Faile & Bäst "Deluxx Fluxx Arcade" in NYC

FAILE & BÄST
DELUXX FLUXX ARCADE

April 30 – May 27, 2010
Opening Friday, April 30, 2010, 7:30 – 10:30 PM

What do you get when Brooklyn-based duo Faile and collaborator Bast take over a disused store front on the Lower East Side? Deluxx Fluxx, a functional video arcade that will be open to the public from April 30th to May 27th.


Originally conceived as a one-off project in London, Deluxx Fluxx allowed Faile and Bast to indulge nostalgia for the classic video arcade while exploring the tactile possibilities of the wooden cabinet as sculptural medium. In its New York incarnation, the retrofitted machines run new games by Adapted Studio based on Faile and Bast's omnivorous visual language, with sounds produced by Seth Jabour of the noted band Les Savy Fav.


Deluxx Fluxx aims to make art less sterile, more fun, and accessible to a broad audience. This sensibility harkens back to the golden age of arcade games; a time when the Lower East Side itself was still a redoubt for punk rock and graffiti culture. These foundational roots of the neighborhood are apparent in the show's DIY and street art production values. Faile and Bast rebuke the contemporary art world's fixation on ideas of relational aesthetics and democratization, and give their audience a chance to genuinely engage the work without the looming formality of the traditional gallery. Deluxx Fluxx is entirely interactive, and invites viewers to play a round of psychedelic foosball and take part in the art itself. It is the artists' intention that viewers will forget they are looking at art, and be captivated by the carnivalesque. The video arcade may be a lost form, but in Faile and Bast's re-imagining, it gets a temporary and much needed revival.



Faile is represented by Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York. This autumn they will have a solo exhibition with the gallery in New York.

Deluxx Fluxx
158 Allen Street (Between Stanton and Rivington)
New York, New York
Tuesday – Sunday, 3:00 – 11:00 PM
Opening Reception, April 30, 2010, 7:30 – 10:30 PM

FAILE and Bäst
Deluxx Fluxx, 2010
Installation view
158 Allen Street, New York, NY.
Image courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery.
©FAILE

Scott Eastwood and Skinner "Ballads For Approaching Vultures" at Okay Mountain

Ballads for Approaching Vultures

May 1 - May 29, 2010
Opening Reception: May 1st 7-10pm

Okay Mountain presents, "Ballads For Approaching Vultures", a two person show featuring the work of Scott Eastwood and Skinner. Each artist draws on popular and underground culture, at times employing the aesthetic language of genre horror and fantasy, with emphasis on exploring the exchange of effluence these references have with music. Skinner currently lives and works in Sacramento, California and Eastwood is based in Austin where he is currently enrolled in the MFA Painting program at the University of Texas.

Plus: Mike Parsons and Andy Rihn in the project space...

Okay Mountain
1312 E. Cesar Chavez Ste B
Austin, TX 78702

EARLY NEW YORK SUBWAY GRAFFITI 1973-1975 - An exhibition by Keith Baugh

Book signing & photography exhibition with works from Keith Baugh's book: EARLY NEW YORK SUBWAY GRAFFITI 1973-1975

'In the early 1970s Gloucestershire based painter and photographer Keith Baugh visited the USA and captured some astounding images of New York subway graffiti from the tracks in Harlem the South Bronx, Times Square & Coney Island. Keith’s photographs of work by over 150 pioneer old school writers, from what is now recognised as the ‘Golden Era’ of graffiti writing, have just been published in a delicious hard-back book ‘Early New York Subway Graffiti 1973-1975.'

OPENING PREVIEW: 30th April - 6-10pm.
Show runs until the 9th May.

Weapon of Choice Gallery
14 St Michael's Hill
Bristol, BS2 8DT

Check out some of Keith's photography in WOC magazine ISSUE 3 online and in shops now!!!

Upper Playground Capsule Collection by Deniol Alva

Upper Playground Presents:
Deniol Alva Capsule Collection

Upper Playground is always excited to be able to find new, talented and relatively unknown artists and give them an outlet for their work. So, this week Upper Playground is releasing a capsule collection containing four tees from Deniol Alva, a young artist with a unique and lively style out of Mexico City. He calls this collection the “Fresh Policy Series” which features politicians like Mao, Nelson Mandela, Joseph Stalin and Yasser Arafat dropping out of their boring everyday duties and enjoying the delights of common life. All four t-shirts are available at all Upper Playground retail locations and online at the Upper Playground online store.



Deniol Alva - Born in Mexico City, Deniol’s style consistently incorporates colorful and humorous tales of street characters and an ironic perspective on society. His style is richly influenced by the vividness of Mexican cartoonists, and the commentary of punk music like The Clash, Rancid and NOFX.

