/ Previous ‘East West Connect’
Above Second is pleased to present East West Connect, a group exhibition curated by online art magazine Arrested Motion, featuring the work of Luke Chueh, Faile, Shepard Fairey, Evah Fan, Stella Im Hultberg, Tat Ito, Akino Kondoh, Travis Louie, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Brendon Monroe, Edwin Ushiro, Nick Walker, and Yoskay Yamamoto. The exhibition will run from November 25th until January 12th 2012 with an opening scheduled for Friday, November 25th (6-10 pm).
East West Connect brings together 13 participants chosen carefully from a diverse selection of artists covered by Arrested Motion for their inaugural curatorial feature at the Hong Kong showspace. Despite differing ethnicities and nationalities of the participating artists, all of them either have an Asian heritage and/or have utilized imagery inspired by the Far East in the past. But despite this common interest in the region, most of the artists have not had major shows in Asia. By bringing their collective work back to its geographic “source”, the exhibition hopes to deal with themes of identity for those who have dual cultural allegiances, explore the melting and fusion of artistic influences, and foster the discussion of the work when brought into local context. No other place would have been more suitable to host this exhibition than the vibrant city-state of Hong Kong, long considered as the gateway between East and West and the epicenter of the region’s booming art market.
About Arrested Motion (http://www.arrestedmotion.com/):
Arrested Motion is an art culture hub started up in 2008 by a group of collectors who saw the opportunity to share their love for artists they knew through extensive online and onsite coverage. Along with the associated Artchival Forum (http://artchival.proboards.com/), the website has grown from its humble beginnings to over half a million hits a month while reporting on the contemporary, street/urban, and so called low brow art scene in all the major art centers of the world. Their goal is to provide unique and exclusive content while demonstrating that art is for people of all ages and socioeconomic groups.
Strictly RSVP: may@above-second.com
www.above-second.com
www.arrestedmotion.com
tel: +852-3483-7950
mob: +852-6330-7759
address: 31 Eastern St, Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong
(between 2nd and 3rd st)
Mon-Fri 12pm – 7pm
Weekend by Appointment Only
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: Hung-Hei Yung or Tanley Wong
Shepard Fairey
Faile
Luke Chueh
Evah Fan
Stella Im Hultberg
Tat Ito
Akino Kondoh
Travis Louie
Tomokazu Matsuyama
Brendon Monroe
Edwin Ushiro
Nick Walker
and Yoskay Yamamoto
Shepard Fairey www.obeygiant.com
Shepard Fairey is the man behind OBEY GIANT, the worldwide street art campaign that has changed the way people see art and the urban landscape. Fairey steeps his ideology and iconography in the self-empowerment of those who refuse to be manipulated by the machine of manufactured consent. With biting sarcasm verging on reverse psychology, he goads viewers, using the imperative “obey,” to take heed of the propagandists out to bend the world to their agendas. What started with an absurd sticker he created in 1989 while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, has through his prolific and tireless work in the streets, seen his imagery progressively insert itself into social consciousness culminating in his “HOPE” portrait of Barack Obama which became the iconic image of the presidential campaign and helped inspire an unprecedented political movement. Along the way, Fairey has become one of today’s best known and most influential street artists.
As Fairey’s career reached the 20-year mark in 2009, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston honored him with a full-scale solo retrospective, which drew a record number of visitors for the museum. Entitled Supply and Demand, exhibition has since traveled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati. Along with his prominent inclusion in other museum shows (like the recent Art in the Streets at the LA MOCA), important auctions, art fairs, and street art festivals throughout the world, his work is also included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The LA-based artist has been and is also involved with an innumerable amount of charities and causes that he supports with his involvement, as well as the donation of his artwork and time.
Luke Chueh www.lukechueh.com
Born in Philadelphia, but raised in Fresno, Luke Chueh studied graphic design at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo where he earned a BS in Art & Design (Graphic Design concentration). He was employed by the Ernie Ball Company, working in-house as designer/illustrator where he created several award winning designs and was featured in the design annuals of Communication Arts and Print Magazine. Meanwhile, he also created, produced, wrote, designed, edited and published E.X.P., a ‘zine dedicated to the “Intelligent Dance Music (IDM)” genre.
