Category: News

Brian Roettinger 8 Announcements opening Los Angeles and Berlin

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Berlin

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Los Angeles

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Berlin

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IMG_4367Berlin Opening

Currently on Display at HVW8 Gallery’s in Los Angeles and Berlin.
Please email info(at)hvw8.com for further information.

HVW8 Los Angeles
661 N Spaulding Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036, USA
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 1 – 6pm

HVW8 Berlin
HVW8 Berlin, Linienstraße 161, 10115 Berlin, Germany
Open Tuesday through Saturday, 1 – 5 pm

Janette Beckman – New York Times

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1980s, Janette Beckman, an expat punk photographer from London, amassed a portfolio of burgeoning New York rap acts like the Cold Crush Brothers, Big Daddy Kane and Public Enemy. It was a labor of love for Ms. Beckman, who had visited New York a few years earlier and was so entranced by the beginnings of hip-hop that she never left. She later collected those images in a book, but she challenges you to find a copy of it today.

“We couldn’t sell it to anyone,” Ms. Beckman said. “Back then, there was not one thought in my mind hip-hop would become this massive thing.”

Was she wrong.

Ms. Beckman’s early portraits are now on display in “Hip-Hop Revolution” at the Museum of the City of New York, alongside the work of Joe Conzo Jr. and Martha Cooper, photographers whose images from the 1970s through the 1990s document parties and dances that began in empty lots and playgrounds and went on to become part of global youth culture.

Full article Here

Atiba Jefferson: Lonely Wanderer – HVW8 Opening Hong Kong

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WOAW and HVW8 Present –

Lonely Wanderer
Atiba Jefferson
with HVW8 Gallery pop-up

Monday, March 16th
6:30 – 9:30pm

WOAW store – 11 Gough Street, Sheung Wan, HK
RSVP : info@woawstore.com

 

Atiba Jefferson: Lonely Wanderer

Skate photography can be limited by its environment: incandescent street lights, pedestrians, and handrails among other urban barriers. This particular craft compensated for these obstacles and maximized action and consequently took the form of fisheye perspective, oblique ground angles, and wide panoramas. Contemporary practice has become so perfected that street images have attained a studio finish of painstakingly perfected lighting and dramatically staged composition. Atiba Jefferson, beginning as a self-taught hobbyist photographer from small town Colorado, entered the field at this pivotal moment becoming a major influencer in this aestheticization of digital skateboard photography.

Andrew Reynolds suspended in mid-execution of his Frontside Flip in Vancouver surrounded by an innumerable wall of ragged spectators is frozen at the apex frame, decisively timed and impossibly composed. This image has since compounded Reynold’s mythologization, and in turn, lives in the collective experience of what it feels like to watch someone “land it.” It’s also a reminder that there’s still an instinctual value and awe with using photography as a way of preserving an ephemeral, and for a lot of viewers, culturally monumental moment. Atiba has since photographed an impressive range of individuals of athletes and musicians who have attained a status of iconicity: Kobe, Animal Collective, Michael Jordan, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Tony Hawk, Tyler the Creator, Future Islands, RZA, Derrick Rose, Run the Jewels, Battles, 2 Chainz, Mark Gonzales, and so on.

What is more baffling is how someone arrives at the opportunity to photograph these people from such disparate industries; for Atiba, these occasions often occur out of chance rather than will. A backstage “hey” activates a network of social dominoes that eventually results in the moment when Explosions in the Sky’s Munaf Rayani holds a guitar ritualistically to the crowd, irradiated by beams of light and covered in a cosmos of photographic grain, in a way that speaks to the shimmering/shattering gliss of the band’s music. Commercial or recreational, each image demonstrates the skill needed to render the particular affect of that instance and the attention necessary to convey the something of an innate quality of a person’s identity.

