State of the Art: Your Weekly Guide to NYC's Latino Art
Photo: ExitRoomNY
Twitter: @labarbaraaa
State of The Art is Remezcla’s weekly guide to Latin art openings in your city each week. Mingle with art admirers, collectors and casual passersby to check out these new works. And don’t forget to grab a free glass of wine…or three.
Exit Room Track 1:
For the next 10 to 13 days, you can see a mashup of work by highly skilled bombers, illustrators, mosaicists, and muralists all with a contemporary urban technique at Exit Room NY. This show is eye candy overload with art by 17 artists crowded into an East Williamsburg art gallery/cultural space. And many brilliant Latin@ artists make up the show including Nicole Salgar, Marka 27, Ricardo Cabret, Esteban del Valle, Ramiro Davaro, Sonni, NEPO, Jeff Henriquez, Juan Carlos Pinto, and possibly others. Artists Viajero and Don Rmx who were part of the mural-painting project Los Muros Hablan in Spanish Harlem are also in the show. Exit Room NY is open everyday from 5 to 8pm. The work in this show is dope. I highly recommend it.
City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection
“Graffiti is a art and if art is a crime, let God forgive all,” wrote Lee Quiñones on one of his oil paintings being shown in City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection. Graffiti from LADY PINK, Lee Quiñones, FUTURA2000, Angel Ortiz, Keith Haring and other well-known bombers from the 70s and 80s show what the “street art scene” was like at its inception. The 150 works include photographs of beautified subway cars and public buildings airbrushed with polychromatic imaginings– many photos document art that no longer exists. There are also paintings on canvas and black book sketches. The collector Martin Wong was an artist himself who began collecting the work of friends and fellow graffiti writers in New York in the 70s. He donated his collection to MCNY 5 years before succumbing to the AIDS virus in 1999. The show opens Tuesday, February 4th.
Peru: A Visual Journey
There’s a nice little combo of photographs and graffiti paintings over at Bleecker Street Arts Club this week. Photographer and former model Helena Christensen traveled extensively around Peru taking photos of the picturesque lands and culture. Iced mountains, seemingly unreal deserts, fluffy llamas and elaborate textiles made in the villages show a land of immaculate elegance and natural purity. Sale of the photos will benefit the non-profit organization OxFam that helps find solutions to poverty and other social justice issues. The show runs through February 15th. Graffiti collaboration crew Mint & Serf will also be exhibiting work in their show ‘Support Therapy, and Instability,’ so catch ‘em both.