(Endless Canvas is not throwing this event)
Project One Gallery presents…
THE ART OFFICIAL TRUTH…
Curated by Chor Boogie
June 17th – August 6th 2011
Chor Boogie brings to Project One Gallery an exclusive summer exhibition: The ArtOFFICIAL Truth. Originality speaks volumes, and art always speaks the truth. These two combined create a massive force, which allows artists to express themselves fully, without borders, judgment or fear.
The ArtOFFICIAL Truth features an array of artists, spanning from across the continent. This exhibit will be show new works and sculptures by:
DECOY
PABLO CRISTI
KELLY ALLEN
SHARKTOOF
ROBERT BURDEN
AARON NAGEL
CRASH
VULCAN
APEX
HOW & NOSM
SARATOGA SAKE
JOHN KOLEZAR
BAST & KAREN LIGHT
JEFFEREY PENA
ASHLEY ZELENSKIE
SARAH FISHER
ALFREDO “LIBRE” GUITIERREZ
DOGADI
LAURA WEYL
ROBYN TWOMEY
AKIRA BEARD
JET MARTINEZ
YIYING LU
CHASE TAFOYA
LUCID DAWN
KELLY ORDING
About the artists:
DECOY
I am a Washington, DC artist who paints under the nickname, DECOY. I was born near Brussels, Belgium, and spent most of my childhood in the villages of Europe. My art focuses on figures not the figures alone, but their intersection with color and space. I am especially passionate about recording my immediate surroundings with my art. The art concentrates on the situations, people and places that form daily interaction. The images chosen are the ones that leave a lasting impression, whether they are born from social encounters at work or at play. The resulting work is generally a distorted reflection of the original idea. The idea is not to copy life, but to express my memory of it. Ilike to work large and don’t limit myself to only canvas and gallery presentations.
PABLO CRISTI
Pablo Cristi is an artist born and raised in Los Angeles. Born to Chilean parents escaping the Pinochet regime, Cristi’s work is motivated by an active political awareness and is steeped in a critical inquiry of power, representation and history. His investigations of the colonial past, present, and future often take the form of paintings and sculptural objects that deconstruct and commingle urban visual vernaculars. Informed by Los Angeles mural culture, Cristi’s complex paintings often intermix cultural signs and representations with painterly abstraction, connecting the politics of the canvas to the politics of the street. By articulating strategies of cultural erasure, survival, and transformation, Cristi’s work produces counter-hegemonic narratives that allow a critical reanalysis of the status quo. Cristi is also an educator and community organizer, teaching and leading youths in art and mural projects throughout the West Coast. Cristi is a graduate of the Masters of Fine Arts(MFA) program at California College of the Arts, San Francisco, and was awarded the Barclay Simpson Award in 2009. He has recently exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Oakland.
KELLY ALLEN
Kelly Allen creates tightly rendered paintings based on collages, featuring clusters of animals, plant life, and a variety of colorful forms and objects. Every image is lovingly and meticulously hand painted with gouache, oil, or acrylic. Oftentimes her dedication to technique initially fools viewers into thinking they are experiencing a traditional collage. Kelly Allen lives and works in the Mission District of San Francisco, CA. She currently holds gallery representation at Bold Hype Gallery in New York and Thinkspace Gallery in Culver City, CA, who will be featuring her work in a number of shows in 2011. In addition to creating original paintings and commissions, she works as a freelance illustrator, having worked for New York Magazine and The Sunday Times UK Edition, among others. She holds an MFA in drawing from Kendall College of Art and Design and her B.A. in painting from Humboldt State University in Northern California.
SHARKTOOF
California street artist
ROBERT BURDEN
Robert Burden was born in Toronto, Canada. He received his BFA from Queen’s University in 2005 and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007. He currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.
AARON NAGEL
Born 1980 in San Francisco, California, Aaron Nagel began drawing as a child and gradually made his way to painting. Upon discovering oils in his early twenties, he became enamored with the medium and has been obsessed ever since. Although he has had no formal training, he continues to relentlessly pursue a mastery of figurative surrealism from his home studio in Oakland, CA.
Nagels’ work explores the potential to create a new sort of iconography for the non-believer, with subtle commentary on the trappings of organized religion and theism.
