Check out some shots of the install happening at White Walls in preparation for Casey Gray‘s solo show ‘Style of Eye‘!The show opens tomorrow, rsvp here, and join us from 7-11pm!
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Send Inquires to Tova@whitewallssf.com
Apex recently spent a month in Syracuse, New York, where he participated in the Warehouse Gallery’s September exhibition Colorfornia: New Forms in West Coast Street Art, along with Chor Boogie and Jet Martinez. Apex’ painted a site-specific, temporary mural measures 28 feet long, with a height of ten feet. It’s an excellent display of the talent he’s known for!
From Warehouse Gallery:
The work is based on improvisation, and the notion that how and what they paint is recognizably Californian in its focus on strong colors, patterns, forms and nature. Their language consists of colorful abstract forms pertaining to optical illusions and movement, faces, evoking real and imaginary urban settings, and imaginary tropical landscapes. All three of the artists have significantly contributed to public art in San Francisco, San Diego and other major cities within and outside of the United States through their use of spray (Apex; Chor Boogie) and traditional paint (Jet Martinez) to achieve elaborate compositions with high attention to detail
Casey Gray‘s solo show, Style of Eye, opens this Saturday at White Walls. Check out the new video, filmed by Spencer Cunningham and edited by Casey Gray himself, for a look inside Casey’s studio. Watching Casey paint and seeing a preview of his new work is guaranteed to get you amped for the show! Read the full press release and RSVP Here!
Style of Eye
Opens Oct. 1st, 7-11pm
@White Walls
835 Larkin
“www.350.org is a grassroots global movement working to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis—the solutions that science & justice demand. 350 is you, and the thousands of people like you who take it upon themselves to inspire your communities to action.”
Gareth Gooch just sent over a picture of the wall EINE painted at Redding Elementary on Frank Norris for 350.org. Other artists involved are Jonathan Darby and ROA, stay updated on 350.orgs projects, get inspired and see how you can contribute here.
Watch Colin M. Day‘s video of EINE here!
Many Thanks to Wall Space!
Jessica Hess – It Finds You from Colin M Day on Vimeo.
Colin M. Day brings us another fanatstic exhibition video on Jessica Hess’ solo show It Finds You, on display at White Walls until September 24th. Hess speaks on the title of the show stemming from the necessity of always being prepared because you can’t always know what you’ll encounter.
There are only fifteen delux editions of Above‘s new book Above:Passport that come with a unique hand embellished signed print housed in a one-of-a-kind wood box. Check out the Process video below:
ABOVE: PASSPORT examines the street artist that has blanketed the world with art covering over 65 cities in 45 countries. The book includes hundreds of plates and quotes from artists across the globe and introductory statements by Shepard Fairey, FAILE, Wooster Collective – Marc and Sara Schiller and Tristan Manco.
“I first encountered ABOVE’s art on the streets of Paris in early 2003. His large scale trademark arrows were painted on roll down gates, trucks and storefronts with impressive coverage throughout the city. ABOVE is extraordinarily driven. To paraphrase Radiohead, “ambition can make you look pretty ugly,” but in ABOVE’s case, his ambition makes the streets look very engaging. I am very impressed by ABOVE’s diligence, but after I got to know him and his artwork more, I began to realize that his output is not evidence of selfish ego, but of a lust for life, a utopian life, where his generosity, and curiosity, and his pursuit of creativity and social-consciousness have led him around theworld making more friends than enemies.
ABOVE made the time to act as tour guide for me and my wife and our two young daughters in a city he knows well and we didn’t. The gesture made me greatly value ABOVE’s friendship and reinforced my belief that what you give is what you get. The Karma Police are not coming for ABOVE even if the police vandal squad is.”
—Shepard Fairey, Los Angeles, California
Technical Specs
Ripo, a street artist born in New York and currently living and working in Barcelona is largely known for the text- based painting he has brought to more than thirty countries, including an extensive solo show in Brussels. It’ll be wise to take note of him now because Ripo will be having his first US-solo show with us here at White Walls, in August of 2012!
Ripo’s recently released print:
Casa Nova
Archival giclée print
38″ x 28″ (approx. 97 x 71 cm)
Moab Entrada 300gsm Cotton Rag paper
Edition of 10
Casa Nova, or New House in Catalan, was painted in a torn out house on the outskirts of of Barcelona in the winter of 2009. The message, colors and delicacy of these painted words strike a stark but seductive contrast to the chaos and decay surrounding the remains of these walls. The incredible detail and texture in this image shine through stunningly in this large photographic print.
€310 each + shipping (will vary depending on your location). Payments will be accepted via PayPal.
To purchase get in touch at ripo.visuals@gmail.com.
