West Chelsea Contemporary Presents: STREET KINGS: RISK + Blek Le Rat by West Chelsea Contemporary

RISK + BLEK LE RAT

JULY 24 - AUGUST 22

For more information and pricing, please contact us by phone, email, or at one of our two locations WEST CHELSEA CONTEMPORARY DOWNTOWN 512.478.4440 1009 West 6th Street #120| Austin, TX 78703 Hours: Monday – Saturday 10am - 6pm Sunday 12 - 6pm DOMAIN NORTHSIDE 512.919.4221 11621 Rock Rose Ave #116 | Austin, TX 78758 Hours: Monday - Thursday 10am - 6pm Friday - Saturday 12 - 8 pm; Sunday 12 - 6pm wcc.art sales@wcc.art wcc.art

INDEX FOREWORD ...................................................................................................1-2 RISK .............................................................................................................. 3-20 BIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................. 4 RISK AND ROLL .................................................................................... 5-8 BUDDHA .............................................................................................. 9-12 FACE YOUR FEARS ...........................................................................13-15 NEON ..................................................................................................17-20 BLEK LE RAT ............................................................................................ 21-38 BIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................ 22 MANIFESTO OF STENCILISM ........................................................ 23-26 ON THE WALL ......................................................................................... 39-42 ASHELY METRO ..................................................................................... 40 WILEY ROSS ............................................................................................ 41 TODD SANDERS ..................................................................................... 42

FOREWORD Street Kings: RISK + Blek le Rat highlights two graffiti masters, each who have catalyzed the movement within their respective international homebase - Los Angeles and Paris. RISK, also known by the monikers of Risky and RiskRock, moved to LA in 1982 at 15 years old. By 1989 he became one of the first LA based taggers to adorn New York subway cars when he travelled to the epicenter of graff. Continents apart and almost two decades earlier French artist Blek le Rat visited the New York scene, where he was inspired by the WildStyle graffiti subculture and the impulsive, alleyway works of Richard Hambleton - the godfather of street art. Returning to Europe in 1979 Blek drew on his degree in printmaking and his newfound appreciation for urban art, integrating the ethos of graffiti with the practicality and refinement of stencil based design. Both RISK and Blek le Rat have pioneered new techniques that have garnered international acclaim and acceptance. Synonymous with stencil art, Blek - the founder and father of the movement - pioneered the medium and paved the way for Banksy, who accredits the artist as his biggest inspiration.

RISK's use of car paint and surfboard resin creates a unique metallic finish, highly desirable and aligned with the finish fetish movement in LA. Both artists work in, and on, a variety of media from Boeing 777 doors to elongated white picket fences. Each artist takes inspiration from their surroundings and continues to have an active studio practice. Their imagery is relevant to the immediacy of their lives - RISK painting his daughters and collaborating with well-known musicians, and Blek recreating the French lifestyle with spray paint. Their identifiable styles denote each graffiti artist as masters of their craft. Like most artists who pave the way for the next generation, RISK and Blek le Rat continue to develop their techniques and create new work that showcases their mastery. This exhibition reveals their next chapters on canvas, in neon, and across a range of media from metallic tissue to plane doors.

RISK American, b. 1967

Multi-talented fine artist, sculptor, and graffiti pioneer RISK was one of the first artists to exhibit graffiti and street art in galleries. Born Kelly Graval, the artist moved to Los Angeles with his family and made his new high school his personal canvas. He has participated in a number of street art crews, most famously West Coast Artists (WCA) and the Seventh Letter. In the course of his nearly 30-year career, RISK has become one of the most influential figures for subsequent generations of graffiti artists, particularly in Los Angeles. He is also considered one of the first artists to have painted on freight trains, as well as a pioneer of “painting in the heavens”—a graffiti term referring to highly elevated surfaces like billboards, rooftops, and overpasses. His art can be seen in music videos by everyone from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Michael Jackson.

RISK & ROLL

From a very early age Kelly “RISK” Gravel has had a deep connection to the LA music scene. As a young graffiti writer in LA, RISK would cruise the streets looking for film shoots and ask if the production department needed “real graffiti” for their set’s. On one such occasion, a producer asked RISK to cover the entire set for a music video with graffiti. That production was the set for Michael Jackson’s 1987 “The Way You Make Me Feel” music video. RISK has done original work, commissions, and designs for some of the biggest names in the music business including -Red Hot Chili Peppers, Slash, Ice Cube, Aerosmith, Bad Religion, House of Pain, Halsey, Cypress Hill, and Blink 182. Joe Perry and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith wrote a special dedication for the RISK book “Old Habits Die Hard.” In the foreword to the book Joe and Steven wrote “RISK is to art what Aerosmith is to Rock and Roll.” RISK’s two-acre studio and home in Thousand Oaks California is a regular stop for some of the biggest names in music. Over the past six months alone - Dave Navarro (Jane’s Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers) - Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters) Corey Taylor (Slipknot) and Billy Morrison (Billy Idol and The Cult) have worked with RISK at his 'Compound.'

