ICONS & VANDALS

APRIL 30 -

JUNE 06

King Saladeen, Product of My Environment (2020)

Cey Adams / Charlie Ahearn / Ai Weiwei / Banksy / Beeple / John

Baldessari / Bill Barminski / Blek le Rat / Mr. Brainwash / Chen

Quilin / Chuck Close / Cope2 / Crash / Robert Crumb / DAZE /

Defer / Delta 2 / Al Diaz / Jim Dine / Dot Pigeon / Shepard Fairey

/ Fab 5 Freddy / Sam Francis / Futura / Giz / Bob Gruen / Richard

Hambleton / Keith Haring / Damien Hirst / Robert Indiana / Paul

Insect / JAZZ / JR / Alex Katz / Mari Kim / Kobra / Jeff Koons / Lady Pink / Steve Lazarides / Li Tianbing / Liu Bolin / The Love

Child / Gary Lichtenstein / Roy Lichtenstein / Mad Dog Jones /

Robert Motherwell / Takashi Murakami / NessGraphics / George

Ortman / Lee Quiñones / Fiona Rae / Rammellzee / RETNA / RISK

/ James Rosenquist / Ed Ruscha / King Saladeen / Tyler Shields /

David Shrigley / Donald Sultan / Bill Tavis / Sage Vaughn / Vhils / Andy Warhol / Tom Wesselmann / Yue Minjun / Zhang Xiaogang

/ Zhong Biao

For more information and pricing, please contact us by phone, email, or at one of our two locations

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FOREWORD

Recognizable by name and respected for their invaluable contribution, the artists featured in Icons & Vandals have subverted the contemporary art world throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Categorized by their emergence, whether through normative or non-normative means, these artists have distinguished themselves through disruption. Icons & Vandals seeks to celebrate and highlight monumental works by notable innovators.

With artwork spanning 60 years, Icons & Vandals features art-world agitators from across the globe. Modern Masters—such as Alex Katz and Jim Dine challenged the status quo through aesthetic and technical innovation. While Pop Art icons like James Rosenquist and Robert Indiana mined everyday culture and transformed it into fine art. Contemporary Neo-Pop legends—such as Takashi Murakami and Mari Kim—re-explore the conceptual underpinnings of Pop through the lens of global contemporary culture while pushing the visual language of the movement even further. Contemporary Chinese Artists like Li Tianbing and Zhang Xiaogang—critique their country’s collectivist society on a global scale.

Street art pioneers from Cey Adams and Richard Hambleton to Blek le Rat and Banksy—disrupt physical urban space while challenging the boundaries of what can be considered art. In this same vein, artist-licensed Skate Decks and Vinyl Art bring both toy culture and the subculture of skating into the upper echelon of the art world and redefine what it means to be a collector.

By contemplating ground-breaking movements from the past six decades, Icons & Vandals allows viewers to rediscover and redefine the art world’s most iconic and contentious household names. These artists have left their mark on the development and progression of contemporary art by subverting the norms of their own time. Through this show, it becomes clear that these two labels are not mutually exclusive but in fact ingrained in their interconnectedness.

Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination, and encourages people to go further.

― KEITH HARING

ICONS

MODERN + CONTEMPORARY MASTERS

JOHN BALDESSARI

ROBERT CRUMB

CHUCK CLOSE

JIM DINE

SAM FRANCIS

BOB GRUEN

ALEX KATZ

ROBERT MOTHERWELL

LYORA PISSARRO FIONA RAE

ED RUSCHA

TYLER SHIELDS

DAVID SHRIGLEY

DONALD SULTAN

“To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing-- what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that.”

― Gerhard Richter

Not confined to a certain style, these artists have broken ground in their respective movements through their innovative approach to the historical tradition of art-making. Throughout the twentieth century, art has been defined and narrowed into specific movements and periods held together by their stylistic, philosophical, or conceptual underpinnings. Other artists, such as Alex Katz, Jim Dine, and Ed Ruscha defy categorization with their prolific and long-lasting careers. Contemporary masters, from YBA's Fiona Rae to Rock and Roll photographer Bob Gruen continue to innovate their respective medias.

JOHN BALDESSARI

American, 1931–2020

It is hard to characterize John Baldessari's varied practice which includes photomontage, artist’s books, prints, paintings, film, performance, and installation—except through his approach of good-humored irreverence. Baldessari is commonly associated with Conceptual or Minimalist art, though he has called this characterization “a little bit boring.” His twodimensional works often incorporate found images, composed in layers or presented as distinct pieces with an element of surprise, like a brightly colored geometric shape in the place of a face or a starkly printed sardonic caption. Baldessari has demonstrated a lasting interest in language and semantics, articulating these concerns through the use of puns or the juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated images and words, as in his 1978 work Blasted Allegories. His self-referencing photomontages and use of text have been sources of inspiration for countless artists, including Cindy Sherman, David Salle, and Barbara Kruger.