Scott Campbell "If You Don't Belong, Don't Be Long" solo exhibition at OHWOW

SCOTT CAMPBELL
If You Don't Belong, Don't Be Long

April 29 - May 29, 2010

In what will be his first solo presentation of his works in New York City, Scott Campbell will showcase his unique aesthetic via sculptures, paintings and drawings. Campbell has taken the blue collar grit and lore of tattoo culture and extracted a visual language and wit that are supremely refined and deliberate. His uncanny ability to tell a story with any medium, flesh or otherwise, will be on display for his upcoming exhibition, If You Don’t Belong, Don’t Be Long, which will feature all new work.

In April of 2009, Campbell held his first solo exhibition at OHWOW - Miami to much critical acclaim. He has also been featured in group exhibitions at Macro Future Gallery in Rome, Italy, The Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Centre in Greece, The Massimo Carasi Gallery in Milan, Italy, Colette in France, Moeller Snow Gallery in New York, and OHWOW during Art Basel Miami Beach 2008 and 2009.

Opening Reception Thursday, April 29, 2010 6 - 8pm

109 Crosby Street (between Prince and Houston)
New York / NY / 10012

oh-wow.com

MI JU "Landscape and Being" solo show at Fecal Face Dot Gallery

Landscape and Being
MI JU solo show
April 29 - May 22

"My work is an improvisation in liminality: between dream and concretized, ancient and contemporary, Korea and the West, ephemeral and eternal, the uncensored and codified. Each character, pattern and energy reflects states of consciousness that are revealed in the creative act, a form of both improvisation and organization wherein the uncensored is working in concert with momentary, yet specific compositional organizations. It is my intention that the work will be a place of meeting between memory, dream and fantasy, and concretized into meaningful visual terms." -Mi Ju

MI JU // A native Korean, Mi Ju has been studying at The San Francisco Art Institute for the past year after getting her BFA in Korea. She's moving to New York to pursue her painting career and get her MFA at Pratt.

Fecal Face Dot Gallery
66 Gough St. @Market - map

Stefan Strumbel “Home Sweet Home“ at Circleculture Gallery

STEFAN STRUMBEL
HOME SWEET HOME

APRIL 30, 2010 TO JUNE 10, 2010

OPENING APRIL 29TH 2010 7PM

Circleculture Gallery presents Stefan Strumbel’s solo show “Home Sweet Home“. With his art, Strumbel uses traditional motives that are associated with his origin, the Black Forest. On an abstract level, Strumbel deals with the paradigms of “home“ and simultaneously questions its concept. The exhibition encompasses objects from folk art that refer to the clichéd notions of home, folklore and popular piety: the traditional cuckoo clock, wooden masks of the Alemannic Carnival or typical crucifixes mainly used in catholic households.


Strumbel exaggerates these objects of popular cult and culture with elements of urban art and pop art. By doing so, he puts these objects into a new, partly provocative context. Significant elements of the cuckoo clock, such as traditionally carved ornaments, are replaced by aggressive motives that stand for violence, pornography and death. A typical carnival mask from the Black Forest region, such as the “pig mask“, bears a wooden grenade instead of the apple that would be usually expected by the audience.

At first sight, these objects do not appear disturbing. The wooden carvings are excellently crafted and, with their bright and colorful surface, appear as light and shiny pieces of pop art. Strumbel, however, creates both an artificial and artistic aesthetics with his usage of extreme exaggerations in regard to form and content. His objects simultaneously provoke and attract the audience by decadence and violations of taboos.


With his art, Strumbel initiates a change in social values: Traditional ideals, clichéd notions of home and the reality of the individual are dissolved and transformed into an aesthetics that becomes an allegory of social status symbols. The artist unmasks the mechanisms of a society that is urged to the pursuit of consumerism by having surrendered to the attraction of the media. With his objects, Strumbel creates a world of illusion that reflects society’s real maladies.

Circleculture Gallery GmbH

Gipsstrasse 11, 10119 Berlin-Mitte . Germany

Kid Acne solo show at Helmet Gallery

Kid Acne

Private View Thursday April 29th.

Show runs until June 5th.

Helmet Gallery

Fraunhoferstrasse 8,

80469 München, Germany

AKACORLEONE "This is not a Graffiti" at Montana Shop & Gallery Lisboa

THIS IS NOT GRAFFITI!
how to become a writer and blow it all up by entering the art world!

AN EXHIBITION BY: AKACORLEONE

Opening: Thursday April 29th/ 9:00 pm

From April 29th until the May 29th 2010.

