Opening

Crash and Daze at Ad Hoc

Image

CRASH & DAZE

May 15th through June 14th 2009

Opening Reception: Friday, May 15th 2009

A contemporary of Keith Haring and a modern-day master of this present day art form, Crash One shoots his metaphorical arrows into art galleries, subway cars and dizzying flashes across concrete walls. His is a lavish gift to the eyes and a statement in time and space that celebrates the movements and change of an ever changing world. His work is a direct descendant of the Roman wall-scribes but he has evolved this inherited gift back to its simplest form: “tagging,” leaving his name. Great artists sign their names on the paintings they leave behind, in this new/old incarnation the artist leaves just his name. A reduction of unadulterated form; or “refined” art.

Daze, aka Chris Ellis, began painting New York City subway trains, the canvas of choice for the serious graffiti artist, in the late 1970s. After moving from subway trains to gallery walls he has exhibited in Paris, Stockholm, Tokyo, Florence and many other cities around the world.

Ad Hoc

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I Heart You! Chris Uphues at “Street Crush”

Who doesn’t know this happy heart guy?  Raise your hand!

That is because you are bitter.  That’s what it is.  And probably your mom was mean to you and your father was a big green sewer frog.  You know these hearts, with their various personalities and dispositions, but you just don’t want to admit it because you think that will make you soooooo un-tough.

When you round a corner and hit a sudden patch of hearts smacked up – with their different personalities and dispositions, they made you a little bit happier.  It’s okay.  No one will tell.

U Makin Me Salivate!  (Chris Uphues for "Street Crush" Show)

U Makin Me Salivate! (Chris Uphues for "Street Crush" show)

I got a love hangover (Chris Uphues for "Street Crush" show)

I got a love hangover (Chris Uphues for "Street Crush" show)

Tough Love  (Chris Uphues for "Street Crush"

Tough Love (Chris Uphues for "Street Crush" show)

Check out this fun animation of Chris’s art made by Jason Robert Bell.

Love from Jason Robert Bell on Vimeo.

Chris Uphues

Street Crush Show

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First Street Crush – Sneak Peak – Jef Aerosol

Deep in the frozen tundra of Greenpoint Brooklyn….. this group of artists have focused their gaze on one theme,

and each one comes at it from a different angle. They are each going up with a variety of ways to see love, sex, sensuality, and the streets.  The show is rockin’ it sexaaaay!

Starting us off is one example from stencil pioneer Jef Aerosol.

It seems appropriate to pay tribute to Bettie Page (Jef Aerosol for Street Crush Show)

It seems appropriate to begin with a tribute to Bettie Page: "Fishnets" (Jef Aerosol for Street Crush Show)

Jef Aerosol Myspace

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Hey you kids, stay away from the ledge! Chris Stain is on the Roof with the Pigeons

Chris Stain prepares for his upcoming show at Carmichael.

Chris Stain (courtesy Carmichael Gallery)

Chris Stain (courtesy Carmichael Gallery)

He talks to us about where the inspiration came from for the upcoming show…

Brooklyn Street Art: The name of the show came from something your grandfather used to say: What was he talking about?

Chris Stain: “Up on the roof countin pigeons” was a reply that my grandfather would use if you would inquire where a family member was. Honestly not sure what he meant exactly. My guess is it was in reference to someone bein loony.

Brooklyn Street Art: When you talk about doing something on the roof, a familiar song written by two Brooklyn natives, “Up on the Roof”, comes to mind.

Chris Stain: Yeah I remember that song. A lot of people still do go up on the roof to get away for a minute. The work I will be showing has everything to do with what is going on down on the street. The roof idea for the install is just to try and switch it up in the gallery a bit. No hidden allegory here plus it ties into my grandfathers’ saying.

Up on the Roof” is a song written by Brooklyn natives Gerry Goffin and Carole King and recorded in 1962 by The Drifters. Yo, check out the graff on the roof circa that time, and  they actually have a cage with pigeons up there!!! Coolness.

Full description of the Show in Our Calendar

Carmichael Gallery

ChrisStain.com

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“These images exist to help people change the world” Interview with Josh MacPhee

At the crossroads of art and activism, the thinking person makes a choice. Aside from discovering and pushing the boundaries of aesthetics and the occasional petty street beef, Brooklyn’s street artist sometimes sprays for a higher calling.