RISK’s influence on the music world takes many forms. From hosting the first ever live concert by Cypress Hill at his small Hollywood Studio to doing painting for emerging bands like the “Dirty Heads” or hand painting all on stage outfits for Halsey’s 2019 world concert tour. RISK has had the privilege of collaborating on original works with several notable artists including his 2018 collection with legendary lyricist Bernie Taupin and a series of works in 2020 with musician Travis Barker. The Rolling Stones Logo is another example of RISK’s connection to the biggest names in the music world. Through mutual friends of the Rolling Stones and a chance encounter with the artist who designed the “Stones Tongue Logo” - RISK is one of only a few artist’s in the world with permission to use the iconic logo in his original art.

RISK & Bernie Taupin Scar, 2018 Acrylic, spray paint, mixed media on canvas 62 x 50 in

RISK & Travis Barker Don't Tell Anyone #12 Acrylic, spray paint, wheat paste posters on wood panel 36 x 24 in

BUDDHA RISK’s serial use of buddhist imagery was inspired by his interaction and collaboration with the late contemporary painter Ed Moses, a seminal figure in the Post-War, West Coast art scene. Before his passing, Moses introduced and educated RISK on his Buddhist beliefs which greatly intrigued the artist. Fully inspired, he went on to create a piece for Hollywood’s Shep Gordon, delving deeper into this newfound Buddhist series. RISK is a self-proclaimed “Buddhist beginner” and draws inspiration from the religion while he continues to search for an elevated state of mindfulness. Many of RISK’s Buddha works, such as Peaceful Buddha (2020), embody the many juxtapositions seen consistently in the artist’s work. The Buddha represents RISK’s philosophy that people are composed of three modes of thought: right, wrong, and in-between (which he refers to as "our greater good"or "the real grey area").

RISK PeacefulBuddha, 2020 Aerosol on copper panel with surfboard resin 49.50 x 38.30 in

RISK Peaceful Warrior #9, 2021 Acrylic, spray paint on coventry rag archival paper 68 x 52 in

RISK Peaceful Buddha Woven, 2021 Acrylic, spray paint on hand woven strips of coventry rag archival paper with burned edges

FACE YOUR

FEARS

RISK’s Face Your Fears series was inspired by Damien Hirst’s Natural History series and a collection of conversations about Buddhism with the late painter Ed Moses. RISK recalls when Moses introduced him to the concept that the fundamental essence of fear is a feeling of rejection toward suffering. A former surfer, RISK dreaded sharks, compelling him to examine Hirst’s preoccupation with preservation in his Natural History series, particularly Hirst’s infamous The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991). RISK built on that foundation and challenged himself to create a series of sculptures inspired by fear. His many large-scale shark sculptures include a massive ten-foot long shark composed of assorted machine materials, as well as a shark built entirely from license plates referencing police as predators. The first sculpture in the series, in fact, was a life-sized LAPD Police Cruiser car intricately cut in half lengthwise. Risk explained “If you are a graffiti artist, the real predators are the police.”

RISK "Face Your Fears" Medium Shark, 2018 Found objects 84 x 60 x 120 in

RISK

"Face Your Fears" Cop Car, 2018 LAPD Police Cruiser Cut in Half Lengthwise 222 x 77 x 53 in

NEON To RISK, neon is the most versatile form of artistic representation in contemporary art. Although the majority of contemporary artists use it to convey text, he believes its representational purpose is equally as strong. Neon is a gateway between scientific principles and artistic expression, integrating electrical technology, creative design, and fundamental concepts of physics and chemistry. RIsk has been devoted to art in electric media, exhibiting electric and kinetic fine art for over 25 years. His fascination with neon began in one of his early studios where he met a neighbor who made neon signs. Risk took hundreds of random scrap pieces and strung them randomly together from fishing wire. He began clustering groups together by color to evoke emotion or cast a mood. Enamored with the glow of neon, RISK believes the pieces take on two lives; one with neon on and another with the lights off.

RISK 72" Tongue 2 Aerosol, Kandy car paint and crushed abalone on spray can collage panel surf board resin and neon 72.25 x 72 in

RISK WTF ICON, 2019 Aerosol, Kandy Car paint, crushed abalone on recycled spray can panel with surfboard resin 68 x 48 x 4 in

RISK ‘PGFY Finger’ Double-Sided Neon, 2019 Aerosol, kandy car paint, crushed abalone on license plate, road signs, recycled spray can panel with surfboard resin 60 x 48 x 8 in

“Every time I think I’ve painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek le Rat has done it too, only Blek did it 20 years earlier.”

