Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art is proud to present Seiva Bruta, the
first West Coast solo exhibition of work by Brazilian artist Flip. Artwork
featured in the exhibition will include acrylic, ink and mixed media on
wood, canvas, and paper as well as a site specific installation.
An opening reception will be held on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 from 7.00pm – 10.00pm
with Flip in attendance. The exhibition will be open for viewing through
Thursday, March 26th, 2009 from 1.00pm – 7.00pm.
In Seiva Bruta, Flip continues his exploration of the natural world and the
relationships that exist within it. In this new body of work, he interprets
plant sap as the blood of plants, comparing and contrasting it with the
blood of animals.
“I make a parallel between the fluid and the blood,” comments Flip. “Nerves,
veins, and roots.feelings, diseases, patterns all mixed up.”
With an environmentally-flavored color palette and textural variations
created by a unique approach to Asian calligraphy, Flip offers a fresh,
intuitive voice to the international contemporary art scene.
About the Artist:
A member of the renowned artist collective Famiglia Baglione, Felipe “Flip”
Yung is widely hailed as one of the most talented Brazilian artists of his
generation. He has painted and exhibited his work throughout the streets
and galleries of Brazil, Europe, and the US for over a decade.
Mighty Tanaka is proud to present As Is, the artwork of JMR and In the Raw, a group show featuring Alexandra Pacula, Will Anderson and David Cook.This combined event seeks to bring communities together through a pop-up gallery located in the popular upcoming Clinton Hill area of Brooklyn.Through the usage of this alternative space to display fine art, these two art shows look to expand the interpretation of art in Brooklyn, mirroring the beauty of fine art with the seemingly raw environment of Brooklyn life.
As Is: The Artwork of JMR—JM Rizzi, or better known as JMR, has adapted a unique mixture of neo-abstract expressionism w hints of contemporary pop to create a style all is own.Having worked in both the street art world as well as the gallery world, JMR brings his iconic imagery to Clinton Hill .As he looks to demonstrate the scale and motion set forth by early abstract expressionists, he reinterprets the ideas within his own personal adaptation.Originally hailing from Brooklyn, New York, JMR has grown up with the influences of street art and the established art world constantly around him.Through his own individual, hybrid street style, he has dedicated himself to helping art fit into the public arena.Having participated in the highly successful 11 Spring St show in 2006, he has gone on to produce art for hotels and restaurants, as well as completing building sized murals in Manhattan.Having just completed the design for a line of clothes, which were featured at a recent fashion show during NYC’s fashion week, JMR looks to expand the idea and integrity of his art to the next level.
In the Raw: Alexandra Pacula, Will Anderson & David Cook—A group show consisting of three talented artists demonstrates an array of different mediums and approaches.Highlighting the unique artistic interpretation of each artist, In the Raw looks to offer insight into some of the exciting art currently being produced in Brooklyn.Alexandra Pacula has been showing art both regionally and internationally for the past six years.With a healthy resume consisting of both museum and gallery shows, she most recently won the Saatchi Gallery Showdown Competition in 2008, having her art displayed in the esteemed institution.Originally from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, Will Anderson began his artistic venture as a graphic designer.After moving to New York in 1997, he began pursuing photography.Currently working for Nylon Magazine, his award winning work has been published and exhibited both nationally and internationally.Born in Louisville, Kentucky, David Cook moved to NYC after being featured in New American Paintings.Working primarily on t-shirt and record design, he most recently received attention for his work in the Young Widows album Old Wounds.
Opening Saturday March 7th, 6-8pm.105 Lexington Ave, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
US solo exhibition of work by UK artist HUSH Opens
Remember when your 3rd grade Art Class teacher excitedly told everybody that “today we are going to make Mother’s Day ashtrays”
out of molding clay and tempura paint …. and you managed to turn yours into a U.F.O. and also include pipe cleaners, feathers, and Amy Knickerbockers’ reading glasses into your design?
Mr. Hush understands you. He knows that there are just too many ways to let the creativity flow, and refuses to be pigeon-holed into one technique. Invite him to come play in your studio and he’s going to fly around the room employing whatever materials are available.
Starting Thursday at Carmichael Gallery Hush will be showing new chaotic cleverness that will include Acrylic Paint, Screen Print, Spray Paint, Ink, and Tea on Canvas and Wood as well as a site specific installation. That’s just the way he rolls. While simpleton’s are busy defending their chosen category of expression and expounding on it’s meaning and rightful place in the annals of the street, Hush says, “Let’s combine them all”.
