From the Ground Up

The purpose of "FROM THE GROUND UP" is to create a show that visually illustrates how street culture influences intersect with contemporary, and capital A, academic art. This show will attempt to call into question the boundaries of high and low art, in a forum that is institutional in nature to illustrate how deep the influences of these subaltern groups run in a wide variety of emerging artist works. From graffiti, street, pop, guerrilla, lowbrow, scenster, wheat paste, D.I.Y, anarcho punk, hiphop, etc. This exhibition is an honest attempt to bring the kind of ferver and intensity into the Concourse Gallery that artists bring to the streets and back alleys. This show will be a multidisciplinary show which will utilize the Concourse Gallery as a forum for all works that investigate street culture and its intersection with fine art.


ARTIST'S STATEMENT:
Lust and Wrath
from the series 5 Sins of Advertising

As in graffiti, birth and death and the aesthetic of decay are central themes that occur in the diptych. The two panels are taken from a larger body of work entitled The 5 Sins of Advertising, the two being Lust and Wrath. I utilized an alias that I have been working with for a few years now by the name Panther Explosive, which I use for both my fine art and music practices. For me Panther Explosive has become a brand; an obsession of mine that has brought me to the point where I have the overwhelming urge to display it in both a gallery setting and public space. As certain elements of graffiti are a reflected in forms of corporate advertising, the piece functions as a direct way of self-promotion and raises the question of the artist as a corporate identity and the place of graffiti in the fine art realm.

From the Ground Up is currently showing at the Concourse Gallery at Emily Carr on Granville Island. Come support your local artists and check out some killer graffiti-inspired art while your at it.

- P