Brooklyn’s street artists have a proud history of getting out a message; citing social ills, expressing dissatisfaction with a current war, yelling about a feared police state, or even advocating positive solutions.

A new book out by Josh MacPhee and Favianna Rodriguez places the messages of the streets in a context that helps the reader understand that we are, at any given point, merely on a continuum; peeps have been reaching the masses on the streets for years using their artistic talent.

The book, Reproduce & Revolt quickly engages you and cuts to the chase: social justice movements have always heavily relied on the talent and ingenuity of the artist to communicate, elevate, agitate, and educate. CHANGE, anyone? HOPE, anyone? Some of the most pressing issues of the 21st century – gender inequality, racial injustice, prison reform, globalization, labor rights, queer rights, immigration reform — all of these movements started in the margins, with little resources and little political clout. The power, resourcefulness, and creativity of the graphic designer and the artist were crucial to getting the message out to as many people as possible, in the most meaningful way.

In both English and Spanish, Reproduce & Revolt features the work of artists from over a dozen countries. It includes hundreds of permission-granted images that can be used (and have been) on flyers, posters, t-shirts, brochures, stencils, and any other graphic method you can devise. Most importantly to the authors, the reader is encouraged and schooled step-by-step on how to to think of themselves as the artist.

One of the authors, Josh MacPhee, is a well-known Brooklyn dude. Artist, curator, writer and activist, MacPhee has had a hand in creating many a piece that advocates and educates – his favorite may be the poster. In fact, a large poster show he is co-curating opens January 23 at Miller Gallery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania called Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now.

We are thankful that Josh took some time and talked to us about this book, and what it means to him.

Brooklyn Street Art: What is your personal connection to art and activism?
Josh MacPhee:
When I was a kid I used to make art. When the US invaded Iraq in 1990 I was in high school, and started to realize sh*t wasn’t right in the world. Between punk rock, graffiti and stumbling upon an early issue of World War 3 Magazine, I realized that art and politics could and should go together.

Brooklyn Street Art: And your co-author, Favianna Rodriguez, has dealt with social issues with poster design?
Josh MacPhee: Favianna is practically a political poster making machine. She has and continues to produce an amazing breadth and depth of political graphics.

Brooklyn Street Art: The book serves as a step-by-step primer with a quick history of modern social justice movements and how they have each used art to energize and activate the populace. Why is this history relevant to today’s artists and activists?
Josh MacPhee: Everyday I wake up and feel like the world around me is losing meaning, with more and more people getting screwed, and at the same time more and more of us throwing our hands up in the air and saying, “well, nothing matters anyway.” F*ck that, sh*t matters! And sh*t changes. By understanding our history, we can understand that things haven’t always been the way they are, which means that they can change. If as street artists we had a slightly better understanding of the diversity of amazing art that has been done on the street in the past (and I’m not just talking 1980, but 1960, 1940, 1910…), then we’d have much more to draw from in making new work that is engaging and powerful, rather than just rehashing and slightly tweaking what everyone was doing 6 months ago.

(Klutch) (courtesy Reproduce & Revolt)

(Klutch) (courtesy Reproduce & Revolt)

Brooklyn Street Art: In a media soaked world, how can a message break through and reach people?
Josh MacPhee: People read what they see on the street. Not everyone, and not every word, but people do read, and do absorb. Never mind whether you “break through,” there’s no way you’ll ever reach people at all if you don’t even try to meet them where they are at.

Brooklyn Street Art: What have modern activist/artists learned from corporate advertising methods?
Josh MacPhee: Or vice/versa? Most corporate advertising steals from youth culture, street culture, and graphic history. Street stenciling started as a political act, now it’s a promotional device. Images on moving trains started during the Russian Revolution. The creativity of capitalism is purely parasitic, it never comes up with anything new on its own.

Brooklyn Street Art: Do you have to go to art school to make effective political graphics?
Josh MacPhee: I didn’t. Most effective political graphics are made by “amateurs.”

