ICONS

West Chelsea Contemporary is a world-class gallery offering museum-quality art in Austin, Texas, and New York City, focusing on 20th century and contemporary art predominantly in American, Asian, and European post-war movements. West Chelsea Contemporary opened in October of 2020 under the direction of Lisa Russell, who has operated this gallery since founding Russell Collection in 2002. With this gallery rebrand, her vision is for West Chelsea Contemporary to satisfy the evolving demographic and style of Austin’s culture by showcasing everything from mid-career and emerging artists to legends like KAWS, Yayoi Kusama, Keith Haring, Shepard Fairey, Andy Warhol, Blek Le Rat, Mr. Brainwash, Fiona Rae, Roy Lichtenstein, Takashi Murakami and more West Chelsea Contemporary clients are assisted by an expert staff dedicated to providing the highest level of service

NEW

YORK CITY - CHELSEA

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Saturday 10am - 6pm; Sunday 12 - 6pm

AUSTIN - DOWNTOWN

1009 West 6th Street #120 Austin, TX 78703

512.478.4440

Monday - Wednesday 10am - 6pm

Thursday - Friday 10am - 8pm

Saturday 10am - 6pm; Sunday 12 - 6pm

FOREWORD

West Chelsea Contemporary is proud to present ICONS, an exhibition that celebrates and highlights works by renowned innovators. Recognizable by name and respected for their invaluable contribution, the artists featured in ICONS have transformed the art of their time and left lasting legacies. With artwork spanning six decades, this exhibition features art-world icons from across the globe curated within three contexts: American Postwar & Contemporary Masters, International Icons, and Icons as Subject.

Postwar American Art, defined as work created after 1945, saw a proliferation of innovative movements and styles from Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art to Conceptualism and Postmodernism. America emerged from World War II relatively unscathed, with an economy on the rise and an artist population inspired by the European avant-garde, many of whom had relocated to the United States. New York City emerged as the epicenter of artistic activity, challenging Paris as the nexus of the international art world

After fleeing Germany during the war, influential colorist Josef Albers moved to the United States where he and his wife, Anni Albers, taught at North Carolina’s experimental Black Mountain College before arriving in New York City in 1950 where he began his most notable series, Homage to the Square After crossing paths as a student of Albers, Robert Rauschenberg took residence in New York where his hybrid forms of painting and sculpture ushered a new era of Postwar American Art in the wake of Abstract Expressionism. Rauschenberg’s subject matter and technique denounced by well-known critic Clement Greenberg are understood by historians to have anticipated the Pop Art movement

Beginning in the early 1960s, Pop Art dominated the American art scene with artists such as James Rosenquist, Robert Indiana, and Claes Oldenburg mining everyday culture to change the public conception of what constituted Fine Art Archetypal modern artists Alex Katz and Ed Ruscha, once associated with the Pop Art movement, have come to defy categorization with their prolific and longlasting careers Later in the decade, Sol LeWitt established a set of aesthetic principles, which birthed the term Conceptual Art a movement that emphasized the idea over the physical product Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf emerged during the interdisciplinary East Village art scene of the 1980s exploring the convergence of Pop Art and Graffiti. Contemporary artists Kehinde Wiley and José Parlá recall art historical movements in the present day. Whereas Wiley collates modern culture with the influence of Old Masters, Parlá continues the tradition of street art and graffiti with large-scale works reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism.

Beyond the United States, Globalism a far-reaching and ever-present movement catapulted the international art world into an era of cross-pollination and reflection International Icons as a category looks at how the increase in accessibility to art across geographic borders has fostered abundant artistic influences while at the same time creating an urgency for reflection on one’s own point of origin.

Surrealism, one of the most well-known international movements of the 20th century, left a profound and enduring legacy that continues to influence artists. Arguably the most iconic Surrealist, Salvador Dalí was largely responsible for cementing the visual language of the movement through his provocative and phantasmagorical compositions.

