WOW – Work Of the Week – Shepard Fairey “Ramone Canvas”

Ramone Canvas

Shepard Fairey
Ramone Canvas
2002
Screenprint on canvas
24 x 18 in.
Artist’s Proof (A.P.)

Pencil signed and numbered

About This Work:

“Most of my heroes don’t appear on stamps or in art galleries.  No matter how much I love art, or try to convince myself of its relevance in society the fact remains that music is a lot cooler and way more able to reach people’s hearts and minds”  – Shepard Fairey

Music has always had a huge influence on pop culture. Every generation had a defining genre of music.  Music, like art speaks volumes about the times in which we live in. Just as art, music is constantly changing.  Shepard Fairey’s brand of art is Street Art. Real street art touches upon the pulse of the everyday person, whose perception of what art is about is not in a museum, but rather on the street. Music touches the everyday person, much like the street art of Shepard Fairey and his contemporaries.

Society emulates musicians, society hums their music, society sings their lyrics. Fairey’s art is an extension of what music does to society. His work talks about the social, environmental, political, and every day issues that concern the everyday person.

His work became more widely known in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, specifically his Barack Obama “Hope” poster. The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl called the poster “the most efficacious American political illustration since ‘Uncle Sam Wants You‘”.

This week’s Work Of the Week (WOW) is a very rare silkscreen on canvas of one of Shepard Fairey’s favorite Punk Rock icons, Joey Ramone. The Ramone Canvas as it has come to be known, was done in 2002. There are only 2 of these pieces ever made, plus 1 AP (artist’s proof) and 1 PP (printer’s proof).

Needless to say, this work is extremely rare.

In 2002 – 2003 Fairey produced a Punk Pioneers suite. The first piece of this series was Joey Ramone, lead singer of the Ramones. Despite others that had come before him setting the stage for the punk rock genre, such as Iggy Pop or the Stooges, the Ramones, according to Fairey “really set the wheels in motion” in the realm of punk music.

The other icons in Punk Pioneers suite are Johnny Rotten, Joe Strummer, Glenn Danzig, Henry Rollins, and Ian MacKaye. However, the only work on canvas was of Joey Ramone. All the other icons were silkscreen on paper and in an edition of 300.

The whereabouts of the 2 editioned Ramone Canvas are unknown. The printer’s proof has been found, and archived, but has a tear to the canvas. Thus, leaving the Artist’s Proof left, which belongs to Gregg Shienbaum Fine Art, the only known work in mint condition.

WOW – Work Of the Week – Banksy “Grannies”

Grannies close up

Banksy
Grannies
2006
Screenprint
19 3/4 x 27 1/2 in.
Edition of 150

Pencil signed and numbered; accompanied with COA by PEST Control

About This Work:

Banksy is a British street artist and activist who, despite worldwide fame, has maintained anonymity. Although details of the artist’s life are largely unknown, it is thought that Banksy was born in Bristol more or less around 1974, and started his career in this city as a graffiti artist. 

Whether plastering cities with his trademark gangsta rat, painting imagined openings and building hotels in the West Bank barrier in Israel, or stenciling “we’re bored of fish” above a penguins’ zoo enclosure, Banksy creates street art with an irreverent wit and an international reputation that precedes his anonymous identity. “TV has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting” he says, “but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress”.

Banksy’s work features striking and humorous images, occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist or anti-establishment. Subjects often include rats, apes, policemen, soldiers, children, and the elderly.
As all Banksy fans know, the artist can be extremely edgy, political, satirical, and in the case of this Work Of the Week, Grannies, humorous as well. A humor that plays upon the evident contrast and contradiction that lays in the image of two old, extremely British ladies knitting sweaters that say PUNK IS NOT DEAD or THUG FOR LIFE.

Banksy’s works need no explanation. Through his crafted signature and his immediately identifiable graphic style, he critically examines contemporary issues of consumerism, political authority, terrorism, and the status of art and its display. Grannies is another perfect example of how Banksy’s work can be thought-provoking, intense, shocking, intriguing and funny.

