GROUP INK

GRoUp InK

a collective of graffiti and street artists presented by gallery nine5

Exhibition: June 25 - July 30, 2014

All images in this catalogue have been reproduced with permission of image owners.

Graffiti and street art’s influence on visual language is immeasurable - beginning on the United States’ East Coast in the late 1970s and extending its reach internationally, from Europe to Australia. It is a visceral art form, immediate and emotional, an underground movement that, through the sheer power of its presence, has fought its way into the mainstream.

Aerosol paint cans have found their way into the mediums of major contemporary artists.

Words have influenced the direction of styles. Disjointed lines and angles, simplified but sophisticated figures, and site-specificity, have all, if not primarily, in indirect ways, come from graffiti art and are easily viewed in what hangs on the walls of galleries and museums alike.

With GROUP INK, gallery nine5 seeks to re-engage an audience in the communal experience of graffiti and street art. Inspired by the white-washing of graffiti and street art mecca 5PTZ, and beginning with the blank canvas of empty white walls, graffiti and street artists from around the world will transform a privately-owned space into one that belongs to multiple members of the community. Each piece on the wall is simultaneously the artist’s, the gallery’s, and the audience member’s - we are all a part of the dialogue it ignites and encourages.

GROUP INK represents a true democratization of art.

In addition to mimicking the artistic process of graffiti and street arts on the avenues of New York, GROUP INK attempts to characterize and portray the varying shades of influence that now color the art world.

From gallery nine5’s roster of artists, SHAKA, Alben, Steve Ellis, Tapp Francke, and Jessica Lichtenstein all exemplify ways graffiti has influenced their work. SHAKA uses aerosol paint on his wooden boards, allowing his graphic strokes to merge with the material plane. Alben, who began his career as a graffiti artist in France, now accumulates discarded materials into technologically-advanced resin sculptures. Steve Ellis, ever a political voice in Pop Realism, pays homage to contemporary issues, referencing Keith Haring’s graffiti work. Tapp Francke and Jessica Lichtenstein use wordplay in their work to varying effect: the former, to acknowledge one’s physical existence, and the latter, to question common-place gender beliefs. gallery nine5 is thrilled to have such a dynamic lineup of graffiti and street artists painting on our walls. Hailing from boroughs in New York to cities in Japan, great writers and muralists in GROUP INK include TATS CRU, Bisco Smith, Rubin415, Vor138, KET, and Shiro. We thank them for their continued contribution to the art world, and ask that you join the conversation.

Maureen Chung Exhibitions Manager

Where are you reading this?

As GROUP INK, the graffiti and street art collective exhibition at gallery nine5, is being gradually installed? Or perhaps you are reading this after the fact and the gallery walls have already been filled, documented, and buffed. Your participation is being requested. Something different has caught your attention. Arguments about graffiti art continue today: did graffiti start in New York or Philadelphia? Graffiti went worldwide well over 20 years ago, starting from the major cities and extending to the suburbs and smaller villages of the world we will never visit. The representations of this are more present than ever. We can find and discover all the examples we want living energetically today as data. Tags and throw ups have never stopped expanding. It is from simplicity that graffiti has grown into intricate letter style marquees, sticker slaps, paste-ups, installations, and building-sized murals. It’s not slowing down.

Today, we have our friend the Internet dictating who’s getting up and where. Even Google is participating by creating real time maps that tell us where to look. Love it or hate it, make no mistake about it, graffiti is an art movement. You can call it vandalism, brandalism, or any other –ism you want, but graffiti art is in your consciousness, no matter how you cut it. Graffiti is evolving and transcending its own energy.

We want to know how graffiti affects or has affected you. We are asking you to think of what you know or have observed on the street on your walk over to the gallery.

Ryan Seslow @ryanseslow

@gallerynine5

By the early 1980’s, graffiti had already gone post-graffiti. A few risk-taking New York City galleries began pushing the limits by showing works by graffiti artists indoors. The works were for sale – and they sold. This took place in Europe, with international galleries inviting New York artists to exhibit their works. Some of the early works were acquired by museums and reside in their permanent collections. More than ever before, graffiti has entered the museum and gallery world, residing in the same spaces with works that have long ago been deemed historical and important.

Why now? What role has modern day culture, advertising, and corporate involvement played?

What about age and the Internet generation? Who are you in relation to this and where do you feel it will go?

RESPOND AT

#GROUPINK #WHYNOW

gallery nine5 has invited a diverse group of graffiti and street artists to transform their private space into an ephemeral outlet for one month. The works generated will indeed be buffed at the end of the show’s duration; they can’t be sold, but they can be experienced. It is a whole new way to experience the traditional context of street art. Graffiti began as an action of non-commissioned art in public and/or privately owned spaces. It is evident there is a need and desire to execute this kind of art. Whether it’s in a gallery exhibition or online, you will recognize fragments of traditional letter styles, aerosol techniques, characters, and evolved abstractions.