Table Lamp and It's Shadows (A1-A6), 1994

Monotype, photo intaglio, cut-out and hand-colored acrylic additions on handmade paper, laminated for thickness

38.25 x 27.25 in

John Baldessari

CHUCK CLOSE

American, 1940 - 2021

that appear abstract from up close and highly realistic and pixelated from afar. Close has exhibited extensively since the ’60s and enjoyed solo shows at the Walker Art Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the State Hermitage Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, among other institutions. He has featured in group exhibitions at the Venice Biennale and Documenta on multiple occasions. At auction, his work has sold for seven figures. Close has often depicted his family and friends, including fellow artists Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, and Richard Serra. His work links him not only to other Photorealists such as Richard Estes and Audrey Flack, but also to the Conceptual art movement.

Chuck Close

Roy Lichtenstein

(PP/Aside Edition of 12), 1999

Digital inkjet prints on Somerset

paper, four panels

92 x 69 in

Chuck Close

Alex Katz

(PP/Aside Edition of 12), 1996

Monochrome digital pigment print on

Arches Aquarelle, cold press paper

92 x 69 in

ROBERT CRUMB

expresses his contempt and disgust with America. He created the notorious characters Devil Girl, Fritz the Cat, and Mr. Natural, and was the subject of Terry Zwigoff’s 1995 documentary, Crumb. In 2009, he published his illustrated graphic novel version of the Book of Genesis, including annotations explaining his reactions to Biblical stories.

Robert Crumb

Green Girl, 1980

Oil paint on canvas

20 x 16 in

BOB GRUEN

American, b. 1945

Bob Gruen is one of the most well-known and respected photographers in rock and roll. By the mid 1970s, he was already regarded as one of the foremost documenters of the scene. While living in New York, he notably befriended John Lennon and Yoko Ono and captured intimate moments from their personal lives. Gruen is perhaps best known for an iconic photograph of Lennon wearing a New York City t-shirt. He also photographed major acts such as Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Kiss, and others, while also covering the emerging New Wave and Punk bands including The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, and Blondie. Among his many books of photographs are "The Sex Pistols - Chaos," "The Rolling Stones Crossfire Hurricane,""The Clash," "John Lennon - The New York Years," and "Rock Seen." Gruen’s work has been exhibited widely, including at the Brooklyn Museum, Pearlstein Gallery at the Drexel University Museum, Blender Gallery in Sydney, and the Beit Hatfutsot Museum in Tel Aviv, among others.

Bob Gruen

Mick Jagger, NYC, 1972 (29/50), 2014

Silkscreen on 2ply Rising Museum Board

52 37 x 38 87 in

Printed by Gary Lichtenstein Editions

Bob Gruen

John Lennon, NYC, 1974 (34/50), 2014

Silkscreen on 2ply Rising Museum Board

54 x 40 in

Printed by Gary Lichtenstein Editions

American, b. 1927 ALEX KATZ

New York School painter Alex Katz developed his highly stylized aesthetic in reaction to 1950s Abstract Expressionism, finding his own distinctive resolution between formalism and representation. His brightly colored figurative and landscape paintings are rendered in a flat style that takes cues from everyday visual culture like advertising and cinema, in many ways anticipating both the formal and conceptual concerns of Pop Art. Well known for his many portraits of his wife and muse, Ada, Katz has also dedicated himself to printmaking and freestanding sculptures of cutout figures painted on wood or aluminum. Katz' work resides in numerous public collections across the world, including: the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Saatchi Gallery in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

Alex Katz

Sasha 2 (75/100), 2016

Archival pigment print in colors on Crane Museo Max paper

33.87 x 33.87 in

Alex Katz

Gray Dress (Laura) (AP 4/18), 1992

Screenprint in twenty-three colors

on Arches 100% Rag paper

36 x 28 in

LYORA PISSARRO

Nature. These paintings aim at translating perfect moments of clarity and stillness into a language made of color." Currently based between New York and London, Pissarro completed her formal education in Fine Art at Hunter College in NY after attending Rhode Island School of Design for her foundation year. The often dream-like landscapes of Pissarro’s work have much in common with the artist’s embrace of her artistic heritage as a direct descendent of Impressionist Camille Pissarro. Described as the ultimate young painter in GQ magazine, Pissarro has exhibited across the United States and in London.

