BETWEEN THE LINES
GROUP SHOW
11 MAR - 28 APR 2016
The Mine is pleased to announce Between The Lines, an urban contemporary group show curated by Rom Levy, featuring Andrew Schoultz, Kenton Parker, RETNA, Andrew Faris, Paul Insect, BAST, eL Seed, Jenny Sharaf, and Word to Mother.
Since people first began painting on cave walls, the line has been the simplest element of art. As a mode of mark-making, it doesn't remain static but holds an infinite potential—of velocity, of direction, of connection, of form. Against the noise of today’s overly decorative urban art scene, then, it makes sense to return to where it all began: to the purity of line.
The line is at once a road and a horizon. Between the Lines considers the space in between. Bringing together an international group of artists, it surveys the landscape of a movement that started in the grimy backstreets of Paris, London, New York, and LA but has since exploded to become a worldwide phenomenon. Today, the lines between contemporary art and what was once called street art are increasingly blurred and difficult to distinguish. The lineup includes heavy hitters and fresh new blood alike. Despite their humble beginnings—and very often an aversion to getting sucked into the commercial art machine—many of these artists have been welcomed into the upper echelons of the art world—its fairs and auctions, as well as its museums and other institutions.
Still, this is a show that doesn't forget its roots, with many of its participants having honed their craft not only in art schools but also in the streets. The myriad figural and typographic styles on show are deeply grounded in their urban origins but have evolved over time to develop their own unique figural and typographic languages. Take the colorful geometry of Andrew Faris’ new aesthetic landscape art, in which the digital seems to erupt into the physical, or Andrew Schoultzs, who implies a sense of alluring fantasy and whimsy—a crossroads vaguely familiar to the modern world. Almost all of the artists are showing for the first time in the Middle East, yet the influence of the region can be felt in the hieroglyphics and Arabic calligraphy that, along with black letters and Native American scripts, inform RETNA's characteristic style.
It makes perfect sense to show these artists here in Dubai. Just as urban contemporary art itself draws upon and connects multiple movements, Dubai is a cosmopolitan, multiracial node linking Europe, Asia, and Africa, with all these diverse influences reflected in its culture. It's also a city that looks to redefine public space and bring the outside inside, even as it is constantly remaking itself. Like the city and like the line, the movement continues to evolve, using its high-profile platform to advocate for personal freedom, social change, and an expansion of awareness all to the largest audience that any art movement has ever reached. Even as the works in Between the Lines celebrate this urban facet of contemporary art, they not only demystify but also repoeticize the streets.
ARTWORKS
Andrew Schoultz
Sourcing inspiration from 15th-century German map-making and Indian miniature paintings, Andrew Schoultz's frenetic imagery depicts an ephemeral history bound to repeat itself. In his mixed-media works, notions of war, spirituality, and sociopolitical imperialism are reoccurring themes, which shrewdly parallel an equally repetitive contemporary pursuit of accumulation and power. Intricate line work, painting, metal leaf, and collage twist and undulate under Schoultz's meticulous hand, ranging from intimately sized wall works to staggering murals and installations. While his illustrated world seems one of chaos and frenzy, Schoultz also implies a sense of alluring fantasy and whimsy - a crossroads vaguely familiar to the modern world.
Kenton Parker
Kenton Parker’s (1968) work addresses issues of self-improvement, beauty, and masculinity, expressing rebellion against the societal pressures of being perfect or successful while exploring the landscape as a metaphor for the body. Parker’s studio practice is content-driven, full of the charisma and charm of the artist’s personality, and able to tackle any media. Drawing from the psychological underbelly of humanity, Parker’s work develops from crude and witty musings incessantly scribbled on thousands of papers and gathered into an archive. These ideas are then translated into sculpture, painting, installations, videos, and murals.
The overall result is a multitude of interpretations that tap into the dark humour of lifetime achievements and disappointments. Through careful observation of his surroundings and meticulous sourcing, Parker cultivates a perverse ethos where viewers can get a glimpse into his crude yet contemplative persona, whose intellect is matched by sexual deviation, marked by his personal experiences navigating the glorious and troubling Los Angeles landscape.
Retna
Influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphics and calligraphy from the Middle East and Asia, RETNA is a world-renowned graffiti artist creating highly distinctive and widely collected art. Blending photography with painted graffiti lettering and combining elements of the past, present, and future, RETNA’s work appears complex, beautiful, and captivating. Having adopted the name ‘RETNA’ from a popular Wu-Tang Clan song, his art form is wrought with stories and almost always includes his own alphabet that he created, a hybrid of global typography: Incan, Egyptian, Asian, Hebrew, Arabic, Native American visual writings, hieroglyphic, and ink calligraphy.
