ROA’s eagerly anticipated UK solo debut opened earlier this month down at the Pure Evil Gallery exhibiting his unique portrayal of large scale urban wildlife, disquietly cohabiting city streets, hand painted in his distinctive black and white style.
Pure Evil Gallery, Leonard Street, London
ROA started painting abandoned buildings and warehouses in the isolated industrial outskirts of his hometown - Ghent, Belgium. Fixating on the animals he found there; the wildlife became the central subject matter of his work, inspired by their clever ability to adapt into scavengers in order to survive. He used the dilapidated, coarse interiors and exteriors of the unyielding landscape as a canvas to portray his large-scale creatures.
Roa filled a vast abandoned warehouse complex of different chambers and exteriors with a menagerie of large-scale animals, creating an impressive spray painted zoo of city scavengers.
His obsession went global when he took to the streets of New York, London, Berlin, Warsaw and Paris, prolifically painting his trademark cross sectioned animals wherever he went, locating them where they naturally invade the main city streets with their quiet yet powerful presence.
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
ROA at Pure Evil Gallery until May 2nd
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Thursday, 12 November 2009
HUSH tonight at the Urban Angel Gallery, Shoreditch
If you haven't already, get your name down on the list for tonights HUSH launch. At the Urban Angel gallery, Redchurch Street, Shoreditch 6-9.
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Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Miss Van at Stolen Space
If you're out and about on the first Thursday Art Train tomorrow, Miss Van is the one to see. Get on down to Stolen Space at the Truman Brewery, Oct 1st from 6.30pm. Show runs until the 18th Oct.
Toulouse native and current Barcelona resident Miss Van started to paint her graffiti on the streets during the 90s, at the age of 18. Her overtly feminine street art was a breath of fresh air in a traditionally masculine movement of urban art and paved the way for many contemporaries. Now her infamous sultry female characters, known as her ‘Poupes’, are seen on the streets and in galleries alike all over the world.
From these pouting, sulky girls emerges a certain sensuality and disconcerting eroticism that is frank and unabashed. Their thoughts are palpable and the paintings become real in both flesh and spirit. Miss Van creates her characters with an innovative spirit. Affirming her style, the artist infuses into her work traits from her own personality, rendering them thus, self-portraits. It is through their fantasy that the sensitivity and fragility of the artist is expressed. She takes pleasure in playing with ambiguities, her dolls are childlike women that are equally angelic and devilish. They have a rare appeal that transcends gender-an appeal that also extends to the work that she shows in galleries.
Over the years, Miss Van’s characters keep evolving. They have become less cute and more dangerously alluring, edgier - their sexy aura made all the more complex by their increasingly ambiguous facial expressions. The more she has moved into gallery work and can work with the nuances of more fragile media than the streets allow (pencil, for one), her characters have grown even more sensitive, subtle, and delicately rendered.
Featuring a retrospective of her work & new paintings this show will also see the release of a rare exclusive hand pulled limited edition screen print from Miss Van.
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