FIONA RAE

British, b. 1963

Counted among the Young British Artists (YBA), Fiona Rae has drawn inspiration from many divergent sources ranging from Willem de Kooning to cartoons. Her abstract paintings make bold use of juxtaposition, both formal and thematic. Rae combines contrasting painting styles on the same canvas and renders often kitschy images with formal techniques such as impasto, resulting in works that are at once fanciful and serious, enchanting and slightly menacing. Rae was selected for the 44th Venice Bienniale in 1990, shortlisted for the Turner Prize at the Tate Gallery in 1991, as well as nominated for the Eliette von Karajan Prize for Young Painters in Austria, in 1993. In the early 2000s she was inducted into London’s Royal Academy of Art and later appointed a Tate Artist Trustee. Her work is held by many art institutions worldwide such as the Royal Academy of Arts and the Tate Modern in London, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Rae currently lives and works in London where she is professor of painting at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Fiona Rae

Untitled (Brown), 1994

Oil and acrylic on canvas

78 x 72 in

ED RUSCHA

American, b. 1937

Despite being credited with a Pop sensibility, Ed Ruscha defies categorization with his diverse output of photographic books and tongue-in-cheek photo-collages, paintings, and drawings. Ruscha’s work is inspired by the ironies and idiosyncrasies of life in Los Angeles, which he often conveys by placing glib words and phrases from colloquial and consumerist usage atop photographic images or fields of color. Known for painting and drawing with unusual materials such as gunpowder, blood, and Pepto Bismol, Ruscha draws attention to the deterioration of language and the pervasive cliches in pop culture, illustrated by his iconic 1979 painting I Don’t Want No Retro Spective. “You see this badly done on purpose, but the badly-done-on-purpose thing was done so well that it just becomes, let’s say, profound,” he once said. Equally renowned were his photographic books, in which he transferred the deadpan Pop style into series of images of LA apartments, palm trees, or Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1962), his most famous work.

Ed Ruscha

Sin Without (C.T.P. 1/2), 2002

Lithograph printed in yellow-green on wove paper

26.75 x 46 in

POP ART

KEITH HARING

ROBERT INDIANA

ROY LICHTENSTEIN

JAMES ROSENQUIST

ANDY WARHOL

TOM WESSELMANN

“The Pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split second comics, picnic tables, men’s trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, coke bottles all the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried so hard not to notice at all.”

― Andy Warhol

Pop art dominated the American art scene beginning in the early 1960s. Short for “popular art,” it featured common household objects and consumer products, as well as forms of media such as newspapers, and magazines recognizable to the masses. Artists often created Pop works using mechanical or commercial techniques, such as silk-screening. Modernist critics were horrified by pop artists’ use of ‘low’ subject matter and their apparently uncritical treatment of it. In fact, Pop took art into new areas of subject matter and developed innovative ways of presenting it, emerging as one of the first manifestations of postmodernism. As Warhol suggested, the choice of mundane subject matter and machine-like techniques was a blunt rejection of the heroic subjects and methods of Abstract Expressionism, the leading American movement of the previous decade.

ROBERT INDIANA

American, 1928–2018

Robert Indiana was an American Pop artist whose work drew inspiration from signs, billboards, and commercial logos. He is best known for his series of LOVE paintings, which employed bold and colorful letterforms to spell out the word “love.”

Following the advice of his friend Ellsworth Kelly, the artist relocated to New York after receiving his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1954. It was here that Indiana became acquainted with a number of prominent artists, including Agnes Martin, and James Rosenquist. Over the following decades his work became increasingly popular, with both his LOVE and HOPE motifs transformed into a number of public sculptures. In September 2013, the Whitney Museum of American Art opened “Robert Indiana: Beyond LOVE,” the artist’s first retrospective in New York. Indiana died on May 19, 2018 in Vinalhaven, ME. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.

American GARY LICHTENSTEIN

Abramovic, Robert Indiana, and Ken Price. Lichtenstein s prints have been exhibited and collected by, among others, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, and the Chicago Art Institute.

Gary Lichtenstein Editions is a publisher and printer of fine art silkscreen editions, located in Jersey City, NJ. Eighteen-foot ceilings and gallery-lit exhibition space allow for an everchanging display of work from both recent projects and their extensive print archive. In addition to custom screenprinting services, GLE frequently curates exhibitions, produces events and cultivates site-specific projects and educational programs.