Brooklyn Street Art: But definitely you need a computer and Photoshop, right?
Josh MacPhee: These days it helps, but it also has a tendency to get in the damn way. Not only do you get sucked into the screen, and forget how to do things with your hands, but the computer has a nasty habit of homogenizing the way things look, and spitting out carbon copies of slick and dull images and designs…

"Safe Sex is Hot" (Merideth Stern) (courtesy Reproduce and Revolt)

Brooklyn Street Art: You like stencils? What other techniques do you like to use?
Josh MacPhee: My body hates spraypaint these days, so I’ve started cutting my stencils out of rubylith, and using those to burn screens to silkscreen my images. Silkscreening is a cheap and easy way to make really nice short runs of prints. But if you really wanna reach out to a lot of people, you need to go offset and print 500 copies, 1000 copies, 5000 copies.

Brooklyn Street Art: Okay, Josh, imagine you are speaking to a fired-up teenage artist who wants to really shout out their message visually. What is the rule of thumb for an effective design?
Josh MacPhee: If you can, let your image speak for itself. The failure of most radical political communication is that it’s way too wordy. No one wants to read a poster with 20 paragraphs of small type on it. Catch people’s attention, communicate a tight, concise idea, and send them on their way to think about it. If you reach them, they’ll follow up, do research, and hopefully act on whatever your trying to change.

And diversify how your communicating. Posters reach one audience, emails another, social networking sites, flyers, stickers, graffiti, pirate radio, murals, banner drops, do it all.

(Shepard Fairey) (courtesy Reproduce & Revolt)

(Shepard Fairey) (courtesy Reproduce & Revolt)

Brooklyn Street Art: When designing for social change, how important is it to know your audience?
Josh MacPhee: Most important. period. You can’t speak to people if you don’t know what language they understand. So many well intentioned artists try and put out social messages but use graphic language or vocabulary that most people misunderstand, and then they get frustrated when no one responds. It’s like going to Bolivia and putting up giant posters in Swedish, it’s unlikely people will be feeling you.

Brooklyn Street Art: What street artists today use their work to draw our attention to social issues?
Josh MacPhee: The most successful, of course, is Banksy. But Chris Stain and Swoon are pushing the envelope, I’ve been impressed by what Above has been up to lately, Armsrock, the whole Yo! What Happened to Peace? crew, and on and on….

"Comido o Amigo" (Tyler Galloway) (courtesy of Reproduce & Revolt)

Brooklyn Street Art: You want people to reproduce the graphics in this book, right?
Josh MacPhee: Hell yeah, let ‘er rip! The point is that all these images and ideas are part of the commons, we share them, just like we share the earth we live on and the air we breath. These images exist to help people change the world.

Brooklyn Street Art: Are you going to be in any shows this year?
Josh MacPhee: A giant show of political posters, flyers, photos, video and film that I curated with Dara Greenwald is opening on January 23rd at the Miller Gallery in Pittsburg

Justseeds (a political art collective MacPhee is a part of) has a big collaborative show coming up in Milwaukee in March (http://www.aux.uwm.edu/Union/events/gallery/Spring%202009/JustSeeds.htm), I’m really looking forward to that.

REPRODUCE & REVOLT BOOK

———————————————————————————————-
Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now

Opens January 23rd
Miller Gallery, Pittsburgh


Artist-run political art cooperative and blog
Out now! Reproduce & Revolt (edited by Josh MacPhee & Favianna Rodriguez) is a collection of over 500 copyleft political graphics for activist use. Pick up a copy today!
The Celebrate People’s History Poster Series
53 posters and running…

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“Street Crush” coming up Feb 13 at Alphabeta

Whassup Brooklyn!

This show is going to be off the hooker.

It’s for all the fans, that’s you. 42 artists, that’s all we gotta say, and lots of fun because it is all about community, and creativity, and love.

You’ll be hearing more about it as we get closer – in the meantime read all about it here in the calendar.

And In Preparation for Street Crush…

And for those of you who will want to be practicing up on yer def mooves for the Ladaays of the Eightaaays – here is an instructional video below. Stand up in front of your computer please and practice according to the directions.

I only needed like two minutes and I totally got it. Some other people (no names please, people) may want to view it in it’s entirety.