This raises questions. Graffiti has changed its context. Not all graffiti writers are willing to accept or support this aspect of the game, yet what artist today does not want exposure through a gallery or going viral online? Graffiti was meant to be seen by the masses. It expresses the specificity of its writer as well as the unified creative human potential.

RESPOND AT

#GROUPINK #CONTEXT

The artists involved in the exhibition have been given the full freedom to create what they wish directly onto the surface of the gallery’s walls. The process of how the artists will work together has not been pre-planned. What do you anticipate? Do you feel the sensation of immediacy from these works?

RESPOND AT

#GROUPINK #ANTICIPATE

TATS CRU In the mid ’80s three teenagers began their artistic careers by creating subway graffiti. What began as an adolescent hobby and recognition tactic has evolved into a powerful, expressively iconic style that has brought TATS CRU to the forefront of the advertising mural industry. For over two decades TATS CRU has spearheaded the battle to change peoples perception of graffiti as an art through their respected work. In addition to the recognition they recieve throughout the world as leaders in mural advertising and art, proof of TATS CRU’s success and the acceptance of graffiti as an artform can be found in their murals that adorn the walls of hospitals, museums, schools, businesses, and New York City institutions.

TATS CRU’s work has been highlighted in a multitude of Nationally respected publications such as The New York Times, The New York Post, USA Today, New York Magazine, The Associated Press, The Washington Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, Latina, and Vibe Magazine, as well as many Nationally and Internationally published books. TATS CRU has also been featured extensively in Film and Television including Sean Connery’s Finding Forester, Robert DeNiro’s City by the Sea, Spike Lee’s Clockers, “The View”, “ABC World News Tonight”, “CBS Sunday Morning”, “NBC Evening News”, “Good Day New York”, “BBC News”, CNN, and BET’s “Rap City”. They have also been featured on National Public Radio and in numerous documentaries.

BISCO SMITH Bisco Smith is a Venice, California, based artist whose work is often described as “refined grime� - a blend of fine art, graphic design, and graffiti deconstruction. His artwork captures the untamed energy and uncharted environments of street style and expresses a sense of duality, spontaneity, and movement.

Drawing inspiration from the industry that once was and the confines of fences and walls, the Expanse collection is a mix of imagery, textures, and energies captured along explorations of these often overlooked environments. The work captures the silent yet rough feeling of these environments using a heavy blend of paint, paper, and ink displayed on wood panels. The collection takes viewers on a journey through the unexplored urban.

KET KET is an American graffiti artist who for the past 25 years has made art in streets and on trains around the world. He has documented the graffiti movement through photography since childhood and is the author of numerous books surveying the art form both domestically and internationally. His mixed media drawings showcase old letter styles and news stories that cover issues of war, injustice, oppression, and the decline of human civilization in order to bring attention to the plight of humanity.

VOR138 From the age of 14, Vor138 began graffiti with the intention of having fun and replicating the letter forms he saw on the streets, highways, and handball courts of northeast Queens, New York. Over two decades later, he continues his tradition of using graffiti as a vehicle to illustrate ideas, design, and explore abstraction.

The movement of shapes and letters is the underlying backbone of his work. It is at the center of how a project begins. Every marking and color choice thereafter is used to accentuate the flow and movement of the piece. Some murals are well planned. More are done with little to no reference. It is his spontaneity that keeps the work on a wall fresh and exciting.

At times, full or partial sketches facilitate the turnover on a wall. Color decisions are premeditated with only a loose idea of where they will be placed. He changes and adds to the color palette commonly, but minimally.

Vor138’s work focuses on presenting his name in previously unexplored ways. Incorporating illustrated adages, puns, literature, and references to a location on a wall, building, or city, no themes or subjects are off-limits. At its most bare, Vor138’s work is simply painting the letters and numerals “Vor138.”

Interview with Shiro by Lois Stavsky www.streetartnyc.org When and where did you first get up?

Back in 1998 in Shizuoka, Japan.

What inspired you at the time?

I remember seeing a video with graffiti as the backdrop. I was impressed! And soon after, I saw the movie Wild Style.

Any early memories stand out?

I remember having to create my own tools. I couldn’t get hold of any spray paint in aerosol cans at the time, and so I had to be inventive. I mostly used hair spray and mosquito spray containers that I filled with paint.

How did your family feel about what you were doing?

At the time my mother didn’t understand it, but now she appreciates it.

What percentage of your time is devoted to art?

When I am in NYC, 100%. But back in Japan, I work as a nurse, and I can’t devote as much time to my art as I would like to.

Wow! A nurse and a graffiti writer!

