Opening On January 20th: STUCK UP!

Maxwell Colette Gallery and DB Burkeman are excited to present STUCK UP: A Selected History of Alternative and Popular Culture Told Though Stickers. This traveling exhibition, curated by Burkeman from his extensive personal collection, provides an unparalleled opportunity to explore the expanding role that stickers have played in popular culture over the past four decades. The collection focuses on Music (including Punk Rock, Hip Hop, and Rave Culture), Skateboard Culture, Political Campaigns, Branding, and Culture Jamming.

STUCK UP... features stickers from Street Art legends (Banksy, Barry McGee, Shepard Fairey, Space Invader, KAWS), and internationally lauded contemporary artists not necessarily known for stickers (Andy Warhol, Jenny Holzer, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Tom Sachs) shown side by side with anonymous stickers peeled from the streets of NYC.

STUCK UP... will kick off its run in Chicago with two days of special events. On Friday, January 20th Maxwell Colette Gallery and DB Burkeman will host the exhibition’s opening reception from 6pm - 10pm. Beverages will be provided courtesy of Modelo. Then on Saturday, January 21st the gallery will host a book signing from 1pm - 3pm featuring DB Burkeman and the celebrated photographer, author, and self- described sticker thief Martha Cooper.  Coffee and baked goods at the signing will come courtesy of Sweet Thing Bakery  and Metropolis Coffee Company.  Burkeman and Cooper will be signing copies of Burkeman's book Stickers: From Punk Rock to Contemporary Art which is available in Chicago at Quimby's.

Concurrent with these happenings, the gallery will present a selection of sticker-based collage work fromChris Mendoza, and will showcase an incarnation of Slap Happy the charity sticker invitational that made its debut as a part of SCOPE 2011 in Miami.  Slap Happy features stickers created by an international group of 75 visual communicators. This will be the only place outside of SCOPE where the limited edition stickers and signed black books from the project will be available to view and purchase in person.

Mark your calendars now and be sure to join us for this incredible weekend of sticker-related festivities!

Opening December 2nd: Text and Drugs and Rock and Roll

Maxwell Colette Gallery's next show, Text and Drugs and Rock & Roll, runs from December 2nd until January 7th, 2012.  The show is will feature work from an international group of over forty artists who work in a variety of different media.  "Don't expect a dry, academic exploration of text driven art that requires a lot of reading," cautions Gallery Director Oliver Hild.  "TDRR is going to be the opposite...  It's visceral, full of equal parts swagger and stagger."

The opening reception for Text and Drugs and Rock & Roll will take place on Friday, December 2nd from 6pm - 9pm.  Many of the artists will be present at the opening which Hild promises will feature "compelling art, cascading beverages and copious swag."

The list of participating artists includes: Abe Lincoln Jr, Antonio Martinez, Bask, Bill Connors, Brian Knowles, Brooks Golden, Chad Davis, Clown Soldier, Colt Bowden, Dain, Derek Erdman, Don't Fret, El Celso, Elik, Emily Cunningham, Faust, Fred Litch, Glenn Wexler, Goons, Greg Mike, Hebru Brantley, Infinity, Instigator, Joe Padilla, Klepto, Lloyd Patterson, Mark O'Brien, Mike Murdock, Mike Perry, Nice-One, Posterboy, Priest, Ron Copeland, RP Reeson, Ryan Duggan, Scott Albrecht, Sebastian Napoli, Stikman, Telepath UK, TEWZ, Thomas Billings, Tim Pigott, Victor Kaifas, Weed Wolf, Zero, and Zissou Tasseff-Elenkoff.

Billy Craven has been posting sneak peeks of the work on his Flickr. Check out the amazing life-sized Les Paul style guitar crafted entirely from corrugated cardboard and beer cases that Mark O'Brien is sending.  It's amazing!

SLAP HAPPY: A Sticker Invitational

Set to debut November 29th in Miami at the Wynwood Walls is Slap Happy, a charity sticker invitational curated by Paul Weston and DB Burkeman.  The project includes designs from 75 visual communicators from around the globe who have each created an intimate, same size, black and white sticker.  The stickers include original designs from well known artists and are printed in a small, limited edition.