Atiba derives his practice from his subject. Panda Bear’s Lonely Wanderer, with its cascading keys and mantric vocals repeats, “If you…Look back…Would you…Look back…What have you done…Have you done…Was it…Was it Worthwhile.” Similarly, Lonely Wanderer can be taken as a persistent, reflective, and fragmentary self-interrogation of achievement as communicated through the people that Atiba meanders around.

Atiba is a photographer living and working in Los Angeles. He has served on the editorial staff for Transworld and is one of the founders of The Skateboard Mag. He shoot campaigns for Supreme, adidas, Panasonic and the LA Lakers. He plays keyboards in a band called The Goats & The Occasional Others and co-runs a bar in LA. Lonely Wanderer is his third exhibition at HVW8. He has previously shown at HVW8 LA and HVW8 Berlin.

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Atiba Jefferson Interview

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Interview with Atiba Jefferson by Chris Danforth.

I first heard the name Atiba Jefferson in relation to the skate scene in Los Angeles. Over the years, Jefferson has had access to a who’s who of not only skating, but music, sports, pop culture and more. Whether sitting in on a Henry Rollins photoshoot and quietly clicking the shutter through a long lens, or being commissioned to snap portraits of the Jumpman himself, Atiba has accumulated a wealth of experience during his tenure as a photographer and multi-creative. When speaking with Atiba, there was a lot to cover, as you can’t place his work into only one silo. In this sense, he seems to be a caricature of the modern creative; being well-versed in multiple creative mediums.

How did the HVW8 exhibition in Berlin come to fruition?

It came together at the last minute. I was in Berlin, working with Oakley on a new project, traveling with Sean Malto and Eric Koston, and they asked us to come over for a sales meeting. Tyler asked me to do it, and I was enthusiastic about the project, especially because I was already there.

So you knew him from LA?

Yeah, that’s the one gallery I show at in LA. So I’ve done a couple of shows at his gallery in LA and stuff like that.

Do you have other relationships with galleries like that in the States where you only want to show at one particular gallery?

I don’t regularly show my work but I do have a friend whose group show I’m always trying to be a part of. And then smaller stuff but I only started doing solo shows after I met Tyler.

What about the name of the exhibition? Could you explain that as well?

Titles are always a little bit tricky to come by. I’ve been listening to “So Long, Lonesome,” this Explosions in the Sky song. They’re an instrumental band – pretty big in the U.S. They’re one of my favorite bands actually. I saw them on their first tour in 2000 or 2001, and they were playing to some four people. Now they play huge festivals, in front of eight to ten thousand people at a time. The funny thing is, I was backstage at the Fuck Yeah festival in LA, and the dudes in the band were passing me. They called out to me because they knew who I was. I turned around and recognized them as well. After that we became really good friends.

Read More HERE

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Also Atiba Jefferson on NOWNESS

Atiba Jefferson ‘So Long, Lonesome’ Opens at HVW8 Berlin

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Photographer Atiba Jefferson presents his first European exhibition ‘So Long, Lonesome’ at the HVW8 Berlin gallery.

“This show is special because it’s the first time showing a solo show in Europe. I have shown a lot of my older stuff before but for this show I really wanted to show a good amount of current stuff. I’m a big fan of the things that I shoot, I feel that all the people I shoot are not alone in their drive to do great things and they all are amazing individuals from all different walks of life. I’m lucky to photograph them. ”

– Atiba Jefferson

Atiba Jefferson (b. 1976) is a Los Angeles based photographer. Internationally known for his sports, music, lifestyle, and skateboarding photography, his work can be seen in a wide variety of publications and commercial projects.

HVW8 Berlin
Linienstraße 161, 10115 Berlin, Germany

with support from adidas

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HVW8 x adidas x Kevin Lyons x Jean André

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 10, 2014

HVW8 Gallery and adidas Release New Designs By Kevin Lyons and Jean André

Launch Party in LA at HVW8 on Saturday, November 15, 2014

(Los Angeles) Celebrating the intersection of fashion, art and music, adidas and HVW8 announce the release of new artwork on Seely and Adi-Ease styles from two of the design world’s most inspiring minds: Kevin Lyons and Jean André.