APEX
a·pex (pks)?n. pl. a·pex·es or a·pi·ces (p-sz, p-)
1. The highest point; the vertex: the apex of a triangle; the apex of a hill.
2. The point of culmination. See Synonyms at summit.
3. The usually pointed end of an object; the tip: the apex of a leaf.
I would just like to see if I could ever reach my apex.
HOW&NOSM
“HOW AND NOSM”
(RAOUL AND DAVIDE PERRE)
The twin brothers HOW and NOSM are graffiti artists and professional muralists residing in New York. Born in the Basque country of San Sebastian, Spain ,the Perre brothers grew up in Duesseldorf ,Germany practicing the Bronx born art form of graffiti .Their late teenage years were spent spray painting the world, visiting many of the more than 50 countries in which they both left their remarkable artwork on any kind of surface including subway trains. During a visit to New York in ’97 HOW and NOSM were asked to become members of the legendary TATS CRU, and permanently relocated to New York shortly thereafter in ’99 – a move that marked their transition from painting on trains, and even the Berlin Wall – to creating elaborate murals for a number of known commercial clients.
SARATOGA SAKE
Born in 1969 in El Paso, Texas, two-time EMMY award winning artist Sake, began his art career with inspiration from New York City’s subway graffiti. Sake was one of the first graffiti artists in San Diego County at the age of twelve. Sake, the last in a long list of nom de plumes, with his stylized lettering and characters inspired hundreds of kids across San Diego County to pick up the spray can as a medium to create art. Sake’s reputation as a serious artist grew out of respect for his technical skill, creating his first portrait with spray paint in 1986. He continued his quest for detail and realism with spray paint. Eventually Sake gained the attention of the San Diego art scene, taking home two EMMY awards for his portrait work for the Fox network. Sake, now practice his graffiti art at legal yards and started painting with oil paints in 2005.
JOHN KOLEZAR
While I have experimented with many forms of art, stenciling has provided me with the technical challenge that most suits my interest. Stencils are formed by removing sections from template material in the form of text or an image. This creates what is essentially a physical negative, and each negative represents a different color to be used in the painting. My process starts by breaking down an image into colors and layers, then spending hundreds of hours cutting out sections by hand with a razor blade. The finished stencils are then sprayed with spray paint on to a canvas or wall. When I combine all of the different colored stencils on top of each other, what I am left with is a finished piece. Imagery plays an important role in my work as well. While I often like portraits and subjects of pop culture, I also have a love for the various cityscapes that I have been fortunate enough to visit in my life. With my focus on imagery and technique, I hope to help propel the art of stenciling to the point where it can be critically appreciated and respected along side other fine art mediums. While currently there is a surge in the popularity of stenciling, I feel that it has a long way to go to be thought of as a serious art form. I am constantly pushing the boundaries of what i think can be done. I experiment with things like color, detail and scale to challenge preconceptions of what can be accomplished with stenciling.
KAREN LIGHT
Karen Anne Light has been an actress in the theatre since childhood. Her interest in the origins of theatre lead her to study the various art forms that theatre is comprised of: storytelling, ritual, communion, dance, music, literature, religion, and political discourse (with passionate interest in all except the latter). She does all she can to remain an open conduit for performance experiences that will serve and inspire audiences in ways that she cannot control or predict.
BAST
San Francisco based creatrix Bast serves her dharma as a performance and
visual artist, modern temple dancer, writer, poet, yoga teacher, and healing artist. She studied at New College of San Francisco with an emphasis on Art and Social Change and has created performance, dance, and visual art works at numerous venues and public site-specific locations in San Francisco, New York, and internationally.
Artistic inspiration comes from fertile personal experience of the left hand path of yoga and many forms of sacred ceremony from across the globe: tantric ritual sadhana, shaktipat, darshan, puja, Japanese tea ceremony, among others. Performances are an opulent, surreal live dream, in which the barrier between artist and audience always dissolves by whatever method will awaken and benefit. Her modern temple dance is an intentional global blend of tribal fusion bellydance, classical Indian, traditional Middle Eastern, Butoh, Afro-Haitian, and modern dance forms.
SARAH FISHER
Sarah has over 10 years experience in the film and television industry. She previously worked in video production at CBS News, A&E Television, and MTV News. She produced live streaming video events, web videos, and video content for these major television networks at the height of the dot com boom. She then embraced the medium of film to bring much needed awareness of ‘sacred cinema’ to audiences and founded Blue Lotus Films (http://www.bluelotusfilms.net). Over a four year period, she directed/produced/shot/edited the cult classic documentary, MEDITATE AND DESTROY, about bestselling author of Dharma Punx, Noah Levine. Currently she is directing/producing a feature-length documentary on renowned mural artist, Chor Boogie, called SPRAYPAINT (http://www.spraypaint-themovie.com).