Each piece carries meaning, conveying an event or dialogue that RETNA experienced. Celebrity commissions have included creating a portrait of Marvin Gaye for R&B artist Usher as well as having been commissioned by Louis Vuitton to create an original work on the building’s exterior walls, a first for the luxury brand.
Andrew Faris
Andrew Faris is an artist currently living and working in Jackson, WY. He completed Fine Arts and Visual Communication Design studies at Kent State University as well as further studies with Ruedi Rüegg in Zurich, Switzerland. Andrew Faris had productive stints as a designer with Hillman Curtis and at R/GA in NYC, where he also created the New York City Polaroid Project. Next, Sapient in San Diego, as well as Art Director at Yahoo in Los Angeles. The formation, in 2010, of Recess, a design studio also in L.A., along with The Andrew Faris Studio, devoted solely to his artwork.
Paul Insect
Paul Insect's sharp-edged images combine all the absurdism of Dada with the sleekness of modernism, yielding surreal renderings that point playfully at the deep, dark underbelly of adult life. In the 1990s, Insect became known for his witty stencils and spray-painted works before transitioning to the gallery scene with color-drenched canvases, which teetered precariously between tradition and something far more messed up. Never before has chaos been channeled in such clean lines.
Insect has painted alongside Banksy at The Can Festival, produced album art for DJ Shadow, and has worked on the separation wall in Palestine. His work can be spotted everywhere, from the streets of London to LA or Stockholm to Sydney, and he's held in high regard by Damien Hirst.
Bast
Bäst is the quintessential artist representing Brooklyn, New York. He is also one of the few pivotal figures in the international street art movement to retain a considerable degree of anonymity. Indeed, it is often debated whether he really exists or may be a pseudonym for a side project by another major artist. Without wishing to dispel any enigmatic spell this may cast, we can confirm that he is an individual artist working in a relatively conventional manner.
Bäst's first works, wheat-pasted posters assembled from media clippings then standardised on a photocopier and a screen printing bed, appeared alongside those of the New York-based collective FAILE in the early 2000s. While Bäst's art is comparable to FAILE's in that it bastardises the pop culture aesthetic to create more complex, personal, and stimulating imagery, Bäst's own pieces are rougher and hard-edged. They use existing imagery to create uncompromising compositions, in stark contrast to FAILE's personal artworks which aspire to the populist appeal of mass media.
El Seed
eL Seed is a ‘calligraffiti’ artist, a blend of the historic art of Arabic calligraphy and the modern art of graffiti, mixing street culture from Paris and Arabic history to poetic effect. Born to Tunisian parents in the suburbs of Paris, eL Seed spent his formative years juggling different cultures, languages, and identities. Today, El Seed’s pieces have developed out of two worlds colliding, with these two cultures clashing and blending into one another to form a new identity, a unique mark, and a distinctive style.
Jenny Sharaf
Jenny Sharaf is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in San Francisco, CA. Her paintings, installations, videos, and performances celebrate the process while reflecting on art history, feminism, and abstraction. Sharaf is strongly influenced by the Hollywood vernacular, in part because of her family's legacy in the film and television business and growing up in Los Angeles. The mythology of the California girl leads the way to tell a complex and fragmented narrative of art-making in the 21st century.
Sharaf has also presented a strong curatorial practice, focusing on community engagement and promoting the arts in San Francisco. She is the founder and director of Parking Lot Art Fair, San Francisco's rogue art happening, and continues to produce art events in the Bay Area and beyond.
Word to Mother
London-based artist Word To Mother, entered the art world with a strong background in illustration and graffiti. Word To Mother creates works that combine many influences into uniquely layered paintings, often atop pieces of salvaged wood. Incorporating hand-drawn personal sentiments, emotions, and feelings that he executes in the form of loose script, inspired by his experience as a tattoo artist, and tight sign-written letters, drawn from years of painting graffiti.
Suggestions of nostalgic sign writing and unmistakable WTM figures feature within a salvaged environment where they appear to have existed for years. A beautiful juxtaposition of fragile and emotive elements shown through subtle textures and washes of colour, but with a strength and confidence fused with his signature patterns, architecture and figures. His work is melancholic yet fun and playful. An earthy ‘London’ palette of grey tones accentuating splashes of brighter 'seaside' colours of fluo red, pink, yellows, and turquoise, which give the paintings an optimistic feel.