Past
Subaquatica has selected a mix of old friends and newly found collaborating artists portraying a wide scope of the different kind of art that makes us tick. Coming from cities as diverse as Berlin, São Paulo, Lille, Vigo and Madrid. All the artists will be showing original work on paper in small format, the kind of art pieces Subaquatica likes best for its space. It will be the 7th of the OCHO group exhibitions series scheduled to take place this year, in different cities around the world. More than 150 artists are part of this ROJO® Art Network world group show, that runs through world class galleries until August 2009.
Artwork by: Nano4814, Therese Vandling, Ezba, Juju’s Delivery, Deno JR, 3ttman, Nuria Mora, Remed and Fefe Talavera.
Kayu is a japanese artist living in Spain since 2006 and whose presence in Madrid has surprisingly been quite unoticed despite her participation in different projects and winning several art contests (Circulo de Bellas artes, Caja Madrid…). Kayu paints and draws mainly animals and abstract forms with pastel and acryllic on paper. Her work is fresh, almost childish, and was worthy of a constant flow of comissions in Japan from book publishers, magazines, etc… Recently Kayu has put together a team of creative individuals for her brand Kayu-en (http://www.kayu-en.com) and Subaquatica is where she will be presenting the brand for the first time with some of the products and the original artwork that she has created as inspiration for this first line of articles.
MOMO (www.momoshowpalace.com) is one restless artist, independent from topics and scenes that is reaching a wider audience every day with just his work own merit to blame. He’s exhibited his work or participated in projects in New York, Seoul, Cologne, Manchester or New Orleans and has colaborated in joint projects with artists such as Eltono, Zosen or Maya Hayuk. This is his first solo show in Madrid where MOMO has prepared 1000 silkscreen printed variations of his “MOMO Maker” project (www.momoshowpalace.com/1000.html). The “MOMO Maker” series began a year ago as an joke to see if a computer could create MOMO’s artwork for him. And its worked very well. The bulk of prints are wheatpasted in public spaces, sometimes with invented equipment to reach new urban spaces. The online system discovers 174,720 possibilities, of those, the serigraph will produce 1500, & we are exhibiting just 1000.
“GRAFIKA: Graphic work and objects by the artists from Beautiful Losers” is a parallel show with the ocassion of the arrival of the “Beautiful Losers” (www.iconoclastusa.com) exhibition to Madrid. It’s a lesser scale show with the series of prints produced by the artists for the exhibition curators label: Iconoclast as well as a selection of other prints, graphic work, objects…
Participating artists:
Thomas Campbell, Henry Chalfant, Larry Clark, Cynthia Connolly, Cheryl Dunn, Brian Donnelly (KAWS), Shepard Fairey (OBEY), Glen E. Friedman, Evan Hecox, Wes Humpston, Jo Jackson, Todd James, Andy Jenkins, Chris Johanson, Harmony Korine, Ari Marcopoulos, Geoff McFetridge, Barry McGee, Ryan McGinness, Mike Mills, Raymond Pettibon, Stephen Powers, Terry Richardson, Clare E. Rojas, Rostarr, Ed Templeton y Tobin Yelland.
In September 2008 we celebrated a solo show by Brazilian artist Fefe Talavera, that we interviewed not long ago around here.
And Fefe Talavera came to town with the beasts from her inner self! Fefe is an artist from São Paulo that shares the raw creative energy and freedom of the new generation of urban artists coming from the streets of the Brazillian megalopolis. Her career as an artist has taken her to galleries and art fairs and events around the globe: Moscow, Buenos Aires, New York, Seville, Berlin, Los Angeles, Mexico DF, Vienna, Amsterdam… and she has recently been featured in magazines and websites for her succesful show in Amsterdam in collaboration with the legendary NY artist and Graffiti pioneer Doze Green. This was her first solo show in Spain.
To celebrate our fifth anniversary we organized a group exhibition,
in which all the participating artists have either collaborated in some way with us during this time or for some reason are close to us. We asked each participant to buy a postcard of the city where they reside and to send it to us after personalizing it, changing the postcard as they saw fit. Since they are not signed on the front, no one will know which artist is the author of each postcard. It is a silly idea, yes; but there is a reason behind it.
