MARIANNE NEMS
GALLERY NEW YORK
PRESENTS

“This is OZ, Nothing Makes Sense”

@ The Dorian Grey Gallery
437 East 9th Street (between 1st Ave and Ave A)
NY, NY

The story began with "Oz, le visage du mal" ("Oz, the face of Evil", read below) as an introduction to the chaos that surrounds us and which we are forced to witness.

Received from Ford Crull in Shanghai:

OK, so I survived the performance. It was all improvised. I had one hour to paint these 2 canvases while 2 Chinese musicians each played for a half hour. It is very humid here so I was sweating bullets, but I just about got it done. The scaffolding wasn't quite high enough, so I stood on the ends to reach the top. I will touch it up when it comes back to Red Town in Shanghai where it will be permanently displayed.

Stefan Eins, foreground, saw a striking similarity between a shadow, center of background, on a facade of Lenox Hill Hospital, and his own profile.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/arts/27urbanart.html

Scenes from Harlem sidewalks: a nasty splotch of green paint, or a clenched-fist image of defiance; a blue blob, or a spot-on profile of President Bill Clinton. As Stefan Eins would ask, coincidence or not coincidence?

Small surprise that Mr. Eins would find order among random lines and spots. In the late 1970s, he found art among the chaos of the South Bronx as the founder of Fashion Moda, a legendary gallery that brought together downtown hipsters and uptown hip-hoppers. But all along he has pursued his own art, teasing meaning from otherwise-random lines, spots and cracks that most New Yorkers pass without noticing.

This was a charming little piece of street art but perhaps I felt that way about it because I saw it after a bad day at work. In any case I'm tired of galleries so I support this sort of effort by default. As with the Chanel Art Container, which I also enjoyed in spite of the art, whether it's good or bad art is still up in the air.

What does it mean for the Tate to endorse Street Art and the Street for art?

Street Art has, for as long as it has existed, been frowned upon by institutions, the critics disdain it's integrity and art professors grit their teeth at the students who go to art school and practice street art for their work.

The only place street art has had a dominant place in academia is its relation to the social world in humanities; The crime relevance to society and how the media has taken this sub-culture and taken its soul for advertising purposes.

This media trend also relates and somewhat explains the art worlds new acceptance with this art form.