed limited edition of 150 with 18 hand-finished Artists proofs.
Royce Bannon Catches Unusual Suspects at 17 Frost Tomorrow
Check out Abe Lincoln Jr. Celso, Chris RWK, Darkclouds, Infinity, Keely, Matt Siren, Moody, Nose Go, and Sno Monster, all curated by monster man Royce Bannon at this eclectic show in Brooklyn Saturday night. Read more and see images from the show HERE:
Please Support the Pantheon Show Across from the MoMA in April
This spring at the former Donnell New York Public Library across the street from MoMA Joyce Manalo and Daniel Feral will bring you PANTHEON: A History of Art From the Streets of NYC. This artist’s initiative is a 40 year history of New York Street Art told by the people who actually did the work. Run with volunteers, this show promises an erudite assessing of this moment in the timeline, and a look at how we got this far – and daily demonstrations in the windows. With your pledge to their Kickstarter campaign they will be able to afford to print catalogues and mount the show. Please throw them a buck! Click Here to see their KickStarter.
“I’ve always been an artist in some form, or certainly always creative – it’s a lifestyle, I don’t think you choose art, its something you do, it is life. Well my life,” Hush explains to BSA. This week he’s been putting work up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and tonight is his NYC solo exhibition debut at The Angel Orensanz Foundation For Contemporary Art. We’re not missing it.
172 Norfolk Street
New York, NY 10002
Tel: 212.529.7194
Rae McGrath at Brooklynite Saturday: Unconventional Conviction
The gallery is completely re-painted and Rae is standing on his head waiting for it to dry. Unconventional is right – the last two years as a ringmaster and co-proprietor of Brooklynite Gallery have put him squarely in the middle of a tornado of punchy Street Art and a panoply of personalities – always with a very defined focus, high level of quality, and total conviction. As a curator, marketer, and host, this modern carny is a font of new ideas and angles, backed up with straight up elbow grease.
Now Rae is taking a minute or two to let people see what snaps his elastic mind when it comes to making art. You can see how the curator and the artist merge in this poppy geometric collection; Bast, Miss Bugs, Dain, Ana Peru Peru Ana, Various & Gould and others each have a shout out. It’s all here; the dense graphic punch, the vibrant blue collar reverence, the deliberate slicing and refracting off a funhouse mirror ball. Always a surprise and always a reward, artist Rae MaGrath’s debut is bound to be a funkadelic bootilicious jam.
‘UNCONVENTIONAL CONVICTION” this Saturday November 20 6 to 9 pm at Brooklynite Gallery on 334 Malcom X Blvd, Brooklyn, NY 11233. Tel 347 405 5976
Bushwick Block Party Saturday
Tacos! And freshly painted street art by some of your favorite names on a street in Brooklyn. What’s not to like?
Factory Fresh and app maker All City Street Art are throwing a party for you and all you have to do is show up on the block Saturday afternoon.
Brooklyn Street Artists Paint a 200 foot wall and the Burning Candy Crew debut their new film!
• Live painting
• Calexico taco cart
• DJs
• Art for sale from participating artists
• Burning Candy’s Dots film premiere
James Brown was the Godfather of Soul, Aretha is the Queen of Soul, Michael was the King of Pop, and Jennifer Lopez is a judge on a TV talent show. Now we learn that one of New York’s first recognized street artists, having blanketed the L.E.S. with disconcerting shadow figures in the 1980s, is actually called “The Godfather of Street Art”. Thank Allah you don’t have to be the one in charge of handling these honorariums because you know that has got to be a thankless task. On the occasion of “Richard Hambleton New York”, The Dairy Gallery released this video.
Richard Hambleton. Image Courtesy of the Dairy Gallery
And Speaking of Dairy, Have You Seen the new Ron English Cow Painting?
Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida in collaboration with Giorgio Armani present “Richard Hambleton New York – The Godfather of street art”, an exhibition of works by Richard Hambleton
London, November 2010 – Elusive New York artist Richard Hambleton will be the subject of an exhibition at The Dairy in London, following highly successful exhibitions in New York, Milan, and Cannes. The exhibition, opening on 18th November, will be curated by Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida in collaboration with Giorgio Armani.
