CARNIVORA OUT NOW!
Carnivora is finally making its way to stores across the land, and is available from the likely suspects online!
Device Gallery Inaugural Exhibition Opening on July 19th…
…in La Jolla, California will feature 18 innovative artists from around the world whose work explores the mechanical nature of man. Fantastic Contraption is a remarkable collection of curious things, including 11 of the original artworks from the book, CARNIVORA: The Dark Art of Automobiles, by artists Eduard Anikonov, Greg Brotherton, D. Hwang, J. U. Abrahamson, Christopher Conte, Kazihiko Nakamura and H. R. Giger.
Click on icons
The Fantastic Contraption exhibition at Device Gallery includes additional artworks by Carnivora artists Viktor Koen, William B. Hand and Eric Joyner.
Two Carnivora Book Artists Exhibit at Last Rites Gallery
Last Rites Gallery and Barany Books are proud to introduce the work of William B. Hand and J.L. Robbins, two new and exciting talented artists whose artworks are featured in Carnivora: The Dark Art of Automobiles. Advance copies of Carnivora are available for sale at the gallery.
The exhibition is on view from July 12 through August 18
LAST RITES GALLERY
511 W. 33rd Street • Between 10th & 11th Avenue • 3 blocks from Penn Station
3rd floor, New York, NY 10001 • 212.529.0666
Available original art from the CARNIVORA book by William B. Hand:
Available original art from CARNIVORA by J.L. Robbins:
16 Carnivora Book Artists in Fuse Gallery’s NEW BLOOD RISING exhibition
NEW BLOOD RISING
Group Show curated by Les Barany
Exhibition runs July 10th through August 9th, 2008
Summer Hours: Fuse Gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday 3 – 8PM
Fuse Gallery 93 2nd Ave NYC, 10003 NY • 212.777.7988 • www.fusegallerynyc.com
Participating Artists:
John U. Abrahamson, Patrick Byers, Vincent , Christopher Conte, William B. Hand, Eli Livingston, J.L. Robbins, Chris Savido, Kenneth “Dominique” Williams.
Guest Artists:
Stephen Kasner, Victor Koen, H.R. Giger, David Hochbaum, Andre Lassen, Bart Powers, Paul Rumsey
and Brian Viveros.
• Among the 43 artworks in the show are 12 of the originals from the book Les Barany’s CARNIVORA – The Dark Art of Automobiles, by New Blood Rising artists Patrick Byers, Vincent Castiglia, William B. Hand, Eli Livingston, J.L. Robbins, Chris Savido, Kenneth Williams, Viktor Koen, Andre Lassen, Bart Powers, Paul Rumsey and Brian Viveros.
Click here to view all the art in the show
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE EXHIBITION
• Additional original artworks from the CARNIVORA book by the following artists are available through Fuse Gallery: Marshall Arisman, Zdzislaw Beksinski, Hanno von Bran, Bernardo Corman, Steve Ellis, Viktor Koen, Till Nowak, Peter Pontiac, Rick Prol, Sybille Ruppert, Christopher Savido, Hugo Schuhmacher and Nick Weber.
Click here to view additional CARNIVORA art for sale
Advance copies of the CARNIVORA book are available for sale at the gallery.
New Blood Rising runs July 10th through August 9th, 2008, at Fuse Gallery.
Gallery Hours: Wednesday through Saturday 3 – 8pm.
93 2nd Ave (between 5th & 6th Sts, 2nd Ave stop on the F), NYC, NY. For more information, contact Fuse Gallery at 212.777.7988 or fusegall@fusegallerynyc.com.
Los Angeles Carnivora Art Exhibition
The Carnivora exhibition’s next stop was at Los Angeles, California, where the show ran for six weeks.
Carnivora Update
Photos of the Carnivora exhibition installation and the opening night at Detroit’s ©Pop Gallery have been uploaded to the PICS section of the Carnivora MySpace page. Please have a look. the show looks great! Of the 90 artists featured in the book, 64 are represented in this first leg of the exhibition. The show looks great! A big thanks is owed to Tom Thewes, Rick Manore and all the people who pitched in and helped during the two days leading up to the opening, Topher Crowder, Jaclyn Schanes, and visiting artists Patrick Byers, Bernado Corman, and Jason D’Aquino. My big thanks to Chris X and Kevin Slaughter for making sure the book was done in time for the ©Pop exhibition and for representing Scapegoat Publishing on opening night. Others in attendance from the Carnivora family were editors George Petros and Deanna Lehman, and contributing author Daphne Graham. The exhibition will run through the end of February. If you are anywhere within a 100 mile radius, it is well worth the trip to view the Carnivora art collection up close and in person. 200 advance copies of the book were rushed from the printer to Detroit for sale at the show so, for now, until the first shipment of Carnivora arrives at bookstores in April, ©Pop Gallery is the ONLY place in the world the book is available!
