The mundane is made sacred in the full-wall alter created at the back of Jonathan Levine’s gallery for the first solo New York show by Faith47. Small collected ephemera is displayed in groupings of signs, cards, documents, family photos and hand painted works by the South African artist whose work on the street is large scale and at times haunting, holy.
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
As the name of the show indicates Aqua Regalia – Chapter Two is a continuation of her 2014 London exhibition at Moniker Projects and elsewhere in the show you see the artist experimenting with collage of found objects alongside of paintings on wood and canvas. Opening on a night when Manhattan was enjoying a near continuous inundating downpour, the water washes and dream-like sequences, symbols and forms were only enhanced. With references to the sanctified and the dirty politics of being human, the Aqua regalia (royal water) here is in the hands of a medium, channeling spirits with a sense of the mystic and disarming with plain truths.
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Detail. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Detail. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Detail. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Detail. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Detail. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” is open for the general public at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Manhattan. Click HERE for details.
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
Alter egos of the common fiend. Many Street Artists and graffiti writers create a new character to inhabit – as actor or director. New on NYC streets, illustrator Sara Lynne Leo seeks to capture...
Famed graffiti writer REVS detailed many an illegal ‘mission’ in his first self-published opus – the caveat is you needed to go underground in the New York subway tunnels to read about them. That was...
The great irony of painting a mural about the evils of gentrification is that you may indirectly aid gentrification in the process. Guido Van Helten for Nashville Walls Project. Nashville, TN. June...
Many people in New York and around the world breathed a collective sigh of relief this week when our native son from Queens got on that helicopter with his immigrant wife and A. left the White Ho...
Halloween 2022 (photo © Jaime Rojo) Welcome to New York, where it is basically Halloween year-round when it comes to outlandish fashion on any given Wednesday on the D train or in the laundromat o...