Practiced across continents, Op Art (or Optical Art), pioneered by FrenchHungarian artist Victor Vasarely, was an international movement during the 1960s that presented a new form of abstraction by playing with viewer’s visual perception. The antecedents of Op Art, much like the Surrealist movement, can be traced back to Cubism, Futurism, and Dada among other movements of the early 20th century that arose in a global context

Emerging in the late eighties, the Neo-Pop movement drew upon and expanded the principles of Pop Art made popular thirty years prior. Both wide-spread and global, Neo-Pop surged in Japan with artists such as Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara merging the youthful Pop aesthetic with manga and Japanese contemporary culture. Contemporary Chinese Artists, such as Ai Weiwei and Zhang Xiaogang, explore notions of identity within the Chinese culture of collectivism. Both artists are inspired by contemporary tensions in China and links between traditional Chinese culture and the contemporary world.

Legendary street artist Banksy has built an international reputation that far precedes his anonymity Subverting icons of cultural fantasy and products of capitalism, Banksy reveals disquieting truths regarding globalization, exploitation, mass media, and the normalization of violence from an international lens

Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, known as Aboudia, chronicles the street scene and political realities in his city of Abidjan, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire The artist’s distinct style recalls the Neo-Expressionist markings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, while remaining deeply rooted in the graffiti culture of his home city and the traditional wood carvings of West Africa.

Across artistic genres from fine art to music the most notable innovators and taste-makers have created such iconic output that their very faces have become iconic subjects Many contemporary artists explore the stature of icons past and present through their own artistic practice. Photorealist painters Yigal Ozeri and Chuck Close have depicted some of the most legendary artists, such as Yayoi Kusama and Alex Katz respectively Rock and Roll photographer Bob Gruen and fashion photographer David LaChapelle both capture and memorialize icons from music and fine art through their own lens Street Art pioneer Blek Le Rat looks back on artistic tradition in his own work, depicting composers such as Beethoven and Chopin, subjects from Renaissance paintings, and even his own alter-ego as iconic subjects. Technical masters in their own right, these artists carve space out of their oeuvre to pay tribute to some of the greats, prompting questions of status, legacy, and influence

By contemplating ground-breaking movements from the past six decades, ICONS prompts viewers to distinguish new connections through the three contexts of American Postwar and Contemporary Masters, International Icons, and Icon as Subject Through these categories, the art world’s most notable household names, who have each left their mark on the progression of art history, are able to be rediscovered and redefined

AMERICAN POSTWAR + CONTEMPORARY MASTERS

Postwar American Art, defined as work created after 1945, saw a proliferation of innovative movements and styles from Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art to Conceptualism and Postmodernism. America emerged from World War II relatively unscathed, with an economy on the rise and an artist population inspired by the European avant-garde, many of whom had relocated to the United States New York City emerged as the epicenter of artistic activity, challenging Paris as the nexus of the international art world.

In 1949, Robert Rauschenberg took residence in New York where his hybrid forms of painting and sculpture ushered a new era of Postwar American Art in the wake of Abstract Expressionism. Rauschenberg’s subject matter and technique—denounced by well-known critic Clement Greenberg—is understood by historians to have anticipated the Pop Art movement Beginning in the early 1960s, Pop Art dominated the American art scene with artists such as James Rosenquist, Robert Indiana, and Claes Oldenburg mining everyday culture to change the public conception of what constituted Fine Art. Archetypal modern artists Alex Katz and Ed Ruscha, once associated with the Pop Art movement, have come to defy categorization with their prolific and long-lasting careers. Later in the decade, Sol LeWitt established a set of aesthetic principles, which birthed the term Conceptual Art a movement that emphasized the idea over the physical product. Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf emerged during the interdisciplinary East Village art scene of the 1980s exploring the convergence of Pop Art and Graffiti. Contemporary artists Kehinde Wiley and José Parlá recall art historical movements in the present day Whereas Wiley collates modern culture with the influence of Old Masters, Parlá continues the tradition of street art and graffiti with large-scale works reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism.

