SWOON

Saturday, May 8^th from 6-9PM

Urban Art Projects

136 Wythe Ave. at 8^th Street

Brooklyn, NY. 11211

Free beer and music!

Swoon will be creating an installation with the books themselves, and they will be sold right off the wall so be sure to stop in and get an exclusive piece of this project.

This event is open to the public.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Amy Franklin

Senior Publicist

212-229-7183

afranklin@abramsbooks.com

“…different than any street art I had ever seen. There was a sensitivity in the rendering

of the figure that I was astonished to see on the street. It was some of the freshest work

I had seen outside in the city since the early 1980s.”

—Jeffrey Deitch, owner, Deitch Projects

“A lot of us in New York have extremely personal connections to

Callie’s art…her figures walk out of the city and leap onto the walls.”

—Jeff Stark, artist and creator of Nonsense NYC

Swoon

By Swoon

With an introduction by Jeffrey Deitch

Artist Caledonia Curry is known as Swoon to admirers who follow her work on streets and in galleries all over the world. She is perhaps best known for the life-size prints and figural paper cutouts she has pasted on walls for the past ten years, each portrait taking on a new life as it is slowly destroyed by the elements. Much of Swoon’s work is like this—beautiful and powerful, but ephemeral.

Swoon’s projects are often grand in scope, requiring weeks of preparation and huge numbers of collaborators to make them a reality. And then they disappear. Her art collective, Toyshop, was known for organizing massive street parties and demonstrations in New York City that were elaborate and dynamic, but fleeting. Her most recent focus has been on armadas of boats fashioned from scavenged junk and then launched by crews of craftsmen into the Mississippi and Hudson rivers and the Adriatic Sea.

This book captures Swoon’s work—her portraits, boats, installations, and parties—and presents them with reflections from collaborators and colleagues. Deitch Projects owner Jeffrey Deitch provides an introduction to the artist and her work, and other contributors include: culture critic and curator Carlo McCormick, Nonsense NYC founder Jeff Stark, journalist and Toyshop-member Rollo Romig, gallery owner Thomas Beale, and playwright Lisa D’Amour. Swoon herself writes the captions and the essay for her Miss Rockaway project.

As a prelude to her next project, building konbit houses in earthquake ravaged Haiti, Swoon is working with Urban Art Projects and a team of engineers and architects to produce a domed sculpture to raise awareness of the housing crisis in Haiti.  Pending NYS Parks approval, the sculpture will be exhibited in Urban Art Projects’ inaugural Williamsburg Waterfront Sculpture Exhibition in East River State Park during the month of May.   This project is also sponsored by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and in addition UAP received a FY2008 Initiative Grant, and the Sponsoring Member of the local legislative initiative pursuant to which this Contract is funded is Assemblyman Joseph Lentol.

To celebrate the release of Swoon‘s new book and her project with Urban Art Projects, there will be a book-signing with the artist present at Urban Art Projects’ headquarters, located at 136 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, on May 8^th 2010 from 6 to 9 pm.

About the author

Swoon has been creating street art in New York City since 1999. She studied painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and has traveled internationally to create exhibits and host workshops. Her work can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Tate Modern, or on the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn, NY.

Jeffrey Deitch is the owner of Deitch Projects in Manhattan.

About Urban Art Projects

Urban Art Projects is a 501(c) (3), Internal Revenue Service-recognized charitable, educational nonprofit corporation, in Brooklyn, New York. The organization was formed in 2007 to provide the organizational framework for public art exhibitions, both nationally and internationally.

