If you travel by rail between Berlin and Halle, Germany, and pay attention to the passing landscape, you will eventually set eyes on a 350-foot-long graffiti mural (obligatory football field metric: two and a third). It’s a series of detailed scenes: a laboratory overrun by rats, a shipping port under dark clouds, galleons fighting through rough waters and a giant octopus, and a cityscape at sunset. The graffiti name of the artist, MadC, is ubiquitous.
Currently on display at the La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Hollywood is Charles Binger – “A Pulp Life, Steven Dailey – “Covenant,” Howard Hallis – “The Picture of Everything,” and Tammi Otis – “A Fertile Madness.” The opening reception on Friday, January 7th, attracted swarms of Los Angeles art lovers who dedicated their Saturday night to mingling with talented artists.
As I mentioned briefly in my magical music post, I’m one week into my three-week stay in good ol’ London and finding myself falling even more in love with this city. I’m lucky enough to get over here several times a year but generally when I’m over I feel rushed to squeeze everything in – seeing friends, having quality time with the boy, smashing in my favorite foods (oh Amigos, you make the best chicken and bacon sandwich in the world) and bars, making runs to Boots and Topshop, being dragged to Forbidden Planet and whatnot. So it’s been completely wonderful to just relax and enjoy the city, putter about and explore.
I dipped into a number of galleries this week but the following are my favorites.
Lalo Cota is known by his trademark colorful skull-infused art that represents his Mexican heritage and pays homage to his love of Dia de los Muertos. Unlike many of today’s top artists, Lalo never attended art school. He believes that, “Art schools teach you to be like everyone else and that defeats the purpose of being an artist.” Lalo took advantage of classes throughout his public school days and focused his advanced education on developing his business practices. His work can be seen in the form of murals, billboards, stickers, paintings, and his own t-shirt line that will be soon launching on his website. He’s also done his share of painting on human canvases and has even designed actual bust casts from real models in the name of Breast Cancer awareness.
Lalo set down his paintbrushes to share his artistic thoughts with ChinaShop:
When an artist friend returned from his first Art Basel Miami Beach experience a few years back he recounted a frenzy that made me think of Black Friday, only instead of flat-screens and digital cameras, the gate-crashing mob of insanity was hording multi-million-dollar works of art.
“There were people literally running from booth to booth,” he said. The best – and often most expensive – artwork was sold within 20 minutes.
That image of collectors sprinting from convention booth to convention booth has always stayed with me. And as I planned for this years event, I couldn’t help but feel that I, too, would be in a constant dash from one supposedly cool thing to the next.
2010 was a tremendous year for art. Take a look at the Top 10 Artists of 2010 (in no particular order) according to painter, pencil pusher, photographer, and Coilhouse Magazine co-founder Zoetica Ebb.
Twin brothers HOW and NOSM are on the move – constantly. Currently painting murals all over Rio de Janeiro, the graffiti artists return to their home base of New York very briefly before heading down to Miami at the end of the month to paint in Primary Flight, a mural project during Art Basel week.
Born in San Sebastiano, Spain, and raised in Dusseldorf, Germany, the brothers landed in New York in 1997, where they live and work (they are part of the . They paused just long enough to tell us what it’s like to be not only all-city, but all-world.
Last week, three designers came together in downtown LA to present a trio of spring collections that shook up the generally tame LA Fashion Week. Edgy Ashton Michael and Skingraft were joined by the whimisical Anthony Franco at the LA Stock Exchange for a show that was fresh and full of surprises.
Ashton Michael, whose first line, Glaza [“Eyes” in Russian], created a stir in 2002 and who is known for his celebrity styling for the likes of Usher, Nicki Minaj and The Black Eyed Peas, crossed over to the dark side with a capsule collection called “back label”. Using only black and white, the eco-friendly knits featured kilts, harnesses and bondage straps, and hinted, in equal parts, at old school punk rock and new school hop hop, while remaining lightweight and even sporty. Weaving was a theme, too, showing up both in the designs and the models’ hair styles created my Plaid studios.
This past Saturday, the preeminent pop-artist Ron English had an amazing viewing of his retrospective “Status Factory” exhibition at the spacious, 3-floor Opera Gallery in Soho, NYC. Whenever the term “Pop Art” is brought up, people’s minds inevitably go to Andy Warhol, the Pittsburgh-born, NYC icon who initiated the movement. But in present times, it’s impossible to find a pop artist with a body of work more influential, wide-reaching, and thought provoking than the dazzling paintings, screen prints and sculptures Mr. English has been cranking out since the ‘80s.
The Museum of Art and Design (MAD) in NYC might not be your first stop. In a city so full of art and culture, museums and galleries galore, it might not even be your second stop. But I can honestly say, it should at least make the list. The current exhibit, Dead of Alive: Nature Becomes Art is captivating. It’s a collection of work “from 30 international artists who transform organic materials and objects that were once produced by or part of living organisms-insects, feathers, bones, silkworm cocoons, plant materials, and hair-to create intricately crafted and designed installations and sculptures”. Whether you are a fan of organic materials or not it will win you over.