Yes, a nurse heals, and so does art.

Have you exhibited your work in galleries?

I’ve shown my work in galleries in the U.S., Germany and Japan. And I’ve participated in projects in India, China, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines.

Have you any thoughts about the movement of graffiti and street art into galleries?

I’d rather paint on a wall than on a canvas. But when I create work for galleries, I learn and perfect new techniques.

What inspires you these days?

I’m inspired by my own experiences in different situations…and by my imagination. In my art I can be anything!

Are there any particular cultures that have influenced your aesthetics?

The entire graffiti and hip-hop culture, along with, I suppose, my Japanese roots.

What is the riskiest thing you ever did?

I hadn’t planned it to be risky. But back in 2002, I found a deserted wall in Forest Hills, Queens that I thought would be the perfect canvas for me. As I began painting, a group of boys suddenly appeared and stole my spray paint. One of them had a gun. Soon they were hurling stones and although they weren’t aiming the stones at me, some rocks did hit me and injured me.

Gee, that sounds traumatizing. Do you generally paint alone?

I love painting alone. I am very independent! But I’ve also painted with crews and collaborated with other writers.

What are some of the crews you’ve painted with?

TDS (The Death Squad), SUG (Stick Up Girlz), FX and UZNJ (Universal Zulu Nation Japan) What’s it like being a female writer in what is so much of a man’s world?

I forget about gender when I’m painting. It’s irrelevant.

Do you work with a sketch in hand or do you just let it flow?

Sometimes I work with a sketch; other times I just let it flow.

Are you generally satisfied with your finished piece?

I mostly feel very happy with it!

How has your work evolved through the years?

It is more detailed, and I paint more quickly. I’ve developed much better can control than I had earlier.

What’s ahead?

I just got my artist’s visa, and so I’m looking forward to spending more time here. I will just go with the flow!

SHIRO SHIRO is a female hip-hop artist from Japan. She began painting in 1998 in Shizuoka, Japan.

Shiro has been expressing her own vision of the world and for life through her original characters “MIMI”. Her colorful artwork is a reflection of her love for true hip-hop. Over the years she has been touched by the essence & soul of hip-hop culture and old school graffiti styles. Her devotion to graffiti art afforded her the opportunity to work with many great graffiti artists.

The experience of working with these artists inspired Shiro creatively and fueled her mind and soul with the true spirit of hip-hop.

As an international artist, she continues to be inspired by the strength and creativity of oldschool hip-hop. She decided to stay in NY and develop her talent as a graffiti artist. From 2002 to 2004, she lived in Brooklyn and Queens. In Japan, Shiro has worked with many people in the hip-hop scene, organizing graffiti shows and participating in hip-hop events. She loves traveling, painting, making friends and leaving footsteps of her existence all over the world.

She also has worked on canvases, illustrations, graphics design, body paintng, and has produced her original clothing brand “BJ46”.

“Love life and live it to the max! We exist RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE!”

RUBIN Rubin was nine years old when he did his first tag. The son of Finnish immigrant workers to Sweden and born and raised in the epicenter of boredom – the concrete projects of Bergsjön, Gothenburg – he pictured walls blossoming before his eyes and started out on a journey that he’s still on today.

Rubin’s complex abstract geometrical pieces – rooted in traditional wild style but with muted color palettes and Scandinavianly clean lines – have earned the artist his own signature style. Rubin is also known for adapting to the urban landscape by incorporating what’s already there.

Rubin resides in Brooklyn NYC but he’s just as home in the wilderness of Lapland, where he spends the summers with his wife in a log house among reindeer and underneath the midnight sun. Born a creative soul, he explains why graffiti became his mission: “Something happens when I press the cap and draw the first line of a piece. The expectation that takes hold of me is so strong that everything else around me ceases to exist.”

SHAKA Shaka focuses on portraiture and figures in movement to reveal the emotional workings behind the façade of everyday human interactions. His figures twist and turn in an energetic color palette, the movement of their bodies representing the struggle for individuality in social power politics. Heightening the internal conflicts of each figure, the paintings feature bas-relief details that pop out from the two-dimensional plane, underscoring a sense of escape and emancipation.

Shaka has been practicing his unique method of sculpting on canvas since 2007 in the heart of Paris’s burgeoning contemporary art scene. Mixing technical elements and classical influences with new-age styles like tattoo design and graffiti culture, Shaka infuses his work with a pulsating menagerie of polygons, lines, and angles of radiating color. These elements reflect the inner conflicts of each of Shaka’s subjects who are searching, presumably like us, for individuality, while simultaneously living within communities organized by social norms.

Shaka is currently represented by gallery nine5.