Richard Hambleton rose to fame in the early 1980’s when like his contemporaries, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, he used the streets of New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris, London and Japan as his canvas for visually arresting public art, most notably his “Shadowman” and “Crime Scene” series. Hambleton has now been labelled ‘The Godfather of Street Art’, influencing artists such as Paris based street artist Blek le Rat and English street artist Banksy.
The last influential surviving member of the East Village Art Movement, Hambleton saw what fame and drug use did to his close friends, and for the last 20 years has led a relatively reclusive life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Despite a low public profile, Hambleton has continued to create and his works can be found in the permanent collections of The MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, The Houston Museum of Fine Art, The Check Point Charlie Museum and The Zellermeyer in Berlin; the Andy Warhol Museum, the Austin Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Queens Museum, and Harvard University. He was chosen for the Venice Biennale in 1984.
Giorgio Armani says: “I have long been a fan of Richard Hambleton. Richard’s work is of the streets, and for me stands as a reminder that art in all its forms is first and foremost driven by individual passion and creativity”
Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida say: “Richard Hambleton’s brush stroke as an artist is genius and is in a league of its own. Most significantly, he is the most important and influential living street artist in the world today, with a story and career that is unparalleled. It is also a privilege for us to collaborate again with Giorgio Armani and we’re pleased to present it in such a prestigious space.”
The Richard Hambleton Exhibition will be open to the public from November 19th to December 3rd. During that time the pop-up gallery at the Dairy, at 7 Wakefield St in London will be open Monday to Friday from 10am to 7pm. Of the 45 pieces, 30 works (including 25 never before seen works) will be for sale.
Moreover, eight custom made light-boxes with photography of Richard Hambleton’s original street art from the early 80’s will be presented.
A quarter of a century since falling in love with New York, WK looks at his route.
WK Interact was 8 years old, spending hours drawing on old floor plans. On the job with his father, even then he buried himself in his work while Dad rushed around giving orders at his interior design worksites in the south of France. A few years later, his drawings came alive with movement as he hung out all day in dance schools watching young bodies fly across the floor. Once more his style catapulted forward the day he discovered how to stretch and animate a figure just by dragging it across the glass of a photocopier. Action. Captured.
Without question, his love of the street, of art, and wild motion fully materialized and went on steroids when WK first laid eyes on monstrous, convulsing New York City. He was 16. He was blown away, frightened, and excited. Two years later, he gave into the magnetic pull of New York’s raw power.
“I remember I went downstairs and I said to my parents, ‘You know what, I am going to New York’, and my parents said ‘But why, what for? Are you going to be able to get a good job? Why do you have to go to a place where you don’t even speak English?’,” he remembers. A great struggle took place but he left for the United States anyway, alone for the first time. That’s when WK’s war began, almost a quarter of a century ago, on these streets. And he won.
(image WK Interact)
If his work on the street is an indication, it has been a constant state of war. Look at these images and themes that reappear in WK’s work since he first came to New York; Ever-present fear, violence, anxiety, overheated sex-play, fishnets & firearms, contorted figures racing, martial arts kicks to the head, hand-to-hand combat, boxers swinging, prisoners tied and bound, hooded figures snapping heads of bound businessmen, terrifying escapes in progress, maniacal twined and twisted forms and faces, propaganda, undercover spies, official seals, gun assembly diagrams, digitized labels, ID fingerprints, cameras, surveillance, camouflage, radioactive symbols, streaming codes and bureaucratic text passages, black military choppers hovering overhead, contorted soldiers screaming “bring me back”, a permanent state of survivalism… All of these hellacious visions collide and collapse and expand in continuous motion and interaction almost exclusively in black and white in wheat pastes, paintings, screen prints, photographs, sculpture, and performance installations on the street.
(image WK Interact)
You may think that some of this work is vaguely autobiographical, but for WK, all of this work is simply a reflection of the city he chose and the atmosphere here. “New York is extremely demanding and challenging”, he says, “If you do something sexy in the street in New York you are in trouble. If you do something violent, people will give you the thumbs up!”