In 2003, Chueh moved to Los Angeles to further pursue a career in design. However, a lack of employment opportunities left him resorting to painting as a way to keep busy. He got his start when the Los Angeles underground art show, Cannibal Flower, invited him to show at their monthly events. Since then, Chueh has quickly worked his way up the ranks of the LA art scene with his signature combinations of minimal color schemes, simple animal characters, and a seemingly endless list of ill-fated situations. Chueh stylistically balances cute with brute, walking the fine line between comedy and tragedy. Chueh’s work has been featured in galleries around the world, and some of his paintings have also been reinterpreted successfully into highly sought after vinyl toys. He also recently created the artwork for Fall Out Boy’s Folie à Deux album.
FAILE www.faile.net
FAILE is a Brooklyn-based artistic collaboration between Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. Since its inception in 1999, the collective has been known for their use of wheatpasting and stenciling in the increasingly established arena of street art, and for their explorations of dualities with a fragmented style of appropriation and collage. During this time, the duo adapted its signature mass culture-driven iconography, influenced by their love for pop culture and comic derived imagery, to a wide array of media, from wooden boxes and window pallets to more traditional canvas, prints, sculptures, stencils, multimedia installation, and prayer wheels.
Now recognized as one of the most important artists in the genre working today, their reputation has been buoyed by invitations to join international art festivals, museum exhibitions, and art fairs all around the world. Highlights include the Spank the Monkey exhibition at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK in 2007, the Street Art exhibition held at the London’s Tate Modern in 2008, a Temple installation for Portugal Arte 10 Festival in 2010 as well as many successful solo exhibitions during the same period of time. They recently released a comprehensive book, Prints + Originals (Gestalten, 2010) that surveys their career and explores FAILE’s process, influences, and iconography.
Evah Fan potatohavetoes.com/
Evah Fan studied Communications Design with an emphasis on illustration at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. After graduation, she migrated westward to Berkeley, Califorinia. After a moving to Sweden in 2010, to continue her education in Stockholm with husband and fellow artist Brendan Monroe, Fan has recently relocated back to Oakland, California where she currently resides.
Fan’s delicate gouache paintings are mostly narrative, poetical and minimalistic: they very often show a minimum of characters or a few objects. Her artwork reflects nonsense, mystery, sometimes overcast. Fan tackles mundane objects and figures in negative planes throwing in elements of parody and irony that address a certain naïve humor. She likes developing series of works on unexpected themes such as invitation to meetings for kleptomaniacs, or the sounds produced by music and instruments. She is represented by the Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles and Galerie L.J. in Paris.
Stella Im Hultberg stellaimhultberg.com/
Stella Im Hultberg is a painter living and working in Brooklyn, NYC. Born in South Korea, raised in Seoul, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and later in California, she studied Industrial Design at CSU, which naturally segued into work as a toy designer early on in her career. Work in the design industry serendipitously led to her building on her natural talents as an artist and a career as a self-taught painter soon followed.
Stella Im Hultberg’s paintings are conceived in varying combinations of ink, watercolor, and oils on paper, wood and canvas. Her portraits of women are rendered in easy, flowing lines with soft hues that transcend the typical critiques of feminine beauty, inherent in today’s self conscious society. She has shown with multiple galleries in Philadelphia, New York, California, and London just to name a few.
Tat Ito www.facebook.com/tatitoart
Tat Ito was born and raised in Japan, but he later made his art studies in the United States. Consequently, the artist and his paintings are a dynamic confluence of East and West, traditional and contemporary. The poetic analogy of “oil on water” describes Ito’s approach to both imagery and cultural references; in his vibrantly colored work, traditional Japanese aesthetics are a foundation upon which floats a contemporary (i.e., Western-influenced) viewpoint. Like a skim of oil on water, the beautiful, reflective surfaces of his paintings fascinate viewers. These top layers never mix but, rather, are presented in dialogue with the substance beneath. Tat Ito received a BFA from Academy of Art University in San Francisco and an MFA from New York Academy of Art; he currently lives and works in Queens, New York.
Akino Kondoh akinokondoh.com/
Akino Kondoh was born in Chiba in 1980 and graduated from Tama University Department of Graphic Design in 2003. In 2000, Kondoh won 2nd AX Manga Newcomer’s Award / Encouragement Award with her manga Kayoko Kobayashi, and in 2002 her animation The Evening Traveling, on which girls dance rhythmically to the music by Toshiaki Chiku (former member of music group, Tama), brought her Grand Prix for DIGISTA AWARDS 2002 / Animation Division. And more recently, her video, Ladybirds’ Requiem, was recently selected as one of the 25 winners of Youtube Play: a Biennial of Creative Video at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She is currently working on a new animation entitled Kiyakiya.