JOSEF ALBERS

German-American, 1888 - 1976

Josef Albers was a legendary teacher and color theorist. The artist is best known for his iconic “Homage to the Square” series (1949–76), which features nested squares of varying colors and explores how different juxtapositions of form and hue affect viewers’ perceptions and emotions. Albers formalized and expanded upon his theories in his seminal 1963 book Interaction of Color He was closely involved with the original Bauhaus and moved to the United States when the school was closed by Nazis in 1933. In the U.S., Albers taught at the experimental Black Mountain College as well as at Yale, where his teachings influenced generations of American artists His work has been exhibited in cities around the world and belongs in the collections of institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, the British Museum, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others

American, 1931 – 2020 JOHN BALDESSARI

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 two-dimensional 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

John Baldessari

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

American, 1898 – 1976 ALEXANDER CALDER

Alexander Calder changed the course of modern art with his three-dimensional kinetic sculptures, which Marcel Duchamp named “mobiles ” Resonating with tenets of Futurism, Constructivism, and early non-objective painting, Calder’s mobiles consist of boldly colored abstract shapes, which are made from industrial materials and hang in lyrical balance Calder was an international phenomenon during his lifetime He won the grand prize for sculpture at the 1952 Venice Biennale, where he represented the United States. He earned the French Legion of Honor and the American Presidential Medal of Freedom, among other honors. Calder has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Rijksmuseum, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, and the Museo Reina Sofía. His work regularly sells for eight figures on the secondary market. Though Calder is best known for his mobiles, his diverse practice also encompassed standing sculpture, painting, set and costume design, large-scale public installation, and jewelry-making.

Alexander Calder

Spirals (from Art In America: Graphics 70) (36/100), 1970

Lithograph in colors

19.75 x 14 in

KEITH HARING

American, 1958 – 1990

American artist and social activist, Keith Haring, is best known for his illustrative depictions of figures and symbols “I don't think art is propaganda,” he once stated. “It should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it ” Haring was inspired to draw from an early age by Walt Disney cartoons and his father who was an amateur cartoonist After briefly studying commercial art in Pittsburgh, Haring came across a show of the works of Pierre Alechinksy and decided to pursue a career in fine art instead. He moved to New York in the late 1970s to attend the School of Visual Arts, and soon immersed himself in the city’s graffiti culture. By the mid-1980s, he had befriended fellow artists Andy Warhol, Kenny Scharf, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, and collaborated with celebrities like the singer Grace Jones. Haring’s prodigious career was brief, and he died of AIDS-related complications on February 16, 1990 at the age of 31

Keith Haring

Untitled (Helmet and Invitation), 1987

Marker pen on helmet and printed paper invitation

6.50 x 11 x 8.50 in

American,

1928 – 2018 ROBERT INDIANA

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

Robert Indiana

Love Is God (4/25), 2014

Silkscreen on 2ply Rising Museum Board

60 x 60 in

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.

Good Afternoon, Study VII, 2007

Silkscreen on canvas

42 x 54 in

Alex Katz

SOL LEWITT

American, 1928 – 2007

Sol LeWitt famously stressed the importance of the ideas that animated his artwork over the particulars of their execution

A leading figure of the Conceptual and Minimalist movements, he maintained a practice that included drawing, printmaking, photography, painting, installation, sculpture, and writing. He is perhaps best known for simple, geometric drawings and wall paintings and for his “structures”: modular sculptures of cubed forms, variously constructed from steel, polyurethane, wood, or concrete. LeWitt also received attention for his writings on the nature of Conceptual art. To “install” his wall paintings, contemporary exhibition spaces must follow a set of instructions the artist left behind. LeWitt received his BFA from Syracuse University. After graduating, he took classes at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School (now the School of Visual Arts), worked as a graphic designer and, later, worked shifts at the Museum of Modern Art alongside artists such as Dan Flavin and Robert Mangold His work has been exhibited in a number of institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, the Centre Pompidou, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami; it also belongs in the collections of countless museums including the Tate, the Guggenheim Museum, Dia Beacon, and the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris.

Sol Lewitt

Color Bands (/75), 2000

Linocut in colors on Somerset paper

36 x 36 in

American, b. 1953 ROBERT LONGO

Robert Longo is known for large-scale, hyperrealistic charcoal portraits that consider power, authority, and social unrest In the early 1980s, Longo earned acclaim for his bold “Men in the Cities” series, which features business-suited subjects posed in uncanny contortions. Since then, he has depicted scenes from the Occupy Wall Street movement, the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, Black Lives Matter protests, and refugee migrations A member of the loose cohort of Pictures Generation artists who repurpose mass media images in their artwork, Longo has drawn on photographs and art historical works for inspiration He often uses a monochromatic palette, carefully building his charcoal surfaces to create a sense of depth and contrast. Longo has exhibited at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among other institutions. On the secondary market, his work has sold for seven-figure prices Longo’s practice also includes photography, performance, and sculpture.