On Saturday, November 15, HVW8’s West Hollywood gallery will kick off an international series of events celebrating these collaborations with appearances, artwork, a display of the four new shoes from the two artists and a special music guest.

Kevin Lyons

“I wanted to create bright, colorful all-over prints. But making sure that they are still very wearable…” says Lyons, “With the Seeley, I wanted to experiment with a lot of the watercolor on paper backgrounds that I have been doing over the past couple of years. I played around with very saturated color mixing that created an analog, thermodynamic Predator-like pattern. I like the moody blue and rich tones that some of the saturations and bleeding make.”

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With the Ease, Lyons saw an opportunity to use some of the color fill drips from his larger mural paintings where he often uses sponges and water-based paint to loosely fill his Monster characters. The drips then often make for interesting compositions of drops and splatters.

“I loved the idea of doing a white shoe that then had the watercolor on it…But it is not meant to look like literal paint splatters – more a fabric design that was made up of those drops and splatters.”

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Jean André

Speaking on his Seeley design, Jean says, “I always wear full color shoes. I’m not into many colors and many shapes. I wanted a special product that looks like something I would wear. I figured out that if you were to stand in a pool of black ink with your white shoes, then it could be a cool look and feel.”

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For his Adi-Ease, Jean looked at an all-over pattern of more sensual shapes and the formal similarities between leaves and women’s lips. Jean adds, “I thought that everybody would expect me to draw girls on the shoes, but I don’t really love figurative patterns. I did, however, want a thugged-out black and white pair that I’d be proud to rock, so I added the girl inside as a signature, last touch.

The November 15 event at HVW8 Art + Design will be followed by an installation at Art Week in Miami from December 3 – 7 and special pop-up galleries to follow in Europe. Both artists and HVW8 want each launch date to be a full-on event. Expect live-paintings, large scale murals, and plenty of great live music.

Saturday, November 15th 2014 – 7PM – 10PM
Exhibition runs through December 28, 2014

HVW8 Gallery
661 N. Spaulding Ave Los Angeles, CA 90036
RSVP : rsvp@hvw8.com

Tonight Francesco Giusti ‘Caribbean’ opens tonight

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A ribbon in green, yellow and red is strung with Junior written in 70’s bubble font, as memorial. The epitaph commemorates the death of a man who contributes a meaningful part of the neighborhood, a supermarket and a garden. Yet these angel investors, are commonly, and most plausibly, drug pushers. They make their money through crime, yet this same cash funds community based projects. These are the issues of moral ambiguity that underlie Francesco Giusti’s images. This image that at first glance, holds a degree of violence, or one dimensional sort of ‘slummy-ness’ or criminality, reveals that sort of duality of urban life in the Caribbean. That somewhere between crime is an economy, a community based system of justice that is as easily codified.

Broken down cars are overridden with foliage from the tropics. Palm trees commonly associated with paradise are wilderness, unhampered. Where utopia and dystopia exist in a zone with an unrestrained rawness. This sort of cultural hybridity is often the remnants of European hegemony where it’s post-colonial history is traced through the in-the-street as a playboy icon, through the print heavy patterns of the dancehall queens, or in the particular way a woman poses, hips out, in essence of the dancehall attitude.

The images show that these vestiges of colonialism are still very much at conflict by threatening local heritage or progressing the flattening, or globalization of culture. How a gift store grass skirt, and machete may seem like a costume hodgepodge, actually represents the struggle for an indigenous past to serve under western influence. That in order to preserve deity of Ogoun, locals developed visual strategies to incorporate catholic imagery to escape Spanish catholic effacement. These gestures of dress or, markers of identity, are often expressions of a conflicted relationship between indigenous preservation and steps toward modernity- a syncretism for folkloric survival. Mickey deviously summons images of candy and popsicles as if to demonstrate a fantasy, suspended just out of reach.