The multi-talented artist is not only known for her video work as her fine and delicate drawings and surreal oil paintings are in high demand. Her work has been described as dualities – innocent yet worldly, beautiful yet disturbing, delicate yet strong in subject matter. Perhaps it is these paradoxes that make her imagery so intriguing.
Travis Louie www.travislouie.com
Travis Louie was born in Queens, New York, about a mile from the site of the 1964 World’s Fair. He earned his degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. After working for years as an illustrator, he began showing his unique paintings of oddly lifelike creatures rendered in the style of vintage photographs that he remembers from childhood. Using inventive techniques of painting with acrylic washes and simple textures on smooth boards, Louie creates portraits from an imaginary world that is grounded in Victorian and Edwardian times.
The world of Travis Louie is inhabited by human oddities, mythical beings, and otherworldly characters who appear to have had their formal portraits taken to mark their existence and place in society. The underlining thread that connects all these characters is the unusual circumstances that shape who they were and how they lived. The paintings come to life after they are taken from the source material of many writings in his journals.
Tomokazu Matsuyama www.matzu.net
Now based in New York City after growing up between Japan and California, Tomokazu Matsuyama brings a bicultural aesthetic that appropriates influences from Western sources as well as Japanese art from the Edo and Meiji eras. His educational and career backgrounds are just as diverse as his upbringing: he holds a BA in Management from Tokyo’s prestigious Sophia University and an MFA in Communications Design from New York’s Pratt Institute, one of the East Coast’s strongest art schools. Matsuyama exhibits his work internationally showing in galleries and in institutions in cities from Tokyo, Osaka, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, and Vancouver to institutions such as Asian American Arts Centre.
Brendan Monroe www.brendanmonroe.com/
California native Brendan Monroe graduated in 2004 from the prestigious Art Center College of Design of Pasadena and currently lives and works in Oakland with artist and wife Evah Fan. His work, both painting and sculptural, is often described as organic and is influenced by his fascination with the world on a micro level and his interest in science. In Monroe’s imagery, ambiguity weaves between figures and blob-like shapes, dying or sleeping, being consumed or created, in bliss or confusion. He is represented by the Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles and Galerie L.J. in Paris.
Edwin Ushiro www.mrushiro.com
Transplanted from Maui to California, Ushiro attended the Art Center College of Design and attained a BFA in Illustration with Honors. Post graduation released Ushiro towards his love for film, where his multi-disciplinary skills have earned him credit as a Visual Effects Consultant, Storyboard Artist and Concept Designer on television shows ranging from CSI:Miami to Angel and Battlestar Gallactica. Ushiro began his fine art career in 2006 with several group shows, including shows in Los Angeles, New York and Berlin and has progressed to solo exhibitions in recent years. The unique emotion and techniques that make up Ushiro’s work as well as his utilization of his island influences have turned him into one of the most exciting emerging artists working today.
Nick Walker www.theartofnickwalker.com
Nick Walker emerged from the infamous and ground-breaking Bristol graffiti scene of the early 1980s as one of the forerunners of the British street art phenomenon. His work is constantly evolving and remains innovative, modern and thought-provoking. Nick draws on the energy and imagery of graffiti but he succeeds in combining the freedom the spray can brings, with very controlled and intricate stenciling which translates well into the gallery setting. Walker’s instantly recognizable style and humor have gained him a worldwide following.
In addition to successful solo shows, his work has also been embraced by the record, fashion and film industries. He was commissioned by Stanley Kubrick to recreate the heavily hit graffiti’d areas of New York for Eyes Wide Shut. More recently Nick’s infamous and recognizable Vandal character – the artist who disguises himself as a quintessential English gentleman in order to get away with artistic vandalism – was featured in the Black Eyed Peas I Gotta Feeling video. Nick Walker’s work is featured in numerous prestigious public and private collections, including the Mugrabi family.
Yoskay Yamamoto yoskay.com
Born and raised in Toba, Japan. Yoskay Yamamoto moved to the United States at the age of 15. A self-trained painter, Yamamoto’s artistic tastes expanded as he fell in love with the urban culture of the West Coast and consequently he discovered a way to fuse two different cultural backgrounds together in his work. The LA-based artist Yamamoto nostalgically blends pop iconic characters from his new Western home with traditional and mythical Japanese elements, balancing his Asian heritage with urban pop art. He has sold out his work recently at shows in San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles.
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