Opera Gallery Hong Kong showcases the work of two street artists, Mr. Brainwash and Seen, in its latest exhibition, “Streetease.”Together, these artists highlight two distinct strands of gallery-level street art, with Seen representing a history of the movement stretching back to its beginnings as a clandestine youth movement in New York in the 1970s, while Mr. Brainwash represents the post-millennium and post-Banksy movement of street art.Seen (Richard Mirando), like many of the early graffiti artists, started in the movement painting on New York City subways trains in his very early teens, becoming part of the first group of graffiti artists (alongside Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat) to start working with galleries. The Seen works appearing at Opera Gallery show the influence of another figure whose work featured in those early street art gallery shows in the 1980s, Andy Warhol. In works such as “Popeye” and “Wonder Woman,” Seen combines the obsession with American comic books that can be seen in Warhol’s early work and in series like “Myths,” 1981 with the aesthetics of the early New York graffiti movement.Mr. Brainwash (Thierry Guetta), in contrast, finds more inspiration from the more mocking and wry work that is associated with Banksy, who made a documentary on Guetta, “Exit Through the Gift Shop” (2010). Although initially dismissed as a sort of Banksy-lite, the works featuring in “Streetease” highlight the distinctive aesthetic of the artist’s work, with its splashes of brightly-colored paint and focus on mixed media works. Together, the two artist’s work offers a retrospective of current street art in miniature, the past and present of street art.“Streetease” runs May 5 - 26 at Opera Gallery Hong Kong
↧