❮ New York

Gallery

Sep 05 - Nov 30 2024 - 72 days left

JoAnne Artman Gallery is pleased to present LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS, OH MY!, a solo exhibition of new works by America Martin. Titled after the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, "lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" is exclaimed by Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion as they brave through the perilous forest to the Emerald City. A playful reference to the famous line suggesting that risk is often rewarded, Martin delivers a fresh perspective on a familiar subject. Martin’s series of animal portraits captures a temporary stillness, while maintaining the energy and spontaneity of movement. Layering bold swaths of color, her expressionist touch achieves a wildness and freedom that matches each of her subjects. Influenced by her Colombian heritage, classicism, and modernist aesthetics, her work is both a humanist investigation and evocation of the relationship between the human form and the natural world. Adhering to most fundamental aspect of drawing - the line - to tell a story, Martin connects compositional elements with blocked areas of color to both inform and characterize her distinctive style. With unapologetic strokes and a bold palette, America’s forms hum with the vitality and vigor of the world around her.

Nov 14 - Dec 31 2024

As a result of his decades-long autodidactic art practice, Matos’ fluorescent palette, structural boldness, and graffiti influences have become synonymous with his proficiency. Eye-popping canvases and smaller watercolors balance flatness with dimensionality whilst incorporating signature elements of lettering, ocular motifs, lens flare, and decisive slashes of color. Borrowed imagery from popular cartoons including Popeye, Dick Tracy, and Batman gleefully appropriate and excavate visual history to echo Matos’ childhood memories as he delivers collective nostalgia. Ransacking the senses with bright neon and visually fragmented compositions, Matos generates works that reject the mundane. Rooted in his identity as a Bronx-born graffiti artist, having come of age in the hip-hop fueled Bronx of the late 1970s, Matos’ unique style made him an iconic part of the New York City visual landscape, while also pioneering a new age for graffiti in 1980 when he curated the pivotal “Graffiti Art Success for America” exhibition at Fashion MODA. A frequent collaborator, CRASH is continuously engaged in various projects, commissions, and numerous museum shows, with works in many permanent museum collections such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Brooklyn Museum (New York), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (Scottsdale), and Stedeljik Museum (Amsterdam). Whether on city streets or gallery walls, concrete or canvas, Matos’ works are instantly recognizable.