Swoon

By Swoon

Abrams

May 2010

US $35.00; CAN $45.50

192 pages

200 full-color illustrations

Hardcover

ISBN 978-0-8109-8485-1

ABRAMS The Art of Books Since 1949
Founded by Harry N. Abrams in 1949, ABRAMS was the first company in the United States to specialize in the creation and distribution of art and illustrated books. Now a subsidiary of La Martinière Groupe, the company publishes visually stunning illustrated books in the areas of art, photography, cooking, interior and garden design, craft, architecture, entertainment, fashion, sports, pop culture, as well as children’s books and general interest titles. The company’s imprints include Abrams, Abrams ComicArts, Abrams Image, Abrams Books for Young Readers, Amulet Books, Stewart, Tabori & Chang, and STC Craft/A Melanie Falick Book. Abrams also distributes books for The Vendome Press, Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate, Royal Academy of Arts, Booth-Clibborn Editions, Five Continents, and others.

www.abramsbooks.com

SIGNAL GALLERY PRESENTS:

Signal Gallery is delighted to be presenting the second solo show in London, by legendary French street artist Jef Aerosol. Jef is well known to London audiences, having appeared in a large number of group shows and in other venues for many years. Jef is a household name in his native land.  He has been in the vanguard of the vibrant French stencil art scene. His distinctive and elegant artworks have graced streets in France since 1982. Jef has continued to produce new work and develop his style and has shown all over the world. Recent shows in New York, Japan and Ireland are ample evidence of his irrepressible spirit and talent. For the show in Signal, called ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’, Jef is celebrating the female form in all its glory. Staying away from portraying celebrities, these women will anonymously represent their sex. The works on show will sometimes hark back to familiar poster imagery of ‘girls’ from the post-war years, while others will have a very contemporary feel. However, it’s certain that Jef’s innate elegance and charm will be strongly in evidence and show will be brimmed full of attractive and irresistible images. About the show, Jef says :

” This is a show dedicated to women, a sexy show, a sensual show… Women ‘s curves have always fascinated artists and I’m no exception! Being quite inspired by the aesthetics of the 50s and 60s, I’ve always felt attracted to the pinup style and the erotic imagery of those times. And sexy girls have also always been one main rock’n’roll source of inspiration. Later on, fishnets and lace have come back to the scene with the punk and goth trends. The women shown in those brand new pieces aren’t celebs or stars, but isn’t every woman a star? That’s the reason why you can see stencils of red stars in all those new paintings!”

When?
Private View: 6th May
Open: 7th – 22nd May

Where ?
Signal Gallery, 96 Curtain Road, London EC2A 3AA, England
www.signalgallery.com
Tel: 07766 057 212

ROA

ROA
a Solo Exhibition

Opening Reception May 14th, 7-10pm

This May, Factory Fresh goes wild as it opens its doors to the zoetic art of Belgium-born artist ROA. The artist’s organic animal forms, huge in both their reputation and impact, will grace the walls of the gallery this May, reminding spectators of the forgotten natural world beneath the city’s streets.

Through his large-scale installations of very wild wild-life on the industrial canvas of the city, ROA produces a juxtaposition of the overtly natural against the mechanic that is both feral and nostalgic, a reminiscence of what the world used to be before cement and concrete. ROA is famous for his large black and white works that depict both the outer and inner appearance of rodents, bulls, roaches et al, who slumber on garage doors and cement blocks, copulate in abandoned alleyways and decay on brick walls. His work is sprawling and uncontainable, and will be filling Factory Fresh as such, barely pinned down to found materials, clustering in our corners and escaping out into our surrounding streets.

ROA began pulling animals out of the depths of the industrial world in his hometown of Ghent, Belgium, where he explored the area around his home and was inspired by the life that lurked in its lonely smokestacks. His resulting work snarls at you from wherever it prowls, awaking a visceral reaction that comes from seeing something familiar yet unknown, an uncanny portrayal of the animals within and around ourselves that our contemporary lifestyles have made null.

Since his Belgium beginnings, ROA’s work has hit the ground running like the animals he depicts, scattering on four legs all over major cities, showing up on the walls of galleries and abandoned factories alike. His work has been shown in London, Berlin, Warsaw, and sold out in two days in Paris. He now returns to New York, arriving at a very different kind of factory than the industrial wastelands his animals are known to inhabit, ROA’s show at Factory Fresh promises to be untamed and animated as his pieces.

On view till May 30th.

FACTORY FRESH GALLERY

1053 FLUSHING AVE

BROOKLYN,  NY