WOW – Work Of the Week – Keith Haring “Pop Shop II”

Pop Shop II quad

Keith Haring
Pop Shop II
1988
Silkscreen
12 x 15 in. each
Edition of 200; matched number set

Pencil signed, dated and numbered

This must be sold as a set of 4 only.

About This Work:

Keith Haring was born on May 4, 1958 in Reading, Pennsylvania. He started developing a love for drawing at a very early age, learning basic cartooning skills from his father and from the popular culture around him, such as Dr. Seuss and Walt Disney.
Upon graduation from high school, Haring moved to New York City and enrolled in the School of Visual Arts.
In New York, Haring found a thriving alternative art community that was developing outside the gallery and museum system, in the downtown streets, the subways, the clubs and former dance halls. Here he became friends with fellow artists Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, as well as other musicians, performance artists and graffiti writers, all together forming the New York art community. Haring was swept up in the energy and spirit of this scene and began to organize and participate in exhibitions and performances at Club 57 and other alternative venues.

Though many associate the artist Keith Haring with his seemingly innocuous images of barking dogs, crawling babies, beating hearts and flying saucers, his work often tackled social justice issues – from nuclear proliferation, to AIDS, to the environment to racial and income inequality.

In April 1986, Haring opened his first Pop Shop, a retail store in Soho selling T-shirts, toys, posters, buttons and magnets bearing his images.
Haring considered the shop to be an extension of his work, intended to allow people greater access to his work, at a lower cost. The shop received criticism from many in the art world, however Haring remained committed to his desire to make his artwork available to an audience as wide as possible, and received strong support for his project from friends, fans and mentors, including Andy Warhol. This is the origin of the Pop Shop series, that at the time could be acquired for what could be considered an affordable price back then, and that now are one of his most iconic and recognized works.

Pop Shop prints were released as a set of four individual pieces or one quad of the different images.
This work of the week is called Pop Shop II, a set of four individual works, all pencil signed and all matching numbers.
Haring was a child of Pop. In his Pop Shops, he used his iconic symbols and characters in a playful and joyful way, with bright colors and bold contours of cartoonish figures.

While his human figures generally depict people and players in society, human figures depicted upside-down, like the one in Pop Shop II, are usually B-boys and B-girls, the dancers of hip-hop, doing the iconic move in which they spin on their head. Figures contorting in backbends or jumps are also depictions of break dancers, some of the most iconic cultural figures of the New York City of the 1980’s.

In the Pop Shops, Keith Haring always kept imagery accessible and easy to understand, in order to grab the eyes and minds of viewers and get them both to enjoy themselves and to engage with important concerns.
Haring’s genius was his ability to communicate very directly, very immediately through his chosen symbols and iconography. The joyfulness and a wonderful lightheartedness in his work, is a message of his vision and strong hope of a better world to come.

WOW – Work Of the Week – Ahol Sniffs Glue “Tropical Depression In Paradise”

Tropical Depression In Paradise

Ahol Sniffs Glue
Tropical Depression In Paradise
2017
Mixed media collage
30 x 22 in.
Signed on verso

About This Work:

This work presents Ahol Sniffs Glue’s famous lovable characters in a completely different light than what we are used to. For a very long time Ahol has been working in a completely different style and medium, but was never fully confident in showing that work. Not because the style was not good, or the work was not of the highest caliber, but because for as long as he can remember, his artistic career was built upon a certain style, that everyone has known and loved for so long. This is a drastic change in style that, the artist feels, “feeds his soul”.   

Tropical Depression in Paradise is made of collaged elements of cloth, felt, thread, wood, a Crown Royal sack, Kool cigarettes, and even beard hair, to name a few. With his recent success, his work can sometimes become glamorized. While the whole time, Ahol maintains that his work is the exact opposite of glamor.
He has always tried to show the darker, grittier, real side of life in Miami, not the Miami that outsiders know of, sunshine, beaches, palm trees, bronzed women in bikinis at the clubs in South Beach.