Thankfully, he’s not just youthful energy on the loose. He has some serious chops behind his promises, and the resulting work very nearly vibrates off the wall.
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Hush took a few minutes away from the cans, stencils, paint brushes, and wheatpaste to talk to BSA about his inclusive approach:
Brooklyn Street Art: How long have you been an artist?
Hush: Well 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 Smacking up a Wall with his everything.
Brooklyn Street Art: Sometimes it appears that your work is riding the line between graffiti and street art; do you make a distinction between the two?
Hush: When I make my art I try and translate my interest in tagging, graf, decay, street art aesthetics into my work and juxtapose it with images of beauty, sensuality and the female form; allowing the later to be scene in a more positive way. The act of a tag or graf is no doubt beautiful in its own right but fusing the two together in an expressionist action creates something in its own right and puts questions out there.
Tagging, Graf, Street Art and art; each is always a choice, an action. It’s the context or location (in which appears) that changes its comment. I think it can work on so many levels.
Three’s Company! (Hush)
Brooklyn Street Art: Similarly, elements of Eastern and Western culture dance together in your work…
Hush: Working and traveling through Asia had a huge impact on my life, my views and how I think and view life. I’ve always been interested in the way both the East and the West adopt each others’ cultures. The mix is almost fantastic.
Kimonos, Comix, and Calligraphy all come into play (Hush)
Brooklyn Street Art: Do people ever make references to Faile when they talk about your stuff?
Hush: In the past Faile has been mentioned especially when people first saw my work. It was no surprise, but Faile are Faile, end of. Do I love they work? Yes. But I’m not going to stop something that comes naturally to me because another artist has played with similar imagery or aesthetics. I’m pretty sure we are probably turned on and inspired by the same things visually. As my work progresses I would hope people realize that my work exists in its’ own right.
Its probably because of Faile that my work has been noticed in the first place. That’s how art movements work anyway… look at any art movement through history. What Banksy and Faile have done for the street art movement is amazing. It helps generate a worldwide community through a general interest and love of art which isn’t stifled by the elitism of the general art world.
A Madhouse with Very Good Lighting (Hush)
Brooklyn Street Art: What part does decay play in your process?
Hush: Decay is an important influence (direct from the street, its natural, beautiful) as are any of the D’s; Deconstruction, Decollage and so on. When I start a canvas I suppose my work is quite expressionist and free, I tag, graf, throw paint at it, whatever and generally just f**k it up, its about energy. I do everything to the piece till it feels right. The piece finds itself eventually and then the work begins it’s natural thing.
Mr. Hush is completely engaged with the creative process, barely containing the energy. (Hush)
Brooklyn Street Art: Would you call it collage?
Hush: No, even though visually it can look like that and I do draw influence from the ideas of collage. I use complicated processes by overlaying different mediums – its really complex how the work’s put together. I utilize nearly every way of placing paint onto a medium as is possible through screen print, paint, spray paint, acrylic, oils, inks and then also taking that off – removing it again and building the image up from scratch so that you get a different appearance. Each process allows it to look different. It’s about mark-making ultimately.
Collage Influence? East/West Confluence? Who Cares? (Hush)
Brooklyn Street Art: You probably have poured through many magazines and comics. Which one’s do you keep and treasure?
Hush: I know that people generally think I’m a manga head but the girls are used as a contemporary use of a female form/women in art, mangas more an inspiration rather than a interest. I used to collect graphic novels and comics in the early 90s I suppose I was precious and still have them in mint condition, especially anything by Simon Bisley.
Brooklyn Street Art: Thank you very much for your time!
Hush: Thanks for taking the time to do this also guys.
‘Hymn to Beauty’
A solo exhibition of new artwork by HUSH
Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art is proud to present Hymn to Beauty, the first US solo exhibition of work by UK artist HUSH. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 from 7.00pm – 10.00pm, with the artist in attendance.
Deep Purple was cool, but this updated version is fun too:
Artmakers Inc. presents Images of the African Diaspora in New York City Community Murals, a traveling exhibition curated by Jane Weissmanthat explores how African and Caribbean art, history, religion and myth have influenced mural themes and content. The exhibition will be on view at the African American Heritage Center, Macon Library from May 5 -28.
The exhibition coincides with the publication of On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City by Janet Braun-Reinitz and Jane Weissman (University Press of Mississippi, 2/2009).