White Walls Presents:
Style of Eye, New Work by Casey Gray
White Walls is pleased to present Style of Eye, an intriguing collection of new stencil works by San Francisco-based artist Casey Gray. This will be Gray’s second solo project with White Walls, after participating in multiple group projects at both White Walls and sister space 941 Geary. The opening reception will be Saturday, October 1, from 7-11 pm, and the exhibition is free and open to the public for viewing through October 29.
Possessing a scholarly background in painting, and an absence of street-based graffiti work in his portfolio, artist Casey Gray is a bit of an anomaly in the stencil art game. This position gives him a great vantage point as a painter, as he is able to continue pushing the boundaries of high art – while simultaneously exemplifying that, in the right hands, spray paint and stencil as a medium can be elevated and sublimely refined. He has worked to develop a somewhat interchangeable visual language, one that is extremely specific to his own aesthetic. It is through this complex gathering and layering of contemporary imagery that he is able to open up multiple potentialities and conceptual themes placed within the work. For the selection of pieces featured in Style of Eye, Gray chooses to approach his panels with spray paint and hand-cut stencils as a method for uncovering new access points to traditional painting formats. He is actively exploring and reinterpreting the ideas behind landscape, portraiture and still life painting across more than 20 large-scale panels, brought to life with a stunning color palette and interesting juxtapositions of pattern and content. With definite nods to several historically significant schools of painting, Gray’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek take on proportion, visual structure, and composition are pleasing to the eye, and keep the viewer on their toes with the twisting, layered narratives each frame contains.
Casey Gray’s work is a manifestation of personal experience within the context of contemporary digital perspective. His desire is to create a visual language that explores the relationship between the fluidity of personal experience that is today’s contemporary social landscape and the effect that has on the way he perceives events and memories. Utilizing primarily spray paint and hand-cut stencils, his work combines complex color schemes, graphic imagery, geometry and decorative traditions into meticulously layered hyperbolic moments of order and chaos.
From the artist:
“There is a relationship between this fluidity and the immediacy of spray paint. It distances the artist’s hand from the work so what is being expressed is more a representation of culture and not the artist himself. As our experience becomes more entwined with technology and digital perspective, our culture becomes increasingly anonymous. My disinterest in traditional modes of representation allows for the freedom to work abstractly, which I feel best emphasizes this anonymity. The large majority of the world has been documented in one form or another, in a sense creating a palette for representation. For any idea that I have, there is an image already waiting that represents that idea. By using stencils, a particular image can travel through multiple works, representing something new each time. This shared perspective is the basis for how I approach my work.”
Casey received his MFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010 and his BA in Painting & Printmaking from San Diego State University in 2006. He currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA.
White Walls Gallery has worked for nearly a decade to exist as the premiere destination for urban art in the Bay Area. Combined with the Shooting Gallery just next door, this 4,000 sq ft space is one of the largest galleries on the west coast. Justin Giarla founded the gallery in 2005 with a commitment to furthering the urban art movement, drawing directly from street art and graffiti culture. Named for its plain white walls, the gallery takes a backseat to the real focus: the work of our artists.
Media Opportunities:
Interview with artist Casey Gray
Interview with owner/founder/curator Justin Giarla
High-resolution images available upon request
Event Information:
Style of Eye, New works by Casey Gray
Opening Reception – October 1, 7-11 pm
On View Through October 29, 2011
@ White Walls (www.whitewallssf.com)
835 Larkin St.
San Francisco, CA
Included in Jessica Hess’ current show at White Walls (It Finds You Sept.3rd- 24th) is a collaboration with sculptor/designer Christa Assad. The careful attention to detail is obvious at first look, but it is the delicacy with which ordinary objects are rendered in porcelain that is most powerful in their fantastic collaboration.
“Assad explains “Growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, I was strongly influenced by the Steel City’s dying industry and the grit of these oft-abandoned sites. Tagged with graffiti and other remnants of trespassers and squatters, the physical remains of these sites serve as archaeological artifacts in the study of human behavior and societal evolution.” First trained as a studio potter, Assad currently uses the wheel to quickly generate “blanks” of identifiable objects from the urban landscape. Collaborating with other artists using the exquisite corpse concept, in which one artist responds in a call and response to the other, her porcelain blanks are the beginnings of lively visual dialogues and social commentary. Glamorizing an ordinary object, the spray can, led her to collaborate with Jessica Hess. “Our shared vision is to recreate urban street scenes in trompe l’oeil realism, involving faux found objects of ceramic and painted surfaces, stenciled “sidewalks”, and “tagged” gallery walls. I create the objects and Hess paints their surfaces. As visual documentarians, we are working to bring street art indoors to archive and make permanent these otherwise transitory public works.”” – Ferrin Gallery
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Jessica Hess’ opening of It Finds You kept a consistent level of high energy throughout the night, with a great crowd excited to see the work. Hess’ finely detailed oil paintings compel viewers to take a long pause before each one, to really see just how much effort and talent they contain. If you didn’t get to join us for the opening It Finds You is on display until September 24th.
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