URBAN ALCHEMISTS
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AJ Fosik Dan Witz Doze Green Invader James Marshall (Dalek) |
Jeff Soto Jim Houser Judith Supine Mario Martinez (Mars-1) WK |
In conjunction with having works in the show, Parisian artist Invader will create a mosaic mural on the façade of the exhibition space in his signature pixel-based style, and Californian artist Jeff Soto will paint a large-scale mural on an adjacent exterior wall.
Highlighting an assortment of captivating imagery, Urban Alchemists brings together a dynamic group of artists, many who (in addition to their gallery installations) create commissioned murals and/or ephemeral work in public urban environments. Their connective thread is an aesthetic influenced by exposure to early generations of graffiti writers during their youth and immersion into urban subcultures, which has informed their artwork in different ways. Subcultures of graffiti, skateboarding, hip-hop and punk were heavily related and extremely underground scenes in early years, comprised of subversive, non-conformist ideals. Whether driven by political activism or aesthetic improvement, graffiti and later forms of unauthorized art in public spaces address the ongoing discourse of freedom of expression, often in response to the increasing invasiveness of corporate advertising.
Graffiti of the 70s and 80s played a major role in pushing boundaries toward the development of today’s street art scene and laid the foundation for what has now become a widespread global movement. To capture the energy of a public intervention in an urban environment and translate it into exhibition format is a challenging transition, since audience and mode of communication can shift the context of an image. As the artists in Urban Alchemists have grown individually, their artwork has evolved to a point of refinement. Similarly, as un-commissioned public art has risen in popularity, practice and appreciation around the world, it has achieved an expanded definition and broader scope than that of its graffiti-related origins.
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ADDITIONALLY, two HPM works by SHEPARD FAIREY are available, on display at the newly opened WYNWOOD KITCHEN & BAR, located next to the exhibition space, within the WYNWOOD WALLS compound. Please click on the images below for further details:
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
- AJ FOSIK — Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Fosik is currently based in Philadelphia. In 2003, he received a BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design in New York. His artwork explores the powerful medium of language and metaphor to emphasize narrative and interpretation. Using wood and found materials, he creates figural, eclectic and intricately designed three-dimensional works that intrigue and provoke. Fosik’s animal subjects and anthropomorphized beings are built using a complex process in which each form is carefully handcrafted by arranging hundreds of pieces of individually cut and varnished wood, which the artist paints in vibrant colors and patterns. Sharp teeth, claws and eyes emerge once the creatures are completed—some are constructed as freestanding and others are wall-mounted, referencing modern taxidermy practices. Evocative of Folk Art and inspired by subversive cultural influences that shift complacency, Fosik’s work suspends comfort with the appeal of familiar symbols and images. In this dynamic tension, the art and viewer come together in an expanded definition of culture and assumption.
- DAN WITZ — Born in 1957 in Chicago and currently based in Brooklyn, Witz attended Rhode Island School of Design from 1975-77 and came to New York in 1978 to attend Cooper Union, receiving a BFA in 1980. In 1982, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992 and 2000, he received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 1998 he received a fellowship from the Public Art Fund. Witz’s first monograph In Plain View was published by Gingko Press in 2010; the book spans 30 years of the artist’s career in creating works “illegal and otherwise.” Witz’s gallery work and street interventions feature hyper-realistic figurative imagery. Often applying old master painting techniques such as trompe l’oeil, the artist achieves impressively convincing illusions of light and depth in his finely rendered subjects.
- DOZE GREEN — A New York City native born in 1964, Doze Green’s urban background and involvement in the early hip-hop/graffiti movement of NYC in the late 70’s, early 80’s as one of the original b-boy members of the Rock Steady Crew, led him to transition from painting in the streets and subways into creating art for the gallery setting and public mural commissions. Green speaks in a unique creative voice from the collective consciousness, applying a symbolist approach to metaphysical concepts. His signature aesthetic combines stylized letterforms and figurative abstraction—using an array of mediums such as ink, gouache, and metallic pigments with an evolved, organic cubist quality to his high-contrast fluid line work. The artist’s genealogy inspires many of the themes explored therein, influenced by ancient civilizations and indigenous cultures, including his own Afro-Caribbean roots. His totem-like human and animal figures are often conceptually based on various polytheistic deities. These divinities represent sentinels, guardians of universal truths, immortal warriors warning mankind of the dangers contemporary society has manifested, looming on the horizon and threatening to destroy us.
- INVADER — The artist known as Invader was born in 1969 in Paris, France, the city where he is currently based. His work illustrates the overwhelming effect technology has had on contemporary culture while also critiquing it, using the ancient and traditional technique of mosaics to simulate digital pixels. Referencing the 1978 Atari video game, the artist began placing mosaics featuring Space Invaders on the streets of Paris in the late 1990s. Joined by Pac Man ghosts and other popular 8-bit characters, the works soon became a familiar sight to encounter in any urban environment. Invader’s use of tile to create street art, rather than paint or stencil, is not only a unique choice of medium—it also emphasizes his commentary of how digital information networks have affected and transformed our society. Sightings of the work have spread over the last ten years on a global scale as the artist continues invading public spaces across five continents. Currently, Invader’s work can be found on the streets of over forty cities, worldwide. Recently, Invader’s work has evolved, incorporating Rubik’s Cubes in addition to tiles, creating 3D sculptures that echo imagery found in his two-dimensional work. Invader is known to be the originator of this technique, a movement referred to as: Rubikcubism.