On the one hand, we feel that it is essential that the work is what does the talking and artists talk through their work before talking through their name. It is important that each piece has an author and that this authorship is valued. Each work, however, should be able to stand on its own. That’s why we proposed this semi-hidden formula of authorship for this exhibit.
On the other hand, we don’t give much importance to the country of origin or the language or the nationality of the artists, but we do give importance to the city where they live. It can be said that almost all contemporary culture is urban since cultural activities mainly take place in the cities and this is where more and more people are living everyday. Beyond this, in Subaquatica we have always paid close attention to what is creative and characteristically urban. That is why we have chosen the postcard as a support, since it is an icon that identifies the city it represents.
In the exhibition we also included a selection of pieces that we have kept for our own collection during these years and that represent the kind of art that we’ve tried to show at our space.
It hasn’t always been easy to keep Subaquatica going during these 5 years and if we’ve finally been able to it’s in great measure because of the support from all of you. Thank you!
UK artist (www.mattsewell.co.uk) Matt Sewell is a tree lover, master of organic, and a neo-hippy illustrator who presented his first solo exhibition in Spain right here at Subaquatica. Under the title, “The sun shines everyday” the artist described the work he created for the occasion with these words: “It’s about wanderings, fleeting thoughts, leaving home, migrating birds, castles in the sky, her face in the clouds. The beauty of the world and how nature can look after itself, tigers and crocodiles. The sun and Mother earth”
Proud son of the 70s, Matt is known for his street work and his illustrations, with influences coming from European comic books from the end of the 20th century and his childhood in the countryside. Not surprisingly, his production is a fairly optimistic and colorful work of art, whether it’s out on the streets, in his studio or his commercial works as an illustrator.
With the ocassion of the publication of the book that originates from the project of the same name, we are hosting a short two week show with the touring art exhibition “A Nice Set” (www.aniceset.com) curated by Plus Et Plus in NY. The exhibition consist of a series of slipmats (those pieces used by DJs to cue their vinyls) customized by a superb selection of artist from all over the world: Build, Carlos “Mare 139″ Rodriguez, David Ellis, Ian “Swifty” Swift, Hort, Jeff Staple, Jeremyville, Luca Ionescu, Marc Atlan among others.
Choque Cultural is an art gallery that we feel close to in Subaquatuca since we happened to be in São Paulo exactly the day it opened in 2003, only a couple of months after Subaquatica had opened. Since then and due to the contacts we made back then and the huge amount of talent coming from that city we’ve showed work by many artist from that Brazillian megalopolis: Titi Freak, Stephan Doitschinoff, Flip, Herbert Baglione or Speto because they came by Madrid or in the form of prints, often edited by Choque cultural. Because the paulistan galley is also known for pioneering the edition of prints by young talented artists, many of them coming from the Graffiti, Street art of Tatoo scenes. In this way Choque Cultural has greatly contributed to the development of the careers of many emerging artists through their careful, honest and constant work channeling the creative energy of many, with respect for their freedom, no matter how subversive.
This short collective exhibition coincides in time with the greatest art fair in Spain: ARCO in Madrid, precisely when Brazil is the guest country. Because of this the show is in a way an Off ARCO absolutely unofficial project that brings the many visitors of the fair the chance to see the a sample of what’s happening in the outskirts of the art establishment in the giant south american country through the work of artists such as Speto, Titi Freak, Stephan Doitschinoff “Calma”, Onesto or Carlos Dias.
Derrick Hodgson (www.madreal.com) is a Toronto based artist and illustrator whose work is a clear example of the so-called “character design”. His imagery is based on his own experiences growing up in a small rural community north of Toronto. He relates these experiences to the expanding urban environment he finds himself in today. His recent work deals with the theme of rural meets urban, and the urge to gain control over our future in relation to an escalating loss of nature. In this work, complex social spaces are crowded with somewhat real and mutated characters. He has been working as a freelance artist for a wide range of clients over the past 9 years, including Nike (USA and Canada), Sony Creative (Japan), 55DSL or Fox TV (USA), among many others. Furthermore, he has participated in a number of solo and group shows in galleries worldwide, from Denmark to Australia and Italy. This was his first solo show in Spain under the title “Heavy Stew”. In his own words: “In simple terms the concept of stewing is putting a bunch of ingredients in a pot and letting them cook for a long period of time… I do this with my drawings and characters… it’s a visual stew of line and color”.
