Video Recap from the LA Art Show..
RETNA ONE starting out….
About a month ago I had a chance to check out the Street Legal show featuring Mear One, Retna, El Mac and Kofie, at the Riviera and Rivera gallery. At the same time that show took place, each of these prolific artists were contributing to a live painting of immense proportions at the LA Art show. Here is a fresh video and picture recap of the show..
Kofie in deep mediation and work. Zoning it all out.
Few sit and stand, but all are in quiet awe of Kofie who paints an abstract playground for the eyes. Rarely does he acknowledge these spectators of the Los Angeles Art Show. Inches away from the 12 x 12 foot canvas, he lives and works, spiritually tethered to a geometric pool of tides and axes.
Kofie’s approach and aim, is oblique like his style of “vintage futurism.” The artist avows, “Bottom line: I always like to fuck with people’s heads. There’s no real grand scheme with what I’m trying to do here. I’m really just doing what I do.”
Kofie and Mear grinding out…
Retna putting final touches to the pieces him and Mac worked on.
Unfortunately, Mac was unable to put on a show for the fans because spray paint was not allowed into the building, so the portion of his middle-aged woman was completed beforehand, as that is his tool of trade.
What is interesting are Retna and Mac’s mediation and process on creating a spirit of a woman rather than an ethnicity.
“You can’t quite place the culture of the woman. She could be slightly Asian. She could be slightly African American. She could just be an older Caucasian. We can’t place her. I think [the letters] are incredibly beautiful forms and they go with the way [El Mac] has constructed her face, a sort of etching quality that describes dimension. And if you look at the forms, they have a symbolic quality, so you don’t know what that’s saying, but you can go with it — make a little story about her.” -El Mac.
“We’re paintings murals of people that don’t necessarily have a voice, so we like to glorify them,” Retna explains.
MEAR ONE- Completed work.
The dicussion of fine art, street art, graffiti is one that is interminable, multifaceted and knows no bounds. Forever, will we have out debate on how to categorize and interpret art. There is a rich tradition and history that few understand and critique. However, I feel that one should soak it all enjoy rather than critique. What fun is it to be a dilettante and overly criticize? Apparently, as long as you know what you are talking about, you’re fine.
Marta Avellaneda, 56, represents Galeria del Paseo in Montevideo, Uruguay, and opines that VOX HUMANA is neither graffiti nor fine art: “The way I see it, more than graffiti, is that it’s mural work. They’re muralists, but muralists on canvas. To me, maybe because I grew up in the 60s and 70s, the fact that someone is a street performer and becomes part of an art collection — it loses its feeling.”
Avellaneda concedes that the title is apt: “You have a feeling of each [artist]. They have many voices. You have a geometric voice, a figurative voice, an abstract voice. It’s a human voice.”
Partial credit to Juxtapoz and Tommy Tung for the interview.