Robert Longo

Jules (6/10 AP), 1982-83

Lithograph with embossing on Arches

36.50 x 21 in

CLAES OLDENBURG

Swedish, 1929 – 2022

Since the 1960s, Claes Oldenburg has worked at the forefront of the Conceptual and Pop art movements, and he’s best known for his monumental public sculptures of everyday objects. These include Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks (1969, reworked 1974) in New Haven, Connecticut; Clothespin (1976) in Philadelphia; Shuttlecocks (1992) in Kansas City; and Cupid’s Span (2002), a gigantic archer’s bow in San Francisco These pieces epitomize Oldenburg’s irreverent sense of humor and fascination with American consumerism, qualities which have also pervaded his performances, drawings, writings, and famous “soft sculptures” cushiony, unserious objects that resemble diner foods and other symbols of Americana. Oldenburg’s work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Moderna Museet, and the Centre Pompidou. At auction, many of his sculptures including those of a clothespin, a depiction of a flexed muscle, french horns, a dress, a trowel, a sewing machine, and a typewriter eraser have sold for more than $1 million. Oldenburg often collaborated with his late wife, Coosje van Bruggen, who died in 2009

Knife Ship Superimposed on the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum (68/75), 1985

Color screenprint on white Coventry Rag paper

21.50 x 28.25 in

Claes Oldenburg

JOSÉ PARLÁ

Cuban-American, b. 1973

Primarily a painter of murals, paintings, and works on paper, José Parlá also produces installations, video, sculpture, and photographic works that explore or respond to urban landscapes. Parlá’s large-scale compositions resemble city walls that, like palimpsests or psychogeographic maps, have accrued years of ephemera, posters, and fliers; he blends curvy gestures, calligraphy, and personal inscriptions with blurred color fields, using brushes, markers, spray paint, and sometimes fragments of fliers and posters. Parlá has produced several public commissions, including a giant mural at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn. “With making abstract painting,” he has said, “I felt that what I was doing and what I’m still doing is translating the many different cultures and many different languages that I’m confronting.”

New Palimpsest System, 2017

Mixed media and acrylic on canvas

60.25 x 144 in

José Parlá

American, 1925 – 2008 ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG

Over the course of his six-decade career, Robert Rauschenberg embraced pop culture, technical experimentation, and material eclecticism Today, he’s perhaps best known for his radical, three-dimensional “Combines” which he composed from discarded materials and mundane objects such as sheet metal, newspaper, tires, and umbrellas and for his colorful silkscreen paintings on which he screenprinted, then painted over, collaged photographs sourced from books and magazines. In 1964, Rauschenberg made history when he became the first American to win the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale. In the years since, Rauschenberg has been the subject of solo shows at the Guggenheim, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, and Moderna Museet, among other institutions. His work belongs in collections worldwide and has sold for tens of millions at auction.

Robert Rauschenberg

Health (from Tribute 21) (39/50), 1994

Lithograph in colors with vegetable dye water transfer on Arches Infinity paper

41 x 27.25 in

American, b. 1979 RETNA

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

Retna Mural, Panel 6, 2017

Acrylic paint on board

59.50 x 48 in

American, 1933 – 2017 JAMES ROSENQUIST

Leading Pop artist James Rosenquist who came to prominence among New York School figures like Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Willem de Kooning is well known for his large-scale, fragmented 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 massproduced 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

4 Off for Pavilion (AP 5/9), 1985

Lithograph in colors on wove paper

37 x 37 in

American, b. 1937 ED RUSCHA

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 (4/150), 1970

Screenprint in colors on Louvain Opaque Cover paper

19 x 26.25 in

American,

b. 1958 KENNY SCHARF

Muralist, painter, sculptor, and installation artist Kenny Scharf is best known for his fantastical, large-scale paintings of anthropomorphic animals and imagined creatures. Though Scharf’s brightly colored imagery is generally playful, he has remarked that darker themes exist beneath the surface of his works, visible upon closer inspection Scharf moved to New York to receive his BFA, where he became a part of the 1980s East Village Art movement alongside Keith Haring The artist says he has been influenced by all 20th-century art movements, including Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, the latter reflected in his appropriation of cartoon characters from television shows like the Flintstones and Jetsons and his humorous depiction of snack food. Scharf’s oftentimes dense and frenetic compositions also echo a Baroque sensibility.