We could go into infinite detail about the psychotropic universe that Pelucas spits wherever he goes, but basically what you see is what you get. The main characters of this particular film are apparently simple and childish. However, they reflect an inner self traveling from the profound abyss of the conscience in an endless battle against killer routine, and hidden behind the glow of fluorescent black. No one can remain unaltered when confronting the schizo-frenetic world that emanates from Pelucas. Member of the most surreal group “Los niños especialitos” along with his twin brother Tiñas, Nano4814 and a couple of other equally bizarre artists, Pelucas compiled the best of his works from his latest creations in diverse media and techniques for his first solo exhibition in Madrid.
Rilla and Steve Alexander, members of the Australian design and art group Rinzen, exposed their obsessions and shared their secrets in Rinzen’s first show in Spain. Together they shed light on the shadows of an inner world inhabited by monsters and beasts, primitive actions and guilty thoughts. And, in a show displaying their deep affection for Spanish art and culture, they explored the national animal, the bull - and its metamorphosis into that famous symbol of unconscious desire, the Minotaur. The series of watercolor and ink studies were the continuation of the experiments Rilla and Steve began in exhibitions in Hamburg (Helium Cowboy, 2005), Berlin (Neurotitan, 2006) and Portland (Compound Gallery, 2007).
Rinzen is best known for the collaborative approach of its members. As a result of their visual and audio remix project they formed RMX. Extending the concept for their 2001 book, the group invited over 30 international participants to sequentially rework digital art, in what has now become a common method of collaboration among graphic designers and illustrators (¯RMX Extended Play˜ published by Die Gestalten Verlag). Most recently, the project has taken a hands-on turn, yielding a series of fabric toys which were made and remade as they were sent from country to country (¯Neighbourhood˜ published by Victionary 2006). Rinzen’s work, created both individually and by the group, covers a wide-range of styles and techniques, often featuring utopian alternate realities, bold, geometric designs or intricate, hand-drawn studies. Rinzen’s posters and album covers have been exhibited at the Louvre and their large scale artwork installed in Tokyo’s Zero Gate and Copenhagen’s Hotel Fox. They have also designed the inaugural issue of Paul Pope’s Batman for DC Comics and the graphics for a bicycle released by the Japanese company Bebike. The five members of the group are currently based in Berlin, Brisbane, Melbourne and New York.
More info here: www.rinzen.com
…and here: www.rmxxx.com
Maya Hayuk is a muralist, photographer, printmaker, designer, curator, record player, writer, performer, collector, Barnstormer, painter, illustrator, videographer, documentarian and lover of life. She has lived in San Francisco, Baltimore, Boston and Toronto and now resides in New York.
Hayuk makes use of an unbounded and unpredictable matrix of sources, mediums, and styles, while leaving no surface, discipline, or location untouched. Her relationship to the images she invents is an intricate and complex free association and a savvy act of putting all the parts together to make the whole. She employs intense yet apropos colors, complex geometries, and fine lines in order to collect the constituents that make up her present and visceral world. Her obsession with symmetry and her collection of mandalas, playing cards, hexes, totem poles, Ukrainian Easter eggs, quilts and bandanas play out in works that espouse the traditional and the innovative. Maya Hayuk’s wild and unabated imagery may appear chaotic but she has mastered an exact and resolute practice. Hayuk also executes human-scaled designs like small run books and prints, skateboard decks, shoes, photo essays, T-shirts, buttons, group shows, mixed tapes and smaller drawings and paintings.