- JAMES MARSHALL (DALEK) — Marshall was born in 1968 in New London, Connecticut and is currently based in North Carolina. He was raised in a military family who moved frequently along the East Coast throughout his childhood and later lived in Hawaii and Japan. In his youth, Marshall turned to punk rock, skateboarding and graffiti subcultures for inclusion and identity. His Space Monkey character was born out of graffiti, which he discovered in 1994 in the rail yards of California and later in Chicago. After an education in anthropology and sociology, followed by receiving a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995, Marshall worked under the name Dalek to merge street art with influences from animation, Japanese pop, and the energy of the urban punk scene. In 2001, he reached a major turning point in his studio practice while working as an assistant/apprentice to the world-renowned artist Takashi Murakami. Marshall’s work has been shown in galleries and museums across North America, Europe and Japan.
- JEFF SOTO — Soto was born in 1975 in southern California, where he currently resides with his wife Jennifer and two daughters. In 2002, he graduated with Distinction from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. In 2008, his work was the subject of an exhibition at the Riverside Art Museum. Through his work, Soto communicates profound visions and fears, nostalgia of his youth, as well as themes of love, lust, and hope. His distinct color palette, subject matter, technique and bold themes resonate with a growing audience. Inspired by childhood toys, the colorful lifestyle of skateboarding and graffiti, hip-hop and popular culture, his representational work is simultaneously accessible and stimulating. Soto creates visual mythologies with ominous, quasi-divine apparitions, whose organic tendrils writhe from the cavities of their smoking, robotic shells and whose lumbering frames preside over sprawling urban landscapes. Dramatic lighting, textural richness and a sophisticated palette are his hallmarks. Soto’s sculptural sensibility and improvisational, grafitti-informed method of working is often reflected through his rich wall-cluster installations, which are an amalgam of disjointed storytelling and playful formalism.
- JIM HOUSER — Houser was born in 1973 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city where he currently lives and works. He is a self-taught artist and an honorary member of the Philly-based art collective Space1026. Houser’s paintings and sculptures are the system by which he actively catalogs the images and noises that command his attention. His installations create a mapping system, cataloguing the contents of his head over the course of a particular period of time. Houser’s interests include: listening to the cadence of speech, science and science fiction, sickness and disease, plants and animals, time travel, ghosts, the art of children, secrets, radio, codes and code breaking, words that sound beautiful and mean something terrible, and words that sound horrible but mean something wonderful.
- JUDITH SUPINE — Born in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1978, Supine uses his mother’s maiden name as an alias to keep his identity anonymous. The artist spent years traveling throughout European cities including London and Amsterdam, and in 2005 moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he is currently based. Supine did not speak until he was seventeen years of age, during which time he used drawing and collage as a form of communication. In medical terminology, the word Supine is defined as a bodily position in which a person lies on their back with their face pointing upwards. Supine’s artwork consists of collaged, brightly colored figures created with found imagery that the artist re-produces in black and white, enlarges on a photocopier and paints in vibrant washes of fluorescent greens, pinks and purples. His gallery installations include large-scale cut-out works on top of electric dioramas, and his public interventions appear on building façades, hanging on bridges and even floating in rivers.
- MARIO MARTINEZ (MARS-1) — Martinez was born in Boulder, Colorado in 1977. At the age of 13, he began writing graffiti in his hometown of Fresno. He later attended Academy of Art in San Francisco, where he currently lives and works; remaining heavily active in the city’s contemporary art scene. His unique imagery explores possibilities of otherworldly existence through highly developed, multi-layered landscapes. Often employing a fuzzy-logic aesthetic, Martinez’s artwork has a sentient appearance, like a tulpa—which in mysticism, is the concept of a materialized thought that manifests into physical form. His unique style has been described as urban-Gothic, sci-fi abstracted, quasi-organic form. Early inspirations include: graffiti, animation, comic book characters, UFOlogy, extraterrestrials, unexplored life, mysteries of the universe, alternate realities and the abstract quality of existence. The true meaning of Martinez’s imagery is ultimately left open to interpretation. The artist feels this brings his creations full-circle, encouraging his audience to decipher the messages he wishes to convey as well as to form ideas of their own.
- WK (aka WK INTERACT) — Born in 1969 in Caen, France, WK currently lives and works in New York. At a young age, he became interested with the human body in motion; his paintings of figures frozen in a flight of movement reflect this infatuation. The artist’s technique of twisting an original drawing or photograph while it’s being photocopied, results in the monochromatic palette and streamlined, moment-in-time appearance of his finished work. WK site-determines his placements by finding an appropriate location first; then, his imagery is chosen specifically with a concern for encounters in an urban environment or “interactions” (as indicated in his pseudonym). In the late 1990s his images began appearing on building façades in downtown Manhattan. He has exhibited in galleries (and on the streets) around the world, but has lived and worked in New York City since the early 1990s. Over this time he has seen many changes—inside and outside of the art world—but his work remains inspired by New York, the constant stir of bodies and perpetual motion of life in the city and it’s inhabitants, driven by intense passion and fear.
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FOR A RE-CAP OF THE 2010 WYNWOOD WALLS PROJECT, PLEASE CLICK HERE.
FOR INVADER's MIAMI INVASION 2010, PLEASE CLICK HERE.
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Dan Witz
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Doze Green
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Invader
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James Marshall (Dalek)
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Jeff Soto
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Jim Houser
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Judith Supine
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Mario Martinez (Mars-1)
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WK
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Jonathan LeVine Gallery