The central figure is his well known figure of an atypical, typical person standing on the street, perhaps Biscayne Boulevard. Looking closely at her, one can see she is created with many different unique elements, from her weave of thread to her face of a Crown Royal sack, wearing a body suit of jute, and gold trim, down to the wood veneer chancletas, (and if you look real closely at her, you can even see part of Ahol’s beard).  She is standing next to a beautiful, most creative version of a Miami Palm tree constructed of Kool cigarette packages, and pencil sharpening for a trunk.

It is the background of this work, that allows the viewer to get a true sense of the artist, and the real city that he calls home, Miami. Filled with cigarettes, Taco Bell packets of hot sauce, cocaine baggies, pills, and Chinese fortunes, intertwined with spliced collaged photos of random people, palm trees, la Virgen de la Caridad de Cobre, his bus pass and jury duty notices, we see how the artists lives, and shows off the city that he loves. You will see something different every time that you look at it.

WOW – Work Of the Week – CLANDESTINE CULTURE “Isis Drinks Pepsi”

FullSizeRender

CLANDESTINE CULTURE
Isis Drinks Pepsi
2016
Acrylic on wood
45 x 71 1/2 in.
Signed on verso

About This Work:

For some years now, the streets of Miami have been covered with enormous posters bearing the CLANDESTINE CULTURE hallmark. They are works that stand out not only because of the anti-establishment message implicit in them, but also due to their artistic quality.
CLANDESTINE CULTURE is an American contemporary artist working in Miami who, despite his fame, has maintained anonymity.
CLANDESTINE CULTURE was born in 1970 and moved to Miami in the early 1990’s. By the year 2000 he started working as a urban artist and in 2012 he had his first solo gallery exhibition.

His work acts as visual cultural criticism and commentary, with established social and political agendas serving as targets for a unique style of illustration made using several different media, such us canvas, neon and banners.
His art production is s diversified in different formats from painting and sculpture to street art installations and it is often characterized by large format works on paper, that use wheatpaste applications on urban buildings. The works have CLANDESTINE CULTURE written within the work.
Known it for his strong social criticism and portrayal of taboo subjects, that sometimes can appear disturbing, no one can deny the controversial characteristics of his work.

On July 20, 2013, one of his most important projects, The Banner Project, started.
The concept of the project was to raise or hang flags around the city of Miami as art installations. The first flag was raised illegally over Julia Tuttle Causeway on a street light, property of the State Of Florida. The size of the banner was 10 x 16 feet, made of synthetic fabric and painted with latex paint, featuring a black and white image of a police in riot gear, with a red CLANDESTINE CULTURE sign painted at the bottom. This flag was raised on a High-mast lighting, at a height of 98 feet. The method used to raise the flag has never been revealed. The waving flag remained for five days, until it was removed by the Florida Highway Patrol.

IMG_5912  IMG_5913  IMG_5924

The flag on Julia Tattle Causeway, Miami – July 20th, 2013.

By the summer of 2014 another The Banner Project took place, this time in the Miami Marine Stadium. The size and materials were similar to the one used on the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

Approaching December of the same year, Culture acted again, on this occasion in front of the Miami Beach Convention Center, during Art Basel Miami Beach 2014.
Since then no other flag has been placed in the area of Miami.

banner abmb

The police removing the banner at the Miami Beach Convention Center, Art Basel Miami 2014

Many other “street pranks” have occurred. For example, during the NBA Finals in 2013 Miami Heat vs San Antonio Spurs, CLANDESTINE CULTURE placed a sign that read “CITY HALL” and has arrows pointing to the sewer in the street.