Photographing musicians has fueled Hayuk’s livelihood for the last few years and she has enthusiastically designed and illustrated posters and record covers for Prefuse 73, Savath and Savalas, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Oakley Hall, Om, Home and Devendra Banhart. Also, under the moniker Open Arms, Hayuk has been making hilarious and poignant holiday tribute music videos with Home-guitarist Andrew Deutsch, including one for the garage rock band Awesome Color. Her penchant for music, coupled with the process of collaboration, is akin to musicians jamming. About these “killer jams” she says, “Collaborating with other artists is what I’d imagine playing in a band would be like. ”
Hayuk continues to produce work that is social, dynamic and out there for anyone and everyone to take in and discover. She continuously gives herself over to places, people and projects in a true communal bohemian fashion, working collaboratively as well as in a reproducible way, in her murals and prints, respectively. The collaborative projects and interactions that Hayuk has become increasingly known for have a productive impact that a lot of contemporary or fashionable work completely lacks. Her instinctive large-scale paintings directly effect public spaces and are genuine interventions that enrich their environment. They are completed with the help of friends, such as the Barnstormers group, whose work has gained international recognition. There is something very classic-rock-punk-folk-rainbow-peace-freak-out about Maya Hayuk that is very hard to put your finger on, but really it’s all about love. As if kindled by her distinguishing heart-shaped insignia signature, Hayuk’s disposition and practice eschew unpleasantries and welcome the irony and satire of real life.
“The Future”, her show for Subaquatica, was all about utopic landscapes, both inward and outward, in a very positive, forward thinking and idealized idea of nature. The show consisted in a series of new drawings, photographs, screenprints and a few pieces on wood.
Check her website: www.mayahayuk.com
Bfree (www.bfreeone.com) is the artistic name of Merijn Hos, a Utrecht (The Netherlands) based artist/ illustrator. His work depicts a colorful world of characters that operate in different environments. There is a thin line between his purely free artwork and the illustration work that he has been known to create for various clothing brands and magazines. In both situations he’s completely submerged in his own particular world, full of long-legged characters with their crazy high heeled shoes, freckles and hairdos. He is the almighty creator of this universe for which he uses lots of different materials. The art that he originally began creating on the street, with spray-paint, markers and posters, has now progressed into big stuffed dolls, paintings on canvas and drawings on paper. And as a result, the works of Bfree have already received their well-deserved recognition. Since he graduated with a BFA in Illustration at The Utrecht School of Visual Arts in 2003 he has held various exhibitions throughout The Netherlands and Europe. He has also participated in the Dilly shows that the British artist PMH has organized in London and Barcelona over the last few years.
When asked to bring his talent to the Spanish shores for a show at Subaquatica, the artist chose the title “I thought this was forever”. According to Bfree, “Over the last years I’ve noticed that every time I got used to something and started to get comfortable with it, I end up getting bored and I feel the situation has to change again. There are always a couple of days that are perfect and I think: ‘this is life, this is forever’ but then I get bored again”. In the show at Subaquatica, Bfree tried to capture this feeling, among other subjects that were moving him at the time, through framed drawings and paint works in various sizes. He also designed a T-shirt and a zine especially for this show.
PMH is a restless character always behind some initiative where he brings together international artists, most from the Street Art scene, to form a zine or group show, such as the “The Dilly” zine and shows in London and Barcelona. He is also one of the founders of the Finders Keepers group-project with shows in Milan, Hamburg, London and Barcelona. But PMH has participated in these and other group projects (Urban Edge in Milan or Wooster Remixed in New York, just to name a few) as an artist in his own right. It seems like his artwork has somehow been obscured by his role as a curator-promoter. At Subaquatica, nonetheless, we’ve been following his work as an artist for some time now. We’ve seen him at the different group shows and witnessed his works featured in books and magazines, as well as the commercial works he has created for different brands and companies. We felt it was time that he presented his works in a solo show and were very happy to hear that he felt the same way. So, right here at Subaquatica and under the title “Peel Slowly and See”, he held his first solo show. His work is varied and he uses anything that grabs him at that particular time: watercolors, papier-mâché, pen, paper collage and photography. Thus, the show was a combination of all these different techniques and approaches to his discourse.
Like most of his work, the name is a pop culture reference; it comes from the compilation album by Velvet Underground called “Peel Slowly and See”. The year prior to his show, PMH listened to VU every day on his way to work. The name isn’t just a ‘cool, hip’ reference; it’s a literal reference to his life. PMH has been an artist for what seems like forever now, although this was his first solo show ever. And it was a long time over due. Many of his friends/peers have put on many shows, but he’s been happy and engaged in organizing other projects, as he continued to work on his style. Finally he was ready to come out from the shadows with “Peel Slowly and See”. In his own words “an introduction to me, my world, my mind state and my style… Some say you are what influences you… so some pieces here directly represent my influences: Wu Tang, the Red Baron, cute girls or Black Sabbath, to name a few. Each picture is there to be peeled. Yeah, you see the image, but look closer and there are references, inside jokes: Peel me/ my art slowly and you’ll see me more clearly”
If you are not familiar with PMH’s work check this interview we recently made with him for this same website right here.
