LOS ANGELES has recently moved to the forefront of the contemporary art scene with HVW8 Gallery playing a pivotal role. HVW8 stands at the heart of Art, Music and Design in this emerging scene, bringing diverse groups together for its celebrated openings and exhibitions since 2006. In continuing its avant-garde tradition, HOME & AWAY is an exhibition series featuring HVW8 alumni from LA and NY making their European debuts. The exhibition will open at the Galleria Patricia Armocida in Milan and closes out in Amsterdam at the Andenken Gallery.
HOME & AWAY
Milan
GALLERIA PATRICIA ARMOCIDA
May 17 – 19th
Opening May 17th, 7 – 10pm
Via Lattanzio, 77 Milan, Italy
Contact: (+39) 02 3651 9304
RSVP press_originals@adidas.com
Friends and special guests turned out on Friday night at HVW8 gallery in LA to honour the most influential skateboarder of all time, Mark Gonzales, as he celebrates 15 years with adidas.
adidas skateboarding brought together six prominent photographers to tell Mark’s story over the past 15 years through their lenses. These photographers, who have watched Mark and witnessed his skateboarding antics all around the world include Gabe Morford, Joe Brook, Skin Phillips, Brian Gaberman, Benjamin Deberdt, and Sem Rubio.
Guests made their way through the renowned photography and ‘Gonz’ artwork to the outside celebrations where refreshments flowed, Mark’s old video clips were projected and everyone shared their own unique Gonz stories amongst each other and of course with the man of honour himself.
“The show couldn’t have been better. The HVW8 gallery was a perfect venue, all of the six photographers’ work was a true representation of what Mark Gonzales is all about and the opening night was the who’s who of skateboarding’s past and present.
It really meant a lot that Mark was at the event as he never makes public appearances. Seeing him and Natas together was a special moment for me. These are the skateboarders who made history.
Doesn’t seem like fifteen years, it all went by real fast.”
Skin Phillips Exhibiting photographer, Editor at Large of Transworld Skateboarding & adidas Skateboarding Team Manager.
Owing to popular demand, the exhibition will now be open to the public until June 2nd at HVW8 Art + Design Gallery , 661 N. Spaulding Avenue, Los Angeles, CA.
Thanks to everyone who came out to the opening of ‘Family’ this past Saturday, featuring work by Hanni El Khatib, Nathan Cabrera, Keith P. Stone, Nick Walker, and Dr. Woo.
The exhibition is currently on dispay until April 28th. The Gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday, 1- 6pm. Email info@hvw8.com or call 323 655 4898 for artwork inquires.
Opening night video of Hanni El Khatib’s ‘Family’ featuring Nathan Cabrera, Keith P Stone, Nick Walker, and Dr. Woo, currently on display at the HVW8 Gallery. Filmed by the Video Mouse.
Geoff lectures about his work at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Parra discusses his recent exhibition “Tracy Had a Hard Sunday” at Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York.
Subscribe to HVW8’s YouTube for the latest HVW8 Videos.
Tifoso #4, (Fan #4) The songs and banners are not only passionately shown for support and intimidation, but also against the role of local government. These ideological songs can be heard throughout the stadium.
Thank-you to everyone who attended the opening of ‘The Deconstruction of Italian Football’ at HVW8 Gallery. Show runs until April 1st. Call 323 655 4898 or email info@hvw8.com for inquiries.
HVW8 15 yrs Strong! This month marks the beginning of 15 years of HVW8. First starting in a small studio in Montréal in 1998 on St. Alexandre, just off St. Catherine St, to moving to Los Angeles in 2003 … and countless exhibitions worldwide. Thanks to all the artists, musicians and supporters through out the years … and many more to go. Tomorrow is Alessandro Moroder.
Above Polaroids of original live performace pieces created by T. Gibney, D. Buller and G. Pendon aka HVW8 Art Installation, in different cities, 1999 – 2001.
10 minutes of wildness created for Hassan Rahim’s art show “The Air Above This Ground”
1. Kwame’ Sets the Scene
2. There Was A Face On It
3. What If My Name Wasn’t Up in Lights?
4. It’s Truly A Miracle
5. …And Bit Down
6. Glass / Food
7. Reaper Come and Get Me
8. Blackness, Nothingness.
9. The Saga Continues >>>>
Hassan Rahim is an artist and art director living and working in Los Angeles. His work, reminiscent of vague childhood memories and adolescent fantasies, utilizes photography, collage and mixed media to create strong contextual pieces which are both appealing and alarming to the audience.
The artist is best characterized by a description of one of his works: Don King’s face looms large, fixed in an impish smirk across from a then-naïve-but-very-dangerous Mike Tyson. Between them is a Lamborghini Countach. A marble backdrop could be a galaxy or an ocean. This particular piece is both exceptional and typical of Rahim’s work. His usual themes—competition, excellence, and the decadence that come with them are all present, but in this work you also find a keen intuition of the antagonism that pervades the lives of the icons in play in the collage. The curious detail here is that there is a fight going on, not between fighters but rather the real fight: between fighter and promoter.