In other words, he’s playing to the audience in this particular city and unfortunately it may give an inaccurate impression of WK, the person, “I’ll just say this; My work, the people always see one thing – fear, attack, violence. They have absolutely no clue of the other side. I don’t think they are ignorant. My work is very black, it’s very bold, it’s very graphic, it’s very strong. There is nothing really friendly like a little bird flying around or a pink piglet… it’s totally not that. But I live in New York City and I am responding to that kind of contrast. The weather is very strong, very hot and very cold. All the traffic is heavy, the structure of this city is almost like a double bladed knife. I wanted to adapt myself as a New Yorker and adapt my mind as an artist. I’m always fascinated by this fear, and the people who want to ignore it.”
It was the mid-1980’s and there was not such a thing as “Street Art” yet, but “Low-brow” was in full effect, with graffiti as a new darling in the booming art market. The City had just pulled out of a deep recession, Wall Street wall was flush, newly minted “Yuppies” were ordering sushi and flashing their Swatches, Run DMC was rocking a tricky rhyme, and graffiti had been nearly scrubbed from all the subway cars. Kenny Scharf took his cartoons into the Tunnel, Richard Hambleton was doing shadows on the street walls in the Village, Keith Haring was doing his thing in the subways, and Warhol was fixating on Basquiat.
Image of Richard Hambleton shadow work by photographer Allan Molho
WK Interact knew very little about all of this activity, but he gradually learned. 18 year old WK looked for work as a graphic artist but because he spoke little English and had few connections, doors slammed in his face quickly one after another. Eventually he got work as a carpenter and painter, living in a tiny room on Houston in Alphabet City.
The Lower East Side was his first real school; “I was like a student. I was not that good in school, and all of that work, work, work to get a diploma! That diploma was absolutely no help to me. My own diploma was my own dream, it was my own need. It was not proving anything to anybody, just me.” What followed was the “School of Hard Knocks”; occasional opportunities, a lot of drawing and time alone observing city life and street life, experimenting with his work on the street, and missteps that included a period actually living on the street in a box. Socially, he wasn’t able to connect with other artists and couldn’t really understand how to navigate the city and street culture world he had thrust himself into. He spent a lot of time feeling a deep sense of alienation.
A younger WK on the Williamsburg Bridge (image WK Interact)
“When I started to do my stuff I was so ‘not there’. I was so different and without an understanding of the art, the graffiti, the branding. Nobody really understood me; I was a bit early to be put in this category so I created myself just to be “this guy”. There were groups there, but I was on my own. And it was very, very difficult to believe in myself. It was so difficult not to be a part of a group. It was so difficult not to be able to speak English. I used go seek artists because I liked their work, and they never replied, or never wrote back.”
While WK still values those hard years because his inner strength and knowledge of humanity and inhumanity was greatly broadened, not to mention his development as an artist, he wouldn’t recommend them to you as a friend, as those years haunt him today. Coupled with feelings of rejection from his parents, this sense of alienation made him a lone wolf in a hostile town.
Prince and Lafette (image WK Interact)
A turning point for WK may have been the literal turning point of the corner of Prince and Lafayette streets in Soho, a garage and mechanics business. WK liked the multiple surfaces and angles of the lot, as well as their industrial rawness and he inquired about who owned it. After cajoling the owner of the garage to allow him do a piece on the wall, he eventually went on to “run” that whole corner that was a mechanic’s garage for a number of years. He likes to say no one noticed the racing, leaping, landing, crashing, chasing, panicked people in black and white on that block for many years, but in fact many New Yorkers around at that time still remember the sudden surprise of those images on the buildings and began to look forward to checking them out in when they passed through Soho.
Alek and WK (image WK Interact)
A piece on it’s larger overhead walls one time featured model Alek Well – a bicephalous blur portrait of gut-busting joy and ebullience as one head is tossed back to the left and one slightly forward to the right, anchored by solid shoulders. The scenes and players changed but usually the entire space was a spooked by hair-raising scenarios which you may or may not want to understand more clearly.
