FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

STREET MAGIC

A group show of Street Artists from North America and Europe

Curated by Tod Seelie

Street Magic features the work of some of the most compelling artists working today, either in the gallery or the public sphere.   It brings the work of New York artists Swoon and the team of Downey and Darius together with Akay and Adams, Jorge Rodriguez Gerada, and Zevs from Europe.  

Each artist approaches working in public from a very different perspective.   Swoon's beautiful narrative portraits incorporate elements of a cityscape and other scenes to ultimately form each life-size figure.   Downey and Darius take a playful and insightful approach to animating very familiar components of the urban environment; lampposts, stop signs, phone booths and other standard sidewalk fare all take on a new dimension when brought to life in their hands.   Akay and Adams collaborate together on ambitious projects in Stockholm, Sweden.   They often explore the more creative use of public space, creating installations such as swings hung from bridges, building small houses on ignored pieces of land (examples include: the land between two sides of a highway, on the roof of a public works building, and suspended over a cliff in a park), and creating a "shadow zoo" for commuters alongside a highway. Jorge Rodriguez Gerada is one of the original members of the influential New York City collective "Artfux," one of the originators of "culture jamming."   He has since moved to Barcelona where he pursues a different, if not related, body of work.   Jorge creates enormous photo-realistic portraits of local residents in their own neighborhood on the walls of factories and abandoned structures, all in charcoal.   The drawings take days to complete and can vanish in just one rainfall.   Zevs hails from France and takes a more confrontational approach to his public work.   In a piece called "Visual Kidnapping," he steals the huge image of a woman from a billboard advertisement.   The kidnapping is then followed up by a series of ransom posters (displaying the victim being held in the artist's studio) posted around the area, and culminates with the mailing of a severed finger from the victim to the headquarters of the company responsible for the advertisement.

Every artist in this exhibition challenges the understanding of exactly what is and who controls public space.   Whether through subtly embellishing the visual experience of an area, or by aggressively changing it to suit their vision, these artists have expanded the understanding of what art is and where it belongs.