Robert Indiana

HEAL (red, green, blue variation) (/5), 2015

Silkscreen on 2ply Rising Museum Board

32 x 32 in

Printed by Gary Lichtenstein Editions

Bob Gruen

Led Zeppelin, NYC, 1973 (/50), 2014

Silkscreen on 2ply Rising Museum Board

40 x 50 in

Printed by Gary Lichtenstein Editions

Cey Adams

American Flag (Black), 2021

Silkscreen on 320g Coventry Rag Paper

28 x 48 in

Printed by Gary Lichtenstein Editions

ROY LICHTENSTEIN

American, 1923–1997

detached and deadpan style at a time when introspective Abstract Expressionism reigned. Mining material from advertisements, comics, and the everyday, Lichtenstein brought what was then a great taboo commercial art into the gallery. He stressed the artificiality of his images by painting them as though they’d come from a commercial press, with the flat, single-color Ben-Day dots of the newspaper meticulously rendered by hand using paint and stencils. Later in his career, Lichtenstein extended his source material to art history, including the work of Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso, and experimented with three-dimensional works. Lichtenstein’s use of appropriated imagery has influenced artists such as Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, and Raymond Pettibon.

Roy Lichtenstein

Wallpaper with Blue Floor Interior (/300), 1992

Screenprint in colors on Paper Technologies, Inc. Waterleaf paper in five panels 102 x 152.50 in

JAMES ROSENQUIST

American, 1933–2017

works that bring the visual language of commercial painting onto canvas (notably, from 1957-60, Rosenquist earned his living as a billboard painter). In his use of mass-produced goods and vernacular culture rendered in an anonymous style, Rosenquist's work recalls that of Andy Warhol, while his seemingly irrational, mysterious pictorial combinations owe a debt to Surrealism. His breakthrough work, the iconic F-111 (1965) 51 panels that total over 22 by 24 feet juxtaposes an American fighter plane with a Firestone tire, garish orange tinned spaghetti, and a young girl under a hair dryer.

James Rosenquist

Time Door Time D'or (19/28), 1989

Colored pressed paper pulp with lithographic collage on two sheets on TGL handmade paper, the collage elements on Rives BFK wove paper 97 50 x 120 in

NEO POP

DAMIEN HIRST

TAKASHI MURAKAMI

MARI KIM

JEFF KOONS

Emerging in the late eighties, the Neo-Pop movement drew upon and expanded the Pop aesthetic made popular in the mid-20th century by icons like Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana. Artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst continued to elevate and exaggerate the everyday while not shying away from themes of narcissism, death, and decadence. Both widespread and global, Neo-Pop surged in Asia with artists such as Takashi Murakami and Mari Kim merging the youthful pop aesthetic with manga and contemporary culture. Associated with the Superflat movement, both Kim and Murakami pull from recognizable, appealing themes and strive to create accessible art while making sense of the postindustrial world they inhabit.

"Art is about profundity. It's about connecting to everything that it means to be alive, but you have to act."

Jeff Koons

DAMIEN HIRST

British, b. 1965

Damien Hirst is a British Conceptual artist known for his controversial take on beauty and found-art objects. Along with Liam Gillick, Tracey Emin, and Sarah Lucas, Hirst was part of the Young British Artists movement that rose to prominence in the early 1990s. “I have always been aware that you have to get people listening before you can change their minds,” he reflected. “Any artist's big fear is being ignored, so if you get debate, that's great.” As a student at Goldsmiths College in London, his work caught the eye of the collector and gallerist Charles Saatchi, who became an early patron. Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) a large vitrine containing an Australian tiger shark suspended in formaldehyde—was financed by Saatchi and helped to launch the artist’s career. Hirst went on to win the coveted Turner Prize in 1995. In 2012, he showed what went on to be one of his most controversial work in decades, the installation In and Out of Love, which consisted of two white windowless rooms in which over 9,000 butterflies flitted around and died.

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) (111/300), 2000

Lambda inkjet print in colors on gloss Fujicolor professional paper 45 x 53 x 2 25 in

Damien Hirst

MARI KIM

South Korean, b. 1979

Mari Kim calls the recurring figure in her work “Eyedoll,” a cartoon-like, porcelain-skinned female distinguished by her large oval eyes. In Kim’s lustrous ink-on-canvas prints, Eyedoll stares directly out from the surface; she dons different outfits and guises while standing against different backgrounds. As Eyedoll shifts through identities, Kim makes subtle alterations to the figure’s iris patterns, matching changes in costume to changes in mood. The relentless seriality of her work attends to questions of how identity can be altered with props and fashion, and it also models a kind of fetishistic Asian female identity that is confrontational in its forwardness.