- Banksy

BLEK LE RAT French, b.1951

Pioneering French graffiti artist Blek le Rat counts the infamous Banksy among his many admirers. Born Xavier Prou, the artist was one of the first graffiti artists in Paris and has been described as the “Father of stencil graffiti.” Blek was introduced to graffiti after a trip to New York City in 1971 and was inspired to bring the style back to Paris, adapting the stencil as a more fitting technique for French architecture. He is best known for stenciling a giant graphic image of a rat all over Paris in the early 1980s, which to him symbolized both freedom and the dissemination of art through the city as if it were the plague. In recent years his work has become increasingly political, focusing on the homeless, the environment, and other social causes. Blek’s posters of kidnapped French journalist Florence Aubenas helped raise public awareness of her situation, pressuring politicians and journalists to work harder for her release.

THE MANIFESTO OF

STENCILISM

It was on a trip to New York City in 1971 that I saw my first wild art graffiti. They were popping up everywhere: on the subway and around the basketball courts. I remember graffiti painted with a marker, like nervous signatures with a crown, allover NY, and big letters filled with spirals and many colors. These miniatures made me so curious that I asked to Larry Wolhandler, my American friend lodging me in his home in NYC, the inevitable question: “What does all this mean? Why are these people doing this?” Unfortunately, nobody could give me a proper answer, except that it was the work of people without any reason or sense of responsibility, the “Dusty rabble,” said Lindsay, the former mayor of NYC. In Paris, this kind of expression hadn’t emerged at this time. Of course there were a lot of political slogans in 1968 during the student riots and of course we discussed art in public through the posters produced in the popular workshops of the Ecole des Beaux Arts. But there wasn’t any bigger movement of artists determined to investigate urban architecture. Graffiti, this kind of wild art, was born in the US in the mid-sixties when about ten artists, condemned to anonymity, started the ball rolling by writing their assumed names on the walls. I kept all this souvenirs in my mind where they took ten years to mature, then I started to add my bit. 23

While studying Engraving and Archictecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, I got acquainted with the subject. So, in the seventies I learned the art of etching and the techniques of lithography and seriography, while the study of architecture waked my conscience for measurable public space. At the beginning of the seventies I also was very inﬂuenced by David Hockney who had a big exhibition near the Beaux Art School of Paris. And I can say that he did the most impressive work I’d ever seen in my life. The next year, he made a movie called “The Bigger Splash” and in this movie Hockney is painting with brushes and oil color a large character of one of his friends on a wall of an apartment. This image never quit my mind. I considered that movie so important for art history that I saw it about ten or ﬁfteen times. In 1980, I helped my friend Gérard Dumas who worked for an Adventureland, a kind of place where teenagers could go just to get to know each other and to keep themselves occupied without having the authorities on their backs. Adventureland was located just behind a supermarket. The kids went back and forth easily. Paint pots were often found under all the gadgets they brought from the supermarket. These illegally exported pots were used to paint the little hangar in which we put our stuff. Big, dripping Frescos appeared and disappeared throughout the year. Gerard and I were moved by each and every creation. And so we decided one day to get hold of some paint sprays, feeling the need for modernism. We’d caught the virus.

The capital belonged to us, and we just had to act. In October 1981 in Paris, rue des Thermopyles, we painted for the first time on an old dilapidated house where we wanted to reproduce an American piece. But what a fiasco! So I suggested making stencils, an old technique, ancestor of seriography and later used by Italian fascists for their propaganda. I remembered having seen a little effigy of the Duce (Mussolini) with a helm, a relic of the Second World War, in Padova (Italy), when I was there with my parents in the early sixties. Well, once the technique and the material were found, again we just had to act. In Paris, there was enough space and practicing graffiti was so unknown that the touring cops hardly ever disturbed us unless they wanted to know what we were doing and if we had a political aim. We answered: “No, this is art,” and the game was won. We had assumed the name BLEK with reference to the Italian comic strip Blek le Roc that we read in our childhood. A pseudonym had been chosen to get the attention of all people of the quarter: “Who are the authors of theses little rats, the bananas, the running men, and of all the other small stencils we were producing in the day and spraying at night in the14th and 18th Arrondissements of Paris?”

