2011 Annual Summer InvitationalGallery I
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ABOVE Daniel Martin Diaz Dickchicken Edwin Ushiro Eric Fortune Hello Monsters |
Jennifer Delilah Melissa Haslam Meryl Smith Nicoletta Ceccoli Yuko Shimizu |
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
The artist known as ABOVE was born in 1981 in California. In 1995, at the age of fifteen, he became involved with graffiti, tagging the word ABOVE on freight trains. In 2001, at the age of 19, he moved to Paris, France and began painting his trademark arrow icon. He returned to California in 2003 and has traveled the globe extensively in the years since, placing his work in Ilocations in over 90 cities in 50 different countries, worldwide.
Born in 1967 in Tucson, Arizona, Daniel Martin Diaz is a self-taught artist. With Mexican-American parents, his traditional Catholic upbringing influences much of the gothic-inspired aesthetic prevalent throughout his body of work—which has been exhibited in galleries and museums, worldwide.
Dickchicken is a Brooklyn-based street artist whose graphic approach is offensive to some while wickedly humorous to others. His work satirically mocks consumer culture and corporate farming practices of the food industry through appropriated imagery and branded packaging motifs.
Edwin Ushiro was born in 1977 on the Hawaiian island of Maui and is currently based in Los Angeles. He received a BFA in Illustration from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He achieves an ethereal quality of light in his imagery, painted on tiled sheets of vinyl paper and mounted onto clear lucite. His subject matter is rich in narrative, combining obake tales of his Japanese heritage with folklore of his native Hawaii.
Eric Fortune is an artist and award-winning illustrator based in Columbus, Ohio. He received a BFA with Honors from Columbus College of Art and Design. With fine details and smooth textures, his emotive works on paper portray stylized, isolated figures set in surreal, atmospheric backgrounds.
Hello Monsters is a Belgian collective formed by Jérôme Meynen, François Dieltiens and Antoine Detaille. The artists blend their individual styles to create an imaginary universe occupied by human-animal-monster hybrid figures. The resulting graphic imagery is layered in caustic social commentary.
Jennifer Delilah is a Brooklyn-based painter. She attended the Kansas City Art Institute and in 1991, she received a BFA from the Art Institute in San Francisco. She describes her figurative work as carrying themes of wealth, perversity, excess, debauchery and unfettered desires.
Melissa Haslam is based in Melbourne, Australia. She studied Visual Arts at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). Her paintings express an interest in the nature of social role-playing, particularly in fashion. Her portraits of young women dressed in costumes resembling stuffed toy animals are inspired by a Japanese fashion subculture known as Kigurumi or cosplay.
Meryl Smith is a New York-based artist. She has collaborated with artists such as Neckface, and made the sculptures in Spike Jones’ short film I’m Here, which were later installed in Opening Ceremony’s retail window display. She was photographed in her home with her eccentric collection of objects by Tod Selby for his blog and book The Selby. Her thought-provoking sculptures and two-dimensional works reflect a macabre sense of humor and intense interest in wildlife.
Based in San Marino, Italy, Nicoletta Ceccoli is an award-winning illustrator of over 30 children’s books. Her whimsically allegorical paintings portray doll-like female figures interacting with birds, insects, lizards and other wild creatures in a dark and dream-like fantasy world.
Yuko Shimizu is a Japanese-born artist and acclaimed illustrator. She has lived in New York since 1999, and received an MFA in illustration from School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 2003. Her series of monochromatic ink drawings evoke Japanese manga and narrative comic traditions on an epic scale.
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Running concurrently with the 2011 Annual Summer Invitational group exhibition, Jonathan LeVine Gallery will present a solo exhibition of new works and installations by Polish-born, New York-based crochet artist Olek.
A prolific practitioner of performance and public art (both authorized and unauthorized), one of Olek's street art series is an homage to renowned British street artist Banksy—who placed a stenciled silhouette of a girl suspended in air, holding balloons on the West Bank barrier of the Israeli-Palestine border in 2005.
Re-creating the iconic silhouette on cut board, Olek wrapped the balloon girl with her signature camouflage-patterned crochet work in brightly-colored yarn, and placed her Banksy tribute series in locations around New York City.
The artist has created a new black & white version of the piece for her gallery exhibition. Two of the original street art pieces, which are not included in the exhibition, are currently available. Please click on the images below for further details:
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Olek was born Agata Oleksiak in 1978 in Poland. In 2000, she received a Bachelor degree in Cultural Studies from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, and relocated to New York City, where she is currently based. Olek’s work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and public spaces worldwide, and featured in numerous publications such as The New York Times, New York Magazine, Time Out NY, Village Voice, CNN, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News. Olek is the recipient of awards including the Ruth Mellon Award for sculpture in 2004, In Situ Artaq award (France) in 2011, and a grant in 2011 from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) for performance in public space. Olek’s residencies have included Sculpture Space in 2005, Instituto Sacatar (Brazil) in 2009 and AAI-LES in 2010. In 2008, Olek was the winner of the Apex Art competition, which aired on PBS. In 2010, the artist was commissioned by the Brooklyn Museum of Art for a one-day interactive performance installation. In 2012, Olek will be part of the 40 Under 40 exhibition at the Smithsonian, for which her entire crocheted studio apartment (measuring 16 x 14 x 8.5 feet) will be exhibited.
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Daniel Martin Diaz
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Dickchicken
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Edwin Ushiro
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Eric Fortune
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Hello Monsters
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Jennifer Delilah
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Melissa Haslam
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Meryl Smith
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Nicoletta Ceccoli
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Yuko Shimizu
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Jonathan LeVine Gallery 