MICHAEL ANDERSON (US) - EQUAL OPPORTUNITY DESTROYER 2011


Nedrivning i Kødbyen

Fredag den 8. april gæster en af New Yorks mest originale og særprægede street artister, Michael Anderson, for første gang Danmark og udstiller solo hos Gallery Poulsen i Kødbyen.

Michael Anderson laver street art uden kunstige tilsætningsstoffer. Hans lærred og palette består af reklame-billboards, undergrunds-posters og graffiti stickers, som han river ned overalt i verden, hvor han kommer frem. De nedrevne posters bliver flået i hundredvis af stykker og arkiveret for så sidenhen at dukke op i Andersons fabulerende collager og mosaikker - ofte med stærke samfundspolitiske og kulturelle referencer.

Effekten af collagerne bliver ofte en slags genkendelse af det gadebillede vi ser, når vi befinder os i de store metropoler som New York og London. Der er noget velkendt over det, men også noget nyt og foruroligende, når feel-good typografier og reklame-ikoner bliver vendt på hovedet og brugt imod os.

Vanen tro vil Michael Anderson også gå på jagt i de Københavnske gader efter sære posters og stickers, mens han er her. På denne måde bliver dansk storbykultur indlemmet i det efterhånden enorme materiale, der danner baggrunden for Michael Andersons gadekunst.

Michael Anderson, startede sin karriere med at sammensmelte collage og maleri, men har siden starten af 1990érne udelukkende beskæftiget sig med ren collage. Han har udstillet i New York, Amsterdam, Madrid og en række andre amerikanske og europæiske byer.

Fra 8. april til 6. Maj kan 15 helt nye værker ses i Kødbyen i København, i forbindelse med udstillingen udgives katalog.

Kunstneren vil selv være til stede i galleriet i dagene op til og under ferniseringen, hvor han vil være tilgængelig for interviews.

For yderligere oplysninger kontakt Morten Poulsen på +45 4015 5588 / [email protected]

Se også mere info på Michael Andersons hjemmeside http://www.chamuconegro.com/


Demolition in the ”Meat Packing”


Friday April 8th one of New York´s most original and distinctive street artists, Michael Anderson is visiting Denmark for the first time to exhibit a solo show at Gallery Poulsen.

Anderson creates his collages without artifice. His palette consists of commercial billboards, street posters and graffiti stickers, which he has torn down from the streets all over the world. The posters he collects are ripped into hundreds of pieces and archived, and then are recombined in unusual juxtapositions to form his composed collage mosaics, always combining strong political and /or cultural references.

The impact of the collages is a kind of recognition of the street scene which we see in places like New York and London. There is a pinprick of something familiar about them, but also something new and disturbing, when feel-good typographies and commercial icons are turned into compositions that are more than their individual and original messages and meanings.

His collages range in scale from miniature to monument. They’re so unabashedly pop that two were recently reproduced, blown up to 15 x 20 meters and used as a Target department store billboard ad campaign in Times Square in NYC.

The 43-year-old, Bronx-born collagist is foremost a collector of images, an index of vast quantities
of wheat-pasted street advertisements for movies , music events, and political campaigns. His 2010 collage Red Abstraction features Benicio Del Toro’s face from the poster for the movie “Che”, combined with Ashley Judd from the movie “DeLovely”, dancing with Kevin Kline, playing Cole Porter. This is all set against a background of bikinied girls, floating heads, graffiti abstraction, and rock stars. Anderson’s pastiche is a string of re-coded signifiers. Elsewhere, he has remixed ads for Barack Obama’s political campaign with Snoop Dogg, Stevie Wonder, The Wu Tang Clan and Britney Spears, in an ambivalent play on the race and class registers of their source material.

Anderson’s studio in the Striver’s Row section of Harlem, is a ground-level store-front, formerly a barber shop, which he calls the Harlem Collage Shop. Stack upon stack of movie, television, music , movie, and other miscellaneous street posters are piled up to the ceiling. On the table and makeshift shelving sit thousands of graffiti stickers collected in notebook after notebook. As we arrive he is at work at the large table that occupies the center of the room, tearing and gluing street posters together making his remarkably detailed collages. Anderson is hyper -specific about where people sit or what they touch in his seemingly chaotic studio space. There is obviously a method to his madness that is not immediately understood by the casual observer. One thing which is readily apparent, Anderson´s collages are full of energy and didactic meanings in his beautifully juxtaposed compositions.
During his visit here, the artist will, as always, search the streets of Copenhagen in order to find and take local posters and stickers to be used in his future work. In this way Danish street culture will be incorporated into this now huge data base that forms the archive for his future compositions.

Michael Anderson began his carrier with merging collage and painting but since the early 90s he has entirely dedicated himself to advancing pure collage. His collages have been shown in New York, Amsterdam, Madrid and a number of other American and European cities. The works especially created for this exhibition here at Gallery Poulsen lead the viewer directly into the artist´s vision of our modern society as an example of what it´s like to be alive in our contemporary international society today.


Information


"Equal Opportunity Destroyer"
Michael Anderson (US), solo
Vernissage April 8th, 2011 from 5 - 8 pm
The show runs until May 6th, 2011

The Artist himself will be at the Gallery in the week up to and during the vernissage.

Gallery Poulsen Contemporary Fine Arts
Flæsketorvet 24, Den hvide Kødby
1711 København V.
Tlf.+45 4015 5588
www.gallerypoulsen.com
[email protected]

Opening hours:
Tuesday thru Friday 12 - 17.30, Saturday 11 - 15, or by appointment, tel +45-40 15 55 88


 

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