Kenny Scharf

Furungle Blue (12/25), 2021

Archival pigment ink print with silkscreened high gloss varnish and diamond dust on Innova Etching Cotton Rag 315 gsm fine art paper 42 x 42 in

American, b. 1977 KEHINDE WILEY

Kehinde Wiley restages classical portraits and sculptures, replacing historical white subjects with contemporary subjects of color His lush, narratively rich canvases draw on textile patterns and the compositional tenets of Old Masters such as Peter Paul Rubens and Jacques-Louis David. Embracing ornate decorative elements, Wiley dignifies his subjects and subverts the whiteness that has long dominated Western art history The artist received his MFA from Yale in 2001 and has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Berlin, and Milan, among other cities. His work belongs in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Nasher Museum of Art, among many others, and his paintings have sold for six figures on the secondary market. In 2018, Wiley painted Barack Obama’s presidential portrait. In 2019, he launched the Black Rock Residency program in Senegal, which fosters younger artists’ careers and Africa’s broader art ecosystem

Kehinde Wiley

The Gypsy Fortune -Teller (13/48), 2007

Jacquard Tapestry in Italian Cotton and Italian Viscose

71.25 x 98.50 in

Zhang Xiaogang, Untitled, from Bloondline Series (Detail)

INTERNATIONAL ICONS

Beyond the United States, Globalism a far-reaching and ever-present movement catapulted the international art world into an era of cross-pollination and reflection. International Icons as a category looks at how the increase in accessibility to art across geographic borders has fostered abundant artistic influences while at the same time creating an urgency for reflection on one’s own point of origin.

Emerging in the late eighties, the Neo-Pop movement drew upon and expanded the principles of Pop Art made popular thirty years prior Both wide-spread and global, Neo-Pop surged in Japan with artists such as Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara merging the youthful Pop aesthetic with manga and Japanese contemporary culture. Contemporary Chinese Artists, such as Ai Weiwei and Zhang Xiaogang, explore notions of identity within the Chinese culture of collectivism. Both artists are inspired by contemporary tensions in China and links between traditional Chinese culture and the contemporary world.

Legendary street artist Banksy has built an international reputation that far precedes his anonymity. Subverting icons of cultural fantasy and products of capitalism, Banksy reveals disquieting truths regarding globalization, exploitation, mass media, and the normalization of violence from an international lens

Ivorian, b. 1983 ABOUDIA

Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, known as Aboudia, chronicles the street scene in his city of Abidjan, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire In his vibrant, large-scale mixed-media paintings and drawings, which recall those of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Aboudia takes inspiration from the aesthetics of graffiti and traditional African carvings. He has depicted youths in his city’s toughest neighborhoods and the violent postelection conflict that ravaged Abidjan in 2011 While his recurring skull, soldier, and bullet motifs speak to unthinkable trauma and brutality, Aboudia’s bright color palettes reinforce the enduring innocence of the children who live amid the chaos Aboudia has exhibited widely across Côte d’Ivoire and in London, Paris, New York, and Marrakesh, among other cities. His work has been acquired by Saatchi Gallery, the Jean Pigozzi Collection of African Art, and the Nevada Museum of Art, and on the secondary market, it has sold for six figures.

Aboudia

Untitled, 2011

Acrylic and mixed media collage on canvas

59 x 70.75 in

BANKSY

Banksy, b. 1974

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

Banksy

Banksquiat (Black) (140/300), 2019

Screenprint on paper

29.62 x 27.50 in

SALVADOR DALÍ

Salvador Dalí was a leading proponent of Surrealism, the 20-century avant-garde movement that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious through strange, dream-like imagery. “Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision,” he said. Dalí is specially credited with the innovation of “paranoia-criticism,” a philosophy of art making he defined as “irrational understanding based on the interpretive-critical association of delirious phenomena.” In addition to meticulously painting fantastic compositions, such as The Accommodations of Desire (1929) and the melting clocks in his famed The Persistence of Memory (1931), Dalí was a prolific writer and early filmmaker, and cultivated an eccentric public persona with his flamboyant mustache, pet ocelot, and outlandish behavior and quips.