Stephan Doitschinoff, aka Calma, is an illustrator, painter, street-artist from São Paulo (Brazil). In the last few years he’s been particularly engaged in traveling to the US and Europe for shows and projects. As a result, an increasingly larger audience around the globe is becoming familiar with his very peculiar and distinctive imagery, which is full of religious connotations and sentences in Latin. He has worked for clients such as MTV Brazil, Red Bull and even music bands, including Saves the Day. Furthermore, he has recently completed a series of paintings for one of the albums of the Brazilian music group, Sepultura. The most prestigious alternative art and culture magazine, Juxtapoz also featured a full-page layout of one of his latest paintings, which was exhibited at the BLK/MRKT gallery in California for an anniversary group show. This was his first solo show in Spain.
“Death is a Holiday” is a series of drawings and paintings illustrating the outrageously attractive concept that death can actually treat us to a rest. Thrown in between worlds, it becomes a holiday between lives. The concept is serious and sensitive but wildly ironic. The gruesome humor eats away at the images on paper. A play on words, this deathly “holy” day is the only chance in life, in the godliest sense of the word, to enjoy the opportunity to meet your maker.
The pictures in this series take on a cyclic battle between Life and Death: life being hard work and death arriving as a timely holiday, an exotic destination worth its weight in gold. Reaching into themes related to paganism and alchemy, the signature skulls are a reminder of human mortality and the accumulation of knowledge, yet their subjects provoke a realization of the indestructible and the elemental.
The figures in the portraits are seen amidst a variety of afterlife visions. One even holds a bottle of poison, his ticket to his ultimate destination. This contemplation of death and the appeal of a holiday leave viewers wondering where they might be going.
Visit his website: http://www.stephandoit.com.br/
Ezba is one of the leading examples of the new generation of young urban artists in Madrid who combine their street work with their professional career in the world of illustration, graphic design or motion graphics. In particular, Ezba has been engaged in design and in the field of different kinds of engravings. Despite his exposure in international art books and magazines, his show at Subaquatica was his first solo exhibition after his participation in a number of group shows. It was an excellent opportunity to appreciate his latest developments in a range of different techniques on paper, such as silk-screen prints, vinyl, hand drawings… In his selection of works presented, the influence from music, movies and television was clear beyond any particular stylistic or conceptual statement. The images in these pieces came from basic sketches. They all proved to remain fresh while not portraying a particular style but a solid visual language that synthesizes and encodes different personal and professional experiences through Ezba’s own eyes.
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Blu began his artistic career without a well-defined artistic project, following his passion for drawings, Street Art, and particularly unauthorized, illegal art. His work is developed in two stages and two different spaces. It originates from sketches jotted down in a sketchbook, which represent a diary as well as a skeleton draft for the second stage: the mural. The actual project starts in front of the building, with size and load bearing elements of the wall, in an effort to identify an impossible combination between painting and the surrounding architecture. He avails himself of the most traditional and essential painting tools: brushes, paint roller, one color and black. He often uses techniques drawn from scenography as well as long sticks, which act as supports when working on large surfaces. The language adopted is strictly based on drawings, which originated from comics and cartoons alike, although it is best and provisionally epitomized by urban Graffiti. The work is preserved on paper before the mural has disappeared or faded, or before it is taken down, covered or destroyed together with its supporting frame.
Blu works and lives in Bologna (Italy) and prepared a series of previously unseen drawings for his show at Subaquatica, entitled “La nada” (”The nothingness”)
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Blu’s works can be seen on his site: www.blublu.org
Danny Sangra is a UK artist and graphic designer, originally from Leeds. He left home to move to London to study at Central St Martins. He’s also a member of the Scrawl Collective of (mostly street) artists and A Minute Silence with whom he works for the fashion industry as a print and textile designer. He has done several solo shows and has exhibited in Florence, Berlin and twice in Tokyo. He has also worked as an illustrator and designer for magazines such as Jockey Slut, Blag, X-Ray or Sleazenation and companies like Sony, Orange Mobile, Beams Clothing, Bread & Butter, Virgin Records and Merlin Clothing, among many others. And about his style, well, in his own words: “My Painting style has evolved to using geometric shapes and precise line work combined with organic structures. I paint freely moving in and out of styles depending on my mood. I prefer to paint spaces, so the paint has room to grow and takeover”.