“Street Crush” Press Release Here

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Hush at Carmichael Gallery


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. Work in the show will include Acrylic Paint, Screen
Print, Spray Paint, Ink, and Tea on Canvas and Wood as well as a site
specific installation. The exhibition will be open for viewing through
Thursday, March 26th 2009 from 1.00pm -7.00pm.

Hush’s work has been described as a sensory assault of shape, color, and
character. Inspired by the portrayal of the female form in art, the artist
builds up and tears down layers of paint and images as he works, “letting
the canvas and marks take their own path.” The result is an enigmatic
synthesis of anime, pop-infused imagery, graffiti, and graphic design that
exposes the conflict between power and decay, innocence and sexuality, and
the fusion of Eastern and Western culture.

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“Street Crush” Street Art Show at AlphaBeta

STREET CRUSH:
Sexy New Work from the Street Artists
You Have a Crush On.

A Show for the Fans.

“Street Crush” a Brooklyn Street Art show and party, featuring brand new work by 42 street artists, 4 dazzling Street-Tart burlesque performers, and a Kissing Booth will be thrown at AlphaBeta in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on Friday, February 13th, 2009.

BROOKLYN, NY-BrooklynStreetArt.com and AlphaBeta are thrilled to be hosting a timely and sexy show of brand new art by veteran and rookie street artists who are on the scene today redefining our ideas of street art. Working around themes of “Love, Sex, and the Street”, well-known street artists like Aiko and Jef Aerosol dig deep for fresh takes on gritty street ardor alongside relative whipper-snappers like Cake and Poster Boy.

In addition to a salon-style show, the opening party will feature live art collaborations and installation.

Full Press Release HERE

THE STREET ARTISTS You Have a Crush On

An unprecedented killer lineup of many of 2009’s best in one Brooklyn location, “Street Crush” will run from February 13 until February 28 and will feature work from an artist list that includes:

Aakash Nihalani, Abe Lincoln Jr., Aiko, Anera, Bortusk Leer, Broken Crow, C. Damage, Cake, Celso, Charm, Chris Uphues, Creepy, DirQuo, Ellis Gallagher A.K.A. (C)ELLIS G., Eternal Love, FauxReel, FKDL, General Howe, GoreB, Imminent Disaster, Hellbent, Infinity, Nobody, Jef Aerosol, Jon Burgerman, Matt Siren, Mimi the Clown, NohJColey, Pagan, PMP, Poster Boy, Pufferella, Pushkin, Chris from Robots Will Kill, Col from Robots Will Kill, Veng from Robots Will Kill, Royce Bannon, Skewville, Stikman, The Dude Company, Titi from Paris, and U.L.M.

STREET CRUSH SHOW OPENING INFORMATION

Friday, February 13, 2009, 7-12 pm
Press Preview by appointment

Location: Alphabeta, 70 Greenpoint Avenue
Greenpoint Brooklyn, New York 11222
Suggested Donation: $8

For more information on Brooklyn Street Art and to see images of the “Street Crush” artworks in the days before the show please visit http://www.brooklynstreetart.com

CONTACT: Crush@BrooklynStreetArt.com

THE PERFORMERS

To entertain the Opening Party street art fans, exotic passions will be alerted with Street-Tart Burlesque performances by 4 of today’s award-winning NYC burlesque artists – thrilling, titillating, and Twitterpating the audience in the back-room gallery at AlphaBeta. The rollicking rollcall includes Nasty Canasta, Clams Casino, Harvest Moon, and your MC, Tigger!

THE KISSING BOOTH

A funky loveshack built by artist and set-designer J. Mikal Davis and lorded over by Madame Voulez-Vous, will awaken furtive crushes in the crowd AND raise funds for Art Ready, a mentoring program created by SmackMellon Gallery to serve NYC High School students who are interested in the arts.

For more Information about the Art Ready program for New York City high school students, please visit: http://www.smackmellon.org/education.html

MUSIC

Live DJ sets by DailySession.com will be pumping and streaming live from the “Street Crush” event over the internet all night.

The featured Street Crush DJ will be Jessee Mann, a Williamsburg hottie and self-professed music nerd who plays weekly at Bembe and has mooved booties all over the whirl.

