A few photos from the Opening night of ‘Beirut Youth’ at HVW8 Berlin. Exhibition now on display through August 3rd.
More photos here.
A few photos from the Opening night of ‘Beirut Youth’ at HVW8 Berlin. Exhibition now on display through August 3rd.
More photos here.
The inaugural exhibit opens July 19th at HVW8 Los Angeles, featuring:
🗯 Ross Schwartzman, a.k.a Ross One’s installation exploring music consumption and identity via personal sound systems, comprising a wall of over 30 vintage boom boxes.
🗯 Charlie Ahearn‘s Doin’ Time In Times Square, a home movie “capturing the old capital of sleaze in all its pathetic glory”, filmed in part during the production of Ahearn’s classic 1983 hip hop film Wild Style.
🗯 LA filmmaker Calmatic and Steven Traylor‘s video and art installations, questioning the means of how we consume music, media, and technology – including their music video for Vince Staple’s FUN!, shot from the perspective of an interactive Google maps session.
The opening event will feature musical performances from Budgie & Battlecat as well as a DJ set from Ross One, recorded and streamed on NTS Radio platforms worldwide.
Produced with support from adidas Originals. Refreshments courtesy of Saintwoods.
RSVP below:
HVW8 Gallery and adidas Originals present:
BEIRUT YOUTH –
GOGY ESPARZA & JEY PERIE
Opening: Friday, July 5, 6-10 pm
Show: July 6 – August 3, 2019
HVW8 Gallery Berlin presents Beirut Youth – an immersive, multimedia installation of Jey Perie and Gogy Esparza’s experiences while in Beirut, Lebanon.
The duo arrived in August 2016, with little more than a tentative plan to recount the lives of the city’s youth, from the affluent to the disenfranchised. Honest, raw, sensitive; the exhibition crystallizes the emotion they felt there, and in its people. The beauty and blood of its pulse, the pain and fruits of its history. Though war-torn and fractured, the juxtaposition of such diversity in cultures, religions and opinions breed its chaos, seductively, beautifully, the way only a Beruti enchantress could.
Esparza photographed these images exclusively on 35mm film in August 2016, and on a second trip in March 2017 (over a total of 20 days). He also shot digital video, and constructed four short films on he and Perie’s experiences.
Beirut Youth has created physical extensions of the project via its photography book including all exhibition images, and a tee shirt commemorating the history and culture of the City. 50% of proceeds from these sales will be donated directly to Shatila Refugee Camp’s CYC Youth Center in Southern Beirut. Initially set-up in 1949 for displaced Palestinians, the camp is also home for over 6,000 Syrian Refugees since the start of the 2011 Syrian Civil War. Donations will go towards providing CYC’s children with educational materials, stationary, uniforms and sneakers for the center’s youth football program. You can also donate directly through the GoFundMe link found on the site: www.beirutyouth.com
After premiering the exhibition in New York City on June 2017, Beirut Youth has also exhibited in Dubai, Tokyo and Los Angeles. The duo hand delivered donations to CYC in Shatila summer 2018, and closed out with the homecoming installation in Beirut.
GOGY ESPARZA
(b. 1987) is a New York City-based artist who concentrates in fine art, photography, and video.His project, El Vacîo (2012-13) featured a photography book published by Dashwood Books, and accompanying exhibitions with Comme Des Garçons in Berlin and the Wayward Gallery in London. Esparza has also exhibited at Test Gallery (Copenhagen), SO Gallery (Tokyo), NO ROMANCE Gallery (NYC), Know-Wave Gallery (NYC), AUTO BODY (NYC/MIAMI). Esparza has collaborated with brands such as Supreme, and his work has been featured in publications such as ARTFORUM, Purple Diary, Interview, Richardson Magazine, VICE Creators Project, i-D, Dazed, Ollie, and Hypebeast.
JEY PERIE
Born in the south of France in 1984, Jey has lived in Barcelona, Hong Kong and Tokyo for extended periods and now resides in New York. His network of friends and partners sprawl far and wide, with roots in all corners of culture.
