GRAFFITI VS. STREET ART: A HISTORY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Bishop Gallery Presents - Graffiti VS Street Art: A History
Graffiti and Street Artists come together to set record straight on their history and significance in the art world
Graffiti and Street Artists come together to set record straight on their history and significance in the art world
Brooklyn, NY October 5th - In recent years street art and graffiti have been conjoined under the blanket terms of either Street Art or Urban Art, yet in their incipience they were very different things. Graffiti vs Street Art: A History, is an historical exhibition intended to clearly present that fact by representing major players on both sides of the coin. Of course, people have written and drawn on walls ever since the walls were caves, rocks, clay, or just dirt. This exhibit, opening October 17th and ending November 14th, concerns popular contemporary urban formats. Inspired by the attention that the calligraphically oriented classic graffiti writers who adopted self appointed monikers as did the hip hop musicians of the day, a later generation of artists took to the streets in order to take advantage of the exposure the writers had experienced. Simply put, this Graffiti is calligraphic. This Street Art is primarily image based, or when textual, conceptual.
Artists Al Diaz (SAMO*, BOMB ONE) and Christopher Hart Chambers (avant*) are not only participants, they are the curators responsible for the telling of this story. Both Al and Chris agreed that the selection of artists included in this exhibition is based on the timely significance of their efforts and not solely on artistic merit. The most difficult task for the curators lay in not being able to include even more of the talented artists that worked on the streets, subways; painted on trucks, etcetera. This show is not a comprehensive overview but a selection of Graffiti writers who rose to prominence during its “golden era” of the 1970s, and the most prolific street artists who subsequently developed the form from the mid/late ‘70s through the early 1980s.
All of those included in this show worked primarily, although not exclusively, in New York City during those years.
Participating Graffiti artists: SAMO*, SNAKE1, FLINT, JESTER, Tracy 168, & LEE
Participating Street Artists: avant**, Scot Borofsky, Linus Coraggio, Richard Hambleton, Ken Hiratsuka, Michael Roman, RV, Dan Witz, Keith Haring
*SAMO was a duo including Al Diaz and Jean Michel Basquiat
**avant was a group of as many as twelve individual artists. Core members were: David Fried, Marc Thorne, Peter Epstein, Jed Tulman, and Christopher Hart Chambers
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The Bishop is a contemporary art gallery located in the heart of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Launched in 2012, we offer an innovative multimedia space, where the work of cutting edge, emerging artists can be fully realized and experienced, while connecting our growing community of art lovers and culture seekers to the ever expanding world of art. For more information about this show, please email media@bishoponbedford.com or call 917.966.9467
The Bishop Gallery 916 Bedford Ave Brooklyn NY 11205 www.bishoponbedford.com
Artists Al Diaz (SAMO*, BOMB ONE) and Christopher Hart Chambers (avant*) are not only participants, they are the curators responsible for the telling of this story. Both Al and Chris agreed that the selection of artists included in this exhibition is based on the timely significance of their efforts and not solely on artistic merit. The most difficult task for the curators lay in not being able to include even more of the talented artists that worked on the streets, subways; painted on trucks, etcetera. This show is not a comprehensive overview but a selection of Graffiti writers who rose to prominence during its “golden era” of the 1970s, and the most prolific street artists who subsequently developed the form from the mid/late ‘70s through the early 1980s.
All of those included in this show worked primarily, although not exclusively, in New York City during those years.
Participating Graffiti artists: SAMO*, SNAKE1, FLINT, JESTER, Tracy 168, & LEE
Participating Street Artists: avant**, Scot Borofsky, Linus Coraggio, Richard Hambleton, Ken Hiratsuka, Michael Roman, RV, Dan Witz, Keith Haring
*SAMO was a duo including Al Diaz and Jean Michel Basquiat
**avant was a group of as many as twelve individual artists. Core members were: David Fried, Marc Thorne, Peter Epstein, Jed Tulman, and Christopher Hart Chambers
###
The Bishop is a contemporary art gallery located in the heart of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Launched in 2012, we offer an innovative multimedia space, where the work of cutting edge, emerging artists can be fully realized and experienced, while connecting our growing community of art lovers and culture seekers to the ever expanding world of art. For more information about this show, please email media@bishoponbedford.com or call 917.966.9467
The Bishop Gallery 916 Bedford Ave Brooklyn NY 11205 www.bishoponbedford.com