"Beautiful Losers" Exhibition and Lightning Bolt
at Laforet Museum Harajuku
in the Omotesando, Aoyama area
This event has ended - (2008-08-02 - 2008-08-16)
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Starting in Cincinatti in 2004 and traveling around the world since then, “Beautiful Losers” now finds itself in Tokyo. The show capitalizes on the legacy Aaron Rose built up with his Alleged Gallery, a seminal space for street art that operated on New York’s lower east side which he from 1992 to 2001. Thus, the exhibition boasts names such as Todd James, KAWS, Barry McGee, Harmony Korine, Shepard Fairey, Spike Jonze, Ed Templeton, Chris Johanson, and Stephen Powers â the first generation of artists to have been influenced by do-it-yourself street culture, and who paved the way for the street inspired art to enter the “legitimate” art world.

The Tokyo version of the show has been edited down, although this is hardly noticeable. The strongest works in the show include Stephen Powers’ huge wooden room in the center of the space, Chris Johansonâs geometric and bizarrely humorous paintings, Ed Templeton’s photography and a homemade tattoo installation by Alexis Ross.

Filmmaker and photographer Harmony Korine has included a set of Polaroids titled âPolaroids from Gummo 1995 â 2008â. Korine is not really treading any new ground with these images of âwhite trash Americaâ, bizarre and fashionable portraits of awkward youth. In one photo, one of the main characters from Gummo stands shirtless, cigar in mouth, wearing oversized high top sneakers while a Blondie record rests propped against the wall. Like many of his older films, Korine’s photo work is certainly beautiful, but leaves me feeling complicit in some kind of knowing and fashionable exploitation of wasted youths too young to be legally wasted.

Forty-two year old Barry McGee (aka âTwistâ) is showing a mesmerizing geometric work printed on a huge piece of stretched canvas. The work is a mish-mash of vivid Technicolor cubes, a style he has been using for a number of years. McGee was a student of the San Francisco Mission School along with a number of other artists in the show including Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson and Margaret Kilgallen. These artists went on to develop an aesthetic based on street art, signwriting and street culture. McGee’s work in this current Beautiful Losers show is more abstract and forceful than the classic “street” aesthetic he and his peers are known for. Although he has been producing these geometric paintings for years now, they still seem to sit outside of his other work, namely his graffiti installations and hobo caricatures.
Chris Johanson is also showing a vivid geometric work. This bizarre and humorous collage/painting, Untitled â contemporary cosmopolitan painting (2007), half-collage, simplistic, and deliberately ugly, shows two shirtless men, one cutting up lines of amphetamines while the other says âDavid, I find you very attractiveâ. Inside jokes like these permeate the whole exhibition.
Much of the show is characterized by work that is average at best. Some of Jo Jackson’s pieces have no more impact than an art school experiment in graphic design, and Mike Mills is showing a piece from his âFireworksâ series, which I’m sad to say comes across as a mere emotional self-help illustration. Meanwhile, Shepard Faireyâs works â highly graphic and stylized portraits of pop cultural icons rendered in a faux communist poster style â are just what you would expect from his tired and very repetitive âOBEYâ empire.

The one work that dominates and literally outshines all others with its glowing facade is Stephen Powers’ huge wooden room covered in a noisy plethora of signs, sayings and symbols, painted on fluorescent orange posters. As the man who began writing ESPO in the late eighties and disguised it as legitimate advertising, Stephen Powers is a significant character in graffiti history. For the âBeautiful Losersâ he lends a classic sign-writing style to clichĂ©d graffiti phrases (âFuck the Buffâ), throw-away one-liners (âStone cold Bummerâ), comments on Japanese eating traditions (Whale meat $4.99 per) and homoerotic personal jokes (âLets start a bromanceâ). The installation is a glorious exercise in idioms for idiots.
Another key work in the exhibition is by Alexis Ross, who is not officially listed as participating but nevertheless remains an important part of this group of artists. A respected tattoo artist and member of LA sign-writing group âGents of Desireâ, this mustachioed man is the creator of the homemade tattoo cart placed in the far corner of the exhibition. During the crowded opening reception, he picked up his homemade tattoo gun and set to work tattooing a skull on the arm of an overexcited Japanese man with a Mohawk.
The Beautiful Losers shows are conduits that follow on from the groundbreaking Street Market installations held since 2001, with which the perception of street-inspired works as “legitimate” art took root. With this, graffiti âwritersâ began to refer to themselves more readily as graffiti âartistsâ and a whole new subset of self endorsed âstreet artistsâ started to emerge.
However, putting this âmovementâ in context, there is something tragic about this show. The distance this kind of art has travelled has been so short, that looking back on it now, many of the works seem impotent, just limping along, weary of public scrutiny, and weary of being used in one too many corporate collaborations. The tacit promise of possibility has not yet been fulfilled, and what’s more, it seems like this whole new generation of street inspired art has forgotten this potential all together and is content with complacent repetition.
The excitement and hope of the late nineties is gone and I think it is only now that people are starting to come to terms with this change of mood. Before leaving the show, it is worth keeping an eye out for one poster hidden in among the visual cacophony of Stephen Powers’ wall of signs. Reading Street Art: Propping up the corpse, the poster has in all likelihood been written half in jest, and yet it cuts all too close to the truth.

