SAN FRANCISCO: APEX

As Above, So Below

November 8 – December 6, 2014

Opening reception: Saturday, November 8, 7pm – 11pm

SHOOTING GALLERY

886 Geary Street

San Francisco, CA

From Shooting Gallery press release:

Shooting Gallery is pleased to present new works by Bay Area street artist, APEX. This new body of work, titled As Above, So Below is the artist’s most abstract to date.

As Above, So Below is an exploration of new territories in modern art for this already well-established street artist. Known for his “burner” aerosol styles and graffiti lettering, APEX takes his art in a new direction. As Above, So Below is an exploration of minimalist color blocking, sleek lines and architectural forms and arches. Careful compositions of colors and shapes take APEX’s work into a totally new dimension.  While maintaining the dynamism that continues to characterize the street artist, APEX wields this energy into a refined body of work ready to go from street to home. In addition to the Shooting Gallery main space, APEX will also occupy one of the Shooting Gallery’s project spaces, representing the “So Below” portion of the show’s title; this project space will feature some of APEX’s signature and most recognizable earlier style-graffiti and hand-styles.

APEX aka Ricardo Richey was born in San Francisco, CA in 1978. He is a street artist who creates colorful abstract patterns through the use of spray paint. Part of the Gestalt Collective that engages in collaborative murals in San Francisco, Apex curated mural projects on Bluxome Alley, other districts of San Francisco, and the SFMOMA display windows in association with St. Johns Community Center (San Francisco, 2002). His work has been shown extensively both in the Bay Area and abroad. He was the artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2007), and was featured in documentaries and publications regarding the Mission District in San Francisco. Client commissions include Outside Lands, Spotify, the Puma lounge at the America’s Cup, Scion, Red Bull, Zynga, GoDaddy, Starbucks, and Adobe. 

Shooting Gallery opened its doors in 2003 to the historic Tenderloin district of San Francisco; known for its lively street culture. Growing up in Southern California gave owner and curator, Justin Giarla, a love for everything lowbrow: pop art, street art, outsider art, punk rock album art, comic book art, surf/skate art and hot rod culture. Giarla recognizes how important it is to provide lowbrow artists with a platform for their work, which is exactly what Shooting Gallery has done for over a decade.

SAN FRANCISCO: Chor Boogie

Chor Boogie, Love Visions Vol. 2,  Light Orange, Enamel on canvas, 40 x 30 inches. Image via 111minnagallery.com.

Balance

Featuring Chor Boogie & Jet Martinez

November 7, 2014 – January 3, 2015

111 MINNA GALLERY

111 Minna Street

San Francisco, CA

From 111minnagallery.com:

Prolific muralists, Chor Boogie and Jet Martinez will unveil their most recent works on November 7, 2014 as part of 111 Minna Gallery’s latest exhibition, Balance. 

An artist driven by a unique creative passion and inspired by both renaissance and modern spray paint legends alike, Chor Boogie is a pioneer and a true original. Known for producing vibrant and distinct pieces, Chor’s intentional use of color and technique are truly exceptional and widely recognized for invoking raw emotion and intensity. His works have often been described as having healing effects by his unique and unmatched use of color, which brings greater meaning and understanding to his works and leaves no question as to why he is counted among the top urban artists in the world.

Entranced by the works of both Boogie and Martinez after viewing their murals at San Francisco’s infamous Clarion Alley Mural Project, 111 Minna Gallery Curator, Micah LeBrun composed Balance as a showcase of the artists’ stunning use of color and to demonstrate the depth of their techniques.  Notorious as the gallery to exhibit underground, edgy and often-times controversial works, 111 Minna has maintained a twenty year reputation for constant progression and positive energy making it a cornerstone of San Francisco culture.

Exhibit Link

View Chor Boogie Balance image here.