The Moon, 2021

Mari Kim

Acrylic pen, Acrylic paint used, Genuine gold leaf plated on ultra-chrome ink printed paper

51 x 51 in

TAKASHI MURAKAMI

Japanese, b. 1962

his contemporary Pop synthesis of fine art and popular culture, particularly his use of a boldly graphic and colorful anime and manga cartoon style. Murakami became famous in the 1990s for his “Superflat” theory and for organizing the paradigmatic exhibition of that title, which linked the origins of contemporary Japanese visual culture to historical Japanese art. His output includes paintings, sculptures, drawings, animations, and collaborations with brands such as Louis Vuitton. “Japanese people accept that art and commerce will be blended; and in fact, they are surprised by the rigid and pretentious Western hierarchy of “high art’,” Murakami says. “In the West, it certainly is dangerous to blend the two because people will throw all sorts of stones. But that’s okay— I’m ready with my hard hat.”

Takashi Murakami

Jellyfish Eyes × e-ma Flower Stand Happy Rainbow (13/30), 2013

Fabricated plastic flower with one hundred candy cases, on a painted metal stand with five wheels

64 75 x 56 25 x 28 25 in

CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART

AI WEIWEI

CHEN QIULIN

LI TIANBING

LIU BOLIN

YUE MINJUN

ZHANG XIAOGANG

ZHONG BIAO

“Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put, aside from using one's imagination - perhaps more importantly - creativity is the power to act.”

Ai Weiwei

Traversing media and style, Contemporary Chinese artists explore identity, society, and tradition through sculpture, print, photography, and installation, emerging at the forefront of the international contemporary art movement. Ai Weiwei, Yue Minjun, and Zhang Xiaogang engage the notion of identity within the Chinese culture of collectivism while photographer Liu Bolin explores notions of invisibility through philosophical and societal perspectives, respectively.

Chinese, b. 1957 AI WEIWEI

then released to house arrest. I don t see myself as a dissident artist,” he says. “I see them as a dissident government!” Some of Ai’s best known works are installations, often tending towards the conceptual and sparking dialogue between the contemporary world and traditional Chinese modes of thought and production. For Sunflower Seeds (2010) at the Tate Modern, he scattered 100 million porcelain “seeds” handpainted by 1,600 Chinese artisans a commentary on mass consumption and the loss of individuality. His infamous Coca Cola Vase (1994) is a Han Dynasty urn emblazoned with the ubiquitous soft-drink logo. Ai also served as artistic consultant on the design of the “Bird’s Nest” stadium for Beijing’s 2008 Olympics, and has curated pavilions and museum exhibitions around the globe.

Ai Weiwei

Thin Line (98/100), 2017

3D multiple with glass fiber light line and PMMA mirror in acrylic display case

19.69 x 19.69 x 9.84 in

LI TIANBING

Chinese, b.1974

When Li Tianbing was 12 years old, he sold a cow and used the proceeds to purchase his first camera, with which he has been traversing the mountains in Fujian province ever since, taking portraits of the people who live in the impoverished, rural villages. Entirely self-taught, he uses black-and-white film, sometimes adding touches of color by hand. Rather than naming the individuals in his portraits, Li labels each one “Comrade,” adhering to the Communist form of address.

Through his decades of work, he has amassed a straightforward, subtle, and sensitive visual record of multiple generations of people, who have lived through momentous transitions in China’s history, including independence from colonial rule, the Cultural Revolution, and rapid modernization.

ZHANG XIAOGANG

Chinese, b. 1958

of the 1990s and his 2005–06 series of grisaille portraits in oil reveal countless narratives about the aspirations and failures of the Cultural Revolution as well as Zhang’s own emotions. Like the blank visages of the individuals in these paintings, Zhang’s brass and concrete sculptures of figures, as well as implements used for recording history (such as fountain pens, notebooks, and light bulbs, all 2009), appear compressed and distorted by memory, age, and some unknown force.

Zhang Xiaogang

Untitled, from Bloodline: Big Family (17/68), 2007

Lithograph in colors on Arches paper

36.50 x 51.50 in

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

― BANKSY

VANDALS

GRAFFITI

COPE2

DAZE AL DIAZ

DEFER

DELTA 2

FAB 5 FREDDY

FUTURA GIZ

LADY PINK

LEE QUINONES

RAMMELLZEE

RISK

Some people are enraged, and some people are applauding. If there were a mission statement for graffiti, that would be it.

Barry McGee

Graffiti was born on the streets of New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Its earliest practitioners were roving bands of “writers” who competed within their ranks and with rival groups to reach ever greater heights of proliferation, notoriety, and visibility. Out of necessity, graffiti evolved rapidly. This evolution saw artists graduating from paint pens and permanent markers and into the media, which would aid, in part, in the fracturing of the movement from the singular goal of competition between writers into an artistic practice for public consumption. Taggers began to utilize spray paint as a means to create grander pieces with greater staying power, while still more artists departed from these concepts entirely.

