Wham Bam Thank You M’am
June 16 ~ July 29th 2018
Wham Bam Thank You M’am ~ Artists
Trevor Mikula is a self-taught, contemporary artist from Nashville,TN. He acts silly and creates paintings with a whimsical, sophisticated style that is unmistakable. Trevor paints with a vivid imagination, vibrant paint and a palette knife. His work is enjoyed and collected by people near and far and everywhere in between.
Dominique Steffens is a German born CAN artist. She moved to New York in 1993. After years working as a producer for the ARD (German Public Radio and TV) and freelance projects she started to get back into painting.
Ten years later she has developed her own distinctive style playing with perception and branding. Dominique’s current studio is on Mare Island near San Francisco.
Indie184, (born 1980) is a native New Yorker and has been active in the graffiti culture for over a decade and a half. Determined to express herself to the world through art, she quit business college to teach herself how to sew, paint and produce graphic design. Influenced by abstract expressionism and pop art, her paintings are raptures of color and textures fused with of her original graffiti and street art, imagery, and designs juxtaposed with personal messages. Indie’s art has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including El Museo del Barrio in New York City and Völklingen Ironworks Museum, in Saarbrücken Germany. You can find her graffiti pieces in the streets from the South Bronx to Paris. Her current endeavors also include designing the latest collection for her streetwear brand Kweenz Destroy. Indie’s graffiti was featured the recordbreaking Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto IV video game. Her most recent collaborations have been with M·A·C Cosmetics, Marvel and Netflix. Catch her creating her latest work in the streets or painting in her studio. Indie184 Is Rimmel London’s New Chief Artistic Officer.
Greg Gossel was born in 1982 in western Wisconsin. With a background in design, his work is an expressive interplay of many diverse words, images, and gestures. Gossel’s multi-layered work illustrates a visual history of change and process that simultaneously features and condemns popular culture. His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Copenhagen, and Japan. His commercial clients include Levi’s, American Express, Hyundai, Burton Snowboards, and Interscope Records; and has been published widely, including The San Francisco Chronicle and Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine. Greg currently resides in Minneapolis, MN.
Michael Forbes was born in Dingwall in Easter Ross, Scotland and he grew up in the area surrounded by peers who joined the Armed Forces after leaving school He chose a different path and exhibits artwork at a galleries in Manhattan and abroad and has quite a celebrity following; supporters include Madonna, Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam and comedian Ricky Gervais.
Forbes describes himself as a Pop Surrealist.
His work has referenced women’s rights campaigns, featured “mash ups” of glamorous Hollywood icons, also past US presidents such as Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln as well as bears wearing sunglasses.
“I think artists can play a role in the health of society by making cathartic images that allow a release of frustration though imagery,”~ M.Forbes
David William‘s new series ,“Pop-straction”, is a painterly approach to pop imagery. One of the most outstanding and — to some critics — infuriating features of art in the post-modern era is the appropriation of already existing images. To many it seems like cheating, somehow.
Some artists reject the notion of creating new images, why should we when we already live in a world of cluttered images. Images bombard us from every direction, from magazines, television, advertising and cyberspace. I choose to take already existing images and turn then back on themselves, using them for purposes for which they were not intended.
When you see an image reused by an artist this way, you may never feel quite the same about it. Andy Warhol, Jean-Michael Basquiat and David Salle are painters whose names come to mind when I think of reusing images, combining them and juxtaposing them in order to tell a different story than they originally told.
Andre Veloux
British artist Andre Veloux, resides in Princeton, NJ with his wife and daughter. He recently showed at Scope Art Miami 2017 and his feminist work is defined artistically within the parameters of modern feminism; standing up for women and their rights and empowerment. His work confronts the patriarchal society and it’s male entitlement which cause discrimination, oppression and violence against women. His work which is created entirely from Legos is in private collections worldwide and has been installed in public spaces as well as many group shows.