WASHINGTON, DC: Superwaxx

Image via hierarchydc.com

MADE FOR TH!S

October 17 – November 9, 2014

Opening reception: Friday, October 17, 2014, 7pm (RSVP required)

HIERARCHY

1847 Columbia Road, NW (Downstairs)

Washington, DC

From hierarchydc.com:

MADE FOR TH!S is the first-ever solo exhibition from SUPERWAXX, and includes a collection of new 2D and installation works. A self-described lowbrow artist, she has become most notable for her collective works, employing vibrant colors and fine line painting techniques that display her signature style of pop and cartoon art with strong female leads. MADE FOR TH!S is an active remix of cartoons and fine art mixing genre and technique to create images from her vibrant imagination as a child.

A native of Richmond, VA, SUPERWAXX is completely self-taught and heavily influenced by 80’s and 90’s animated cartoons, comic books, popular culture and street art. She has exhibited artwork in Boston, New York City, Miami, Cuba and in Washington, D.C. including at the LADIES F1RST showcase examining the strong voice of women in modern street art and graffiti hosted at The Fridge gallery and performance space.

Exhibit Link

NEW YORK: Indie 184

Indie 184, Aura, 2014, acrylic, enamel, gouache and paper on cotton, 46 x 38 inches. Image via azartgallerynyc.com.

Paradise

October 2 – 23, 2014

Opening reception: Thursday, October 2, 2014, 6-8pm

AZART GALLERY

617 West 27^th Street

New York, NY

From Azart Gallery press release:

Azart Gallery is proud to present “PARADISE” an exhibition of recent works by New York graffiti artist Indie 184.

Illuminated with bold text, vivid colors and striking models, the works convey a nostalgic yet strongly subversive message, suggesting the playful mood and expression of ‘her’.

Indie 184, (born 1980) a native New Yorker, has been active in graffiti culture for over a decade and a half. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including El Museo del Barrio in New York City and Völklingen Ironworks Museum, in Saarbrücken Germany. Her graffiti pieces can be found in the streets from the South Bronx, NY to Paris, France.

Exhibit Link

NYC artist Indie 184: “It’s not a competition. Dare to be different.”

Preview: “Paradise” New Works

CULVER CITY: Nosego

Open Channels

July 19 - August 9, 2014

Opening reception: Saturday, July 19, 2014, 6-9pm

THINKSPACEART GALLERY

Project Room

6009 Washington Boulevard

Culver City, CA

From thinkspacegallery.com:

Thinkspace is pleased to exhibit Open Channels featuring new works by highly accomplished fine artist, illustrator, and street artist Yis Goodwin, aka Nosego.

Imaginatively beautiful and strangely grotesque, the Philadelphia based artist captures a myriad of conflicting impulses in a single piece.

His larger than life creations tend to reveal the smallness of their individual parts upon closer inspection. Imposingly excessive, and saturated with individual references, each piece presents a wealth of composited details and a host of minutiae to fascinate and entangle the viewer in endless readings.

Nosego combines the animal with the suggestion of the human, and the illustrative with the realistic, to create beautifully disorienting hybrids. His works defy categorization, both stylistically and in terms of content. They are polymorphous and in an unrelenting state of flux and metamorphosis: a dynamic perpetuity of becoming and undoing, as though they were living things.

Nosego presents us with worlds that exist unto themselves, as illogical as they are seductive and transportive. The spontaneity of the artist’s huge imagination is at the fore of his practice. His works convey this feeling of explosive energy, as though looking into them provided the viewer with a direct conduit to the origins of their genius. With endless associative recombinations, and a genuinely uncensored creativity and penchant for experiment, the artist opens vistas unto worlds of unimaginable vastness, possibility, and intricacy.

Nosego will be creating a site specific installation in the Thinkspace project room for Open Channels, and completing a public mural in Los Angeles in tandem with the exhibition.

Nosego photographed by Theo Constantinou. 2012. Image via paradigmmagazine.com. All rights reserved.