Perie ́s passion for travel and the exchange of cultures is what drives his curiosity. As the Creative Director of Kinfolk, he uses his travel to influence and guide his work. He also consults for several Japanese labels including Bedwin & The Heartbreakers, and has helped expand the brand’s presence outside of Japan with global collaborations such as Converse, adidas originals and Stussy.
Perie currently directs The Kinfolk Store and their in-house label. Over the last decade Jey Perie has been credited for introducing several cult Japanese labels to the US market and also for his work around soccer and the sport’s relationship with Fashion. To that regard, he is currently working alongside soccer institution FC Barcelona, Nike, Adidas and Stone Island to promote soccer culture in the US.
New ‘Smoking Zebra’ and ‘Bandana’ print by Quasimoto artist Jeff Jank. Available Saturday June 27th, online at Hvw8.com or in person at the Los Angeles gallery, from 1 – 6pm. Limited to 25.
Freddie Gibbs x Madlib “Smoking Zebra”
by Jeff Jank
Giclee Print on Museo Rag Paper
Print size: 31.75h x 24w in. | 81h x 61w cm
Edition of 25
Numbered & Signed
2019
Freddie Gibbs x Madlib “Bandana’
by Jeff Jank
Giclee Print on Museo Rag Paper
Print size: 32.75h x 25.25w in. | 83hx 64w cm
Edition of 25
Numbered & Signed
2019
Email info@hvw8.com for questions. First come, first serve basis.
Thank you to everyone that visited HVW8 Berlin for Gallery Weekend.
‘Selections’ runs through June 15th.
Photos by Mike Matias
Photos by Jennifer Johnson of Little Simz ‘ GREY Area’ Installation and Live performance at HVW8 Gallery Los Angeles.
HVW8 Gallery and adidas Originals present:
SELECTIONS –
MARK GONZALES (FOWER PLOWER)
& ERIN D. GARCIA (GRAND PRIX)
Berlin Gallery Weekend 2019
Opening: Friday, April 26, 6-10 pm
Saturday and Sunday, April 27 and 28, 12 pm – 8 pm
Exhibition: April 27th – June 15th
For Gallery Weekend 2019, HVW8 Gallery Berlin presents a special exhibition of veteran artists Mark Gonzales and Erin D. Garcia. Selected works from the artists’ most recent series, namely Gonzales’s Fower Plower and Garcia’s Grand Prix, are shown for the first time together in Berlin. HVW8 Gallery also welcomes visitors to a salon-style retrospective of the HVW8 collection, including works by Jerry Hsu, Lisa Leone and Josep Maynou & Friends.
MARK GONZALES – Based in New York, skateboarder and artist Mark Gonzales first exhibited with HVW8 in 2013. In summer 2017, Gonzales debuted his first solo show Fower Plower at HVW8 Los Angeles, comprising a selection of paintings that investigate ideas of color theory, the humor and geometry of Paul Klee, the graphic/ non-graphic qualities of Donald Baechler, semiotics, theology—and, of course, classic floral themes.
The paintings are luminous and alive and crackle with movement—fittingly Gonzales is a dancer, in the tradition of Merce Cunningham or Trisha Brown, but on wheels. His teenage years in 1980s Los Angeles were spent traversing the streets which by proxy became his moving canvas. He earned a reputation as a pioneer of modern skateboarding—a master, albeit one not bound by flawlessness or precision, but the anarchy afforded only after achieving true mastery. It was as if he haphazardly broke the laws of nature, causing time and space to bend to him and leaving behind him a wake of influential agitation.
His art, like his poetry, is not separate from his skating. Gonzales’s canvases are filled with painterly technique honed over years of drawing and painting, but they also exhibit a shambolic quality; the works are equal parts precise and imprecise. This particular body is inspired by the disappointment he felt when his business partner “sold out” in the early 1990s, the faces are bursting with bitterness. They are painted-on fake smiles, cheerful in the face of misery and embarrassment. Years later, however, the harsh cynicism has soft- ened, and the power of the smiles seems to have cracked the regret. Indeed, Gonzales seems to be saying, flowers, grown in even the harshest of conditions, can have an immutable healing power.
