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    Putt Around the Playable Artworks of ‘Par Excellence Redux: The Back 9,’ Now Open at Elmhurst Art Museum

    
    Art
    Colossal

    #exhibition
    #games
    #golf

    October 21, 2021
    Colossal

    All images courtesy of Elmhurst Art Museum, shared with permission
    The Back 9 of Par Excellence Redux, an artist-designed miniature golf course, is now open at the Elmhurst Art Museum. Curated by Colossal’s founder and editor-in-chief Christopher Jobson as part of an open call, the exhibition of playable artworks pays homage to the incredibly popular Par Excellence, which opened in 1988 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
    The Back 9, which runs through January 2, 2022, includes artists Wesley Baker, KT Duffy, Eve Fineman, Joshua Kirsch, Annalee Koehn, Vincent Lotesto, Joshua Lowe, Jim Merz, David Quednau, Donna Piacenza, and Liam Wilson & Anna Gershon. This round features a wide array of designs like a mirrored room in which the green spreads out into infinity, a community garden in waiting, and Koehn’s fortune-telling piece first shown 33 years ago in the initial exhibition.
    Chicago sculptor Michael O’Brien conceived of the original Par Excellence, which opened to lines down the block and subsequently sold out daily. It was recognized nationally in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Tribune, among others, and went on tour throughout Illinois before returning to Chicago as a rebranded commercial project called ArtGolf, which was located at 1800 N. Clybourn in Lincoln Park on the site that’s now occupied by Goose Island Brewery.
    Book a tee time to play the second half of the course, and remember that Colossal Members get 25% off.

    #exhibition
    #games
    #golf

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    SOS – Dscreet

    SOS is a new body of work from Australian artist, Dscreet. The well-toured owl lover previously painted extensively in London, as part of the infamous Burning candy Crew, a collective that included artists such as Cept, Pegs, Sweet Toof, Cyclops, Tek33, and occasionally SickBoy. Now repatriated in his home country and forced to spend hours alone during Melbourne’s draconian lockdown, drunkenly trawling Tinder, Dscreet finally put down his phone and picked up a paintbrush, putting the many bottles of booze he’d drained to better use. This is the result.
    SOS – Dscreet‘I spent a lot of time in isolation walking around alone, first depressed, then I found a way tolook at things differently.’‘The world was upside down so it was time to discover new places to keep my mindoccupied. To find new uses for the detritus in my brain and on the streets. This city becamea strange jail with one hour of outdoor time to breathe, no painting and no surfing allowed,few outlets for anyone like me who funnels freedom into my art. I felt like we were allsharing a special kind of crazy. At first I began to go a little insane, listening to the media,trying to make sense of it all, trying to deny my relative misery, but there were a lot ofconflicting stories coming out, no-one really knew what was going on. I meditated, didyoga, breathwork, exercise and then drank a lot of alcohol. I felt the same conflicting storyin myself, trying to stay healthy and positive then destroying the good work with the polaropposite force. Somehow a balance evolved, staring into the empty bottles, I decided toput them to good use and decorate them with the profound lyrics of those who have beendrunk and isolated before me, after all, many of us creative types spend even the mostnormal times in isolation, sometimes confused and conflicted. Sometimes there’s thosemoments of clarity at the end of a cycle.’‘In memoriam to my personal journey, through the schizophrenic stasis of the world, eachof these painted bottles represents a piece of my creative therapy and struggle throughlockdown. The other pieces represent found objects and prose I’ve salvaged from personalhikes through the streets and wilderness and songlists. The surfboard is a monument tothose opposing forces that keep clashing in the media and in our minds, ready to flowbackwards or forwards, I reached an acceptance that nothing can be taken for grantedanymore and nothing is absolute. I’m happy to be sober and surfing and painting again.’– DSCREETView the full catalogue here.COLLECTOR ENQUIRIES: [email protected]@backwoods.gallery@dscreetsheet
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    Coverage: Martin Whatson “FREE” Solo Show at RexRomae, Dubai

    On 3 December 2020, Martin Whatson launched his first solo exhibition in the Middle East with RexRomae Gallery in Dubai the hub of business in the Middle East and Africa. The pop-up exhibition FREE curated by Rom Levy took place in Dubai International Financial Center, a top ten global financial center and a home to a variety of world-renowned retail, dining venues, hotels as well as a dynamic art and culture scene.

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    The exhibition included all new work by the Norwegian stencil artist, with a total of 43 paintings such as A Clean Slate (2020); Rock Climber (2020) and Make Love (2019) additionally, 4 sculptures were also on show, all of which were sold out during the exhibition. Alongside that a Paint Love (2020) screen print of 150 edition was launched for sale at the opening of the exhibition.

    Whatson, who became widely known through his idiosyncratic calligraphic scribbles, filled with cultural references and subversive themes, returned with a new series of eye-grabbing imagery. Works that are socially involved in nature, delivering his commentary in a style that deliberately evokes a continuous dialogue on the decontextualization of urban sphere.
    Scroll down below and take a look at more images of the exhibition and its opening night.