All of the works are made with commercially available Lego bricks. Lego, in all its various forms, is at the same time limiting as well as limitless in its possibilities. The color palette is limited yet consistent, and the basic “pixel” size is also fixed. Yet at the same time, it is a hard, durable, tactile and lightweight material; it can be reused, replaced and altered at will, and provides a myriad of different possibilities due to the different available shaped bricks, tiles and plates, with the exciting opportunity to create the 3-dimensional and textural aspects of the art.
Ray Geary showed no interest in art at an early age, yet was drawn to it post college as a way to create the things he wanted to see. Comprised mostly of cast resin paintings and sculptures, Geary’s work deals with encapsulation and the unexpected elevation of commonplace items.
Bri Cirel’s oil paintings combine photo realism with text and graphic design. Using a multiple stage method of masking, painting, and layering, Cirel’s work has been described as a “visual puzzle”. Cirel explains, “I use text in my paintings to deliver commentary while also utilizing the font’s graphic qualities to distort or contain imagery.”
With an emphasis on bold graphic design, Bri’s influences include advertisement, punk music, and cinema. Her work often examines art history and addresses social politics.
While Cirel is mostly known for her oil paintings, she also produces low budget music videos and independent art shorts for established and emerging artists.
Andrew Pawlan
“Found objects encrusted with glass seed beads make up the body of my work. These works of art invite the viewer to reevaluate their natures, such as pride or greed and their attitudes on global warming or endangered species. In my travels I have been drawn to native American, Haitian, and African beaded objects. The glitter of tiny glass beads and the complexity of patterns dazzles the eye drawing one in, revealing cultural and historical context. I create my own context by combining designs and symbols from different cultures and eras. Irony and whimsy dominate my art calling attention to universal and timely issues: dichotomies of inner verses outer meaning, facade verses core, childish ideas verses adult attitudes.
The objects: toys, figurines, household objects, are chosen for their moral and political symbolism as well as sculptural interest. The undulating surface made of iridescent beads accentuates the play of light and captivates. The dots, much like pointillism and digital-ism, infuses each piece with the timelessness and richness one finds in tapestries and mosaics. The color relationships, patterns, and symbols drive home my statement about human nature and the state of the world. ” ~ A. Pawlan
Troy Gua produces Pop-infused conceptual work in a wide range of media, marrying commerciality to contemporary with a glossy design aesthetic and a keen wit. “My subject matter addresses contemporary culture and the ways in which media, iconography, identity, cultural self-critique, and the universal human need for recognition play parts within it. My methods of fabrication are as eclectic as the results, and my media of choice is whatever best serves the piece, whether it be paint, print, plaster, photography, cast resin, found object, sculptural intervention, video, etc.
Encouraging closer investigation, my work is reflective, often both literally and metaphorically. It implies the reflection of our culture and my love/hate fascination with it. It suggests the slickly wrapped bits of information our society is continuously fed through our ever-growing assemblage of media. It references what we choose to see, and what we choose to show.” ~ T. Gua
Craig “Skibs” Barker grew up in Southern California during the early 80’s and the explosions of both punk rock and surfing culture. With a healthy dose of punk flyers, album covers, and surfing magazines buzzing through his head, Craig began making flyers and t-shirts for his friends and his own punk bands. Fast-forward to today; Craig’s most recent paintings infuse his long-standing love for painting and rendering the human female figure with his punk fueled graphic design. Mixing different approaches, techniques, and mediums, he creates a sense of memory, personal history, and appreciation for the female form. Combining elements of pop culture, literary censorship, and a positive mental attitude, he creates layered scenes of voyeuristic mischief. Craig’s work explores the junctions between past and present, memory and imagination, fantasy and reality, while creating a dialog between image and viewer.
Joshua Horkey
“I have undertaken much introspection in the past few years my life. I have spent a great deal of time learning about myself, and in turn I have learned about the people around me and people in general.
The overall concept of my recent artwork echoes this introspection.
I want my art to expose what people may uncover once they do dive deeper into themselves and find what drives them, what are their passions, their definitions of success…
However, it’s the regrets that seems to be a focal point I tend to use. After all, I feel that it’s the mistakes that we learn most from.
I aim to share my own mistakes, my observations, and my shortcomings, all done with tongue-in-cheek humor and or sarcasm.” ~ J. Horkey