“Graffiti is not meant to be in a gallery, exposed as another art form, it should be on the streets, fighting the system!”

With this idea in mind the 24 years old illustrator with a graffiti background based in Lisbon, decided to create an exhibition about this strange world where kids run from cops, go underground, always looking for the perfect mission, the coolest style, the fame and glory that comes with becoming the king!

This is not a Graffiti exhibition, it´s a 6 step program to become a writer and blow it all up by entering the art world!

Montana Shop & Gallery Lisboa
Rua da Rosa Nº14G Bairro Alto
1200-387 Lisboa, Portugal

Shepard Fairey & COPE 2

Jonathan Bergeron "The Ordinary Life of Death" at Gallery 1988 Los Angeles

Jonathan Bergeron's

"The Ordinary Life of Death"

and new works by Lora Zombie

Opening Reception: Tuesday April 27th, 7-10PM

April 27 - May 14. 2010

Gallery 1988 Los Angeles

7020 Melrose Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90038

NIKE Sportswear Presents Mister Cartoon x USA World Cup

NIKE Sportswear Presents
Mister Cartoon x USA World Cup True Colors Collab Launch

April 29, 2010 7pm- 11pm
Fourthwall Project / Bodega's Gallery
132 Brookline Ave (Fenway stop on greenline)
Boston MA

Flavorheard (just voted best djs by the Boston Phoenix) provide the sounds, while Nike is bringing legendary artist Mr. Cartoon, a Nike ID Lab and a laser machine - for you to customize tees .... We're also hunting down a taco truck and will be previewing the Nike True Colors Colab Collection for the World Cup

Mr. Cartoon The man's hand style is recognized around the world and is both menacing and beautiful. Bred in Los Angeles, Mister Cartoon's art work can be seen on the arms of our time's most lauded musicians. His work is steeped in the East Los Angeles Chicano culture of low riders and graffiti.

Darren Henderson "Get Lost, Find Something" at Gorker Gallery

GET LOST, FIND SOMETHING
BY DARREN HENDERSON
29 APRIL -16 MAY

Loved, feared, celebrated and even hated, owls have a long history in many cultures throughout the world. They have been seen as markers of gods, symbols of knowledge, wisdom, fertility, as well as death, famine and destruction. There are few creatures associated with such contradictory meanings.

Inspired by the mythology surrounding owls and human culture, Darren Henderson's infamous owls of the world have struck a chord in many hearts.


Gorker Gallery is proud the present 'Get Lost, Find Something' the debut solo exhibition by Melbourne artist Darren Henderson. His anthropomorphic birds are distinctly individual, each expressing the infinite shades and subtleties of emotion. With an extensive collection of 270 new works, 'Get Lost, Find Something' is a celebration of the unplanned and unexpected. Drawing inspiration from both the simplicities and complexities of life, Darren Henderson has created an enormously evocative and poetic world that people can't help but wish to be a part of.


A founding member of The Autopsy Gallery in Melbourne, Darren has exhibited in a number of group exhibitions and has been featured in several publications including Wooden Toy, Juxtapoz (USA) and Sunday Life (The Herald-Sun and The Sunday Age).

Launch Night Tursday 29 April, 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Exhibition runs until Sunday 16 May

Gorker Gallery
395 Gore St - Cnr Gore and Kerr Street
Fitzroy, Australia, 3065

GROTESK Book release at Spoonbill Bookstore in NY

Spoonbill & Sugartown, Booksellers are pleased to release

the book of GROTESK

Tuesday, April 27th, 6 to 8 pm

Spoonbill Bookstore

218 Bedford Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11211

The Мишка Lunch Truck Day!

Good day LA! Мишка Los Angeles is excited to announce our first-ever Lunch Truck Day. The best way I can describe this is a scaled-down Echo Park Block Party right in front of our 1547 Echo Park Ave storefront. The event will run from 12pm-4pm & we’ll have some amazing food on hand.

Hungry patrons can nosh Vietnamese from Mandoline Grill, South Indian from Dosa Truck & Peruvian & Japanese fusion from Lomo Arigato. Not your run of the mill Roach Coaches, now is it! These specialized trucks are ALL about their business, just peep their twitter pages (mandoline, dosa, lomo arigato) and see what kind of following they’ve accumulated.

Unfortunately, Grill ‘Em All who was slated to take part in this is away shooting a show for the Food Network and they won’t be in L.A. But fear not, this will be the first of many Lunch Truck days and they will be participating in our next event so props to them for hitting the big time! In their place there will however be a fourth mystery truck will making an appearance! Start following Мишка LA on Twitter for updates.