In the six years the authors researched On the Wall, Braun-Reinitz and Weissman discovered murals in Harlem from the early 1970s that were hitherto lost to history as well as murals painted since the late 1970s in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that were unknown outside their immediate neighborhood.
Despite the disparity of time and geography, these murals are related in both theme and content, filled with images of the African Diaspora.The exhibition also looks at diasporan imagery – Caribbean as well as African – found in murals in other Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods, Queens, and the Bronx.
The exhibitionexamines the traditional meaning of diasporan images and symbols and discusses them in terms of philosophy (i.e., the Black Arts Movement, Ghanaian artist Kofi Antubam) and their visual representations (e.g., Black Madonnas, Ethiopian illuminated manuscripts, Bògòlanfini and Adinkra fabrics, and Ndebele house painting).
Over the past 40 years, artists and arts organizations found contemporary meaning in these images and, through new research and interviews, the exhibition describes the relevance they have today.Decoded, the murals become more than striking images; they stand as visual representations of the cultural, social and political currents of the periods in which they were painted.
Weissman (who lives in Greenwich Village) and Braun-Reinitz (who lives in Clinton Hill) are longtime members of the Brooklyn-based Artmakers, an artist-run, politically oriented community mural organization that creates high quality public art relevant to the lives, work and concerns of people in their neighborhoods.
Royce Bannon and a diverse team of talented street artist/graff writers are taking the challenge seriously: Revive the artists’ space in Soho that boasts a proud history and restore it to the constructive, collaborative, democratic roots of a real artists’ community; one that will have a mission of giving back, as well as re-establishing a laboratory for discovery.
These are times for bold actions of hope, and all hands are on deck for a show opening this month called “Work to Do” at 112 Greene Street in Soho, a place that first flourished in the years before the Reagan Revolution.
A Monstrous Welcome to a New Era for 112 Greene Street (Royce Bannon)
Long before Soho became a jewel encrusted haven for high-end couture, over-priced “foodie” groceries, hi-jacking delis, and exclusive password private clubs, the wild-eyed artists were the only people interested in the abandoned buildings south of Houston, and north of Canal. In the decade of the 1970’s, during a financial crisis when a Republican president told our bankrupt city to “drop dead”, that he would veto any bailout for a cash-strapped NYC economy, Soho was a largely abandoned carcass of warehouses and lifeless factories. As is so often the case, it was the perfect playground for the innovative talents of artists and art students needing cheap raw space to create and coalesce and eventually re-start the engine of cultural growth. Like the Williamsburg/Greenpoint/Bushwick neighborhoods in Brooklyn today, Soho in Manhattan was a pounding heart in a hurting city that was drained by an energy crisis, sapped by a costly possibly illegal war on foreign soil, and duped by the ponzi-schemes of corporate titan opportunists at home.
112 Greene Street in Soho was the original home of 112 Workshop, a raw space open between 1970 and 1980, offering exhibition space for installation and performance for the new generation of conceptual artists who emerged from the radicalized minds and cultural upheavals of the previous decade.
With artists having complete control to curate their shows, the space put on challenging and inspirational work of hundreds of people. During the life of this laboratory it produced a list of influential performers and artists that helped shape the cultural cityscape over next 30 years, including names like Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Louis Bourgois, Chuck Close, Spalding Gray, Phillip Glass, Fran Lebowitz, Jeffrey Lew (co-founder), Gordon Matta Clarke (co-founder), Richard Mock, Richard Serra, William Wegman.
A spirit of collaboration and lively exploration returns to this space on March 26 when street artists well known in North Brooklyn today clear out the moribund basement space at 112 Greene and electrify the walls with a new era of youthful big ideas – and with thanks to those who came before in this hallowed space.
Royce Bannon, core member of the collective ELC (Endless Love Crew), is curating an audacious and boundless graphic cavalcade of street art styles to christen the historic space that honors the creative spirit. While ELC has a rotating roster that sometimes totals as many as 9 artists with a variety of styles, the currently active members of the ELC for this project will be Abe Lincoln Jr., Anera, El Celso, infinity, and Royce Bannon. With everyone working collaboratively, the “Work to Do” show pays homage to the new president and embraces a new reality that artists and creatives in the city are feeling right now.
The 112 Greene Street space is christened The Combine with this inaugural show. Steve Loeb and John Robie are creating The Combine to provide a new environment for the exhibition of art; an alternative to the traditional gallery opening and exhibition, transforming static work into multi-media, performance oriented events.
Detail from Kosbe at “Work to Do” (photo Steven P. Harrington)
On a recent sunny Saturday, with Soho sidewalks anxiously trampled with tourists dragging shopping bags out of Prada, Dean & Deluca, and the Apple store, Royce and Chris from Robots Will Kill are laboring below street level on work for the new show. Descending the stairway you hear the blasting remixed hip-hop jams, see the spray-painted names along the walls claiming space for pieces; Ad Deville of Skewville and U.L.M. have staked their real estate, as has Cake and the Smart Crew. Others have already created pieces on their wall allotment; a 7 foot tall Mochni from Veng on the landing, a chaotic collage from Kosbe as you hit the floor, a manic back wall collaboration with Deekers, infinity, and Celso.
A complete history of 112 Workshop
Royce sits at his makeshift table of plywood and saw-horses, pouring over a large book about 112 Workshop, marking its’ pages with post-its, and eyeballing every available inch of the entire basement space, thinking about how to fill it, and with whom. His phone keeps ringing, but he’s concentrating on the long rectangular room. He’s loving this moment, and proud of the work his friends have put into the space. Chris from RWK climbs a ladder to lay-in the first wash of color that will build the backing of… perhaps a robot?
Did you hear the new one about Octomom? (Royce Bannon, Dain, and AVOID Pi) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
The mottled concrete floor is marked with blue tape where a stage will be built for Afrika Bambaataa and Soulsonic Force on opening night, and the backdrop wall is already claimed by an undulating AVOID Pi tentacle, some Dain wheatpasted portraits that well up with fluorescent tears, and some smart-aleck monsters from Mr. Bannon himself, and a space remains for Abe Lincoln Jr.. Walk past a stack of plywood into a makeshift rectangular “gallery” room where many 3’ x 8’ foamcore canvasses lean – soon to showcase Deekers, infinity, Celso, and Royce pieces and hung in the windows of a music store further north of here.
Brooklyn Street Art: So who decided to put on this show? Royce Bannon: Steven Loeb (composer, arranger, producer) and John Robie (composer, musician and record producer). They both have really extensive resumes in the music industry that go back to the 70’s – have worked with so many great musicians and artists that have impacted most of us – Kurtis Blow, Public Enemy, James Brown, LL Cool J… and a lot more. This is their space, and they’ve given me full control to make this show rock.
This is how we do it (Chris from Robots Will Kill) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Brooklyn Street Art: How did you get involved? Royce Bannon: They hit me up on MySpace about a year ago, I guess. They knew about ELC and liked our work. About November or December they asked me if we could throw an ELC show and I was like “Sure!” We got together and had lunch and they showed me the space. It was a mess when I saw it. It was full of a bunch of wood, tables, broken furniture, junk… it was basically used for storage, hadn’t been used for anything I guess for years.
Brooklyn Street Art: Are they planning to use the space after the show? Royce Bannon: Yeah, they are turning it into an event center, mainly for charitable events. They want to make money, but they want to give back as well. This will be the first kind of event that is following that approach.
Brooklyn Street Art: So they first contacted you to do an ELC show, but you actually know a lot more people who can do work in a space like this. Royce Bannon: Yeah exactly, they were like “we like ELC” and I said, “This is a lot of room to fill for just ELC, so why not invite people who I admire, and some of their friends and we can just crush this whole place up?”
Waiting for the Smart Crew (Cake) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Brooklyn Street Art: Have you had to tell people “no” since this roster started filling up? Royce Bannon: Yes, (laughs) I’ve been telling people “no” a lot, and that’s really hard. What I’ve been telling them is to hold on, and once everybody paints, there will be other smaller or tight spots where they can do “fill-ins’, cause some people like those smaller spots too.
Brooklyn Street Art: Looking at this giant space, you are giving people a lot of real estate; these spaces look like 8’ by 8’ chunks of wall. That’s pretty generous. Royce Bannon: Yeah definitely, why not? The spaces are claimed, and we’ve got lots more space to do, and about a third of it is done already.
Brooklyn Street Art: Are people excited to be in the show? Royce Bannon: Yeah, very excited, I think it’s gonna be like a madhouse in here. It’s about 4,000 square feet floorspace.
This place is Smokin’ ! (detail from Kosbe) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Brooklyn Street Art: You have been working long hours to accommodate all these artists? Royce Bannon: Yeah, since mid-January I’ve been here like 12 hour days, sometimes late at night. First we had to clean up the space, figure out what materials we wanted to keep. We’re using everything they had left here and re-purposing it, cause “why not”. Better than throwing it away. Like my monsters are cut out of some bookshelves (laughs). They’ve been supplying us with whatever tools we need, gave us a bunch of paint. So with extras, like ladders and tools, I just go to them and we can get to work. They are really supportive of us, plus they’re collectors.