As part of the project, a video, sticker packs, a book and 25 signed black books will be produced and sold through the Slap Happy store.  "Proceeds from the benefit will go to Acceptance House, a drug rehab facility in Miami.  This is our way of giving back to the locals who are ignored or exploited by the  decadence brought to Miami during Art Basel and the surrounding fairs."

The only way to see the artist lineup and all 75 designs before the exhibition in Miami is to check the Slap Happy Blog where sticker designs from three artists are posted each day.

Don't Fret Solo Show in our New Space.

If we've been uncharacteristically quiet as of late, it's only because we've been super busy gearing up for a bunch of new shows and preparing to move the gallery to a new 1800 sq/ft storefront in Ukrainian Village.  We'll unveil our vicious new installation space on October 22nd, presenting the first-ever solo show from Chicago- native Donʼt Fret. With distinctive visual style and dry humor Donʼt Fret juxtaposes old and new, then and now, to create light-hearted space and time in which nothing really fits and everything seems absurd.

MAN...THE TIMES...MAN will showcase the hand painted, life-sized paste-up characters Donʼt Fret is best known for, and that have graced walls from Chicago to San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Berlin, Munich, Prague and Salzberg. In addition the show will feature seldom seen smaller scale works. Portraits, witticisms, musings and sentiments are all presented within the context of a hand-crafted, multi-cultural melange of detritus. Alongside these unique works, Donʼt Fret will be releasing a series of hand-finished, limited-edition prints.

Maxwell Colette Gallery will host an opening reception for MAN...THE TIMES...MAN on Saturday October 22nd, from 6pm - 9pm at our new space located at 908 N. Ashland Ave.  Come by for beverages and swag and peep the new joint.  See you there!

Urban Knits

We spend a fair amount of time taking and posting photos of street art, so it is always nice to find out that someone has noticed our efforts.  Recently, Simone Werle chose some of our pics of guerilla knitting installations here in Chicago for her book Urban Knits which will be released by Prestel Publishing this July.

One of our photos is of a knit piece in front of the Art Institute's world famous lion sculptures.  The work is from Microfiber Militia and has occupied that pole on Michigan Avenue since May 2008.  The Militia contacted us and wanted us to "make sure to note that the white piece with a heart on it that's at the very top of the piece... that's not us. Somebody added that after it was up for awhile."

You can order your copy of Urban Knits here, or pick one up in person at Maxwell Colette Gallery once the book is released in July.

See more of our street art photographs on Flickr.

GAIA: one last look at 'Resplendent Semblance'

As we wind down Gaia's show, we wanted to take a look back and share some of the more interesting pieces that were published about Gaia and his art:

Juxtapoz ran an interview with Gaia about his massive paste up on Cabrini Green.

Arrested Motion ran street shots and fantastic pics from the openings.

Wooster Collective hyped us as one not to miss.

Fat Cap ran a two part in-depth interview with Gaia (pt.1 / pt.2) and hosts an awesome time lapse video of the window installation at State Street and Adams.  

Brooklyn Street Art, Curbs and Stoops, Sour Harvest, Fotoflow, Time Out Chicago, Flavorpill, Gapers Block, Crackade, All City Street Art, and Aerosol Planet all covered the show, and we thank them for their bon mots.

 The awesome video below was shot by Justin Nethercut right before Gaia came to Chicago, and highlights the theories and methods behind the madness. It also has great glimpses of the paintings we are exhibiting here at the gallery, while they were in his studio being painted.

GAIA: Resplendent Semblance closes Saturday May 7th.  Your last chance to peep it in person is Friday and Saturday from 12 noon  - 5pm.  

GAIA 'Tiger Rabbit' print release

Gaia’s Tiger Rabbit is a postmodern yin yang, harmonizing the opposing forces of an aggressive animal and a submissive animal. Tiger Rabbit unites dark and light, cold and warm, strong and weak in order to deflate the strictures set forth by contemporary Western culture. Gaia is reminding us that no thing is definitively one thing, as Western materialism promotes, but rather that everything in the universe oscillates between polar opposites.