Look out for a special performance by electronic drummer Kamoni, who flagellates the street-sin out of you with a solo live audio collateral collage of beats, sounds, and samples on stage. yeow!

AFTER PARTY AT COCO66 NEXT DOOR

Immediately following the “Street Crush” show opening, guests are invited next door to continue celebrating their new found love at Coco66 and the 68 bar/restaurant, where the booty-shaking music continues and site-specific installations by 2 Brooklyn projection artists, SeeJ and SuperDraw, will blow minds with their original forays into the next horizon on street art.

BIOS OF THE PERFORMERS

DJ Jesse Mann

Jesse’s musical style encompasses all that is soulful and funky, incorporating familiar sounds with obscure forgotten classics and upfront remixes. In a single DJ set he can travel effortlessly between vintage funk and disco to Afro-Latin grooves, house, techno, hip-hop, and everything in between.
His DJing career has taken him far and wide in the last nine years; Paris, Berlin, Vienna and England, to San Francisco, Miami, and Puerto Rico. He has played at many of NYC’s biggest and most revered clubs, its most chic and exclusive lounges, and its most intense underground parties. Favorites include APT, Cielo, Limelight/Avalon, Love, Sullivan Room, Hotel QT, Socialista, Goldbar, Lunatarium, 3rd Ward, Cabaret Sauvage (Paris), Batofar (Paris), Watergate (Berlin), Roxy (Vienna). Currently Jesse is resident DJ at Bembe weekly with the BodyMusic party.

Download his mixes at:
http://www.jesse-mann.com/mixes.html

Live Electronic Drumming

Kamoni
Kamoni is a Brooklyn based sound designer, live performer and sonic experimentalist. His work encompasses everything from live electronic shows to commercial music production and sound library development. Kamoni has acquired numerous credits on TV, film and animation soundtracks while consulting with music software pioneers such as Ableton and Native Instruments. He launched Puremagnetik in 2006 and his work has been featured in Electronic Musician, Sound on Sound, XLR8R, Remix, Computer Music, Knowledge, Keys and numerous other publications.

See an example of Komoni’s work here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBPSRJAaubg

Street-Tart Burlesque Performers

Tigger!

Tigger! (the MC) is The Original Mr. Exotic World! – Best Boylesque 2006 at The Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. Winner of Four Golden Pastie Awards including “Performer Most Likely to Get Shut Down by the Law” and “Most Unpredictable Performer.”, and “the King of Boylesque.” The New York Times called him a “hysterical and acrobatic man in drag,” Next Magazine called him “the taboo-defying dynamo,” and San Francisco tried to ban his striptease.

Tigger! has a MySpace page here:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=16832866

Nasty Canasta

Nasty Canasta is the co-producer of Pinchbottom (“Best Burlesque in NYC” – NY Magazine, “Most Innovative” – Miss Exotic World Pageant) and the impresario behind Sweet & Nasty Burlesque. Her performances combine classic burlesque, pop culture, and a theatrical sensibility to create a dazzling mummery of perplexing proportions. The reigning Cheese Queen of Coney Island, Nasty is, quite possibly, too damn clever for her own good.

Nasty Canasta can be found here:
http://www.nastycanasta.com/

Harvest Moon

Harvest Moon otherwise known as the Sultry Siren of Burlesque has been sauntering on burlesque stages since 1995. She has performed in Sydney, Paris and many cities in the US. She is founder of award-winning troupe, The Cantankerous Lollies. In the summer of 2008, Harvest toured the Netherlands and Italy in a special showcase of American Burlesque “Cabaret New Burlesque”. From her homebase in New York City she continues to push the frontiers of modern Burlesque with each new act.

Miss Harvest Moon’s website is here:
http://missharvestmoon.com/

Clams Casino

Clams Casino has been called a “Burlesque Queen” by the New York Times, and is the proud winner of the awards for Most Comedic and Most Innovative at the 2008 Miss Exotic World Pageant in Las Vegas. Clams is the co-producer of the Gameshow Speakeasy at the Slipper Room, AM Gold at Coney Island, Killer Queen Burlesque and Borderline Burlesque:Midnight Madonna Madness at the Zipper Factory, and many other pop-culture obsessed burlesque shows around New York City and the Eastern Seaboard.