American, b.1962 DAZE

Chris ‘Daze’ Ellis began his prolific Career painting New York City subway cars in 1976 while attending The High School of Art and Design. He remains one of the few artists of his generation to make the successful transition from the subways to the studio. His first group show was the seminal “Beyond Words” at the Mudd Club in 1981. Soon after his first solo exhibition was held at Fashion Moda, an influential alternative art space in the South Bronx. One year later the Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen, Germany acquired the first of several paintings for their permanent collection. Since then he has exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions in such cities as Paris, Monte Carlo, Singapore, Beijing, Florence, and Buenos Aires. Ellis’ work has continued to be included in many group shows and museum surveys internationally. Daze’s paintings have found themselves in many private collections including Eric Clapton, Natalie Imbruglia and Madonna. His work can also be found in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum, NY, Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Museum of the City of New York, The Ludwig Museum, Aachen, and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.

Daze

Disco Tunnel, 2019

Oil, acrylic, spray paint, and pumice on canvas

52 x 41 75 x 1 75 in

AL DIAZ

American, b. 1959

Al Díaz’s career spans five decades. Born and raised Puerto Rican in New York City, by age 15 he was an influential firstgeneration subway graffiti artist known as “BOMB- ONE.” His friendship and artistic collaboration with high school schoolmate Jean-Michel Basquiat on SAMO©, has been noted often in contemporary art history. Díaz later contributed percussion to numerous musical recordings and performances, including Basquiat’s historic 1983 record, “Beat Bop.” Díaz is sought-after as an expert of New York City counterculture art. He appears often in publications, as a highlighted speaker for a variety of panel discussions at universities and museums (including Smithsonian Institution, the Brooklyn Museum, The New School and Christie’s Education), and has been featured in several films, including Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. Díaz’ current creative practice in Brooklyn includes gathering the standard “WET PAINT” signage used throughout the NYC MTA, and reconstructing them to create clever, poignant anagrams in various mixed media and public art formats. His work is shown and privately collected internationally.

Al Diaz

A Familiar Scent Remains, 2022

Silkscreen and hand painting on synthetic fabric mounted on wood panel 48 x 110 x 2.75 in

LADY PINK

Ecuadorian-American, b. 1964

Brooklyn Museum, among others. They were featured in the major exhibitions “Art in the Streets” at the LA MOCA and “Graffiti” at the Brooklyn Museum. Lady Pink continues to mature as an artist, selling work internationally and producing ambitious murals commissioned for universities, corporations and institutions

American, 1960 - 2010 RAMMELLZEE

First known as a graffiti artist, Rammellzee also recorded and performed as a musician and later worked in sculpture and assemblage. His self-titled Gothic Futurism style was distinguished by the use of bright colors, barbed letters, and its symbolic campaign against standardization. Rammellzee’s self-given name is an esoteric derivation of a math equation. He first began tagging subway cars during the late 1970s. Rammellzee went on to release the hip-hop single “Beat Bop” with K-Rob in 1983, and exhibited alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. In the decades that followed, the artist continued to produce experimental music, costume-like sculptures, and spray painted work. In 2004, Rammellzee collaborated with the design brand Supreme to create a release of 20 hand painted backpacks. The artist died on June 27, 2010 in New York, NY.

Rammellzee

Untitled, 1986

Spray paint on cardboard

17.72 x 39.37 in

American, b. 1967 RISK

like billboards, rooftops, and overpasses. His art can be seen in music videos by everyone from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Michael Jackson.

Risk

Peaceful Warrior 777, 2021

Acrylic, aerosol, crushed abalone on door from Boeing 777 airliner

81 x 50 x 10 in

STREET

CEY ADAMS

BANKSY

BILL BARMINSKI

BLEK LE RAT

MR. BRAINWASH CRASH

AL DIAZ

SHEPARD FAIREY

RICHARD HAMBLETON

PAUL INSECT

JAZZ JR KOBRA

STEVE LAZARIDES

THE LOVE CHILD

RETNA

KING SALADEEN

BILL TAVIS

SAGE VAUGHN VHILS

“Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.”

― Banksy

From Jean-Michel Basquiat to Shepard Fairey, street artists are known for their creative expressions of rebellion. Keith Haring famously turned the New York City subway system into his canvas, KAWS broke into telephone booths and graffitied their advertising panels, and Richard Hambleton surprised NYC denizens with fake crime scene silhouettes painted on sidewalks. Banksy tricked the art world when he shredded his million-dollar canvas Girl With Balloon after it sold at auction in 2018. Today, there are more ways than ever to bring this defiant style of street art into the home, from salvaged graffiti walls to justreleased print editions by emerging talent.