Brooklyn Street Art: So some of the artwork is going to be on sale? Royce Bannon: Yes, I think some of the people are going to actually put their artwork on top of their pieces. We’re going to make a little gallery (gesturing to a 10’x 14’ room) – I think some people are going to put their stuff in there. We’re going to cover the floor, I think, in fake grass… brighten the space up a little bit. But we still got a lot of work to do.
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In planning for the new show, Royce and all of the artists have been inspired by the words of the 44th president:
“In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. It has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things – some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up.“
So far the lineup for the show includes: Endless Love Crew, Moody AA, Cabahzm, Cake, 2Easae, Avone, Chris RWK, Veng RWK, Brando * Nev1 * Sinatra Smart Crew, AVOID pi, infinity, Deeker, Keeley, El Celso, Dain, Pufferella, Skewville, Royce Bannon, AnerA, Abe Lincoln Jr., Ellis Gallagher AKA Ellis G., Matt Siren, Overconsumer, Kosbe, Aiko, Abby Goodman, Alone art, Bast, Ben Jackson, Bobby Hill, Buildmore, C. Damage, Chris Brennan, Christopher Gordon, Dark Clouds, Deeker, Destroy and Rebuild, Erica Faulke, Keely, Pufferella, OHM, Smells, Stikman, U.L.M.
Artmakers Inc. leads two art workshops for teens — May 7 and May 19 — where participants, inspired by symbols found in African fabrics and painting, create an original work of art based on traditional symbols found in bògòlanfini or mud cloth, developed by the Bamana people of Mali.
The workshop begins with a look at the Center’s current exhibition — Images of the African Diaspora in New York City Community Murals, curated by Jane Weissman, co-author with Janet Braun-Reinitz of the recently published On the Wall: Four Decades of Community Murals in New York City (University Press of Mississippi, 2/2009). Scroll down for exhibition press release.
Providing cultural context for the art making portion of the workshop, Janet Braun-Reinitz’s Signs and Symbols: From Mali, West Africa to Brooklyn, NY shows an East New York (Brooklyn) park house covered with both traditional bògòlanfini symbols and contemporary images representing urban New York City life.
Janet Braun-Reinitz, Signs and Symbols: From Mali, West Africa to Brooklyn, NY
1996, East New York, Brooklyn, acrylic on brick, 10’ x 55’
Each piece of mud cloth tells a story. No two pieces are alike and each pattern and color combination has meaning. Mud cloth is also used to define a person’s social status, character or occupation.
Participants will be shown examples of traditional mud cloth as well as contemporary symbols other teens created in the making of Signs and Symbols — city, food, friendship, love, stop violence, celebration, music, sports, nature, rivers and, from images that already exist, recycling and the AIDS ribbon.
After the teens develop their own symbols — working with white chalk on black construction paper — they will collaborate with Artmakers muralists to create their own piece of mud cloth. The result will be put on display.
Note: For traditional bòfòlanfini, cotton cloth is woven, shrunk, and then soaked in a preparation of leaves from certain plants. Men usually perform the weaving, and the women the dyeing, first outlining the intricate designs with fermented mud. The mud is treated with caustic soda, bleaching the designs to create white figures on a dark ground.
Funding for Images of the African Diaspora in New York City Community Murals and related programming has been generously provided by New York Council for the Humanities and Independence Community Foundation.
BREAKTHROUGH UK ARTISTS MISS BUGS & JOE BLACK EMBARK ON THEIR FIRST U.S. SHOW @ BROOKLYNITE GALLERY
“2 MANY ARTISTS” APRIL 4 – MAY 2, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 4th from 7:00-9:00pm, with special guest legendary hip-hop producer PRINCE PAUL spinning on the wheels of steel.
Miss Bugs and Joe Black‘s work is a public summit on the infallibility of comic books, fairy tales, and emerging artists – a cut to the core of blue chip art and born-into pop culture. We, Brooklynite Gallery, give you “2 Many Artists”: Cut it up how you want – that’s what they do, paying tribute to legions of artists. British collaborators Miss Bugs and Joe Black lead a grim but loving procession through hives of art world iconography.