Exhibit Link

SCREENING: Stations of the Elevated

PREMIERE SCREENING!

Friday, June 27, 2014, 8:00pm

Produced, Directed, Photographed and Edited by Manfred Kirchheimer

Music by Charles Mingus

Ticket Price: $25

BAM HARVEY THEATER

651 Fulton Street

Brooklyn, NY

Summary:

STATIONS OF THE ELEVATED (1981) is a 45-minute city symphony directed, produced and edited by Manfred Kirchheimer.  Shot on lush 16mm color reversal stock, the film weaves together vivid images of graffiti-covered elevated subway trains crisscrossing the gritty urban landscape of 1970s New York, to a commentary-free soundtrack that combines ambient city noise with jazz and gospel by Charles Mingus and Aretha Franklin.  Gliding through the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan - making a rural detour past a correctional facility upstate – Stations of the Elevated is an impressionistic portrait of and tribute to a New York that has long since disappeared.

Stations captures the exuberant height of the 1970's graffiti movement in New York, featuring the work of early legends including Lee, Fabulous 5, Shadow, Daze, Kase, Butch, Blade, Slave, 12 T2B, Ree, and Pusher.  At a time when graffiti was largely dismissed as vandalism and a symbol of urban decay, Kirchheimer explores it as a form of self-expression and a reaction to New York's social and economic conditions, an artistic counterpoint to the "legalized vandalism" dominating the city's visual landscape in the form of corporate advertising.  Juxtaposing the colorful imagery of 'tagged' cars with shots of hand-painted billboards depicting hamburgers and bikini-clad women, Stations forces audiences to ask: "What is urban art, and what role does it play in the daily life of a city?"

*This event will feature live music by the Mingus Dynasty, the original ensemble formed by Sue Mingus after Charles' death in 1979 to continue his legacy.  The Dynasty will perform a set of selections from the film score as a prelude to the screening.

STATIONS OF THE ELEVATED extended trailer from Manny Kirchheimer on Vimeo.

Event Link

JAKARTA: Joshua Mays

Image via Facebook.

Egress

May 14 – June 14, 2014

GLITCH NETWORK

Jl. Jendral Sudirman Kav. 52-53

Jakarta Selatan, Indonesia

From glitch-network.com:

Egress is the first exhibition in Asia by Joshua Mays, incorporating themes of discovery and the liberation of emerging from enclosed spaces.

Joshua Mays is a self-taught, Denver born painter, muralist and illustrator. He studied Illustration at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design and graphic design at Community College of Denver before moving to Philadelphia where he lived and worked for eight years. Joshua spent a number of years exhibiting and traveling nationwide. He has created murals across the United States including pieces in Washington, D.C., Denver, Portland, Philadelphia and Oakland. Joshua has traveled to complete international commissions in London, Johannesburg, and Mexico City. Joshua is currently based in Oakland and is working on various projects including commissions, print releases, mural and upcoming exhibitions.

Image via Facebook.

Exhibit Link

View exhibit photos here.

ON VIEW: COPE2

Ben Frost/COPE2 collaboration on wood, 44 x 32 inches. Image via krausegallery.com.

DURABILITY

Featuring COPE2 and Ben Frost

March 21 - April 20, 2014

KRAUSE GALLERY

149 Orchard St at Rivington (LES)

New York, NY 

Krause Gallery NYC is excited to present Legends, COPE2 x Ben Frost.

COPE2: Fernando Carlo (also known as COPE2) is an artist from the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, New York. He has been a graffiti artist since 1978-79, and has gained international credit for his work. He is now known worldwide as a NYC graffiti legend.

Ben Frost: (born Brisbane, Australia) is a visual artist whose work seeks to challenge contemporary norms and values of Western culture and society. Frost’s hand painted visual work places common iconic images from advertising, entertainment, and politics into startling juxtapositions that are often confrontational and controversial.

Exhibit Link