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    Martin Whatson “Free” Solo Exhibition @ Dubai’s RexRomae Gallery – December 3rd

    Rom Levy

    Rom Levy
    Rom is the founder & editor in chief of StreetArtNews. In 2009, he launched the ‘StreetArtNews’ website to promote underground art, which widened his scope to work with a larger roster of street artists on events and exhibitions. He is noted as one of the latest figures to help popularize street art and as an authority on the latest trends in urban contemporary art. More

  • Hiroyasu Tsuri aka Twoone – RAW MARK MAKING

    RAW MARK MAKING – Hiroyasu Tsuri (b. 1983)

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    Hiroyasu Tsuri aka Twoone – RAW MARK MAKING

    “Raw Mark Making is quite a simple idea. It’s literally the meaning of the words. Mark making. In my context, it is making marks that are not commonly used in traditional art practice. Unusual movements, using any kind of tools, embracing a mood or attitude, mixed with the physical speed or controlling the level of impact on to the surface… that’s what I call raw mark making.”
    – Hiroyasu Tsuri

    Since pre-historic times it has been an instinctual human behaviour to make marks. Whether an individual or a group of people, mark making has been a constant outlet for human beings to leave behind a record of their existence and experiences. Hiroyasu Tsuri (TWOONE) is driven by this same innate behaviour. Tsuri creates marks with a childlike freedom of expression, open mindedness and this instinctual human desire to leave behind a legacy of visual depictions of the his interpretations of the human experience. Tsuri calls this ‘Raw Mark Making’.

    The concept of ‘Raw Mark Making’ is the culmination of a decade of experience taking every opportunity to paint marks whenever and wherever Tsuri finds himself around the world. This experience began in the early 2000’s, studying composition and mark making techniques with graffiti writers in Melbourne Australia. In 2014 Tsuri relocated to Berlin Germany and it was this move that sparked a philosophical desire to survey his practise over the last decade and acknowledge and consider the concepts, motivations and ideas behind why he creates marks, and why he chooses to do so in his distinct manner.

    Since 2012 Tsuri has exhibited four unique solo exhibitions with Backwoods Gallery – SevenSamurai (2012), Outsiders (2014), 100 Faces (2016) and Object (2018). Raw Mark Making (2020) celebrates Tsuri’s history, and development of, the different kinds of ‘Mark Making’ that have been exhibited in these exhibitions and that have become pivotal to first decade of his oeuvre. The selected works represents the different stages of discovery of Tsuri’s own unique expression of, and place within, the human history of ‘Raw Mark Making’.
    hiroyasutsuri.com
    Youtube channel
    @T_W_O_O_N_E
    BACKWOODS GALLERY
    25 Easey St Collingwood, Victoria, Australia
    www.backwoods.gallery More

  • Coverage: “8th Ply” Group Show in Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Continuing their successful collaboration Sasha Bogojev and Mark Chalmers team up again for 8th Ply. Curated by Sasha Bogojev and presented by The Garage Amsterdam, 8th Ply is a group exhibition featuring artists whose lives were, and are, significantly marked by their connection with skateboarding.
    Seven layers of maple wood, or 7-ply, is the core construction of the skateboard deck and the bedrock of this globally popular sport/lifestyle. In a year when skateboarding was destined to debut as an official Olympic sport for the first time in history, 8th Ply is here to put a focus on another layer of this popular activity.
    Working in a variety of mediums, applying different techniques, and using a diverse range of aesthetics to express their creativity, the presentation aims to provide a glimpse at the uniqueness, imagination, and resourcefulness of the people closely connected to skateboarding. And while skateboarding itself is now a big part of popular culture and is getting heavily branded as a mainstream sport, 8th Ply serves as a metaphor for the cardinal ingredient that turns a wooden plank into a form of identification.
    The exhibition features artists whose lives were, and are, significantly marked by their connection with skateboarding, such as Ed Templeton, James Jarvis, Jean Jullien, Adam Neate, Boris Tellegen, Parra, Josh Jefferson, Andrew Schoultz, and Jeffrey Cheung.

    “From my perspective, 8th Ply represents the channeling of human energy and emotion into the artifact of the skateboard. The combination of board and rider together allows each to become greater than the sum of their parts. My work across the globe bears witness to the inspiring magic that occurs when skateboarders—particularly among SOC—are allowed to move beyond the local and contribute their viewpoints, actions, and activism to the global language of skateboarding culture. Each rider carries a different thread of humanity which, when woven into the broader fabric of skateboarding, emboldens the next generation to see skateboarding as an outlet for their voice.
    As a young Black teenager, I witnessed firsthand how overt and covert racism negatively affected the lives of people of color, and I sought ways to disrupt its effects. Once discovering skateboarding, I found a new space of freedom and self-expression, as part of a multi-gendered, multiracial collective dedicated to pushing through life’s challenges atop 7-Plys of Hardrock-maple. The diversity within our coalition offered a blueprint, which demonstrated that when harnessed correctly, skateboarding culture might offer the possibility to challenge power, build community, and create social change.” – Dr. Neftalie Williams, Artist. Scholar. Diplomat. Activist. Skateboarder.

     The Garage Amsterdam was created in 2004 by Mark Chalmers, a creative director and founder of the internationally lauded Creative Social. Mark also runs the international studio Chalming.Co where he is working with artists and art to build global brands through culture. Brands such as Nike, Dior, Google and Patagonia. Fascinated by the power of grassroots networks, Chalmers started The Garage Amsterdam, as a place where artists could stay while in Amsterdam, create and exhibit work and connect with other artists.
    Scroll down below for more photos of the group show.

    Images by Rene Messman

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