Wreck the Walls
A Winter Group Exhibition Featuring Over 30 Artists

Opening Reception:
Saturday, December 11th, 2010 / 5-9PM

Exhibition Dates:
December 11th - January 15th, 2011

Subliminal Projects Gallery is pleased to present Wreck the Walls, a group exhibition on view December 11, through January 15, 2011. A reception for the artists will be held Saturday, December 11, from 5-9 p.m.

Wreck the Walls includes works by over 30 artists, established and emerging, who have helped shape the artistic spirit influenced by their times. Rebellious pioneers of their artistic genres, who come from a background where there are few rules and anything is possible, have helped pave the way for a younger generation of artists who are influenced by their prevailing subculture. From gallery to street art, this show expresses each artist’s divergence and individuality, offering a visual cornucopia of painting, photography, mixed media, works on paper, digital prints, sculpture, graphic design, and illustration.

This show seeks to allow the viewer a window into the myriad worlds of a group of artists whose careers span over two cultural generations, and whose individual visions create a disjointed mosaic. Their works recall the vastly differing self-perceptions cultivated in a patchwork art world constantly seeking to define and redefine itself. Wreck the Walls embraces the multiple identities of the artistic practice, and rather than seeking to congeal the complex layers of artistic vision that make up the culture, the show celebrates distinct perceptions by juxtaposing artists, whether established or emerging, who reject uniformity in a culture that defies singular classification.

Participating Artists Include:

Alan Shaffer, Alejandro Gehry, Andy Moses, Bertil Petersson, Billy Al Bengston, Blek Le Rat, Curtis Kulig, David Ellis, David Yow, Ed Moses, Ellwood T. Risk, Erik Foss, Eric Schwartz, Eric White, Evan Hecox, Greg Lamarche, Jason Alper, John Van Hamersveld, Laddie John Dill, Larry Bell, Martha Cooper, Monica Canilao, Retna, Robbie Conal, Ryan McGinness, Ryan Travis Christian, Skullphone, Swoon, Tim Biskup, Vanessa Prager, Kelly Berg

For me most Saturdays are spent digging for collage materials and I usually find all kinds of crazy shit that end up in my work.  This past Saturday was no exception when I stumbled onto a box filled with V mail envelopes that were not dated but I’m pretty sure they are from WW2 or possibly the Korean War.  We now use different methods of communicating today but sadly these are still very relevant.

A lil something with 2mint and det.

Now that graffiti season is in full swing, I spent a little time to compile some of my favorite pieces of all time.  Out of the millions of pieces that have been done over the last 40 years these pieces still stand the test of time.  Not in any specific order (except quasi-chronological) here they are:

Checker piece from the early 70’s…straight classic, nuff said.
Photo Henry Chalfant

King 2 in action, the colors of this piece are ridiculously fresh.
Photo Tracy 168???

Don One Mafia, way ahead of his time.
Photo Don One, (thanks KR TSS).

Mitch77 right outside the old Yankee stadium, one of the best ever to do it period.
Photo Sp.One

Dust Ua, when I saw this piece in style wars I lost my shit.
Photo ???

Cer Tpa, a great all around graffiti writer this guy definitely influenced my style when I was coming up…RIP.
Photo ???

Pade Rtw, dope handstyle, fill ins and piecer ..also a big influence.
Photo ???  Better photo here- http://www.flickr.com/photos/94809347@N00/416571723/#/

Python, fresh 1984..yes, yes!
Photo Az/Mega

Poke Ibm, liquitex perfection, done around 85 or 86, could use a better photo, anybody?
Photo ???

Sane 1990, always original with a nice touch of history…RIP
Photo Nic 1

Went to The Morgan Library on friday night and saw the Lichtenstein show.  Definitely worth checking out…Besides the original drawings the cool thing about the exhibition is that it also included some of his source materials and supplies, comics books, cut outs from old Sears And Roebuck catalogs and some old Flo-Master Flo Pens in which he used to make a lot of the drawings in the show.

Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961–1968
September 24, 2010, through January 2, 2011

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Roy Lichtenstein, I Know How You Must Feel, Brad!, 1963, graphite pencil, pochoir, and lithographic rubbing crayon. Private Collection. © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Photography: Schecter Lee, 2009.

An extraordinary new exhibition organized by The Morgan Library & Museum, opening September 24, presents an important series of large-scale, black-and-white works as a group for the first time and examines Lichtenstein’s less known exploration of the medium of drawing. Created during the early and mid-1960s, the fifty-five drawings on view offer a revealing window into the development of Lichtenstein’s art, as he began for the first time to appropriate commercial illustrations and comic strips as subject matter and experimented stylistically with simulating commercial techniques of reproduction—the famous Benday dots. The work represents an essential and original contribution to Pop Art as well as to the history of drawing.

ROY LICHTENSTEIN IN THE EARLY 1960S
The year 1961 was a momentous period of transformation for Roy Lichtenstein. Thirty-eight years old and regularly exhibiting in New York since 1951, he was by many measures already a midcareer artist, working primarily in painting in Cubist and Abstract Expressionist styles. But in 1961 his art made a radical departure from these precedents. Influenced by the happenings staged by Allan Kaprow, George Segal, Claes Oldenburg, and others, which incorporated everyday objects and popular culture, Lichtenstein turned to an entirely new imagery culled from the contemporary world of advertisements and comic books and adopted the graphic techniques of commercial illustration. The exhibition demonstrates how the act of drawing took on a central role in his practice at this stage, both as a favored medium in its own right, as well as a powerful means of translating and transforming his sources of pop iconography.