Mark Gonzales
nature busting thru the city side walks, 2017
Acrylic on Canvas
16h x 12w in
40.64h x 30.48w cm
ERIN D. Top Recommended Australian Online Casinos – i-casinos.net. GARCIA – In 2013, Los Angeles based artist Erin D. Garcia showed his first of four exhibitions at HVW8 Los Angeles. This selection of paintings are from his most recent body of work Grand Prix which debuted at HVW8 Los Angeles Winter of 2018. This is the inaugural exhibition of Garcia’s work at HVW8 Berlin and the first time his paintings have been shown in Germany.
Upon first glance, Grand Prix tempts one to see it as a radical departure from Garcia’s previous works. The artist has thus far engaged in an exploration of deeply primary elements—the repetition and arrangement of shapes and colors —resisting any representational imagery. To date, Garcia’s work has been a joyful exercise in the most ethereal yet immediate aspects of human cognition. In Grand Prix we are confronted with some images that shock the imagination, and possibly give occasion to rescale our understanding of the artist’s earlier output.
These new iterations of objective drawings and text are alongside pieces that clearly continue the exploration of shape, color, and process that identifies Garcia’s work. In addition, assemblies of drawings structured together push all these ideas further. Contextually the new pieces read as an extension of previous studies—newly representational, yes—but in the unmistakable idiom developed by the artist over the past handful of years.
Garcia has moved past ‘process + limitation’ into full-blown methodology, a subtle but distinct operation that is a delight to witness. His stated aim of “creating compelling compositions using simple techniques and forms” has developed into an eye with which nearly anything can be seen.
The title of the collection itself, Grand Prix, plays on curious associations and arrives at a beautiful paradox. Intially conjuring motor sports racing — the apex of aggressive competition, opulence, and the guzzling of fossil fuels— the collection is actually populated with plants and flowers, rhythmic shapes, and colorful gradations. Grand Prix is certainly a meditation on the ‘grand prize’, but its images and ideas of victory are decidedly non-zero sum. The escape provided by these rose repetitions, geometric insinuations, and the freedom found in Garcia’s methodology all seem to suggest that a world is possible in which we all win.
Text by Jimmy Jolliff
Erin Garcia Still Life #1 c, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 48h x 36w in 121.92h x 91.44w cm
Gallery & media contact HVW8 Gallery Berlin, Linienstraße 161, 10115 Berlin
Jenny Ames
+49 (0)177–14 28 588 jenny@hvw8.com
Manuel Osterholt
+49 (0)172–76 72 718 manuel@hvw8.com
Supported by adidas Originals – Refreshments by Warsteiner
The first in a new series of events from NTS & HVW8 Gallery, founded in 2006 to support fine art and avant-garde design. If you can’t make it down to this one, stay tuned for more throughout 2019, bringing in exciting artists from the extended NTS family for intimate live performances in a gallery setting. A new podcast series, At the Gallery, will also be dropping later this month as part of the partnership – the first episode featuring Eric Elms.
NTS & HVW8 PRESENT:
✨ SHAFIQ HUSAYN
✨ SPECIAL GUESTS
✨ LINAFORNIA (DJ)
📅 THURSDAY 11TH APRIL
📍HVW8 GALLERY LOS ANGELES
Former KAWS studio assistant and Supreme designer Eric Elms’ exhibition “ViewSonic” is now showing at HVW8 in Los Angeles.
“ViewSonic” includes paintings from two of Elms’ series, “Halftone” and “Stair.” The LA-based artist uses his experience in graphic design to inform his art. According to the show’s promotional materials, Elms breaks down images, “re-inventing and re-purposing the familiar to the brink of ambiguity,” walking the line “between representation and abstraction.”