The Detroit News – Sex, death and cars…
Sex, death and cars
Michael H. Hodges / The Detroit News
Sex, death and — amusingly — UFOs predominate in the current show at Detroit’s C-Pop Gallery, “Carnivora: The Dark Art of the Automobile,” timed to overlap with the big North American International Auto Show at Cobo downtown.
It would be easy, perhaps, to see in “Carnivora” an implicit critique of Detroit, the current state of the Big Three, and their impact on the world. But that would be too simple — and a little narcissistic, to boot.
Rather, “Carnivora,” which runs through Feb. 22, looks far beyond the domestic auto industry, embracing the entire world’s dark romance with the automobile, and the central role the car occupies in mankind’s dreams.
It just so happens that most of the dreams presented here lean toward the nightmarish.
Some 65 artists worldwide are represented, with works that range from sculpture to painting to digital art. There are huge names — underground cartoonist R. Crumb and Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger, who designed the alien in the “Alien” films, to name but two artists.
Detroiters are well represented with works by, among others, Niagara, Topher Crowder and Ford GT40 designer Camilo Pardo.
If there’s one constant throughout this entertaining exhibition, it’s that most of these artists, whether European, Asian or North American, are positively enraptured with the classic age of 1950s American car design.
No matter what mayhem occupies the rest of the canvas — from car bombs to the apocalypse — those behemoths-with-fins are rendered with palpable affection.
But then, given the choice, which would you paint? A 1959 Chevy Bel Air or a 2005 Nissan Sentra?
Case closed.
“It’s not the car that’s dark,” says Rick Manore, C-Pop director, and the author of an essay in the show’s book. “The auto is neutral until a human being gets behind the wheel. Then it becomes our automotive doppelganger, a metallic extension of ourselves.”
As such, it’s no surprise that sex and death — those twin obsessions lodged somewhere behind the shiny chrome grill — figure highly. (Climate change, by the way, makes virtually no appearance.)
Take Niagara’s punchy, cartoonish “Light My Fire,” in which a stiletto-heeled dominatrix stands with gasoline can behind her 1950s classic, whose license plate reads “Detroit.” Behind her, a skyline erupts in flames.
The show’s organizer, New York artists’ rep and curator Les Barany, shrugs. “Well,” he says, “bad things can happen in cars, huh?”
Happily, there’s humor in the midst of the darkness.
If some of these works disturb — like Paul Rumsey’s mesmerizingly creepy “Cars,” in which gas-masked people morph into automobiles, or vice-versa — many others are a positive scream.
Eric Joyner’s luminous oil-on-wood “Close Call,” for example, catches a relieved alien-robot just as he bails out of a late-’40s Packard careening off a cliff.
Or consider self-described “auto artist” Bernardo Corman’s “Carp!” series. This features a group of small, colorful “fish” whose heads are the fronts of 1950s cars, which morph seamlessly into an elegant tropical fish before you hit the windshield.
“It just popped to mind,” Corman says with a grin Monday at C-Pop. “Fish with car heads.”
Curator Barany says he decided against putting out a general call when he began pulling the show together in August.
“I knew I’d be inundated with a lot of work I wasn’t crazy about,” he says. “Instead, I used the opportunity to go after people I’ve been a fan of since I was in art school.”
About a third of the works, Barany adds, were created specifically for “Carnivora.”
From Detroit, the exhibition will travel to that other car-crazy town, Los Angeles, for a show at the L’Imagerie Gallery.
As for fears that some patrons will take the show as an attack on the local industry, Pardo says that never occurred to him.
“Especially for people in my field,” says the Ford designer, “it’s very cool to see something a little more colorful. Because generally all we see are the happy, shiny illustrations. It gets a little redundant.”
Whenever he hosts a designers’ party, Pardo says, “I always try to bring in some weird, Salvador Dali-like art. For us in the creative end, it’s refreshing.”
Indeed, the enthusiasm for man’s favorite vehicle — despite the show’s premise — is confirmed in the exhibition catalog, now available on amazon.com. The short bio on each artist notes what kind of car she or he drives.
Niagara motors around Motown in a metallic-silver, 1966 Cadillac Coupe DeVille.
Pardo owns a 2005 Ford GT, a 1967 Mustang fastback, a 1982 Ferrari BBi, and a dinky 1972 Fiat 500 — which he says he parks in his living room/studio.
And Barany, the evil genius behind the whole show?
A typical New Yorker, he’s never learned to drive.
You can reach Michael H. Hodges at (313) 222-6021 or mhodges@ detnews.com.
| Find this article at: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080117/ENT05/801170383 |