So whether you’re hungover from Saturday night drinks, hungry after Sunday morning mass, or looking for the perfect ending to a great weekend, we advise you to bring an appetite & come have some fun in Echo Park this Sunday.

1547 Echo Park Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90026

Mike Parsons and Andy Rihn "Butter and Popcorn Go Together Like Kangaroos and Boxing" at Okay Mountain

Mike Parsons and Andy Rihn

Butter and Popcorn Go Together Like Kangaroos and Boxing

April 24th 2010
Opening Reception: April 24th 7-10pm

Butter and Popcorn Go Together Like Kangaroos and Boxing is a presentation of individual and collaborative artwork by Mike Parsons and Andy Rihn. The show explores the relationships between butter, popcorn, kangaroos and boxing. These 4 items used as icons to create an entire theme-based experience. Mike and Andy take the title, dissect it, then deliver their art in their own unique and complimentary ways. The opening night show on April 24th will be a combination of performance and art in conjunction with Austin's Fusebox Festival. For the opening performance Andy Rihn will drown a stuffed kangaroo, over the course of the night, in popcorn. Eventually filling the closed garage door at Okay Mountain with fresh popped corn and the area with the aroma. Other butter and boxing oriented installations will be set up in the courtyard. While the entire Project Space and walls of the gallery will be converted into Mike Parsons vision of the theme. Through his wonderfully skewed pain! tings and drawings Mike will present the show's icons. All the work will transfer into the Project Space after the opening and create a whole other collaborative version of butter, popcorn, kangaroos and boxing.

Okay Mountain
1312 E. Cesar Chavez Ste B
Austin, TX 78702

Shawn Barber "Tattooed Portraits: Chronicle" at Joshua Liner Gallery

Shawn Barber
Tattooed Portraits: Chronicle
April 24 to May 22, 2010

Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present Tattooed Portraits: Chronicle, an exhibition of new paintings by the Los Angeles-based artist Shawn Barber. This is Barber’s first solo show in New York City.

As a painter documenting contemporary tattoo practices, Barber broadly comments on the act of mark-making itself, on multiple levels, including aspects of the pictorial, the sensual, the practical, and the personal. In these twenty new paintings and eight works on paper, many of them portraits of friends and clients who have sat for Barber, the artist draws on his interest in the conventions of portraiture, the handling of paint, and the specialized mileux of his duel occupations as both a fine artist and a tattoo artist (terms that are perhaps interchangeable here).


Barber appears to relish both—his meticulous brush strokes, in oils on canvas, echo the intricate patterns of needle on skin depicted in these lush works. He treats these surfaces in much the same way; the vivid palette and subtle shadings used to recreate the tattoo designs are just as crucial to capturing the varying tonalities of skin, shadow, and setting. Indeed, the settings for Barber’s portraits are just as engrossing as his colorful subjects. Several works offer views of the artist’s and his colleagues’ studios “at rest,” with myriad tools, paints, animal heads, and other personal effects existing quietly amid the lovingly rendered clutter. In part, this series is a tribute to Barber’s roots and youth spent in upstate New York.


If tattoos can be viewed as rites of passage, Barber has embodied these symbols of change in the loose compositions, meandering lines, occasional paint drips, and dynamic subjects of his work. One of the most arresting is the tall portrait of painter Thomas Woodruff, portrayed standing before one of his own dazzling works. Nude and tattooed, Woodruff’s skin is also depicted as alive with images, Barber’s suggestion, perhaps, that all of existence is a canvas for human energy and imagination.

Born in 1970 in Cortland, New York, Shawn Barber received a BFA degree in 1999 from Ringling School of Art & Design in Sarasota, Florida. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Tattooed Portraits, a book of Shawn Barber’s art, was published by 9mm Books in 2006. His second monograph, Forever and Ever was released in 2008.

Reception Saturday April 24th from 6-9pm

Joshua Liner Gallery
548 W 28th St. 3rd Floor
New York, New York 10001

Nelio & Tobler*One "PLAYGROUND" at ALL OVER Gallery

"PLAYGROUND"
An exhibition of NELIO and TOBLER*ONE

From the 24th of April to the 24th of may 2010
Opening on Saturday the 24th of April, 18pm.

Considering the gallery as a playground, a space of experimentation and confrontation, without losing in mind the concept of exposure and sharing, Nelio and Tobler*One will focus their work on the representation of the creative process. They will try to show with their installation the different steps of a visual, from the source of the idea to its realization. With the use of various medias (paper, wood, canvas, walls,...) and techniques (drawing, silkscreen print, painting, photography, linocut,...), they will create links between them and their pictorial universe, experimenting around the concept of artistic collaboration.