His images have romance that do not ignore the social realism, but instead, posit these factors that are generally considered to be a-civil, as civilizing in this particular socio-economic system. The people in Giusti’s photographs reveal a location and time that is constantly caught between an ideal that is constantly present, and remotely attainable.

Recipient of photography awards, Francesco Giusti is a freelance photographer who has primarily worked in Africa, the Mediterranean, Central and South America. He has exhibited internationally in France, Italy, Colombia, Germany, and the US. This is his first solo exhibition at HVW8.

 

More photos on HVW8 Facebook

PEOPLE: ERIN GARCIA

Interview with Erin D. Garcia from Monster Children

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Aaron Farley sat down with California artist Erin Garcia to ask about his creative evolution, and his new exhibition, 5 Shapes In 6 Colors, which runs Aug 16th – September 14th. You’ve still got plenty of time to go check it out at HVW8 Gallery, 611 N. Spaulding, Los Angeles. Do yourself a favor and hop to it.

Interview and photography by Aaron Farley

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AF: Talk us through the progression of murals that you’ve done.

EG: I think the first one was the standard vertical gallery, and the piece I did for the solo show at This Gallery, and then East of Western, and then The Ace, (Palm Springs), which was a huge leap.

Why was it a huge leap?

It was a huge leap because 1) it was multiple colors, and then 2) because it was massive. It was 50 feet by 2 stories. So before that the one at East of Western was the largest and that was 10 x 8 ft.

 

Continue reading “PEOPLE: ERIN GARCIA”

Bronx Museum: Here I Am: Photographs by Lisa Leone

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Photo the Exhibition ‘Then’ from 2012 at HVW8 Gallery.

HVW8 Alumni Lisa Leone’s exhibition Here I Am: Photographs by Lisa Leone opens this Saturday, September 13, 4:00 to 7:00pm at the The Bronx Museum of the Arts.

The Bronx – Paris – Los Angeles – early 1990s – hip hop. This culture of music, dance, art and fashion is forever in its nascent and most authentic in Here I Am: Photographs by Lisa Leone. From Nas in the first studio recordings for what would become his iconic debut album Illmatic, to Snoop on the set of his first video, from ingénue Debi Mazar on the subway to Grandmaster Flash at a RockSteady reunion, Leone’s photographs open portals to the sounds, places and, most importantly, the people who forged and continue to influence the energy that is hip hop.

 

Erin D. Garcia on Style.com

Recent article on Erin D. Garcia on Style.com :

Los Angeles, United States
Scenes of a Southern Transplant Artist in L.A.

by Chris Black

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Artist and musician Erin D. Garcia is originally from the South, but he’s lived in Los Angeles for a long time and it shows in his work. He uses vibrant colors to create beautiful graphic art that is synonymous with the forefathers of the L.A. style: John Baldessari, David Hockney, and Ed Ruscha. By employing geometric abstractions to explore rhythm and permutation, his art is at once familiar and impressive.

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Using a technique that is reminiscent of ’60s minimalism, Garcia focuses on essential shapes with a less-is-more approach, forgoing the complex and only retaining the essential. His second solo exhibition, 5 Shapes in 6 Colors, displays a rich body of work in a multitude of mediums: drawings, paintings, and even a mural. It’s on view at HVW8 Gallery until September 14.

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Photos: Andy J. Scott

Erin D. Garcia opens Saturday, August 16th

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5 Shapes in 6 Colors
August 16th – September 14th, 2014

Opening this Saturday at 7pm, please RSVP at rsvp@hvw8.com

For inquires email info@hvw8.com

Erin’s geometric abstractions derive from a mother structure of Stacked blocks and volumes rendered in a series of colors. He deconstructs this architecture of color into a simpler lexicon of lines, arches, and curves in an ongoing search of other primary structures, or as he says, “elements”.  These have been the units of full scale pop environments featured in fashion spreads for Bullett and Foam magazines and adorned the walls of the Ace and Standard Hotels. Though effortless in appearance, the ornamental function should not diminish the severity of his methodology. His work is a calculated process of designating, defining, arranging, and permuting elements and colors with algorithmic thoroughness. It embodies 1960′s Minimalism’s obsession with reduction, seriality, repetition, and a priori with a Sottsassian embrace of the decorative. However, with Erin’s treatment these shapes have never been so imposing and naturally enjoyable as the all-consuming and infinitely configurable Amen Break drum loop.