CEY ADAMS

American, b. 1962

New York City native Cey Adams emerged from the downtown graffiti movement to exhibit alongside fellow artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. He appeared in the historic 1982 PBS documentary Style Wars which tracks subway graffiti in New York. Cey’s work explores the relationship between transformation and discovery focusing on themes ranging from pop culture to race and gender relations. His practice involves dismantling various imagery and paper elements to build multiple layers of color, texture, shadow, and light. Cey draws inspiration from 60’s pop art, sign painting, comic books, and popular culture. As the Creative Director of hip hop mogul Russell Simmons’ Def Jam Recordings, he co-founded the Drawing Board, the label’s inhouse visual design firm, where he created visual identities, album covers, logos, and advertising campaigns for Run DMC, Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Notorious B.I.G., and Jay-Z. He exhibits, lectures and teaches art workshops at institutions including: MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, Walker Art Center, and MoCA Los Angeles.

Cey Adams

Pan Am Monoprint, 2021

Silkscreen and hand collage on 2ply Museum Board 32.5 x 32.5 in

BANKSY Banksy, b.1974

graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.” Banksy gained his notoriety through a range of urban interventions, from modifying street signs and printing his own currency to illegally hanging his own works in institutions such as the Louvre and the Museum of Modern Art. Most often using spray paint and stencils, Banksy has crafted a signature, immediately identifiable graphic style and a recurring cast of cops, soldiers, children, and celebrities—through which he critically examines contemporary issues of consumerism, political authority, terrorism, and the status of art and its display

AVAILABLE TO VIEW IN PERSON

BLEK LE RAT

French, b.1951

Pioneering French graffiti artist Blek le Rat counts the infamous Banksy among his many admirers. Born Xavier Prou, the artist was one of the first graffiti artists in Paris and has been described as the “Father of stencil graffiti.” Blek was introduced to graffiti after a trip to New York City in 1971 and was inspired to bring the style back to Paris, adapting the stencil as a more fitting technique for French architecture. He is best known for stenciling a giant graphic image of a rat all over Paris in the early 1980s, which to him symbolized both freedom and the dissemination of art through the city as if it were the plague. In recent years his work has become increasingly political, focusing on the homeless, the environment, and other social causes. Blek’s posters of kidnapped French journalist Florence Aubenas helped raise public awareness of her situation, pressuring politicians and journalists to work harder for her release.

Blek le Rat

Boy with Airplane, 2011

Stencil, spray paint and acrylic on canvas

79.50 x 52 x 2 in

MR BRAINWASH

French, b.1966

culture, and art history. The artist subtly alters the picture or its context, mischievously undermining the tone of the source material. Brainwash, a pseudonym for Thierry Guetta, is known for producing massive spectacles to display his art. He came to prominence through mounting large-scale public projects in his current home of Los Angeles and as the main figure in the Banksy-directed film Exit Through the Gift Shop. His work hinges on the idea that anything is possible in his practice. “Art has no walls. Anybody can be an artist,” he says. “Art has no rules. There’s no manual.”

Pop Wall, 2020

Mr. Brainwash

Silkscreen and mixed media on canvas

36 x 60 in

RICHARD HAMBLETON

Canadian, 1952 - 2017

Richard Hambleton, referred to as the “godfather of street art,” was a pioneering Canadian street artist. He is recognized as a pivotal intermediary between Abstract Expressionism and the popular “art for the masses” graffiti that boomed in the 1980s. Hambleton is best known for his grisly “Shadowmen” and “Horse and Rider” figures, which he tagged in alleyways and drug-dealing hotspots in Lower Manhattan throughout the '70s and ’80s. Despite finding early success in New York and showing at the Venice Biennale in 1984 and ’88, Hambleton was largely forgotten in the ’90s and early 2000s, when his personal battles with addiction alienated him from the art world. Hambleton’s work saw a resurgence in the 2010s, with solo shows, major museum retrospectives, and documentaries taking a new look at the seminal role he played in the history of street art.

Battle Scene Painting, 1983

Acrylic and plastic figurines on canvas

96 x 40 in

Richard Hambleton

JAZZ American

the paintings to flow uninterrupted. His highest goal is finding a genuine connection with the viewer and to strike a cord deep in their soul, allowing them to find comfort or a feel a sense of familiarity. Jazz' mediums consist primarily of oil stick, oil paints, acrylics, and spray paint on canvas, wood, and paper.

