Pose & Revok / Brett Amory
dal 28/6/2013 al 26/7/2013
Segnalato da
28/6/2013
Pose & Revok / Brett Amory
Jonathan LeVine Gallery, New York
"Uphill Both Ways" is a two-person exhibition curated by Roger Gastman, featuring new works by Chicago-based artist Pose and Detroit-based artist Revok. "Twenty-Four in New York", a series of new works by Oakland-based artist Brett Amory.
Pose & Revok
Uphill Both Ways
Two-person Exhibition
Curated by Roger Gastman
NEW YORK, NY (May 21, 2013) — Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to present Uphill Both Ways, a two-person exhibition curated by Roger Gastman, featuring new works by Chicago-based artist Pose and Detroit-based artist Revok. In conjunction with what will be their first show in New York, the artists will also collaborate on a large-scale mural on the famed Goldman Properties wall located on Houston and Bowery streets, in lower Manhattan.
Although style, medium and techniques vary between the two artists, their work is strongly connected from a conceptual standpoint. The exhibition title Uphill Both Ways (inspired by late graffiti artist NEKST), relates to the battles Pose and Revok have faced personally with legal persecution and loss, as well as general themes of the human struggle on a macro level, one of the common threads in their bodies of work. The artists both draw inspiration directly from their environments and both of their processes involve chopping up various elements and reassembling the slices to form a synthesis of intriguing shapes, forms and textures.
Pose’s works reference disparate sources—pop and comic art, skateboard and advertising graphics, collage, sign painting and graffiti. Painting portraits of the human condition, he re-appropriates the visual language of the street and overwhelming experience of consumer culture to convey a broad spectrum of emotions—pain, triumph, joy, fear, love and loss. His fragmented imagery is intended to disarm pretense, making the work universally accessible and open to interpretation. Revok creates abstract geometric panels with vibrant colors and striking patterns using found materials sourced from abandoned homes, schools, businesses and churches—sampling bits and pieces of people’s lives, hopes, dreams and aspirations—reinterpreted through rich layers of history, decay and age-worn patina.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Pose (Jordan Nickel) was born in 1980 in Evanston, Illinois, and is currently based in Chicago. He began practicing graffiti in 1992 and received a painting degree from Kansas City Art Institute in 2004. Revok (Jason Williams) was born in 1977 in Riverside, California, and began writing graffiti in 1990. In 2011, his work was included in Art in the Streets, an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles, and Street Cred, an exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art. Currently based in Detroit, Revok founded the Detroit Beautification Project in which he and his peers create murals throughout the city. Pose and Revok are both members of The Seventh Letter, an acclaimed West Coast artist collective and Mad Society Kings (MSK), a world-renowned graffiti crew.
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Roger Gastman was raised in Bethesda, Maryland and is currently based in Los Angeles. He founded and published two magazines: While You Were Sleeping and Swindle (co-published with Shepard Fairey). In 2010, Gastman served as consulting producer for Banksy’s Oscar-nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. In 2011, he was an Associate Curator for Art In The Streets, an exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles and in 2012, he co-authored The History of American Graffiti published by HarperCollins.
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Brett Amory
Twenty-four in New York
Solo Exhibition
NEW YORK, NY (May 21, 2013) — Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to present Twenty-Four in New York, a series of new works by Oakland-based artist Brett Amory, in what will be his second solo exhibition at the gallery.
Following his 2012 exhibition Twenty-Four in San Francisco, Amory spent a month in New York City, researching, photographing and filming various locations throughout the five boroughs to serve as reference material for his new series Twenty-Four in New York. The artist filmed a total of 40 locations, each in a one-hour increment at different times of day and night. Video footage of 24 locations will be projected in a grid of 24 frames in consecutive order beginning and ending with midnight. The hour-long intervals will run simultaneously, representing a full day in the city of New York.
Amory’s work portrays abstracted studies of urban life through fragmented cityscapes and anonymous, isolated figures. The exhibition includes twelve paintings documenting different locations throughout the city, some iconic institutions and others of the sadly, rapidly disappearing variety. The artist will also create a site-specific installation around one of the paintings, which incorporates a magazine stand with architectural components.
At each location, Amory collected various found objects to be displayed on a pedestal alongside the painting. Whether lost or discarded, the ephemera relates to the surrounding communities like anthropological findings, lending context to the painted landscapes (ie: Korean cigarette boxes in Flushing, jewelry in the East Village, drug baggies by the Bowery Mission homeless shelter, baby pacifiers in the Hasidic section of Williamsburg).
Additional locations include: Grand Central Station, The Apollo Theatre in Harlem, Bleeker Bob’s Record Store and Webster Hall in the West Village, Ray’s Candy Shop in the East Village, Chinatown in Manhattan, Main Street Flushing and the Iron Triangle in Queens, Coney Island in Brooklyn and the Williamsburg Bridge.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Brett Amory was born in 1975 in Chesapeake, Virginia. He has lived in the Bay Area of California for the past 15 years, living in San Francisco for 13 years before relocating to Oakland in 2009, where he is currently based. Amory attended The Academy of Arts in San Francisco. Amory’s work has been exhibited in galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and New York. He has also been featured in publications such as The Huffington Post and The San Francisco Bay Guardian, who named him artist of the year in 2012 with a featured cover story.
ABOUT JONATHAN LEVINE GALLERY
Jonathan LeVine Gallery is committed to new and cutting edge art. Our roots go back to 1995, when Jonathan’s life-long participation in punk and underground music grew into a curatorial experiment with the visual culture that surrounded him. We moved to Chelsea in 2005, with an eye towards honoring and connecting with the history and context of Post War art. We contribute to the dialogue by challenging the conventions of the canon – exploring the terrain of the high/low and everything in between. Jonathan LeVine Gallery is located at 529 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011. For further information, please visit: www.jonathanlevinegallery.com, email: info@jonathanlevinegallery.com or call: 212.243.3822.
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 29, 7-9pm
Jonathan LeVine Gallery
529 West 20th Street, 9th Floor New York, NY 10011
Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm