Month: January 2016
LA2
January – February, 2009
Woodward Gallery Project Space
Excerpt from The Village Voice, “Haring’s Silent Partner,” by Colin Moynihan:
“…From 1980 until 1986, Haring and Angel Ortiz (LA2) met often in the Broome Street studio, painting and drawing for up to 15 hours at a stretch on both canvas and urban detritus like statues, urns, and pieces of metal. The partnership was recognized by both artists to be an equal one, Ortiz says, because their artistic styles complemented each other. Ortiz’s calligraphic, interlocking lines vitalized and filled out negative space between Haring’s cleanly drawn shapes. And while Haring was older and far cannier, the energy of Ortiz’s graffiti-like markings brought freshness and street credibility to his work.”
The association was important personally as well as artistically, particularly to Ortiz, who had never experienced life outside the Lower East Side before meeting Haring. He left school at the age of 16 to create art full-time and was thrilled to receive attention from artists and collectors around the world. The two formed a strong relationship, which Haring likened to that of an older and younger brother. Haring invited Ortiz to clubs like Roxy and the Pyramid, where the young artist met Andy Warhol and Boy George. Ortiz took Haring to a Brooklyn train yard where they spray-painted subway cars. Even after the collaboration ended, as Haring’s increasing renown led him to concentrate on solo work, the two remained friendly….”
Artist Resume
Sonne Hernandez
March – May, 2009
Woodward Gallery Project Space
Our relationship to screens – televisions, gaming units, mobile phones and computers – informs our understanding of the world. The blurred lines of the screen exist as visual metaphor for the gaps between sensationalized media and reality. The “truth of the moment” inherent in our understanding of the photographic medium (i.e. the camera doesn’t lie) is packaged with compressed bites of information, and our perception of reality is siphoned through this mediated system. The lines of the screen are a physical and visual typo that demarcate the sight of the eyes from the passive glow of the screen.
Immersed in media culture, the revolution will be televised and witnessed through the flattened plane of the screen.
Lady Pink
June – August, 2009
Woodward Gallery Project Space
Lady Pink was born in Ecuador, but raised in NYC. In 1979 she started writing graffiti and soon was well known as the only female capable of competing with the boys in the graffiti subculture. Pink painted subway trains from the years 1979-1985. She is considered a cult figure in the hip-hop subculture since the release of the motion picture “Wild Style” in 1982, in which she had a starring role. While still in high school she was already exhibiting paintings in art galleries, and at the age of 21 had her first solo show at the Moore College of Art. As a leading participant in the rise of graffiti-based art, Lady Pink’s canvases have entered important art collections such as those of the Whitney Museum, the MET in New York City, the Brooklyn Museum and the Groningen Museum of Holland. She has established herself in the fine arts world, and her paintings are highly prized by collectors. Today, Lady Pink continues to create new paintings on canvas that express her unique personal vision. She also shares her 30 years of experience by holding mural workshops with teens and actively lecturing college students throughout the Northeast.
Royce Bannon
September – October, 2009
Woodward Gallery Project Space
Royce is an integral member of The Endless Love Crew, a street-art collective and has participated in various live painting events, group and solo exhibits throughout New York and Europe.
Royce Bannon identifies with his monster character and enjoys the interaction between the public and his message. Where monsters commonly evoke scary, menacing or evil reproachfulness, his are neither unnatural or grotesque. Royce shrewdly diverges from what is expected- his monster tags are colorful and emotive, prompting familiarity and accessibility.
Currently, Royce is the art director for Diamond Headz NYC, a new clothing line promoting the life and culture of socially conscious city kids.
Michael De Feo
November – December, 2009
Woodward Gallery Project Space
Woodward Gallery Project Space features an extension of Artist Michael De Feo’s acclaimed self-portrait series. Painting on antique maps relate to his urban play between spontaneity and structure, universal patterns in nature and how the world is connected. Most recently, De Feo’s urban portrait installations have been seen in Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, Miami, and New York.
A professional artist for 17 years, Michael De Feo may be best identified for his ubiquitous flower image. Not limited to the streets as his canvas, his work has also appeared in galleries and museums around the world including the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; MASS MoCA; Museo de Arte, Puerto Rico; The New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY; the A3 Art Fair, Paris; Manifesta 7, Trento/Trentino, Italy; The National Gallery, Bangladesh…
Michael De Feo teaches art at a high school in Fairfield County, Connecticut and lives in New York.
Please visit mdefeo.com to explore more of De Feo’s artwork.
stikman
January – February, 2010
Woodward Gallery Project Space
Woodward Gallery presents the stikman: Double Vision installation on the Woodward Gallery Project Space.
The man on a wire image comes from the precarious nature of modern economic reality. The first large scale installation of the image was of the man on a wire that was stretched between two stacks of demolition debris. He was surrounded by a mass of falling figures that were reflective on one side and black on the reverse. There have been many paste-ups installed using the man (made of maps) on a line (wire) between two verticals. The man on the wire was attached to the top of two stacks of shipping pallets. The stacks were erected in an overgrown lot that had been cleared to build luxury condos, but is now abandoned. This installation is homage to that lot at sunrise.
Since the early 1990’s the artist behind these images has been exploring the realm of a mysterious man made out of sticks and pressed into a soft clay tablet. The basic elements of the original stickman continue to reveal themselves in ever changing forms.
Some observers claim to see shamanistic qualities in these feral glyphs and votives. The figures populate the urban environment with their endless repetition and variation, embellishing the ordinary streetscape while revealing the consequences of the physical world’s forces on an idea. They become alive in the natural cycles that grind them out of existence as we observe their deterioration day after day.
stikman is a self taught artist. The first stikman wooden figures began appearing on urban streets as early as 1991 and with a strong, continuous presence ever since. There have been thousands of stickman images placed in US cities and towns as metaphor for the fragility of human life.
El Celso
March – May, 2010
Woodward Gallery Project Space
El Celso is featured this Spring on the Woodward Gallery Project Space. Inspired by Matisse’s La Danse, this street artist offers his interpretation of the peasant dance in France. El Celso’s spray enamel and acrylic panels represent liberating motions as ancient as the Sardana dance itself. Within its simplicity, boundless energy is discovered.
The Art Newspaper described El Celso’s most recent show, Art Burn, an International contemporary art expo & immolation, as a “bonfire of the art vanities” and the Miami Herald declared it “a funky Basel sideshow.” The New York Times described his previous exhibition, “Post No Bills,” a street art gallery installation in Long Island City as “audacious.” The Brooklyn Rail describes El Celso as “a street artist with a taste for experimentation, a knack for making things happen and a predilection for drawing colorful naked women.”
The Artist was born in Newark, New Jersey. He lives and works in Manhattan and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. El Celso’s work is featured in numerous publications, street art books, websites and blogs.