Miss Clams Casino can be found here:
http://www.missclamscasino.com/home.html

PREVIOUS EVENTS from BrooklynStreetArt.com

An on-going celebration of the creative spirit, BrooklynStreetArt.com presents “Street Crush” as the 4th street art event thrown in the last 10 months.
Previous events include;

* April 2008: a benefit street art auction of work by 27 street artists at Ad Hoc Art in Bushwick that raised money for the youth and family creative arts and mentoring programs of Free Arts NYC (www.freeartsnyc.org) and launched the book “Brooklyn Street Art” published by Prestel worldwide and authored by Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo.

See highlights on Youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP3by_SolwA

* May 2008: a street art showcase of 10 street artists at Fresh Kills in Williamsburg also benefiting Free Arts NYC,

* Sept 2008: “Projekt Projektor”, a first-ever curated show of projection artists as street artists in a live show by 6 projection artists on the side of the Manhattan Bridge and the Pearl Street Triangle during 2 nights of the Dumbo Arts festival on September 26 and 27.

BANNERS and POSTERS FOR YOU TO USE

POSTERS TO PRINT (PDF)
Letter Size PDF
Tabloid Size Poster PDF

WEB FLYERS (JPG)
Medium Web Flyer
Large Web Flyer

STEELY DAN LONG Animated BANNERS (GIF)
468×83 A
468×83 B
468×83 C

Animated RED LIGHT DISTRICT BLINKING BANNERS (GIF)
400×449
400×400
300×300
200×225
200×200

Animated SHOOTING INTO SPACE BANNERS (GIF)
400×400
300×300
200×200
150×150

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Anxiety Room – Jon Burgerman & Jim Avignon at Factory Fresh

Jon Burgerman & Jim Avignon

Anxiety Room

featuring “Anxiety Broom” Opening Night Painting Performance
with Jon and Jim


Opening night is Thursday, February 12 from 6pm -10pm

Jon Burgerman flies across the pond to collaborate with his friend Jim Avignon
and fill the gallery with many drawings and paintings of their beloved characters. It will
be a space to relieve your anxieties, or
perhaps further incubate them.

jonburgerman.com
jimavignon.com

Factory Fresh

Show runs till March 15, 2009

Jon Burgerman & Jim Avignon
Anxiety Room
featuring “Anxiety Broom”
Opening Night Painting Performance
with Jon and Jim
Opening night is Thursday, February 12 from 6pm -10pm
Show runs till March 15, 2009

Factory Fresh gallery is proud to present Jon Burgerman and Jim Avignon in their first collaborative effort, Anxiety Room, an eye-popping showcase of sly, mind-bending drawings and paintings offering viewers an opportunity to alleviate – or exacerbate – their tender nerves. The show, which premiers Thursday, February 12th, also features “Anxiety Broom”, a live, opening night painting performance with Burgerman and Avignon.

With a prodigious resume remarkable in both size and scope, Anxiety Room marks Jon Burgerman’s second effort with Factory Fresh founders Ali Ha and Ad Deville. The Nottingham-based artist is the designer of a series of figurines for Kidrobot, creator of the visually stunning book Pens Are My Friends, and the source of inspiration for innumerable tattoos. Dazed & Confused magazine has described Burgerman’s vibrant, labyrinthine images as “Walt Disney at an Incan monument on mescaline”, and he would like everyone to know he is not just another pretty face. jonburgerman.com


Unpredictable and sensational, Jim Avignon has become a pop-icon in fewer than 15 years, defying the rules of the art market and delivering his crisp, Technicolor works directly to the people. Avignon is the author and illustrator of the Attack Delay series, founder of the one-man-techno-band Neoangin, subject of numerous television documentaries, and a wild and untamed thing. He resides in both Berlin and New York City. jimavignon.com


For more info on Factory Fresh and it’s upcoming shows go to www.factoryfresh.net or email info@factoryfresh.net

Factory Fresh is located at 1053 Flushing Avenue between Morgan and Knickerbocker, off the L train Morgan Stop
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