Erin’s work is in the title. Often reduced to a series of numbers, or definitions of a permutative process, there is an impulse to decode what number corresponds to what element, which is the color, and what is the relationship. All of this implies an inherent rhythm in the way that these patterns are arranged.  His compositional logic is intimately tied to strategies of musical arrangement but exploit the mind’s tendency to complete data. Lines that edge triangles appear completed, but upon closer look, are actually disconnected and superimposed with unmet corners. Three dimensional solids we perceive as pyramids are actually incomplete and interrupted by yet another incomplete solid. It is a counterargument to the Gestalt, the theory of mind that the global whole is more than the sum of its parts. As if he means to argue that the global whole is actually a sum of parts. Or stated in Erin’s nomenclature, that “stacks” are just “elements” with no corners.

Minimalism’s gamble fell short with its habit of weighing down its simplicity with lofty theory. After all, less can’t be more when you have to read before understanding. Whether operating in the tradition of Gestalt or not, Erin’s work is instant. Ed Ruscha taught art to choose yellow, pink, and blue over black, white, and grey. The vibrancy of color, sterility, spontaneity, and casualness of appearance has come to be inextricably linked to the overall aesthetic of Los Angeles. Its strong history of pop, abstraction, and west coast lax is communicated in a language of waves, gloss, and playful irreverence. Erin isn’t claiming this territory, but rather, seems to be isolating LA’s formal identity into a codex of yellow half circles and blue waves that subconsciously reads as something distinctly Angelian.

It’s difficult in it’s procedural complexity, yet, refuses any need of calculation. It’s immediate, familiar. Something as fundamental as a shape is universal enough to draw cultural associations: sun, ocean, cross; yet, the moment you do, you’ve already overthought it.

To Sottsass colors are words;  to Erin, colors are numbers, and numbers are beats.

Born in the South, Erin is a musician, artist, and designer living and practicing in Los Angeles. He has published folios, collaborated with JUCO fashion and photographer John Michael Fulton, and completed three commissioned public murals. His work has been exhibited internationally in Tokyo, London, New York and Art Basel Miami.  5 shapes in 6 Colors is his second solo exhibition and second showing at HVW8 Gallery.

 

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Repetitions of 6 Shapes in 6 Colors, Acrylic on Wood Panel, 18 x 24″ (45.7 x 61 cm)

HVW8 on Nowness

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Hassan Rahim

from Distillations, HVW8 Gallery, 2014

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Exterior of HVW8 Gallery

From Same Old Song, HVW8 Gallery, 2014

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Janette Beckman
Installation photo

From Punks, Rap and Gangs, HVW8 Gallery, 2014

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Jean André
Fuck You Tyler

2014

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Jean André
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Justin R. Saunders
via the Wushipu Oil Painting Village in Xiamen, China.

From JJJJound Correspondence, HVW8 Gallery, 2013

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From Same Old Song, HVW8 Gallery, 2014

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From Same Old Song, HVW8 Gallery, 2014

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From Houston Raps, HVW8 Gallery 2014

 