ASHLEY ZELINSKIE
Ashley Zelinskie is a glass artist recently graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work is conceptual and based on material and display. Much of her work could be described as installation as the viewer’s experience is the goal of the art. Ashley was born in Bryn Mawr Pennsylvania and grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. While in high school she discover her love for art. While seeking out new materials to work with she discovered glass. After falling in love with the material and learning the technical skills to manage it the urge grew to become more experimental. She attended RISD in order to learn conceptual fine art from artists that worked in glass. She can now be found in Brooklyn creating works with glass paired with video, installation, and performance. Much of her work is based in the interest of glassblowing and glassmaking as a process and in her future work she hopes to be able to share her love for creation with her audience. Ashley is a partner at Curbs and Stoops and currently runs the Curbs and Stoops Active Space which includes Studios and Gallery Space located in Bushwick NY.
JEFFEREY PENA
In my work I am primarily interested in exploring issues of race, social justice and popular culture especially as they relate to the social and cultural ambiguity underlying the experiences of the Latin American male.
Because of my training in architecture, my work often hint at the domesticity of a particular built environment. This environment combined with symbols, forms, and colors superimposed and buried into a surface portray time, and build an urban “Dominican-Joe” vernacular aesthetic.
Alfredo “LIBRE” Gutierrez
Self taught painter and muralist, born in Tijuana México who’s influenced by architecture, border life and the contrasts that imply, exploring behaviors and urban language that manifest in society and influence our surroundings; combining traditional painting techniques with alternate where order and chaos are evident, in is most important shows and work are; a dual show in Vevey Switzerland with Ezra Pirk (2010), solo show in Centro cultural Tijuana (2010), several Mexican awards nationwide since 2006 and teaching classes in Reclusorio Preventivo Varonil Oriente (a Prison in Mexico city) since September 2010.
DOGADI
A Brief History of Dogadi:
Born in the lowlands near Tratalias, Southern Sardinia to unknown parents, Dogadi worked in the historical titanium mines from the age of 4 until 9 when he was selected to become an apprentice to the worlds most revered sewing needle craftsman, Buenisimo Pagarazilio, who soon after became ill and entrusted his legendary business, and secrets of handmade needle craft, to Dogadi. Dogadi quickly mastered the art of the needle and at 14 years of age sold the business to Microsoft as he felt he had accomplished all he desired.
Free to experience the world he purchased a refurbished sampan and sailed solo through the open seas with 660 pounds of Sardinian worm cheese and nearly $200 million dollars in cash and AA batteries. He sailed for 7 months weathering many storms and hardships until making land in the coastal town of Mandvi, western India. In Mandvi he used the AA batteries as payment for a guide to get him to Nepal. On the journey Dogadi and his guide narrowly survived passage through the treacherous border lands of the Kashmir Valley before reaching his destination, settling in a tiny village in the Bajura District. In that village he used the cash from the sale of the needle business to open a marvelous sea-quarium, as well as many other modernities, including a hospital, a mini golf course, community college, and the first and only Einsteins Brothers Bagel Shop in the region. Eternally grateful, the village was renamed in his honor.
Leaving the newly named village of Dogadi, Dogadi the man continued his quest for adventure, eventually finding his way back to India in the North Bengal area where he purchased a large, open range tiger refuge. On the refuge Dogadi acted as caretaker for his tigers and as a guide for western tourists seeking to photograph the near extinct and reclusive Diamond Toothed Bengal Tiger. As if by fate, Dogadi was intrigued by the tourists cameras. After learning the basics from gracious visitors to the reserve, Dogadi soon became a master photographer and was sought after the world around for his unique vision and artistry.
He made his way west and while on a coast-to-coast hot air balloon race across the United States he landed in San Francisco where he first laid eyes on the master-works of Chor Boogie. Realizing the vibrancy and vividness of colors utilized by Chor Boogie in his paintings reminded him of the brilliance that is ubiquitous in Southern Asia, Dogadi fell to his knees and cried out loud in a mixture of emotions. Determined to collaborate with Chor Boogie, the two finally united on a warm, spring afternoon and a majestic collection of masterpieces were the result, an exquisite example of which you see before you.
