Currently on view at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, "10 Years of Wooster Collective 2003—2013", is a group exhibition curated by Marc and Sara Schiller featuring works and site-specific installations by over fifty local and international artists including Shepard Fairey, Ron English, How & Nosm and Olek. The Schillers have been avid supporters of the urban art movement by acting as a mouthpiece to help artists promote their message to a wider audience through the global community. Ultimately, "10 Years of Wooster Collective: 2003-2013" is a tribute to street art around the world and its transformative power. In conjunction with the exhibition (housed in a temporary space in Chelsea), a number of the participating artists will also be creating public murals in various locations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn.
After witnessing the rise of temporary art on the streets of New York City over a decade ago, Marc and Sara Schiller founded Wooster Collective in 2001 to document the ever-changing face of their downtown Manhattan neighborhood. In 2003, they started the website woostercollective.com out of a genuine desire to share these images with the world - a few years mind you before social media and image sharing via Instagram, Tumblr, etc. became the norm. The collective’s mission is to discover and document authentic art experiences via salons, lectures, exhibitions and online. In 2006, they organized 11 Spring Street, a monumental street art exhibition that took place in an abandoned building in downtown New York, and was chosen by The New York Times as one of the top art exhibitions of the year. Three years ago, the pair collaborated with Carlo McCormick on Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, published byTaschen. They have been featured in The New York Times, Time Magazine, Good Magazine and more. As a global voice for this brand of art, the Schillers have spoken at the Tate Modern, Design Indaba and The New Museum. In the curators’ words: “While street artists express themselves in a myriad of ways, they are often joined by a set of common principles: reclaiming public space, beautifying the environment and fighting for the freedom of speech. Street art has become the catalyst for people of all cultural and economic backgrounds to challenge the system and express themselves without any filter.”
Street art may have indeed eliminated the artist's filter, but the medium also inadvertently democratized the art world. A few of Martha Cooper's snapshots that appear in 10 Years..., capture the burgeoning hip hop/graffiti scene of late 70's/early 80's. That movement eventually forced those in the art world to look beyond their colorless world of white-walled galleries, white wine openings and white artists and view their own urban landscape in a new light – as one endless canvas for these nascent maverick artists. It’s comforting that decades later, not much has changed. The artist Vhils for example carved his motifs into a found wooden door to create the moody "Insculpt #9". His other piece "Homogeneo #9", consists of hand carved and laser-cut billboards collected from walking down the street.
Rather than concentrate on one plane of street art and possibly alienate the viewer, the curators cleverly exhibited a fairly wide range of work - the delicate and feminine, to the droll to the bold and in-your-face. Zev’s pair of canvases, “Liquidated Marlboro” and “Liquidated Gucci” serves as a humorous homage to both Pop and Pollock. TrustoCorp's biting street signs deserve a few moments to appreciate all the innuendos. Topping it all off, Invader aliens discreetly adorn the space with their omniscient pixilated eyes. – Daniel Alonso "10 Years of Wooster Collective" is on view at 525 W. 22nd Street in New York from August 7-24.