THE EXHIBITION
The exhibition provides a rare opportunity to study Lichtenstein’s black-and-white drawings as a group, to explore their technique and subject matter, to draw attention to Lichtenstein’s revolutionizing contribution to the history of drawing, and to bring to light the critical insights these drawings offer into the artist’s larger body of work.

The drawings constitute an original body of work independent from Lichtenstein’s paintings. Although he produced many black-and-white paintings during the 1960s, the drawings were in fact conceived independently and cannot be interpreted as studies for the works on canvas. Lichtenstein’s motivations in creating these works—which did not have the commercial value of paintings—remain enigmatic, though the exhibition provides some background. Moreover, these drawings differ significantly from Lichtenstein’s main body of works on paper. They do not belong to the category of preparatory studies and also stand apart from the drawings of other major pop artists, notably Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Jim Dine, whose treatment of pop subjects cultivated an old-master look that is absent from Lichtenstein’s black-and-white drawings.

The exhibition traces the development of Lichtenstein’s drawing style in the 1960s, notably his technique of simulating the Benday dot printing process—a characteristic feature of his style. The viewer can follow the development of the black-and-white drawings through the rendering of these dot patterns. Lichtenstein never drew them freehand but experimented with a variety of approaches, which he perfected over the years to mimic the effect of mechanical printing.

This technique became inseparable from the meaning of the finished work, producing, in the words of critic Lawrence Alloway, “an original artwork pretending to be a copy.” By imitating mechanical modes of reproduction, Lichtenstein presented a critical challenge to prevailing notions of artistic originality and authorship, paradoxically achieving an unmistakable hallmark of style in the process.

The exhibition also explores the sources—comic strips, advertisements, magazines, and mail-order catalogues—of Lichtenstein’s subjects. In addition to the drawings themselves, related sketches are on display as well as clippings from newspapers, magazines, telephone books, and other sources from which Lichtenstein drew inspiration for the works in the exhibition. The show underscores the two themes that came to dominate the drawings—household objects and comic-book scenes of war and romance—and illustrates how Lichtenstein endowed them with a heightened psychological resonance and formal intensity, raising them to the level of high art.

EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS
The earliest drawings are also the most basic. A centrally placed, single object often stands against a blank background: an airplane, a couch, a cup of coffee. Others are based on diagrams demonstrating how to use a product by depicting a hand or foot interacting with an object, such as Hand Loading Gun and Foot Medication. When figures are included, as in Man with Coat and Girl with Accordion, they have plain, ordinary features, as oppose to the conventional beauty of male and female figures that would soon appear in his comic-inspired works.

By 1962, the drawings began to incorporate more elaborate source images, which introduced more complex compositions. Keds, for instance, was inspired by an advertisement for Sears, Roebuck & Company. In a sly reference to contemporary abstract art, Lichtenstein significantly reworked the composition to give greater emphasis to the geometric pattern of the sole. Bratatat and Jet Pilot are two drawings inspired by war comics. Both are close-up views of a pilot in his cockpit, with much attention lavished on the details of his accoutrements.

The exhibition also includes a piece from a little-known installation done by Lichtenstein in 1967 that represents an extension into three dimensions of his black-and-white drawings on paper. As part of the Aspen Festival of Contemporary Art, Lichtenstein drew with black tape on the wall of a white room, outlining its architectural elements. The only extant part of this project, a door with the words Nok!! Nok!! is featured, together with unpublished photographs of the whole room.

Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961–1968 introduces an entirely new dimension of the artist’s work to audiences more accustomed to seeing his brightly colored paintings. Although Pop art in general has been the subject of a number of shows, they have featured few drawings and rarely addressed the practice of drawing by Pop artists.

The exhibition is organized by Isabelle Dervaux, curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings at the Morgan. After it closes in New York, it will travel to The Albertina in Vienna, Austria (January 27 through May 15, 2011).

Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961–1968 is underwritten by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Major support is provided by an anonymous donor, The Broad Art Foundation, Doris Fisher, Agnes Gund, and Larry Gagosian, with additional assistance from Barbara Bertozzi Castelli, the Dedalus Foundation, Inc., and David Nash and Lucy Mitchell-Innes.

REFORM
http://www.letsredu.com/reformschool

REDU
http://www.letsredu.com

http://reformschool.letsredu.com/2010/09/greg-lamarche/

Some great photos and kind words…

Photo by Meighan O’toole

http://myloveforyou.typepad.com/my_love_for_you/2010/09/aaron-noble-greg-lamarche-materialism.html

Here are some original “cut and paste” layouts from issues 5, 6 and 7.  These pages were originally printed in black and white so enjoy them now in full color.

Page form Skills #6…This one is definitely one of my favorite pages.

contents page for issue #5
mad shout outs, when a shout out meant something.

page from Skills #7…that Dug piece is still killing it.

Over the last year or so I have been sorting through boxes of photos, mail, drawings, stickers and all things related to SKILLS Magazine…I will be posting more about this in the coming weeks…stay tuned.

Cover of Skills #5, 1993

Yes, that is a real bag of eddie up there.

Check out my recent interview done by the talented and articulate Alex Lukas on World’s Best Ever.

http://theworldsbestever.com/2010/09/09/an-interview-with-greg-lamarche/