JAZZ

Life Cycle #3, 2020

Mixed Media on Canvas

60 x 48 in

KING SALADEEN

American, b.1983

and sketches as a way to relieve stress but it became a light in the dark for the teens and what they had been through as well as their current situations. In 2011 he began his venture at the Saladeen Art Group showcasing art in SOHO NYC, Art Basel Miami Beach, LA ART SHOW and more.

King Saladeen

Product of My Environment

Acrylic, spray paint, mixed media on canvas and resin

72 x 72 x 3 in

RETNA

American, b.1979

RETNA is an American street artist known for his unique typography and letterforms. RETNA combines visual linguistics, urban poetics, and appropriated fashion imagery to explore an eclectic range of media, including graffiti, photography, and painting. “It is important to have art in the streets as a cultural fabric that is woven into the city for the upliftment of civic pride,” he once stated. Born Marquis Lewis, he joined the Los Angeles mural scene as a teenager, developing his text-based signature style featuring intricate line work, complex layering, and a wide range of color. Painting with a brush in addition to a spray can, the artist achieves highly detailed line work. He has exhibited at venues throughout the world, notably including L.A. Art Machine in Los Angeles, Don Gallery in Milan, Yves Laroche Galerie d’Art in Montreal, and Art for All in Malaga, among others. The artist continues to live and works in Los Angeles, CA.

RETNA

Violators Will be Escorted Off the Premises, 2010-2011

Acrylic on wood panels

75.5 xx 48 in

VHILS

Portuguese, b.1987

Vhils, the pseudonym of Portuguese street artist Alexandre Farto, has become synonymous with his signature approach to street portraiture. Working both outdoors and indoors, his large-scale, detailed images are achieved by scratching, drilling, and using bleach to tear away at billboards, walls, and found panels. The subjects therefore become one with the architecture and detritus that Vhils uses as both substrate and medium. His groundbreaking bas-relief carving technique has been hailed as one of the most compelling approaches to art created in the streets in the last decade. Challenging the notion that graffiti art is socially disruptive, Vhils sees the medium as a force to push the boundaries of the politics of communication in the social arena. An avid experimentalist, Vhils has been developing his personal aesthetics in a plurality of media besides his signature carving technique: from stencil painting to metal etching, from pyrotechnic explosions and video to sculptural installations. Since 2005, he has presented his work in over 30 countries around the world.

Vhils

Ataxia 12, 2013

Hand-carved old wooden doors assembled 86 × 59 in

DIGITAL ART: NFTs

BEEPLE

NESSGRAPHICS

MAD DOG JONES

DOT PIGEON

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises in the art world in the last two years has been the explosion of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. Artists with digitally native practices and beyond saw the potential of this new technology. From the endless creative possibilities the medium allows to the benefits of tracking ownership history on the blockchain, a growing and diverse group of artists are using the technology’s potential to propel their practices and expand their markets. This advancement also brought about an evolution in the traditional role of the auction house, with artists directly engaging the houses to contextualize their work and support and educate a growing collecting community. The artist Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple, set a record last year when his collage of images, Everydays: The First 5,000 Days (2021), sold for US$69 million.

BEEPLE

American, b. 1981

Beeple, also known as Mike Winkelmann, is an American digital artist, graphic designer, and animator. In March 2021, Beeple made art history after selling his piece EVERYDAYS:

THE FIRST 5000 DAYS for $69M, making it the fourth most expensive artwork by a living artist and the first NFT to be sold a Christie's auction. Beeple's visionary and often irreverent digital pictures have propelled him to the top of the digital art world, winning him 1.8 million followers on Instagram and high-profile collaborations with global brands ranging from Louis Vuitton to Nike, as well as performing artists from Katy Perry to Childish Gambino. As one of the originators of the current "everyday" movement in 3D graphics, Beeple has been creating a picture everyday from start to finish and posting it online for over ten years without missing a single day. Beeple is currently the highest grossing blockchain-based digital artist.

Beeple

5000 Day Selects (56/105), 2021

NFT and Physical Token in original unopened box

NESSGRAPHICS

American, b. 1995

25-year-old digital artist Alex Ness, known as NessGraphics, works in a wide range of modern media, known primarily for his mastery of 3D animation, modeling, and design. From the age of 12, Ness gravitated towards the use of technology to captivate his audience through digital storytelling at varying scales, showcasing his visual art alongside award-winning musicians at globally prominent events and shows. Ness weaves in soothing undertones of dystopian and cyberpunk timelessness into his work and is widely respected as a thought leader in the NFT world. NessGraphics' first piece to be offered at auction was K1LLSCR33N at Sotheby's New York in 2021, which sold for $214,200 USD.

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