Read Here
A few photos from the NTS x adidas Originals Crew 2 Crew event at HVW8 Berlin, highlighting the Berlin Underground scene.
Featured music :
💢 deadHYPE radio ft Lady Chann, DJ JNS & YAW
💢 Einhundert Showcase (Nico Adomako, JJAQ, Low.Vision, Marlon Beatt)
💢 Hoemies
💢 No Shade
💢 Room 4 Resistance feat. Bergsonist
💢 Shutdown feat. Crimen Passional, Goro, Merca Bae, Moesha 13
💢 TRADE feat. Brat Star & Juba
Thank-you to everyone that came through the Opening Night of ‘LE LUCKY’ currently on display at HVW8 Berlin.
Opening Friday, March 8th, 6 – 10pm
RSVP at rsvp@hvw8.com
Eric Elms is an artist and designer living and working in out of his multidisciplinary studio in Los Angeles CA. He has shown in numerous group shows around the world as well as solo shows in New York, Tokyo and Paris.
Drawing upon his own art practice as well as his work in print and design, Elms appropriates elements from his previously established graphic language and breaks them down by syllable, re-inventing and re-purposing the familiar to the brink of ambiguity. The imagery is in flux between banality and trope. Forcing the viewer to further reflect upon the image itself rather than it’s direct representation. This new language is used intentionally to degrade the imagery. The work exists in the crosshairs between representation and abstraction.
View Sonic will present two iterations of this process; a series from his “Halftone” paintings as well as a small selection of his “Stair” paintings.
Made possible with support from adidas Originals
HVW8 BERLIN | JOSEP MAYNOU ‘LE LUCKY’
Opening: Saturday, February 16 7:00-10:00pm
Special Programming: February 17, 18, 22, 23
Exhibition Hours: February 20–March 30, 2019, Wednesday to Friday 2-7pm, Saturday 12-6pm
Free Admission
HVW8 Gallery Berlin is pleased to present LE LUCKY, a fictional and functioning bar created by Josep Maynou, opening Saturday, February 16th. As a celebration of love, friendship and the avant-garde, LE LUCKY is the Catalonian artist’s tribute to his thirteen years in Berlin, as well as a bittersweet goodbye to the city. The exhibition signifies a full circle for Maynou, who during his first year in Berlin worked as a bartender in Berlin’s Mitte neighborhood, nearby to HVW8 Berlin. Through the element of collaboration, the artist establishes the gallery as a site of fortuitous social interaction: he has invited fifty of his creative friends to contribute to the installation with performances, artwork and music, programmed throughout the show’s one-month duration. As captured by its title, the exhibition is symbolic of good fortune in social and occupational relations, initiating a chance for new beginnings and exchanges.
LE LUCKY
Bernhard Rappold
Ana Alenso
Pere Llobera
Elise Lammer
La Folie 8
Felipe Talo
Felix Leon Westner
Cécile di Giovanni
Victor Jaenada
Bernat Daviu
Isa Toledo
Caique Tizzi
Stephen Kent
Sol Calero
Dafna Maimon
Lorenzo Sandoval
Leah Dixon
Charles Benjamin
John Holten (BDP)
Eli Cortiñas
Cibelle Cavalli Bastos
Natália de Assis
Niels Trannois
Jakup Ferri
Ethan Hayes-Chute
Christopher Kline
Sophie Erlund
Kelly Tissot
Charles Benjamin
Ricardo Trigo
Hanne Lippard
Maximilian Kirmse
Nina Kurtela
Alejandro Lorente
Isabel Lewis
Joel Munné
Andrew Birk
Juan-Miguel Pozo
Coco Magnusson
Adriano Costa
Natasja Loutchko CAVE3000
Joan Saló
Blanca Miró Skoudy
Oliver Roura
Oozing Gloop
Aurora Sander
Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor
Jenny Ames
Mika Manke
Josep Maynou
Happy New Year from HVW8!