IMG_5680

The CITY HALL sign next to the sewer placed by the street artist during the NBA Finals, American Airlines Arena, Miami 2013

As for the name, the artist explains: “When I first wrote this phrase on the street six years ago, it was very personal, I was not happy with my life and the way society treated me. It seemed as if ‘they’ thought they were right and I was wrong. ‘They’ always told the truth and you had to obey them. ‘They’ never asked how do you feel, or if you agree with what ‘they’ are suggesting. ‘They’ are always correcting you. One night I was walking on the street by a commercial area close to my neighborhood. I passed by a big garbage container. I stopped, and with an oil stick I wrote, “I’M CLANDESTINE CULTURE. WELCOME TO MY WORLD.” I did not know why I did it, I just did it and it worked. I was feeling better after that. I released all my anger and all my frustration in just one phrase: CLANDESTINE CULTURE“.

Still today, the artist chooses to remain anonymous. He hits the street with his face and head completely covered. He believes that the painting and the message is more important then the artist.  He uses the faces of everyday people, images and words, to show that in the end, we the people are all part of one world wide culture… a clandestine culture.

WOW – Work Of the Week – Banksy “Donut (Chocolate)”

Donuts Chocolate

Banksy
Donut (Chocolate)
2009
Screenprint
22 x 30 in.
Edition of 299

Pencil signed and numbered; accompanied with Certificate of Authenticity by PEST Control

About This Work:

Banksy is a British street artist and activist who, despite worldwide fame, has maintained anonymity. Although details of the artist’s life are largely unknown, it is thought that Banksy was born in Bristol more or less around 1974, and started his career in this city as a graffiti artist. 

His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humor with graffiti executed in a very personal and distinctive stenciling technique.
It is thought that Banksy started as a freehand graffiti artist in 1990 – 1994 as a member of Bristol’s DryBreadZ Crew (DBZ). Banksy has always said that one of his main sources of inspiration is 3D.

Banksy’s work features striking and humorous images, occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist or anti-establishment. Subjects often include rats, apes, policemen, soldiers, children, and the elderly.
As all Banksy fans know, the artist can be extremely edgy, political, satirical, and in the case of this work of the week, Chocolate Donut, humorous as well.

This work, Donut (Chocolate), needs no explanation. It is simply a spoof on the stereotype that American policemen are infatuated with donuts.
Again, another perfect example of how Banksy’s work can be thought-provoking, intense, shocking, intriguing and humorous.

In 2014, Banksy was regarded as a British cultural icon, with young adults from abroad naming the artist among a group of people that they most associated with UK culture, which included William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth II, David Beckham, The Beatles, and Elton John.

His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world. As of today, his work can be found in countless cities, from Vienna to San Francisco, Barcelona to Paris and Detroit. 
It is thought that Banksy currently lives and works in England.
His last “face-to-monkey mask” interview took place in 2003.

WOW – Work Of the Week – Shepard Fairey “Power Bidder”

Power Bidder

SHEPARD FAIREY
Power Bidder
2015
Screenprint
24 x 18 in.
Edition of 450

Pencil signed and numbered

About This Work:

Tomorrow, finally, will be Election Day.
Both candidates carry a lot of baggage with them.

Both candidates have very high unfavorable poll numbers.

Both candidate are flawed.

Questions about politicians and just how ethical they are, and how ethical the whole system is, have been raised. Charges of unlawful and unjust “dealings” have been tossed around for the whole world to see just how much of a mockery this election is. 

Due to tomorrow’s elections, we feel that this particular artwork is very fitting and we found its message very appropriate for this occasion.

This weeks work of the week is called Power Bidder, by Shepard Fairey

At the bottom of the work it reads “Democracy sold to the highest bidder”.

With all the craziness, and nonsense that has surrounded this election cycle, it seem that truer have never been spoken!

Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is an American contemporary graphic designer and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his “Andre the Giant Has a Posse”
(…OBEY…) sticker campaign.