Chor Boogie refuses to eat worm cheese.
LAURA WEYL
Laura Weyl is a Bay Area Native visual media artist living in the Tenderloin. She got into video, stop motion, and street photography when she moved to San Francisco in early 2008 and majored in Media Arts at Wellesley College. She uses both ends of the camera to penetrate the subconscious and subliminal, using an intrinsic language of contrast and camouflage to capture internal logic in her visual frame. She is interested in dreams, distortion, chaos, and the fictional spaces of mirrors and memories.
ROBYN TWOMEY
Robyn Twomey’s freelance assignments have taken her around the world with work appearing in Time, Fortune, Wired and New York Magazine. She continues to freelance and work on independent photo essays.
AKIRA BEARD
“Having graduated from the Academy of Art University San Francisco in 2004, I find myself using my knowledge and experience of art in effort to make a positive contribution to the community. I have participated in art charity auctions relating to social issues such as homelessness, discrimination, etc., and currently I work as an art instructor with elders to challenge the misconception and treatment of elders in our society, aiding in exposing the potential and passionate livelihood of these individuals through the process and creation of artworks.”
JET MARTINEZ
Jet Martinez is a Mexican born, San Francisco based Muralist and Painter. He has been painting for most of his life. He received his BFA in painting and printmaking from SFAI. His paintings have been exhibited in many galleries throughout the city, as well as in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Washington DC, and Phoenix. He has also exhibited work internationally in Oaxaca, Mexico, Tokyo, Japan, and Zurich Switzerland.
His public murals dot the San Francisco landscape from the Dogpatch to the Sunset District. His unique and vibrant style is easily recognized. In addition, he has completed projects in New York, Los Angeles, San Jose, Arizona, Colorado, and internationally in Mexico, Switzerland, and Brazil.
He has completed many private mural commissions throughout the US and internationally as well. His work has been featured in various publications and web articles, and has received acclaim within the public art community.
He is currently the art director for the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) in the Mission District. He is a proud father and a die hard believer in the power of art as a means to creating a better world for ourselves and our children.
YIYING
“Yiying” is two characters in the Chinese language.
The first part, “Yi”, means Happy. The second part, “Ying”, means Creative.
Yiying is an artist, designer and digital content creator whose artwork has appeared on billions of screens around the world; including the Twitter ‘Fail Whale’ and the Conan O’Brien ‘Pale Whale’.
Educated in the United Kingdom at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London, as well as the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, Yiying earned her Bachelor’s degree with 1st-Class honors in Visual Communication from the University of Technology, Sydney in 2007. She was named as one of the Top 10 Emerging Leaders in Innovation of the Weekend Australian Magazine’s “The Next 100”.
CHASE TAFOYA
Chase was born on August 14th 1983, in the small town of Merced, Ca. He began drawing at the age of 3. As a very young boy he found joy in duplicating the likeness of many of his favorite cartoon characters, much to the delight and amusement of his family. His teachers noticed his talent as early as Kindergarten. While most children his age were creating landscapes of stick-figures, Chase was drawing much more life-like images of people complete with eyelashes and shoe laces.
LUCID DAWN
A one of a kind couture designer, performance artist, and yoga instructor, lucid kindly welcomes custom orders especially to suit your fancy.
KELLY ORDING
Kelly Ording has been living in the Bay Area for over ten years. A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, she has continued her painting practice in the studio and publicly. Kelly shows her work in galleries both in the U.S. and internationally, most recently Tokyo, Japan. She has worked on several public murals, installations and is currently working on a large scale mosaic mural through the San Francisco Arts Commission. She has also collaborated with companies to feature her work, such as a Vans Women’s shoe line and with Random House publishers.
The Artist Attended opening reception will feature performances through the night, as well as DJ sets by: Sake (waiting to hear back from Saratoga Sake & Samala.
Please join us on Friday, June 17th, from 7pm-late.
Project One Gallery
251 Rhode Island Street (between 15th & 16th)
San Francisco, CA. 94103
415-938-7173 / www.p1sf.com
Tags: Aaron Nagel, Apex, Art Official Truth, Art show, Bast, Chor Boogie, Crash, Decoy, John Koleszar, Kelly Allen, Pablo Cristi, Project One Gallery, Robert Burden, San Francisco, Saratoga Sake, Shark Toof, Vulcan