Archive Dossier for the Exhibition Regime Change Starts at Home: Shepard Fairey, Al Farrow, Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) Irvine Contemporary, Washington, DC October 18 December 6, 2008 Organized and Curated by Martin Irvine Contents: Original advertisement in Artforum, October, 2008 Event VIP Invitation Exhibition press release/gallery brochure Review in ARTnews Review in The Washington Post
Regime Change Starts at Home Shepard Fairey, Al Farrow, Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) October 18 December 6, 2008 Irvine Contemporary is pleased to announce the exhibition Regime Change Starts at Home with new works by Shepard Fairey, Al Farrow, and Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky), October 18- December 6. Opening reception with the artists: Saturday, October 18, 6-8PM. Shepard Fairey, internationally known for his iconic street art and graphics, presents ten new paintings and collage works on canvas and paper, including the last of three unique hand-stenciled and collaged portraits of Barack Obama. A new limited-edition print created specifically for the exhibition will accompany the artist s unique hand-finished works. In his first exhibition in Washington, DC, Al Farrow presents welded metal sculptures of religious structures, which are composed entirely of gun parts, bullets, artillery shells, and 1
human bone. The works form striking commentaries on the militarism embedded in the histories of the three major religions. Farrow s Christian reliquaries (in a series ironically titled The Trigger Finger of Santo Guerro ) and exact-scale replicas of a Jewish synagogue and a Moslem mosque are based on historical models for which Farrow assembles appropriated gun parts symbolically related to the three religions. The exhibition will premier Paul D. Miller s (DJ Spooky) new evolving multimedia project, Manifesto for the People's Republic of Antarctica, which comprises a video and sound component and a series of poster graphics. The exhibition features North/South, Part 1, the first part of a two-channel video, which is based on his current work on the political and environmental issues surrounding Antarctica. Miller s installation comments on Antarctica and both poles (North/South) as contested continents with long and often forgotten political history. About the Artists Shepard Fairey s paintings and prints have been widely exhibited in galleries around the world. His works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. His work has been reviewed and featured in The New York Times, TIME, Salon.com, The Los Angeles Times, Juxtapoz, Swindle, and many other publications. A monograph on the artist s career, Obey: Supply and Demand, was published by Gingko Press in 2006, and a large survey of the artist s work in 2007, E Pluribus Venom, will be published in 2008. Shepard Fairey will have a retrospective exhibition at the Boston Institute for Contemporary Art in February, 2009. Shepard Fairey lives and works in Los Angeles. Al Farrow has been a metal sculptor for 20 years, and his reliquaries and religious structures made from gun parts, bullets, and artillery shells have been exhibited in San Francisco at the Catherine Clark Gallery and in major museums. His work is in many important collections around the world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the De Young Museum, and major private collections in New York, Germany, Italy, and Hong Kong. The De Young Museum in San Francisco will present a solo exhibition of his works in November, 2008. Al Farrow lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area. Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) is a conceptual artist, musician, and writer based in New York. Miller s work as a media artist has been presented in multiple venues over the past ten years, including The Smithsonian Portrait Gallery (2008), The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (November, 2007), the Venice Biennale (2007), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2004), the Whitney Biennial (2001), Mass MOCA (2003/2004), and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (2002). As a musician, Miller has composed and recorded a huge volume of music (with a discography of over 100 titles), and he has collaborated with musicians and composers in almost every category from hip-hop, jazz, rock, electronic, and reggae to classical and conceptual. Miller has written two acclaimed books, Rhythm Science (MIT Press, 2004) and Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on sound art and contemporary music (MIT Press, 2008). Miller is currently working on film and sound projects on Antarctica, both a feature film with original music, Terra Nova: the Antarctic Suite, and an editioned multimedia video and graphics project, Manifesto for The People's Republic of Antarctica, which will be presented in this exhibition. Press and media contact: Martin Irvine, Director (martin@irvinecontemporary.com). Phone: 202-332-8767. 2
Selected Works in the exhibition Shepard Fairey, Duality of Humanity 1. Collage, stencil, and acrylic on canvas. 2008. Shepard Fairey, Obama HOPE Portrait. 2008. Hand-finished collage, stencil, and acrylic on paper. 60 x 44 in. Last of three unique hand-collaged portraits. 3
Al Farrow, Shrine of the Trigger Finger of Santa Guerra (IX), 2007. Bullets, guns, shot, glass, steel, bone. 41 x 14 x 14 in. Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky), from the poster series for Manifesto for the People s Republic of Antarctica. Editioned screenprint, 2008.36 x 24 in. Al Farrow, Synagogue 2, 2008. Bullets, guns, shot, 19th c. Torah cover, glass, steel. 36 x 28 x 44 in. Al Farrow, Mausoleum / Mosque 2, 2008. Bullets, gun parts, artillery shells, steel. 36 x 28 x 44 in. 4
Shepard Fairey Works List Monkey Pod Tree DOH 3 HPM, Canvas Big Brother City, Stencil (44 x 60) - Paper - Peace Bomber HPM, Canvas (framed) Evolve Devolve, Stencil (52 x 76) - Paper - Vive La Revolucion - Stencil, Paper (30 x 44) Duality of Humanity 1 HPM, Canvas, (30 x 44) (framed) Rose Girl - Stencil Collage Canvas (30 x 44) - DOH2 Rose Girl: 24 x 18 in. print edition OBAMA HOPE, Stencil and collage on paper (44 x 60) - on request
Al Farrow Al Farrow, Trigger Finger of Santa Guerra (VII), 2007, Guns and gun parts, buckshot, bullets, bone, 12 x 10 x 10 in. Al Farrow, Mausoleum (I), 2007. Guns and gun parts, buckshot, bullets, bone, 27.75 x 30 x 30 in.