Opposite: Boxer in Movement No. 2, Aerosol and acrylic on plywood frame, 118 x 95 3/4 x 2 3/4 in | 300 x 243 x 7 cm Price upon request

ALBEN Building off his background in graffiti-making and painting, French artist Alben’s work has evolved into primarily large-scale sculptures filled with accumulated objects. Working through branded imagery ranging from consumerist Americana and classical statues, Alben’s work evokes questions of canonization; Coca-Cola cans and Venus de Milo’s have equal precedence as the markers of their historical times. Raised in France, Alben began his artistic career in 2004 after developing his skills with materials in his work as an aircraft engineer.

Working through his fascination with accumulated objects, Alben encases found items of visual and personal significance in resin molds of classically canonized figures. The use of discarded Americana that Alben gathers in France, the United States, and China find their homes in life-sized standing statues of Venus de Milo, Disney’s Snow White, the winged Victoire de Samothrace, and Star Wars’s Darth Vader.

Alben is currently represented by gallery nine5.

Opposite: Darth Vader Coke Zero, Mixed media in resin, 35 1/4 x 17 1/8 x 11 1/8 in | 89.6 x 43.5 x 28.2 cm Price upon request

BISCO SMITH

Open Eyes, Mixed media on wood panels, 15 x 25 in Collapse, Mixed media on wood panels, 20 x 30 in Foundations, Mixed media on wood panels, 24 x 36 in

Price upon request

KET

Fuck War, Marker on newspaper mounted on 140lb Strathmore, 11 x 11 3/4 in | 27.9 x 29.8 cm Price upon request

STEVE ELLIS One of New York’s finest Pop Realist painters, Ellis is well known for his technically virtuosic paintings. His dynamic representational technique uses pop culture iconography to explore various issues emerging from contemporary consumerism, often favoring the depiction of single objects rendered with near fetishistic focus.

Previous series have investigated the death of print media and the damaged, transitory beauty of American popular culture, featuring consumer detritus such as torn magazines, cigarette lighters, knives, broken high-heeled shoes, and crashed cars. Following the tradition of Pop Art masters, Ellis employs a wide range of media, including silk screens, wallpaper, light boxes and mixed media installations. The colorful, satirical works communicate narrative with concision and economy, and frequently feature wordplay.

Steve Ellis is currently represented by gallery nine5.

Opposite: Frack is Wack, Acrylic on canvas, 22 x 33 1/4 in | 55.9 x 78.7 cm Price upon request

TAPP FRANCKE Simultaneously nurturing and gently admonishing, Tapp Francke’s latest mirror series re-privileges its viewers with the dichotonic push/pull of self-reflection. The mirrored background requires participants to confront themselves. In their varying neon colors, from cool blue to bright pinks, the words absorb an individuated character, reflected by the custom-made frame surrounding it. Both language and color hold inherently and intimately personal meanings and the viewer is literally central to the piece in the reflection that appears when they lean in to read the colored words.

Since her early photography career, Francke has always maintained an incessant interest in color and its multi-layered meanings. At once universal and specific, color represents a vehicle by which to understand yourself; reactions to color are visceral, immediately assimilated before refinement. Francke teases out a unique mode of understanding with carefully chosen frames and a reflective background.

Tapp Francke is currently represented by gallery nine5.

Opposite: you are not dreaming, Neon on mirror, 36 1/2 x 51 3/8 in | 91.4 x 132 cm Price upon request

SHIRO

Reggae, Spray paint on canvas, 36 x 48 in | 91.4 x 121.9 cm Hip-Hop, Spray paint on canvas, 36 x 48 in | 91.4 x 121.9 cm Techno, Spray paint on canvas, 36 x 48 in | 91.4 x 121.9 cm Price upon request

RUBIN

Leaving Day, Acrylic and resin on wood panel, 12 x 12 in | 30.5 x 30.5 cm Price upon request

JESSICA LICHTENSTEIN Looking to the classical nude form as inspiration, Jessica Lichtenstein explores modern international reinterpretations of female depictions. Beginning her career with placing hyper-sexualized Japanese figurines into domesticated environments, Lichtenstein’s exploration into the female form has since evolved to incorporate glimpses of female sexuality in textiles, furniture, acrylic prints, mirrors, and chrome. Pulling viewers into her utopian, phantasmagoric worlds, Lichtenstein asks her viewers, male and female alike, to re-consider the many complexities of femininity.

Her play with words adds an additional dimension to Lichtenstein’s works, questioning how one reads both text and their environment simultaneously. Her tongue-in-cheek phrases motivate her viewers to constantly think and re-think the sensations of what they know.

Jessica Lichtenstein is currently represented by gallery nine5.

Opposite: LUSH, C-print on acrylic, 72 x 57.5 x 2 in | 183 x 146 x 5 cm Price upon request

24 spring street new york, ny, 10012 | 212.965.9995 | info@gallerynine5.com