“The Velvet King Overthrow” is the title of the show he prepared for Subaquatica where he showed brand new works: silkscreen and patchwork paintings never exhibited before. It was the first series of his explorations combining painting and silk screening.
More info on the artist here:
and here:
http://www.scrawlcollective.co.uk/danny.htm
Who is Sixeart?
Sixeart, as well as his origins and main references, comes from the 80’s and 90’s Barcelona Graffiti scene. During the last few years, his field of activity has opened and Sixeart has become progressively more professional, thus expanding his creative work to paintings on canvas, illustration and sculpture as well as his recent collaborations with the fashion industry. This natural evolution, combined with a continued street activity, has granted the artist the chance to participate in many individual and group art shows at different galleries and events. This exhibition in Subaquatica was, nonetheless, his first individual show in Madrid.
New techniques and forms of Street art, unlike classical Graffiti, have now become a worldwide phenomenon, and as a result Sixeart’s work seems to fit in with today’s trends. But for those who have followed his work for some time now, it’s obvious that, despite its logical evolution, Sixeart’s work has never been too concerned with the latest rage and has always remained true to nothing else but its own peculiar style, while always open to experimentation. His recurring characters (animals and children) have grown with the artist, defining a colorful but bittersweet universe full of contrast. And only Sixeart knows how to get there. We can only hope that he continues to bring back those wonderful snapshots from his travels.
Sixeart about this show: “Niños malos con flequillo” (Bad Kids with a Bangs): “For the past 4 years, I’ve been working on and off on different series of kids that I usually call “Bad Kids with a Fringe”. These “kids” have been to different places: A solo show with 25 paintings at the Laboratorio 22 Gallery, a 6 by 8 m mural painting at the La Santa Gallery, and later at the International BAC Festival (at the CCCB Art Center) with a 2 by 3 m painting, all in Barcelona. At each one of these shows, the series has evolved. The latest collection created for Subaquatica is probably the best “kids” series that I’ve done so far. “Niños malos con flequillo” comes from the inspiration that I get from the characters and night companions I’ve found during the Barcelona intense nights. All of them have been recorded in my subconscious: Their faces, their fringes, those evil faces that actually hide a beautiful inner soul in all of them. So, consequently this series came to exist, through different techniques and approaches: Graffiti, drawings or canvases”
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From 1/Dec/2005 to 2/Feb/2006. Opening Dec 1st 2005 19:30 h |
Louis Lambert “3ttman” and Guillaume Alby “Remed” have known each other since 1993, and share a common interest and approach to painting. Some years later, in 1999, and under the joint name, “Drive59”, they started to interact with each other and used the streets of their hometown of Lille (France) as a working medium for their sticker art. From this experience 3ttman and Remed emerged as an artistic duo.
Later on, they each followed different paths: 3ttman moved to Madrid and started working with silk-screening techniques and painting on canvas while Remed devoted himself to the always risky but addictive world of Graffiti, between France and Belgium.
During the summer of 2005, while Remed was visiting Madrid, both artists re-explored their own doubts, fears and fantasies and worked together using many different techniques, both “classical” and “urban”, such as painting on canvas, pencil, spray paint, markers, stencils… This allowed for a perfect mixture of both styles, which converged and supported each other. Remed’s typographic elements contrasted with 3ttman’s spontaneous strokes and Remed’s clean icons appeared side-by-side 3ttman’s childish and ironic representations. Thanks to their mutual trust and understanding, both can erase, confront, interact and understand each other in this joint effort to create form and content and in their need to deal with the subjects surrounding their lives. As a result, a series of fresh, colorful, topical and modern canvases emerged.
Overall, 3ttman and Remed just hoped to keep enjoying themselves and aimed at portraying the spirit of their joint and solo works -full of color and life- that they prepared for at the first proper exhibition organized by Subaquatica, which was held about 2 1/2 years after Subaquatica began.
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