New article on HVW8 Gallery and Summer School from Nowness.com

Summer School: HVW8 Gallery

Art Lessons and Dance Sessions in the Californian Desert

From the brazen imagery of Amsterdam’s Parra to the internet-inspired visuals of the Kanye West-affiliated Canadian artist JJJJound, LA gallery HVW8 cultivates an international collision of pop culture and graphic design in a contemporary art setting. “We allow someone that might not be familiar with the artists we exhibit to see them in a lineage of El Lissitzky or Roy Lichtenstein, who to me are examples of fine graphic artists,” says HVW8 co-founder Tyler Gibney. This month the gallerist took psychedelic artists Erin D. Garcia, Teebs, Jean André and Alvaro “Freegums” Ilizarbe on a desert road trip for Summer School, an art and music weekender at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs featuring sun-kissed West Coast bands such as dance-punk duo De Lux. “I grew up with a Bauhaus education and I love the idea of artists teaching and exposing their craft,” says Gibney of the hands-on experience of Summer School’s workshops. Founded in 2011 by LA new music champions School Night and the Ace Hotel, the micro-festival’s inaugural line-up included cult mobile letterpress studio Movable Type, and Chris Johanson of the Mission School art movement. “I approach my drawings as a viewer, I want to understand why a choice is made and the reason behind it,” says Garcia, who took on collage class duties while Cali locals Teebs went cosmic with Japanese tie-dye alongside Ilizarbe’s infinity patterns, and Paris’s André showcased poster techniques. “I think there’s an elegance in a simple idea that’s communicated well.”

Summer School at the ACE

 

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Thank you to everyone that attended this year’s Summer School at the ACE Hotel in Palm Springs. The Gallery hosted workshops with artist alumni including a Shibori Dye class by Mtendere Mandowa (Teebs), Post Cards with Jean André, an infinite pattern making and ‘zine production class with Alvaro Ilizarbe and a collage class directed by Erin D. Garcia. Hopefully more artwork related workshop in the near future.

For further reading :

Juxtapoz

Palm Springs Desert Sun newspaper

additional photos on HVW8 Gallery Instagram

Parra opens Saturday, June 28th

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That Red Bell Pepper Life
by Parra
2014
Acrylic on canvas
39.4” x 39.4” (100 x 100cm)

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Same Old Song
New Paintings and Drawings

Opening Saturday, June 28th, 7 – 10pm
Please RSVP at rsvp@hvw8.com

The works in Same Old Song are overturned wine glasses, leisure-suited perverts, and behind-the-bar-booty slaps arranged in compositions of red, white, blue, pink, Ben-Day dots, and stars. In all its orgiastic fervor, his work is foremost graphic in character: tightly controlled compositions, highly saturated colors, flood-filled silhouettes, flatness, and hard edges that are hallmarks of the comic tradition that Lichtenstein had notoriously usurped to conflate the proverbial high-and-low strata of the 1960s Pop movement.

While Lichtenstein’s early production was made for the gallery, Parra had his start in flyers, posters, and other media of advertorial nature. His works are visual literalizations of a dirty punchline. Sometimes they are art referential; other times they seem to be purely profane, both harmlessly witty and uncomfortably politically incorrect. When asked why he uses his trademark beaked humanoids, he claims that if he drew human faces, the figure becomes too familiar. Generalizations and types are more truthful than the personal.

Parra once described his work as “fast and freestyle” with an intent to un-complicate, purposefully limiting himself to a small color palette. This simplification makes his work all the more viral ­ it has the ability to travel through pervasive and accessible channels.  Whether it¹s democratizing or artlessly commercial is a question already beat to exhaustion by Pop and Post-modern. Parra doesn¹t care. His is an example of the strength of graphic design. It shamelessly hijacks commercial systems of circulation and is propagated with both compositional sophistication and crudeness like a silk-gloved bitchslap, a force that gains institutional recognition incidentally, without solicitation. A commercial illustrator doesn’t just earn international gallery exhibitions in major art centers and murals in cultural institutions such as SF MOMA and MOCA without at least some published critical endorsement from an academic.

Parra is a graphic artist, designer, and musician living and working in Amsterdam. He has recently exhibited in New York, Antwerp, Cologne, San Francisco, and Tokyo. Same Old Song is his fifth solo exhibition at HVW8 Gallery.