Similarly many people remember as “classic” the view of WK’s iconic 2-story speeding rollerblader racing along a building on the southwest side of Houston street to jump across Broadway. To hit one of his spots in it’s context is to experience a sudden pick-up in pulse, or skip in the beat, and a little bit of confusion that sharply torques the wild energy of the urban environment. No one else endeavors to shake you like this. It’s safe to say that you admire the mind of the artist who brought you this jolt.
(image WK Interact)
He lived frugally in a tiny studio and brought home left-over paint from his day jobs. It was pretty early in his career that he decided black and white paint was the best way to portray New York and it’s brutal contrasts. “If I go back to my country I will begin to paint blue and pink,” he explains.
Suffice to say, it’s been a long, arduous climb and not one he likes to speak about for a long time, understandably, but eventually WK Interact found his way in New York, and London, and Paris, and Italy, and Sydney, and Japan…. With labor, persistence and luck one opportunity turned another. He doesn’t appear unduly proud that his work today is in demand. He is thankful that he shows in respected galleries, is featured in articles, videos, and he is continuously on the move.
(image WK Interact)
When looking at the rough times, he says, “Those limitations created what I did. That made me want to reverse it, to upgrade it – so I made myself do more. You can see the force in my work, that constant motion, the face. It is on the move, you can see the actual thing vibrating, and this has been my position, and it has been like this for the last 23 years. As far as what happened to me coming to the States, I don’t wish this for anybody. I think this was painful, and it will always be painful.”
Durn, it was awfully crowded over there on the isle of Manhattan last night,
but it was totally worth it if you took the time to peel people off the wall and take a gander at the art (pardon me Martha, mind the elbows, Elbow-toe). The show has the goal of drawing connections between the processes and techniques employed by well known names from the 70’s/80’s and the emerging crop of wild-eyed beasts today. Shockingly, the similarities were readily apparent, and that was somehow reassuring in a crazy mixed up world like ours. …Not to mention that this show brings you into the backroom, the studio, the cramped apartment, to see the doodlings, the lists, sketches, and planning that artists employ when they first conceive of their pieces. This is an educational show, and a kindly revelation.
There seemed like a hundred pieces or more – we show only a smattering here; all courtesy Anonymous Gallery.
Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Hambleton, Robert Indiana, Dennis Oppenheim, Ray Johnson, Todd James, Eric Haze, Bast, Elbow Toe, AIKO, Kenji Hirata, Greg Lamarche, Aakash Nihalani, Erik Foss, Deven Marriner, Michael De Feo, Logan Hicks, Judith Supine, Dan Witz, Maya Hayuk, Daniel Joseph, Ripo, Skewville, Brandon Friend, Dark Cloud, MOMO, Dan Funderburgh, Ellis Gallagher, Matt Siren, The Clayton Brothers, and MORE!
Gallery Exhibition:
December 17 – January 24
opening reception:
December 17th, 7 – 10PM
Exhibition Description
Anonymous Gallery is proud to combine three generations of prolific artists whose work has been influenced by, or has directly influenced popular culture, design, and the urban environment. The Piece Process will unite relevant artists with their contemporary counterparts through artwork that serves as a reference or an impetus to something larger or more complete. Anonymous Gallery will exhibit unique pieces of art in the form of sketchbook drawings and original works on paper or found objects from over 30 established and emerging artists exhibiting in New York. The exhibition intends to create discourse in regard to artists who have not only influenced one another, but society through their use of iconography, collage, pen, paint, and print.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Anonymous Gallery, will also be hosting weekly workshops for children. Artists Todd James, Leon Reid, Michael De Feo, Maya Hayuk, Ellis Gallagher, among others, will teach the workshops.
In the spirit of giving, portions of the proceeds raised will go to benefit Public Art for Public Schools http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/SCA/Programs/PAPS/default.htm. For additional information, workshop schedules, or to make a reservation, please contact – events[at]anonymousgallery[dot]com
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