Fairey created the “André the Giant Has a Posse” sticker campaign in 1989, while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). This later evolved into the “Obey Giant” campaign.  As with most street artists, the Obey Giant was intended to inspire curiosity and cause the masses to question their relationship with their surroundings.

His work became more widely known in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, specifically his Barack Obama “Hope” poster. The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl called the poster “the most efficacious American political illustration since ‘Uncle Sam Wants You'”.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today’s best known and most influential street artists.

His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

In 2011 Time Magazine commissioned Fairey to design its cover to honor “The Protester” as Person of the Year in the wake of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and other social movements around the world.  This was Fairey’s second Person of the Year cover for Time, his first being of Barack Obama in 2008.

Work Of the Week – James Rosenquist “Firepole”

expo-67-mural

JAMES ROSENQUIST
Expo ’67 Mural – Firepole
1967
Multicolor lithograph from 6 stones
34 x 18 3/4 in.
Edition of 41

Pencil signed and numbered

About This Work:

Born on November 29, 1933 in Grand Forks, ND, James Rosenquist attended the University of Minnesota, before earning a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York in 1955.
Rosenquist started as a commercial sign painter. This career ended when he moved into a studio in Lower Manhattan, where he gradually befriended other upcoming artists of the era such as Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Barnett Newman throughout the 1960’s.

James Rosenquist is one of the key figures in America’s Pop Art movement. Rosenquist takes fragmented, oddly disproportionate images and combines and overlaps them in his works to create visual stories, in the most abstract and provocative ways.
Through a complex layering of such motifs as Coca-Cola bottles, kitchen appliances, packaged foods, trousered men legs, women’s lipsticked mouths and manicured hands, Rosenquist’s large canvases and prints embody and comment on the omnipresence of the consumer driven world. 

Rosenquist’s paintings and prints are often made in unusual proportions and giant dimensions. For example, one of his prints, called Time Dust (1992), is thought to be the largest print in the world, measuring approximately 7 x 35 feet.
This week’s Work Of the Week, Firepole, challenges once again the boundaries of scale and tradition.

In 1967, Rosenquist painted Firepole, a monumental mural commissioned for the American Pavilion at the Montreal World Exposition. This mural featured gargantuan blue-uniformed legs wrapped around a fireman’s pole. 
The dimension of the mural was humongous – and then subsequently reiterated in smaller scale in this lithograph.

Firepole refers to Rosenquist’s idea “that it was unnecessary for U.S. to police the world or be the fireman of it“. Indeed, Rosenquist has always been very much involved with political and social issues of that time, especially criticizing the Vietnam war and the political positions of the US government in terms of global relationships and conflicts.

Today Rosenquist is considered one of the greatest American artists still alive.
His seemingly unrelated paintings of consumer products, weaponry, and celebrities hint at the artist’s social, political, and cultural concerns.
The billboard painter-turned-artist’s early works are also considered emblematic of a burgeoning consumer culture in America during the 1960s. Six decades into his career, Rosenquist continues to create massive, provocative artworks, whose relevance hinges on their engagement with current economic, political, environmental, and scientific issues, with a transition away from cultural references into more abstract subject matter. The artist lives and works in Aripeka, FL.

WOW – Work Of the Week – KAWS “Chum Running Pink”

Chum Running Pink

KAWS
Chum Running Pink
2003
Screenprint
14 x 21 in.
Edition of 36

Pencil signed, dated and numbered on verso

About This Work:

Brian Donnelly, born in 1974, is a New York – based artist, professionally known as KAWS.
After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York, his first job was as a freelance animator, painting backgrounds for Disney. In the 1990s, KAWS began his artistic career as a graffiti artist, subverting imagery on billboards, bus shelters and phone booth advertisements. At first, these reworked ads lasted for several months, but as KAWS’ popularity skyrocketed, the ads became increasingly sought after.