Our nocturnal outings became more and more frequent. On December 31 in 1981 we decided to paint around the Temple consecrated to Modern Art, the Centre Georges Pompidou, so-called Beaubourg. On a very cold night from December 31 to January 1, we sprayed a lot of rats, tanks and little characters at this cult place. The guards of the museum came out to ask us what we were doing and, once again, we said: “Art,” provoking a fugitive smile on the temple guards’ lips. At the end of the winter the Blek couple separated. Gérard having other things to do, I was alone and took on the name of BLEK LE RAT. - Blek le Rat

Blek le Rat Joconda, 2021 Mixed media, aerosol on linen 51 x 39.25 in

Blek le Rat LA Tribute Fence, 2008 Acrylic, spray paint, stickers on wooden fence 60 x 78 in

Blek le Rat Can't Kill the Revolution, 2011 Spray paint and acrylic on linen 80 x 48 in

Blek le Rat Mask and Helmet, 2013 Spray paint and acrylic on canvas 40 x 30 in

Blek le Rat The Mask, 2021 Mixed media, aerosol on linen

Blek le Rat The Last Wedding, 2011 Spray paint and acrylic on canvas 25 x 65 in

Blek le Rat Boy with Airplane, 2011 Stencil, spray paint, and acrylic on canvas 80 x 52 in

Blek le Rat Renaissance, 2021 Mixed media, aerosol on linen 51 x 39.25 in

Blek le Rat Flower Power, 2021 Mixed media, aerosol on linen 39.25 x 39.25 in

Blek le Rat Anarchy Rat, 2021 Mixed media 45.9 x 39.25 in

ON THE

WALL 'On the Wall' is WCC's most recent initative that promotes the Austin art community by integrating a curated roster of emerging local talent in each of our exhibitions. After four successful capsule collections, WCC is excited to present three local artists Ashley Metro, Wiley Ross, and Todd Sanders. The artists selected have developed practices that engage with the urban environment through their own unique styles. Metro, Ross, and Sanders have well earned their rightful place beside the Blue Chip icons and Modern Masters that comprise the WCC collection. This unique opportunity affords our collector community the ability to both discover and support influential artists on the rise.

METRO, American

Ashley

Ashley Metro is a young ambitious artist from Austin, Texas, whose stream of consciousness work manifests as seemingly endless line work, organic abstract shapes, and often hidden fragments of text. Coining the term “abstract ideology,” a phrase that often gets tucked into her paintings, Metro explains her personal take on a common paradox: we can create anything we can imagine, yet we are limited to what we can perceive. The eyes, she explains, are there to “perceive” the viewer, the way everyone is perceived regardless of whether they choose to be. Metro’s vibrant paintings take root in artist’s of the 1960s pop art movement, featuring bright colors, brilliant use of rhythm, and complex patterns. At only twenty-one years, Metro has exploded onto the Austin art scene and has no plans of stopping anytime soon. With her paintings featured in numerous galleries across Texas and the completion of large-scale installations in both Austin and Los Angeles, the artist plans to cover the world with her designs and spread a little Metro wherever she goes.

ROSS, Wiley American

Wiley Ross was born and raised in Springfield, Missouri. Throughout most of his life, Wiley’s focus has been art. Then, while in college on an art scholarship, he decided music was his next step to pursue. So he picked up a guitar, loaded up his van, and hit the road to Austin, TX. Soon, the hard hitting rock trio, Street Light Suzie was born. After touring the country, including a packed house at LA’s Viper Room, and recording their first CD, “Red River Revival”, In September of 2011 the band’s blistering demos got the attention of Guns ‘N Roses alum Gilby Clarke. The union was a resounding success as the band traveled to LA to record in Clarke’s studio. The result is the critically acclaimed “Red Album”. Wiley has also been very successful placing songs in film and television, including credits on CSI, Nikita, Ringer, VH1 and E! shows. Wiley is a critically acclaimed painter, muralist and musician. As his reputation has grown, so has the size of his creations. Austinites can see his murals on many walls throughout the city. For a man who truly believes “the world is a blank canvas”, this has been an exciting and fulfilling experience. Wiley lives in Austin, TX with his daughter, Veda Moon. 41

SANDERS, American

Todd

Contemporary neon artist Todd Sanders crafts his vintagestyle designs using durable modern materials and specialized weathering techniques. Evoking the glory days of roadside America, Sanders’ work resembles old relics rescued from forgotten attractions on abandoned highways. Sanders calls his style modern vintage, but considers himself a pop artist, sharing a rich artistic vein mined by Andy Warhol and other pop-culture iconographers. A Montgomery, TX native, Sanders began pursuing his muse in earnest after moving to Austin, Sanders’ work is prized by his collectors, including Willie Nelson, Shepard Fairey, Edie Brickell/Paul Simon, Joe Rogan, Johnny Depp, ZZ Top, and Kings of Leon. Sanders’ pieces have appeared in several films, as well as the pages of Esquire, Fortune, Texas Monthly, and Southern Living magazine. The original version of his most popular design, his animated “Fireflies in a Mason Jar,” was created for the wedding of fellow Texan Miranda Lambert to Blake Shelton. Several of his works have hung in the Museum of Neon Art in Los Angeles. 42