"THE
WALL AT CENTRAL SQUARE":
TWENTY
RENOWNED ARTISTS TO CREATE
NEW
URBAN LANDSCAPE IN CAMBRIDGE
Cambridge,
MA, October 17, 2007.
Twenty artists will be participating in a collaborative art installation that
will take place in Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from October 25 to
October 28. Located in the heart of Central Square at 567 Mass Ave, the 81-foot
long wall will present the best work by internationally known street artists
from around the country. This is believed to be the first time an event of this
magnitude has been done in the Boston Area, which will include posters,
painting, 3-D, graffiti, stencils, and stickers. The exhibit will be open to the
public.
The
people behind The Wall at Central Square
are Geoff Hargadon, a veteran
financial advisor and street art collector, and Gary
Strack, the restaurateur. "This is a collectible, unencumbered, and
vital segment of the art market. What we hope to achieve with this installation
is to help introduce Boston to both established and emerging street
artists," says Geoff Hargadon, a long-time Boston area resident. "But
although I have had this idea in my head for nearly two years, it wouldn’t be
possible without my partnership with Gary. He has been instrumental in gaining
the support of Mayor Reeves and the Cambridge Arts Council.”
Gary
Strack is the owner and chef at Central Kitchen and Enormous Room, where the
installation is to take place. "Our
art community has had limited exposure to the work that exists in other cities
around the world, such as I have seen in New York, Barcelona, London, and
Berlin,” says Strack. “The energy this work brings to Cambridge and Boston
is rare and will be an important ingredient in making this a great event. I am
looking forward to seeing it.”
Many
of the artists who are participating have presented their work in galleries and
on the streets around the world. Michael
De Feo has had seven shows this year in Italy, France, and New York. In 2007
Rene Gagnon has shown his work in
shows in New York, England, Norway, and Massachusetts. Judith Supine is represented by the online gallery Paper Monster (www.papermonster.net),
which was recently unveiled. Nearly all of the artists who are participating
were included in the Spring Street show (New York, NY, December, 2006), curated
by Marc and Sara Schiller, which The
New York Times critic Roberta Smith described as "…one of the
best shows of the season."
Rene
Gagnon
began working as a street artist in 1984, and says he has evolved since then.
"After getting in my fair share of trouble, I retired my markers and spray
cans and went to art school. But in 2000, after being fed up illustrating for
clients, I went back to painting for me,
without the notion of selling. This endeavor brought me back to my roots."
Gagnon's media include paper, acrylic, and spray paint. His subjects include
global awareness and commercialism, and he often delivers it with skill and
humor.
Bren
Betaclan,
born in the Philippines but now living in Cambridge, has shown his work around
the globe. He has this to offer about The
Wall at Central Square: "Central Square is where my art career began
– it is where I first exhibited my cartoon-inspired acrylic paintings. I owe a
lot to this part of the city and I am very thankful that I live here."
Celso,
of New York's Endless Love Crew (ELC),
adds, tongue-in-cheek: "First we will crush the wall, then Boston, and then
the world!" ELC is a collaboration that includes Royce Bannon, Infinity,
and a number of other artists.
Drew
Katz,
of Gallery Katz, Boston, has represented the work of Shepard
Fairey, a RISD graduate and the well-known street artist. Katz says,
"This is one of the largest collaboration of 'street artists' that I have
heard of. The recent art-buying frenzy that has surrounded this medium has
brought the work to galleries, museums and auction houses around the world.
Fortunately, Hargadon and Strack are providing a space for us all to see the
work in its purist form. I hope that people come see this wall before it too
ends up behind a velvet rope with security guards telling us 'no flash
photography.'"
Bernard
Toale,
owner of The Bernard Toale Gallery, one of Boston's leading contemporary art
galleries, adds, " Street
art is the new photography. It's also great to see work outside of the gallery's
white wall - it's more vital and stimulating."
Street
art is a form of expression that many people equate with graffiti, but it has
long grown beyond that. In the October 2005 essay in Time,
reported by Carolina Miranda, wrote,
"Street art is the catchall term for the accelerating phenomenon of
surreptitious imagery inserted by mostly young artists into the municipal gumbo
of overpasses, alleys and neglected street corners. It is popping up in cities
everywhere--New York, Los Angeles, London, São Paulo. And although it has roots
in the outburst of graffiti spray painting in the 1970s and '80s, it's a
different order of business. In the brief annals of street-art history, graffiti
ranks as something like cave painting--a first gesture, recognized for its
primal intuition that public space is up for grabs--and has, in the past four or
so years, been overtaken by a host of new practices: wheat-pasted posters,
adhesive stickers with oddball images on them, elaborately stenciled images and
even three-dimensional objects. And like many things that start below the
Establishment's radar, it has caught the eye of the mainstream and is edging
into the galleries."
In
recent years is demand for this type of work has increased dramatically. Work by
New York artist Swoon was picked up
by Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art; British artist Banksy, recently profiled in The New Yorker, has seen his
work auctioned at Sotheby's for six figures; Brooklyn's Faile experienced similar success at a more recent auction; and
L.A.'s Shepard Fairey, known for his
15-year old oeuvre of Obey and Andre
the Giant images, sold out his solo New York show earlier this year.
In
addition to being a collector, Geoff Hargadon is known for being the creator of
the Internet sensation The Somerville Gates, a 2005 parody of Christo and Jeanne
Claude's Gates at Central Park. The New York Times called The
Somerville Gates "ephemeral…suspenseful and full of meaning." He
won global Internet and other media attention for his work, including 7 million
hits to the web site in 9 days – before it was removed due to unexpectedly
large Internet traffic. The Somerville
Gates are now back online at www.not-rocket-science.com/gates.htm.
Other work of his includes Runaway
Reindeer (www.runawayreindeer.net),
Freud Illustrated, and various
installations of ATM receipts.
While
the "official" date of this exhibition is October 25 to October 28,
when the installation is expected to be "complete", work has already
begun on the project as of October 14. Therefore, the work will be open for
public viewing before (and after) those dates. There will also be a talk by
selected artists as follows:
The
Wall at Central Square
Artists Panel and Discussion
(participants
TBA)
Saturday, October 27, 6pm-7pm
Enormous Room
567 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge
A
private party will follow.
The
artists who will be presenting their work make up an all-star cast. Among them
are:
Additional
artists may join the project on an ad hoc
basis.
Project
photography:
Additional
contact information:
Bernard
Toale:
617 966 6207
Drew
Katz:
617 777 2292,
Gary
Strack:
617 320 3038,