In 1999 KAWS began to design and produce his first limited-edition vinyl toys with Japanese clothing brands and companies. That seemed to be the right country for the beginning of his career, because in Japan, the toys genre is well respected and widespread.
This particular artistic production by KAWS began in the wake of contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, today a great friend of his. KAWS says that his predilection in creating toys and little objects derives from the work of two artists in particular: Superflat master Takashi Murakami and Pop artist Claes Oldenburg, both famous for their fine art and playful objects made in large editions.
With time, the toys which he first started with, have gained popularity and have become more and more recognizable, leading him to several collaborations in different commercial fields.

KAWS’ work is characterized by repeating images, all meant to be universally understood, surpassing languages and cultures. He is greatly influenced by iconic characters from modern pop culture. KAWS uses four main characters: Companion, Accomplice, Chum and Bendy. They riff on Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, the Michelin Man and a giant spermatozoa. Their relationship to Donnelly hovers somewhere between avatar, id, conscience and inner child.
This work of the week is Chum Running Pink.

KAWS’ work treads the fine line between art, commerce, cartoons, and commercials. It distorts, yet at the same time, pays homage to, all the popular objects and icons produced, bought, sold, exchanged, desired, and cherished; the essence of American consumerism. His artworks transform iconic pop culture characters into thought-provoking works of art. His work possesses a sophisticated humor while employing a refined graphic language that revitalizes figuration with bold gestures, playful and cartoonish images.
This artistic process recalls what Andy Warhol and other pop artists used to do by projecting their art toward the concept of consumerism and of American lifestyle.

A graffiti artist, illustrator, toy-maker, sculptor and painter, KAWS is now a world-renowned artist, who exhibits in museums and galleries internationally.

Ahol Sniffs Glue New Print Release “REDRUM”

 

GREGG SHIENBAUM FINE ART

is proud to present its second editioned work with Miami Artist

AHOL SNIFFS GLUE

REDRUM

Limited to only 50 pieces.

This new work titled “REDRUM” is in the style of Abstract Expressionism. Highly influenced by this movement, Ahol breaks away from his well known style of  the “classic pattern”. In this screenprint the viewer can see the brush strokes of raw emotion poured into the work.

This print is a very meaningful work to the artist.  It is his first screenprint on paper published with Gregg Shienbaum Fine Art, and it is a work that depicts his feelings about the state of our nation and the world.

Ahol’s Eyeballs represent the eyes of the working class.  Usually seen in his typical pattern, Ahol paints these eyes to let the everyday working class person know that he is with them.  Painted on walls, cars, canvas, and anywhere he can, Ahol throws up a shout out to the regular guy, just going through the daily grind, of just making it to survive.

REDRUM (Murder spelled backwards), depicts the sad state of the killings in our communities, here at home, and around the world.

Innocent victims being shot down for just trying to get by, and live their lives.  Whether it is everyday working people in our streets and communities, law enforcement, people at a night club, or a someone overseas. This new screenprint by Ahol depicts the chaos, the turbulence, the anger, and the sadness of what is going on in our neighborhoods.

Painted in fluorescent red ink, to symbolize the blood spilled, and running through our streets, this expressionistic style allows for more artistic freedom that the Ahol has been wanting to achieve. This style  not only portrays the tension, and whirlwind of emotions that effect the people and the community, but also gives us a sense of the artist’s pure inner feelings.  This new style has more of a free flowing quality, that shows the artist’s emotion, growth, depth, and dimension.

GREGG SHIENBAUM FINE ART IS PLEASED TO BE PART OF THIS
NEW WORK, AND CREATIVE PROCESS!!

The details of this new edition are below.

  • Ahol Sniffs Glue
  • REDRUM
  • 2016
  • Fluorescent red ink screenprint on French Construction Blacktop 80# Coverweight card stock
  • 25 x 19 in.
  • Edition of 50
  • Signed and numbered
  • $300 

 

Ahol Sniffs Glue signing the REDRUM screenprints.

Ahol Sniffs Glue in front of his work REDRUM

third second

Click HERE to see the video of Ahol signing the screenprints.