As we head into an amazing line up for 2019, we look back at all the incredible exhibits, installations and performances from HVW8 Los Angeles, Berlin and beyond this past year.
We were lucky to have a number of exhibits from an international group of artists such as Gogy Esparza, Inès Longevial, Atiba Jefferson, Olimpia Zagnoli, Chi Modu, Steven Traylor, and Erin D. Garcia to name a few. We continued with our Creative Class Series for intimate interactions with our gallery artists on their creative process and started an Emerging Artist Program to give a platform for up and coming artists.
We continued with our diversity in programing with a variety of installations, performances, radio broadcasts and artist talks with the likes of Kali Uchis, Snoop Dogg, Standing on the Corner, RZA and Einhundert.
Look for an amazing line up for 2019!
Below are a few links from some highlights of 2018.
2018 Year In Review
Exhibits
Beirut Youth Gogy Esparza, Jey Perie
February 22 – March 18th
Four Conversations Inès Longevial, 44 Flavours, Huskmitnavn, Julian Smith
April 28th – June 16th
Heart-Shaped Box Atiba Jefferson
May 19th – July 15th
Cuore Di Panna Olimpia Zagnoli
May 25th – July 15th
Uncategorized – Berlin and Los Angeles Chi Modu
July 5th – August 4th, 2018
August 26th– September 23rd
Wild At Hand – A Group Show of Contemporary Drawing
September 14th– October 13th
10 Toes With His Chest Caved In Steven Traylor
Sept. 22nd – October 7th
Not To Lose My Head Jay ‘One’ Ramier
October 25th – November 24th
Grand Prix Erin D Garcia
Nov. 16 – Dec. 23rd
2018 HVW8 Highlights – Installations, Artist Talks and Performances :
Sarah Bahbah Installation at HVW8 Los Angeles
Andrew Westerman at HVW8 Berlin
Kali Uchis at HVW8 Los Angeles
Artist Dinners Berlin / Los Angeles
Creative Classes – Atiba Jefferson and Chi Modu
Snoop Dogg Live Talk and DJ Set from HVW8 Plana
Wu Tang x Off Safety featuring Eddie Otchre and Paul Chan, live performance by RZA
Standing on the Corner Live Performance and Film Screening
Einhundert ‘Heavyweight Sounds’ Live broadcast from HVW8 Berlin
Select Press –
Inès Longevail on Cover of Juxtapoz
Tyler Gibney Interview in Amadeus
Olimpia Zagnoli ‘Cuore Di Panna’ lecture for Nicer Tuesdays
Chi Modu at HVW8 in Paper Magazine
Wishing you and your family the best from HVW8 Galleries Los Angeles and Berlin, and looking forward to an exciting and prodigious 2019.
Also Special Thanks to our HVW8 Family, if not for you this would not be possible.
Los Angeles –
Addison Liu, John Wheeler, Gabriel Ortiz, Max Junk, Jake Venden Berge, Henry Anguiano, Nicole Kunz, Kelly Merlo, Yvonne Otchwemah, Julio Martinez, Pierre Briet, Mo Hill, Richie Dandan, Josh Chandler
Berlin –
Jenny Ames, Manuel Osterholt, Mika Manke, Lili Somogyi
Cheers to 2019!
Interview with Dam-Funk on how he linked up with Snoop Dogg at the ‘Doggystyle’ exhibit at HVW8 Los Angeles, and would later collaborate for 7 Days Of Funk.
Hear more here: https://youtu.be/2pyN-q7iMF4
HVW8 Gallery Berlin presents
JAYBO MONK
‘APOPHENIA’
OPENING: DECEMBER 15, 6 – 10 PM
DEC 15 – 22, 2018
Apophenia (/æpou´fi:niə/) is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. The term (German: Apophänie) was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as “unmotivated seeing of connections a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness”.
He described the early stages of delusional thought as self-referential, over-interpretations of actual sensory perceptions, as opposed to hallucinations.