For Miss Bugs, “2 Many Artists” celebrates their role as middlemen, spinning toward answers in the marketplace where art titans and street artists remake each other. Who owns art and why do people make it? With a warped sexiness, their work is fantastical and tangible as a bloody nose. Miss Bugs is an image-maker using collage and layering silk screens with other found materials to generate stories. Often the work is not about Miss Bugs, but the images themselves, displaced from their usual habitat.
Joe Black wields Lego’s like arrows — which is funny because they end up facing everyone head on. His technique of assembling photorealistic images from found objects is extremely advanced. The scarily precise formal elements are mirrored content-wise. His specific icons and way of depicting them highlight a sinister piece of pop culture and the art world that, through infinite generations, will not leave.
Brooklynite Gallery is located at 334 Malcolm X Blvd. (between Decatur & Bainbridge Streets) Brooklyn, NY 11233, just two blocks from the Utica Ave. subway stop on the A or C subway lines, in Stuyvesant Heights. Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday 1:00pm -7:00pm or by appointment. For all press inquiries and info about the artists contact Hope McGrath at 347-405-5976 or PR@brooklynitegallery.com.
All Shook Up: Jef Aerosol
January 29 – February 21, 2010
Opening Reception – Friday, January 29, 2010, 6-10pm
Ad Hoc Art
43 Bogart Street
Brooklyn, New York 11206
(via subway take the L Train to Morgan Avenue Station)
For an online version of this document and pictures to download go to this link http://mim.io/3a6f1
Ad Hoc Art presents international stencil master Jef Aerosol in New York City for “All Shook Up”, a stunning show of cultural icons by a Street Artist with 30 years in the game.**
The show with Ad Hoc Art, a gallery widely regarded as one of Street Art’s polestars, features brand new stenciled works as well as the now-classic pieces that have made Jef Aerosol’s name itself iconic; on paper, wood, and found objects.
A true originator who helped spark what is now known as “Street Art” when he sprayed his first stencil series across the city of Tours, France one night in 1982, the self-taught Aerosol has continuously rocked the streets with his oversized portraits and helped define a new public art nomenclature with other French artists like Blek Le Rat, Miss Tic, and Speedy Graphito.
Steadily from the ’80s to the ’10s Aerosol has cut and sprayed stunning portraits of his heroes; cultural icons who stand undiminished by the hype. They connect directly with the masses and shake public opinion with humor and provocation; Strummer, Cash, Vicious, Hendrix, Bowie, Bardot, Cobain, Lennon, Smith, Jagger – all brainy agitators and vixens cut and sprayed in stark layers of black, grey and white. And each with Aerosol’s signature hot red arrows affixed nearby for exclamation.
In Street Art and in the gallery, Aerosol has not purely focused on those well-known personages. Among the faces you’ll find a number of self-portraits and portrayals of the more anonymous among us such as those living and working in the streets.
Like the best photographers, Aerosol catches the instant of truth in his portraits, and reveals a universal humanity in each subject. “In my work I love to call up my feelings and emotions to honor these modern day heroes who have fed my life with their music, art and ideas. This new show is a powerful and vivid collection of these inspirations that I am really excited to bring to New York for the first time,” Jef Aerosol.
Three decades of getting up on walls in cities including Paris, London, Lisbon, Chicago, New York, Bejing, Venice, Amsterdam, Rome, Zurich, Berlin, Dublin, and Tokyo have given him all the “street cred” Jef Aerosol will ever need.
Sighted in numerous books and by authors like Tristan Manco (Stencil Graffiti, Street Logos), blogs like Wooster Collective and Brooklyn Street Art, and newspapers like The New York Times as one of the lynchpins in the stencil art movement that came to be called “street art”, Jef Aerosol’s work has become a perennial favorite of collectors. His work resides in hundreds of private collections, has exhibited in numerous galleries in Europe, the U.S. and Australia (list below), and is regularly auctioned with Bonhams (London, New-York), Artcurial (Paris), Drouot (Paris), and Dreweats (London).
In 2007 Aerosol published a gallery of portraits in VIP Very Important Pochoirs (éditions Alternatives, Paris, 2007).
Galleries where the work of Jef Aerosol has been shown include: Galerie Brugier-Rigail (Paris), Galerie Raison d’Art (Lille), Signal Gallery (London), Zozimus Gallery (Dublin), Art Partner Galerie (Brussels), Galerie Anne Vignial (Paris), Galerie Storme (Lille), Galerie Onega (Paris), Carmichael Gallery (Los Angeles), ATM Gallery (Berlin), and Famous When Dead Gallery (Melbourne).
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