| Shepard Fairey's Venomous Visuals |
E PLURIBUS VENOM: NEW WORKS BY SHEPARD FAIREYDUMBO Installation Space, through July 7 81 Front St. at Washington St. Hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 11:00 am – 7:00 pm Jonathan LeVine Gallery, through July 21 529 West 20th St., ninth floor Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm Both spaces closed July 4 Admission: free 212-243-3822 jonathanlevinegallery.com  Shepard Fairey, âThese Sunsets Are to Die For!â? stencil collage and mixed media on canvas  Shepard Fairey, âTwo Sides of Capitalism: Bad,â? screened collage on canvas  Velvet entrance leads to another look at Shepard Faireyâs work More than 150 new works are now on view at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Chelsea and a companion installation in DUMBO, in an exhibit called “E Pluribus Venom” (out of many, poison), a play on the phrase “E Pluribus Unum” (out of many, one) found on U.S. currency. In fact, several of the pieces are large-scale send-ups of U.S. bills featuring such lines as “Obedience Is the Most Valuable Currency,” “More Militerry Less Skool,” and “Never Bow to the System, Change the System, or Create Your Own.” Fairey’s mixed-media canvases are often made of snippets of newspaper articles on violence and war as well as advertisements, which are painted or printed over with his iconography of soldiers, gas masks, floral patterns, nuclear warheads, birds, rifles with roses, and fists at the ready. In one of the most stunning and powerful pieces, “These Sunsets Are to Die For!” a man and a woman hold hands on a rock in the left foreground, watching as a city across a bloody river shoots polluted smoke and fire into the sky, the huge canvas bathed in (communist) red, with the title words at the bottom signifying that the American dream is now a living nightmare. In “Uncle Scam,” an Uncle Sam-like figure is holding skulls labeled “Human Rights,” “Civil Liberty,” “Privacy,” “Justice,” and other supposed freedoms, with the admonition “Do as He Says, Not as He Does.” And in “Proud Parents Canvas,” a happy couple cradles their beautiful new baby warhead. Despite everything being right in your face, the show doesn’t come off as being didactic or simplistic, because that’s the point; Fairey’s turning the government’s own propagandist language inside out, spitting it right back at them. The exhibition in DUMBO is a vast gallery with wide-open spaces, lending a more dramatic effect to the mammoth pieces, which are not as closely packed together as they are in Chelsea. The installation better represents how Fairey’s work is usually seen, while the Chelsea show more closely examines the detailed nature of his art. We think this is a must-see exhibit, but don’t just listen to us. After all, as Fairey notes, “Blind Acceptance Can Be Hazardous.” - - -All contents copyright 2007 by Mark Rifkin and twi-ny. All rights reserved. Contents may not be reprinted without written permission. Please note that events, dates, and prices are subject to change. For more on what’s going on this week in New York, visit www.twi-ny.com. {mos_ri}
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