Between abstract and figurative work, NELIO main focus is on research around the interactions, links between things, and an important interest on the colors and composition. Particularly sensitive to the techniques and medias which are used for his creations, he likes to adapt to them and to maximize their opportunities. This is one reason for his attraction to street art, this discipline allows him to transform public spaces while being inspired by the atmosphere of the place.


TOBLER*ONE is obsessed with handmade typography and the maximum simplification of the illustrations. They make sense in the simplicity, reduced to a very limited number of colors, with the diversion of graphic codes. Each of his images is thought of as a logo (in terms of impact and visual efficiency). His work of street artist is always in connection with his work as a graphic designer, and vice versa.


Gallery ALL OVER
41 street tables claudiennes
69001 Lyon - France

Blaine Fontana "The Golden Record" at LeBasse Projects

LeBasse Projects presents:
"The Golden Record" A Solo Exhibition by Blaine Fontana

April 24th – May 29th, 2009

Opening reception: Saturday, April 24th, 7pm-10pm

LeBasse Projects is excited to present, The Golden Record, an exhibition of new works from Portland based artist Blaine Fontana. In this anticipated solo exhibition, Fontana returns to the gallery scene after a nearly three year hiatus from showing.


The show is titled after the Golden Records placed on the Voyager spacecraft sent across the universe in 1977. The sets of gold and copper plated records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them. Fontanaʼs series of paintings are set to portray a snapshot of humanity and history of humans on Earth. The show will have a strong focus on humanity and its inherited argument between beauty and tragedy.


After an extremely successful few years showing in galleries from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, Fontana took a hiatus from exhibitions to focus on his commercial work and developing his conceptual process as an artist. Reinvigorated by the robust art scene in Portland, Oregon, Fontana has been working on The Golden Record for almost a year and is looking to show collectors a more serious and mature body of work.


Blaine Fontana graduated from OTIS College of Art and Design in with a BFA in Communication Art/Design. He finished at the top of his class with the “Best in Show” award that is presented upon Graduation and has since shown extensively in galleries internationally. In addition to his gallery work Fontana has worked commercially for companies as diverse as Keep A Breast, Ocean Pacific, SCION, Toyota, KID ROBOT and NIKE.

LeBasse Projects
6023 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232

Paul Wackers & Sean Cassidy "It Takes Two to Make an Accident" at New Image Art

Paul Wackers & Sean Cassidy
It Takes Two to Make an Accident
April 24th - May 15th, 2010

OPENING RECEPTION APRIL 24
7 TO 10PM

Paul Wackers Artist statement

My work is first a response to the world and then a reaction to what it has to offer. Images surround me as abstract concepts, presented by the curious interaction of forms, feelings, and situations. They offer a glimpse into the way the world is constantly being reloaded with opportunities and options for reinterpretations and impressions. It might start with a beam of light passing through a window in the afternoon and that within that beam there is the potential of a full spectrum to appear. In my paintings I try to create the feeling of getting lost in the thoughts that are easily ignored or put aside. Many of my paintings will come from moments seen in films or articles read in the newspaper or simply from a walk down the street. The images tend to be of non-places where the specifics of them are not important but how the elements within the picture interact as parts of another world that is sometimes jarringly familiar to our own. It might be seconds away from becoming reality or lifetimes in the past as a fleeting memory.

Born in New Haven 1978, Connecticut, lives and works in San Francisco CA


New Image Art
7908 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Steve MacDonald "The Last Dragon" at Fuse Gallery

Steve MacDonald
"The Last Dragon"

Exhibition: April 24 through May 15, 2010
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 24th, 7 to 10 pm

Merging classic sewing craftsmanship with an urban edge, San Francisco based artist Steve Macdonald (aka Ramblin’ Worker), creates pieces that redefine the concept of fiber art. The humble craft of embroidery synthesized with vibrant color and a Pop aesthetic result in whimsical yet graphically bold imagery. Macdonald combines various concepts, mediums and a fresh perspective to present unique works that stretch the boundaries of contemporary craftsmanship.


Originally from Jacksonville, Florida, Steve Macdonald now lives and works in the art hub of San Francisco. He received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. His work has been mentioned and reviewed in various media outlets including Nylon and Interview Magazines. Macdonald’s work turned heads all over Manhattan during the 2006 Deitch Parade when a tank he had crafted was towed across the city. His work has been shown in major cities all over the US and internationally including the Max Fish Gallery in New York and Gallery Three in San Francisco.

Fuse Gallery 93 2nd Ave

(between 5th & 6th Sts, 2nd Ave stop on the F), NYC, NY.