Spanish, 1904 – 1989

Salvador Dalí

Narcissus, 1965

Watercolor and ink

29.50 x 21.50 in

Japanese, b. 1962 TAKASHI MURAKAMI

One of the most acclaimed artists to emerge from postwar Asia, Takashi Murakami “the Warhol of Japan” is known for 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

Japanese, b. 1959 YOSHITOMO NARA

Yoshitomo Nara’s deceptively simple paintings, sculptures, and drawings draw on the pop culture aesthetics of manga, Walt Disney cartoons, and punk rock The artist populates his work with alternately adorable and sinister child characters, who run amok in flat backgrounds rendered with simple bold lines and solid hues. Nara explores imagination and the individual, and his more complex canvases consider the intersection of figure and ground Nara received his MFA from Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music and has exhibited in Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and beyond. His work belongs to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Rubell Collection, the Museum of Modern Art, the Long Museum, the Aomori Museum of Art, and many other collections. Nara’s paintings have sold for seven figures on the secondary market.

Yoshitomo Nara

Space Cat, 1991

Acrylic on Paper

16.50 x 14 in

Hungarian-French, 1906 – 1997 VICTOR

VASARELY

Considered one of the progenitors of Op Art for his optically complex and illusionistic paintings, Victor Vasarely spent the course of a long, critically acclaimed career seeking, and arguing for, an approach to art making that was deeply social. He placed primary importance on the development of an engaging, accessible visual language that could be universally understood this language, for Vasarely, was geometric abstraction, more commonly known as Op Art Through precise combinations of lines, geometric shapes, colors, and shading, he created eye-popping paintings, full of the illusion of depth, movement, and threedimensionality More than pleasing tricks for the eye, Vasarely insisted, “pure form and pure color can signify the world.”

Victor Vasarely

Carden (AP/250), 1980

Screenprint in colors

36.50 x 28 in

Chinese, b. 1957 AI WEIWEI

A cultural figure of international renown, Ai Weiwei is an activist, architect, curator, filmmaker, and China’s most famous artist Open in his criticism of the Chinese government, Ai was famously detained for months in 2011, 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

Furniture (From Papercut Portfolio) (139/250), 2019

Single work from a set of eight Papercuts, colored fine art paper

23.60 x 23.60 in

ZHANG XIAOGANG

Chinese, b. 1958

Relying on memory to recreate a highly personal version of his country’s history, Zhang Xiaogang makes art that is as much about himself as it is about China’s past. The grim imaginary families in his “Bloodlines: The Big Family” paintings 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 Series (Set of ten) (97/99), 2006

Lithograph in colors on Arches paper

30.25 x 37 in

Yigal Ozeri, Yayoi Kusama (Detail)

ICON AS SUBJECT

Across artistic genres–from fine art to music the most notable innovators and taste-makers have created such iconic output that their very faces have become iconic subjects. Many contemporary artists explore the stature of icons past and present through their own artistic practice. Photorealist painters Yigal Ozeri and Chuck Close have depicted some of the most legendary artists, such as Yayoi Kusama and Alex Katz respectively. Rock and Roll photographer Bob Gruen and fashion photographer David LaChapelle both capture and memorialize icons from music and fine art through their own lens. Street Art pioneer Blek Le Rat looks back on artistic tradition in his own work, depicting composers such as Beethoven and Chopin, subjects from Renaissance paintings, and even his own alter-ego as iconic subjects. Technical masters in their own right, these artists carve space out of their oeuvre to pay tribute to some of the greats, prompting questions of status, legacy, and influence

CHUCK CLOSE

American, 1940 - 2021

In the 1960s, Chuck Close pioneered Photorealism with his monumental, exquisitely detailed portraits, whose subjects he took from photographic sources Playing with ideas of color, scale, and form, he later gained renown for gridded paintings 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