Jaybo Monk reflects on the perception of random data in our virtual world and social media. The most common examples of Apophenia are people seeing faces in clouds or in the moon. If Apophenia is about drawing connections and conclusions from sources with no direct connection other than their indissoluble perceptual simultaneity, then maybe virtuality is our new reality. Weed seeds grow into plants that may be rich in THC and other cannabinoids. The idea of reality is more real than reality itself. Ideas are taken without being questioned and we are living in a world of binary choices only. We are dead in a dead time where not seeing anything intelligible is the new normal. We are damned to dream towards reality and not away from it.
The paintings and objects presented in Apophenia are constructed within the idea of time spent to keep everything in a present moment which is a moment of no reflexion in itself. Through layers in his paintings and associations in his objects and sculptures Jaybo Monk wants us to re-appreciate time where the past and the future are the foundations of reality – and not the virtual present controlled by our smart phones and other illnesses.
Drinks by Warsteiner
HVW8 GALLERY BERLIN – LINIENSTR 161, 10115 BERLIN
OPENING HOURS: WED-FR 2-7 PM, SAT 12-6 PM
The Einhundert family and Hotel Radio Paris have teamed up again for their second Berlin Radio Hang Out live from HVW8 Berlin.
Join us for A live intimate broadcast and drinks with music from the Einhundert Soundsystem, J.Cloud, Lolsnake (Weeeirdos), Ausschuss (Hauter Records), Golden Medusa (Leisure System), CKtrl (NTS / LDN), Native Teenage, Cld.Bld and many more.
Tune into Radio Talk hosted by Claire Mouchemore (Writer & Editor, BORSHCH Magazine, Electronic Beats etc.) plus very special guests from Berlin’s music scene.
In addition we will exhibit selected artworks by friends from across the globe including
Antoni Adomako
Felix VSOP Taube
Flo Hettenbach
Jessica Ta
Johannes Böttge
Nico Adomako
Nikki Powell
Megu Nakano
HEAVYWEIGHT SOUND – BROADCASTING SCHEDULE:
DAY 1 / 12.12.2018
12:00 – 12:45 CLDBLD
12:45 – 13:30 NATIVE TEENAGE
13:30 – 14:15 LOW.VISION (EINHUNDERT SOUNDSYSTEM)
14:15 – 15:00 J.Cloud (Soulkissesarts)
15:00 – 15:45 MALA JUNTA (Hyperaktivist B2B DJ TOOL)
15:45 – 16:30 MELIS
16:30 – 17:15 SHAUNYB666
17:15 – 18:00 happy new tears
18:00 – 18:45 Qumasiquamé (THROUGH MY SPEAKERS)
18:45 – 19:30 kanalak (PALMOIL / FRANKFURT)
19:30 – 20:30 TALK HOSTED BY CLAIRE MOUCHEMORE (BORSHCH) – GUESTS TBA.
20:30 – 21:00 Marshall Vincent LIVE
DAY 2 / 13.12.2018
12:00 – 12:45 MARLON BEATT
12:45 – 13:30 RIP Swirl (EINHUNDERT SOUNDSYSTEM)
13:30 – 14:15 Lolsnake (Weeeirdos)
14:15 – 15:00 DEADHYPE
15:00 – 15:45 JAXX
15:45 – 16:30 Bianca Oblivion (Club Aerobics – NTS Radio / L.A.)
16:30 – 17:15 CEEKAYIN2U (No Shade)
17:15 – 18:00 CKtrl (SONGS 4 GIRLS – NTS Radio / LONDON)
18:00 – 18:45 Ausschuss (Haunter Records)
18:45 – 19:30 Golden Medusa (Leisure System)
19:30 – 21:00 TBA
After the party (and the exhibition) is the Afterparty…
Join Einhundert and Hotel Radio Paris for the official HEAVYWEIGHT SOUND Afterparty at 131 BAR.
Limited Free Tickets available at HVW8 during the Einhundert x Hotel Radio Paris // Heavyweight Sound Pop Up Radio Station, first come first served. Come early!