Al Farrow, Trigger Finger and Two Ribs of Santo Guerro, 2007. Guns and gun parts, buckshot, bullets, bone, 57 x 21 x 21 in. Detail.
Al Farrow, Synagogue (2), (in progress), 2008. Guns and gun parts, buckshot, bullets.
Irvine s Regime Change : Strikingly Blunt By Michael O'Sullivan Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 7, 2008; Page WE20 Like a yard sign, the latest art exhibition at Irvine Contemporary wears its political heart on its sleeve. For one thing, there's the five-foot-tall portrait of President-elect Barack Obama staring down visitors from the back of the gallery. Chances are it's not the first place you've seen it. Captioned here with the single word "Hope," the iconic image by artist Shepard Fairey has been available for free download during the run-up to the presidential election as a viral marketing tool. Another large version, captioned "Progress," is plastered to the wall of a building on 14th Street NW, just north of U Street. Then there's the little matter of the show's title, "Regime Change Starts at Home." Anyone in this town who doesn't get the dig at the outgoing Republican administration's foreign policy hasn't been paying attention. Along with Fairey, artists Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky) and Al Farrow have a bone to pick -- in Farrow's case, quite literally -- with business as usual. "Duality of Humanity 3" by Shepard Fairey is part of the politically charged exhibit "Regime Change Starts at Home" at Irvine Contemporary. (Irvine Contemporary Photos) Fairey is the best known of the three, and his works pack a graphic punch. Three silkscreens from his "Duality of Humanity" series use Vietnam-era photographs of soldiers to contrast the elusiveness of peace with the certainty of war. Bandoliers of bullets and guns are paired with peace signs in each. Fairey is sometimes accused of plagiarism (he freely lifts imagery from other artists' work and repurposes it), but the fact that you recognize it, instantly and often from across the street, is the point. Andy Warhol did the same thing. In terms of visual impact, Fairey's work is striking, but it's not the best that "Regime Change" has to offer. Nor is Miller's, which consists of several posters hawking something called a "Manifesto for the People's Republic of Antarctica" and an 18-minute film, "North/South, Part 1." All are parts of a larger project touching on themes of global warming and land squabbles. But the points Miller is trying to make are blunted, especially compared with Fairey, whose work hits you in the face like a 2-by-4. "True North is the market's unregulated access to the vanishing ice!" screams one of the enigmatic titles in Miller's film, which appropriates silent-film footage about polar exploration. Paul D. Miller s work on view includes Manifesto for a People s Republic of Antarctica.
Farrow's work, neither obscure nor overly obvious, is the most rewarding, visually and conceptually. Fashioned almost entirely from guns, bullets and artillery shells, the artist's scale architectural models, based on old churches, synagogues and mosques, can't be called subtle. Yet the historical link between organized religion and war is only part of the story. Three of Farrow's pieces come from a series of reliquaries in which the artist incorporates bones from real fingers. Called, alternately, "Trigger Finger of Santa Guerro" or "Trigger Finger of Santo Guerro" -- the names refer literally to "holy war" -- the sculptures are all about blame. Yet it's not just Judaism, Islam or Christianity that gets the rap for war. It isn't even one political party over another. Rather, the sense you get when looking at Farrow's ghoulish yet powerful art is that its cold, bony fingers -- if they're pointing at anyone -- are pointing at you. The Story Behind the Work Friday, November 7, 2008; Page WE20 Few artists, let alone art galleries, encourage you to handle the art. Not so Al Farrow, whose guns-andammo-based works at Irvine Contemporary are meant to be touched. "For the sculpture to be effective and touch the mind of the viewer," he writes in an e-mail, "it must look and feel real and dangerous." They're not. The triggers may wiggle a bit, but the artist renders all bullets and firearms inoperable before assembling his sculptures, which are labor intensive and very heavy. "Synagogue II" weighs 550 pounds and took more than 1,300 hours to assemble. Like many of Farrow's religious structures, it features weapons (in this case Uzi submachine guns) symbolically associated with religion. The crucifix-topped "Trigger Finger of Santa Guerra (IX)" uses Predom Luczniks, a make of pistol from Poland, a predominantly Roman Catholic country. The bones are also real and come, for the most part, from a shop in Berkeley, Calif., called the Bone Room. You can't touch them. They're behind glass. But they can, at least figuratively, touch you. --Michael O'Sullivan Al Farrow's "Synagogue II," is made, in part, of guns, bullets and steel. The piece weighs 550 pounds. Regime Change Starts at Home: Through Dec. 6 at Irvine Contemporary, 1412 14th St. NW (Metro: Dupont Circle). Phone: 202-332-8767. Hours: Open Tuesday-Saturday 11 to 6. Admission: Free.