steve powers
2008-09-03
BINGO!
Jesse Hogan
2008-11-10
A long overdue analysis there! Good Job.
I live and work in melbourne Australia, A city which has for the last few years suffered this epidemic of self proclaimed street styled artists, attempting to carry themselves under some faux cliche commercial graffiti alias-Repeting themselves time and time again with no real engagement with true graffiti activism, nor conceptual progression.
If the work of the pioneers is suffering a lack of resolution imagine the work of the Copy Cats?
Cameron McKean
2008-11-12
Thanks Jesse. Yeah, Melbourne has a lot to answer for! Is the city still rife with ‘Stencil Art’? I recently heard about the ‘Cup-rocking’ phenomenon in Sydney, i hope Melbourne has been spared.
I think your right about the lack of real engagement, that to me also seems to be the issue. I think graffiti and street art finds it hard to think about itself reflexively. Which is frustrating, because it always seemed like there was so much potential for it to really go beyond its confines. Street art suggests something great (democratic, free, artistic expression), but in reality it just seems to comes across as boring, poorly thought out self promotion. I wonder why? The influence of marketing? Dumbing work down for instant recognizability to get known faster? Maybe it has something to do with the paint fumes.
ribun d
2008-11-21
i appreciate your words Cameron However it comes across, there’s a lot that Uprock is responsible for besides cuprocking..In this instance the colab isn’t heavily controlled by ‘the powers’ and the artist still has free rain of his art form and practice, its more a case of the company getting noticed by association .in that case there is so many companies like rvca that support the artists while they can profit to a degree from the awareness that company brings.
In all i think you give Uprock a closer look and see how far he has really gone in his fields of art…check out Trailblazers international art exhib.his paintings are amazing…creating poetry for the blind in braille still using the simple idea of a plastic cup in a fence and sharing that with blind communities abroad..he showcases so many recognisable skills he keeps away from the GIANTS and in all being an artist myself, if you can protect keep some things just for you in turn everything blossoms the right way
peace
OldTimeys
2010-01-22
Jesse, If i’m not mistaken.
Isn’t this your show at the street art gallery, Until Never.
http://until-never.blogspot.com/search?q=hogan
Can you offer us some further distinction on the line between “true graffiti activism”, “conceptual progress” and this “faux cliche commercial graffiti alias” that you speak of.
These terms seem a bit blurry. Also where do you fit in on the equation? I understand you used to enter exhibitions under the name “Radio”, is there a reason why you chose to dump this graffiti themed alias?
Judging by the photos of your show, off the top of my head, your jump ramp installation is eerily reminiscent of the Stefen Marx half pipe installation at Monster Children gallery. Albeit half sized, and… half assed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adAbnZ9wRj8
Also Jesse Hogan (Radio), your coffin installation seems to be highly influences by a certain NY artist who showed at Don’t Come Gallery earlier the same year.
I think its too easy to categorize art under the moniker of “street” simply because the artist might have graffiti roots or be involved in the surrounding culture, but in doing so we risk diminish the value of the art just by bundling it into an arbitrary group.
The idea of “street art” has admittedly been played out and its true that shows such Beautiful Looser are no longer examples of the potential that a street based aesthetic and all the things derived from it are capable of. But by making generalized statements about “street art” we are denying the value of emerging artists who are doing new and cool things inspired by the work of shows such as BL.
Also in doing so we not only pave the way for new generations of artists such as Jesse Hogan to be complacent with repetition but we are also providing them with ammunition to openly criticize the culture from which they derive their aesthetic as they attempt to legitimize their own plagiarism.
I think this is a good post, and a very concise analysis, but the author should offer a distinction between the BL artists and other contemporary “street artists” who are in fact doing cool things.
Otherwise this fine piece of work might just become fuel for people who have a chip on their shoulder and choose to misconstrued this post.