LINE UP:
Bianca Oblivion (Club Aerobics – NTS Radio / Los Angeles)
soundcloud.com/biancaoblivion
CKtrl (Songs 4 Girls – NTS Radio / London)
soundcloud.com/cktrl
Nico Adomako (Einhundert / Berlin)
soundcloud.com/nicoadomako
Kanucia (kanalak – PalmOil / Frankfurt)
https://soundcloud.com/kanucia
JJAQ (Einhundert – Radio 80000 / Rotterdam)
soundcloud.com/jjaqcf
Dj Hrp (Hotel Radio Paris / Paris)
+ Open USB B2B Till Infinity
– – – – – – — – – — – – — – – – – – — – – — – – – — – – — – — –
131 BAR
Chausseestraße 131A – Berlin Mitte
21:00 – Till Late
5€ at the Door
New Work now available online . Featured artists include Erin D. Garcia, Inès Longevial, Brian Lotti, Steven Traylor and more. Please email info@hvw8.com for further information.
“To me, home is any place where you can be creative and make things. I love minimal spaces. The starker the better, when it comes to giving yourself free reign to create. I like a white box.”
LAKISHA KIMBERLY ROBINSON, KNOWN AS “KILO KISH,” AT HVW8 GALLERY LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA / PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID BLACK FEATURED IN CALIFORNIA SUNDAY ‘THE WAY HOME’ DECEMBER 2018 ISSUE
Tomorrow Friday 11/9 in LA at HVW8 Art + Design Gallery ——- screening a film by Standing on the Corner.
Afroprojection #1: The Atmosphere Phased at 120* And Went Blank When The Universe Collapsed
Starting off at 7 w a short DJ set followed by a performance by the SOTC Art Ensemble. Film screens at 8.
Opening Night – Friday, November 16, 2018, 7 – 10pm
rsvp@hvw8.com
Music by
Nosaj Thing & Micah James
Wu-Tang x Off-Safety Featuring Photographers – Eddie Otchere and Paul Chan October 25th, 2018 Featuring Performances by RZA, Young Dirty Bastard, Masta Killa
JAY “ONE” RAMIER – NOT TO LOSE MY HEAD
HVW8 BERLIN
25.10–24.11 2018
Exhibition Opening
Thursday, 25 October 2018
6:00pm – 10:00pm
HVW8 Berlin – Linienstraße 161, 10115 Berlin
Free admission – Warsteiner refreshments will be served
In this series of paintings and collages, Jay “One” Ramier retrieves and reinterprets the first hip hop song that was also a work of social criticism. “The Message” performed by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, feat. Belle Mel and Duke Bootee, describes social disarray, violence, decadence, alienation and self-harm. Released in 1982, it was widely recognized as one of the most iconic songs of late 20th century, and still speaks to the social reality of today.
In “The Message,” hip hop’s tone, formerly celebratory, becomes one of desperate urgency:
“Don’t push me ‘cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from goin’ under”
By crystallizing elements of the song and its video into still images, Jay Ramier invites us to pause and consider in detail the harsh realities and evocative expressions of urban life. In this moment, hip hop’s mission changes. Jay Ramier has always stated his love for music, which he considers inspirational and the mightiest of all art forms: “I like the way music, like the holy spirit, can take possession of one’s soul, either by the power of the lyrics or the enchantment of hypnotic melodies or sounds.”
The video cuts between frenetic New York City streets, South Bronx residents strolling or playing, elderly people lying in the streets, and abandoned lots of rubble. The group raps on stoops and street corners, and the police make conspicuous appearances.
In translating imagery from the music video into the medium of static visual arts, NOT TO LOSE MY HEAD reveals the lives that Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five sought to bring attention to and their lasting impact on us in today’s world.
Almost 40 years later “The Message” still rings true, speaking to economic pressures and systemic racism that persist today. On the one hand, Jay Ramier´s focus on the song highlights the ongoing nature of social inequality, but on the other hand, he explores the roles of popular music and art for expressing and questioning social experience, highlighting the importance of struggle and resistance.