Reclaiming traditional visual iconography, Gaia’s image transcends cultural literacy and achieves significance on multiple levels. Tiger Rabbit reflects the dynamic ebb and flow that permeates life, in which nothing is stagnant. Seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and they give rise to each other in turn. Contemporary urban culture devalues nature, but Gaia’s Tiger Rabbit invades the city of glass, steel and concrete with a breathtaking reminder of earth and life. The confrontational, full-frontal depiction of the hybrid animal implicates each passerby in the destruction of the relationship mankind once shared with both the natural and mystical worlds.

While members of Eastern society identify the tiger and the rabbit as archetypal symbols of annual transition, members of Western society would more readily associate tigers and rabbits with manufactured brands. Gaia emasculates Tony the Tiger and demonizes the Easter bunny, usurping the power vested in our familiar brands and materialistic ideals. 

Tiger Rabbit is an animal in transition, seemingly changing before our eyes. But its original state and objective end are elusive. Is it a tiger transforming into a rabbit, or a rabbit transforming into a tiger? It is at once a tiger with bunny ears, a symbol of aggression turned benign, and a rabbit with the mug of a tiger, a symbol of submission turned fierce. Gaia’s ambiguity conflates multiple layers of meaning, presenting us with an image that seems familiar and simultaneously inexplicable, reflecting the inherent duality of our complex and ever-changing systems of political and social power.

'Tiger Rabbit' is available at maxwellcolette.com.

GAIA: Resplendent Semblance

Maxwell Colette Gallery is pleased to announce GAIA: Resplendent Semblance, a solo show from the Baltimore based artist Gaia. The show will feature indoor and outdoor work in a variety of settings including a show of new, large scale paintings and decollage on wood art work at Maxwell Colette Gallery and a massive window installation at State Street and Adams presented in conjunction with The Chicago Loop Alliance's Pop Up Art Loop initiative.

The opening reception for GAIA:Resplendent Semblance is on Friday, March 25th from 6 - 9 pm in our space at 833 W. Chicago Ave, suite 200.  

Keep an eye on our Flickr and our Facebook page for further details and photos of the projects, the new work, and the installations.

Love Flows Both Ways: pop up show update

Recently our neighbors over at Time Out Chicago were kind enough to write about our pop up show 'Love Flows Both Ways'.  The Chiguide wrote about the show as well, as did Chicagoist who used our quote "Art is the new bling" as the title for their arts roundup piece.  Thanks for noticing!

And in other pop up related news, we spotted President Bill Clinton across the street from our space the other day. That's him waving in our blurry phone pic below.  Unfortunately he wasn't able to pop into the space for a browse.  Next time we are going to get him to come in and view the show.

Love Flows Both Ways: opening night

Mad thanks to everyone who turned out for the opening of our pop up show 'Love Flows Both Ways'.  We hope you had a great time and perhaps a little too much wine.  And a big shout to the staff at the Chicago Urban Art Society, without who's help we would have never been able to frame, wrap, transport and install over one hundred works in the short span of seven days.

In case you missed it: The Chicago Urban Art Society documented the installation of 'Love Flows Both Ways' and posted awesome pics of the process, the opening, and the art on their flickr.  And here are links to articles about the pop up opening on chicagoist, Flavorpill, and fotoflow.

'LOVE FLOWS BOTH WAYS: street culture x contemporary art' runs thru December 4th.  The show is located at 205 S. State Street (State and Adams) and is open Tuesday thru Sunday from 11:30 am until 5:30 pm.

Love Flows Both Ways: sneak peek

With one week to go until the opening of 'Love Flows Both Ways', we are well into the process of getting everything ready for the pop up gallery opening next thursday, October 7th.  We will hit you with installation shots soon, but first, we promised you a peek.  Here is a little taster of what is to be expected in the show...  Hungry for more? Keep an eye on the blog and our flickr for additional behind the scenes pics coming soon.