Alex

(PP/Aside

Close

Katz

from Edition of 12), 1996

Digital inkjet prints on Somerset paper, 4 panels

92 x 69 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

Debbie Harry, NYC, 1977 (31/50), 2014

Silkscreen on 2ply Rising Museum Board

54 x 40 in

American, b. 1963 DAVID LACHAPELLE

American photographer and video artist David LaChapelle is renowned for his hyperrealistic, highly saturated, and often controversial editorial portraits of celebrities. Over the course of his prolific career, he’s shot many of pop culture’s most recognizable faces from Nicki Minaj, Britney Spears, and Madonna to Tupac Shakur, Michael Jackson, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in a humorous style that combines elements of Surrealism and Pop art In addition to shooting for publications such as Rolling Stone and Interview, LaChapelle has maintained a fine-art photography practice. Much of his work has explored themes of mortality and transcendence, with overt references to art history and religious iconography. He has featured in shows at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Musée d'Orsay, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., among other institutions. At auction, LaChapelle’s photographs have sold for six-figure prices

David LaChapelle

Andy Warhol: Last Sitting (1/10), 1986

Photograph on C-print, paper, diasec 23 x 17.50 in

French,

b. 1951 BLEK LE RAT

Blek Le Rat, born Xavier Prou in Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris, was one of the very first graffiti artists in Paris and has been described as the “Father of Stencil Graffiti” Blek was first introduced to graffiti during a trip to New York City in 1971 where he 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 Blek, who has influenced generations of urban artists around the world, boasts a subtle social commitment and considers his images as a gift he gives to the city. His works often represent solitary individuals that can be encountered in the urban space–women, children, the elderly, and a diverse range of contemporary characters. In a desire to bring the people of the city closer to art, he quotes the great classics such as Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci. “I would like to bring the characters out of museums to return them to the people of the city ” His street art has appeared in cities across the world, and he has exhibited in New York, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, and beyond.

Blek Le Rat

Young Picasso, 2022

Acrylic and Aerosol on Linen

43 x 38.50 in

British, b. 1968 DAVID SHRIGLEY

David Shrigley finds meaning in snippets of text and overheard conversations. His crude and cartoonish ink drawings, usually exhibited salon-style, recall pages from the sketchbook of a cheeky adolescent. Tackling serious issues, such as unemployment and child welfare, as well as more absurd subjects, including sexual fantasies about a squirrel, his fragmented narratives can be both poignant and funny In a 2011 exhibition, Shrigley included a dead stuffed kitten that stood on its hind legs carrying a hand-lettered protest sign that read, “I’M DEAD.”

David Shrigley

Warhol Lives (10/12), 2019

Linocut on wove paper

29.50 x 22 in

Israeli,

b. 1958 YIGAL OZERI

Yigal Ozeri succinctly summarizes his current practice as follows: “I paint women in nature ” Though he insists that his large-scale, photorealistic paintings are “reality,” because they are based on videos and photographs he takes of his subjects, his works are also infused with a Pre-Raphaelite sense of fantasy, imagination, and ethereality Ozeri often catches his female protagonists in pensive, dreamy states, seeming to merge with their natural surroundings In a series from 2010, he painted Lizzie Jagger, daughter of Mick Jagger, in a wintry Central Park, New York, rendering each strand of her flowing chestnut hair, the rich textures of her clothing, and the glint of sunlight on her clear skin with brilliant clarity.

Yigal Ozeri

Untitled, Yayoi Kusama, 2022

Oil on canvas

36 x 54 in

West Chelsea Contemporary is a world-class gallery offering museum-quality art in Austin, Texas, and New York City, focusing on 20th century and contemporary art predominantly in American, Asian, and European post-war movements. West Chelsea Contemporary opened in October of 2020 under the direction of Lisa Russell, who has operated this gallery since founding Russell Collection in 2002. With this gallery rebrand, her vision is for West Chelsea Contemporary to satisfy the evolving demographic and style of Austin’s culture by showcasing everything from mid-career and emerging artists to legends like KAWS, Yayoi Kusama, Keith Haring, Shepard Fairey, Andy Warhol, Blek Le Rat, Mr. Brainwash, Fiona Rae, Roy Lichtenstein, Takashi Murakami and more West Chelsea Contemporary clients are assisted by an expert staff dedicated to providing the highest level of service

NEW YORK CITY -

CHELSEA

231 10th Ave New York, NY 10011

646.590.0352

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AUSTIN - DOWNTOWN

1009 West 6th Street #120 Austin, TX 78703

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