About Jay “One” Ramier
Jay Ramier is a multidisciplinary artist working in the media of painting, video, installation and music. His work is an ongoing investigation into his own Caribbean cultural roots and the representation of African diaspora people in cultural spaces.
The narrative he constructs extends into and draws from the plenum of Pan-African experience from West African coast to the Americas. His work fuses the iconography of struggle and resistance as well as popular culture with the styles of musical and linguistic expression of African descendant worldwide. The focus is on the establishment of a new global system of representation to undermine that of western mainstream hegemony.
Jay has been key actor in the building of the European Graffiti and “Urban-Art” scene, a cosmopolitan Afro-centric movement, for the better part of thirty years.
Jay Ramier is a co-creator and contributor to many local magazine projects such as Paris Zulu letters – Hip Hop´s first international Zine, Backjumps Berlin – Street-Art´s first magazine. Currently, Jay is the Artistic-Director of and regular contributor to Afrikadaa, a magazine and conceptual project created in 2010. He has also published the book MOUVEMENT. Du terrain vague au Dance-floor 1984—89, ed. Les mots et le reste 2017. His work has been featured in the 2015 Venice Biennale exhibit “BRIDGES OF GRAFFITI”.
His work is an ongoing fight for a better and more accurate representation of Minorities in cultural spaces (galleries, museums, institutions) and the recognition and importance of Africa’s influences on modern and contemporary culture.
Gallery & media contact
HVW8 Gallery Berlin, Linienstraße 161, 10115 Berlin
Jenny Ames
+49 (0)177–14 28 588
jenny@hvw8.com
Manuel Osterholt
manuel@hvw8.com
About HVW8
HVW8 Gallery Berlin was established in 2014 by HVW8 Gallery co-founders Tyler Gibney and Addison Liu. HVW8 Gallery was founded in 2006 in Los Angeles with a focus on supporting fine art and avant-garde graphic design. HVW8 fosters artistic visions at the intersection of art, music and design, and collaborates with an international community of artists. Emerging and established artists such as Brian Lotti, Jean Jullien, Cody Hudson, Jerry Hsu, Jean André, Atiba Jefferson, Brian Roettinger and Haw-lin Services have exhibited their works in Berlin at HVW8. More info at hvw8.com.
Made possible with Support from adidas Originals
Olimpia Zagnoli takes us on an illustrated trip through 80s Italy at Nicer Tuesdays
“I don’t remember when I began drawing exactly but it was a long time ago”, explained illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli, opening the evening at Nicer Tuesdays September. Joining us from her home of Milan, the beloved illustrator spoke through the numerous forms her illustrative work can take, from illustrated plates and pillows to collaborations with fashion brands to children’s books.
However, Olimpia’s talk explained the importance of personal work, explaining how crafting her own practice is always on her mind, particularly when she gets to consider how her work can infiltrate a space when exhibited,
Her most recent exhibition, Cuore di Panna in Los Angeles, saw Olimpia illustrate visuals that were close to home. Taking inspiration from her childhood in 80s Italy, Olimpia illustrated the popping high colour of it all, from fizzy drink packaging to cafe signs. The result was a series that jumps off the page, screen and in the exhibition context, the wall too. It’s a guilty pleasure series, and one that suits the illustrator’s work perfectly, both sensual and overly sweet at the same time.
Beloved Italian illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli talks us through one of her most recent projects, Cuore di Panna: a personal and cultural interpretation of 80s Italy.
Video from opening night of the Chi Modu Exhibition ‘Uncategorized’, featuring an artist talk and event with Snoop Dogg.
Chi Modu’s Creative Class presented by HVW8 and adidas Originals in association with his incredible exhibit of legendary hip hop ‘Uncategorized’ photography at HVW8 Plana, 5416 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles.
Creative Class is an ongoing series by HVW8 with artists giving insight into their creative process and work.