Rahim’s knack is to contextualize culture in this way. In the artist’s world about seven percent of Michael Jordan’s significance was on-court. Here he is treated as an event; as the kind of icon that changes the way we do icons in the first place. Throughout the work there is a similar dialogue. Rahim interrogates ‘the icon’ and ‘nostalgia’ as phenomena. The investigation is very much alive, never slips into academic moralizing. Here riches and competitive dominance are flattered, but their respective uglier sides are also sorely present. When contemplating any of these collages one has the impression of a child at a dinner party attended by sports luminaries who has just heard a dirty joke: you can’t quite put your finger on the vulgarity, but you know that something has happened.
Conversant with pre-existing works–Rahim’s “The Big Three” owes as much to Wallace Berman’s “Untitled” (hand holding a cassette) as it does to Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman, and Scottie Pippen—his pieces build a bridge from art-historical zones to realms of culture that are usually entirely claimed by advertising. There is a reclamation of imagery happening, the sports Hero comes back home to art. One is reminded of classical sculptures of discuss throwers, or of the fact that Nike was originally the Greek Goddess of Victory.
Hassan Rahims works are not terse. They are simple, and deep. Members of his generation will undoubtedly recognize his voice as their own.
Text by James Jolliff.
Music By Bobby Evans.
Hassan Rahim
The Air Above This Ground
January 18—February 22
Opening Friday January 18 2013, 7—10PM
HVW8 Art & Design Gallery
661 N. Spaulding Ave
Los Angeles 90036
323 655 4898
Toro Y Moi and Red Bull Music Academy previously hosted special album listening events in Brooklyn, NY and San Francisco, CA. Now, fans in Los Angeles will be able to experience the same unique experience from December 14-16 at HVW8. At these events, fans have the opportunity to hear Toro Y Moi’s upcoming third album, Anything In Return, more than a month in advance of release. The event will feature 13 original drawings from Chaz Bundick on display, each paired with a corresponding song from the album that fans can listen to via Incase headphones. “I just wanted to do something fun for this album release,” says Bundick. Toro Y Moi will be DJing at the opening night on Friday, which will be 21+. The gallery viewings on Saturday and Sunday are 18+ and all days are free and open to the public.
About Toro Y Moi:
The product of a move from South Carolina to Berkeley, CA and the subsequent extended separation from loved ones, Toro Y Moi’s third full-length, Anything in Return, puts Chaz Bundick right in the middle of the producer/songwriter dichotomy that his first two albums established. There’s a pervasive sense of peace with his tendency to dabble in both sides of the modern music-making spectrum, and he sounds comfortable engaging in intuitive pop production and putting forth the impression of unmediated id. The producer’s hand is prominent- not least in the sampled “yeah”s and “uh”s that give the album a hip-hop-indebted confidence- and many of the songs feature the 4/4 beats and deftly employed effects usually associated with house music. Tracks like “High Living” and “Day One” show a considerably Californian influence, their languid funk redolent of a West Coast temperament, and elsewhere- not least on lead single, “So Many Details”- the record plays with darker atmospheres than we’re used to hearing from Toro Y Moi. Sounding quite assured in what some may call this songwriter’s return to producer-hood, Anything in Return is Bundick uninhibited by issues of genre, an album that feels like the artist’s essence.
Born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, Chaz Bundick has been toying with various musical projects since early adolescence. Having spent his formative years playing in punk and indie rock acts, his protean Toro Y Moi project has been his vessel for further musical exploration since 2001. During his time spent studying graphic design at the University of South Carolina, Chaz became increasingly focused on his solo work, incorporating electronics and allowing a wider range of influences- French house, Brian Wilson’s pop, 80s R&B, and Stones Throw hip-hop- to show up in his music. By the time he graduated in spring 2009, Chaz had refined his sound to something all his own. Music journals across the board touted his hazy recordings as the sound of the summer, and he released his debut album, Causers of This in early 2010.
Since then, Bundick has proven himself to be not just a prolific musician, but a diverse one as well, letting each successive release broaden the scope of the Toro Y Moi oeuvre. The funky psych-pop of 2011’s Underneath the Pine evinced an artist who could create similar atmospheres even without the aid of source material and drum machines. His Freaking Out EP, a handful of singles and remixes, and a retrospective box-set plot points all along the producer/songwriter spectrum in which he’s worked since his debut, and Anything In Return is another exciting offering that shows he’s still not ready to settle into any one genre.
Thank-you to everyone who came out to the adidas and HVW8 Gallery’s ‘Fortune’ at Art Basel in Miami featuring artists Justin West, Hassan Rahim, Alessandro Moroder and 13th Witness, hosted by A$AP Rocky.
It was an amazing night of art and music, and with 3000 RSVP’s to the pop-up Gallery’s capacity of 260 it was a packed night as well.
Jean Dubuffet
Joan Miró
