Expecting mass attendance, Jeffrey Deitch hired a crack security team…

The two-headed Brasilian art phenomenon that is OS GEMEOS (Portuguese for “The Twins“) brought their fantastic art circus to NYC when their phenomenal show of new work “Too Far Too Close” opened at DEITCH PROJECTS as the art party of the summer on Saturday nite. In it, identical 24-year-old twin brothers GUSTAVO and OTAVIO PANDOLFO have created a sprawling cityscape within superstar downtown art dealer JEFFREY DEITCH’s cavernous Wooster Street space. Mirroring their psychedelic storybook street paintings that cover the city walls of their native Sao Paulo, Os Gemeos have expanded upon a smaller show of non-commercial work first debuted at the Museum Het Domein in the Netherlands in late 2007 and constructed an immersive dream world of paintings, sculpture, and large-scale installations that transport viewers from the jaded streets of SoHo to the deepest reaches of their prodigious imagination. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

And… FIRE! France’s JR takes aim at the Tate Modern’s finest…

Unlike a host of unmentionable urban art institutions that turn a blind eye to the burgeoning art movements erupting just outside their museum doors, London’s TATE MODERN is paying homage this month to the city’s most colorful and volatile movement through their inventively-named “Street Art” exhibition. With an eye for international talent, the museum has invited six artists with roots in graffiti including Brasil’s OS GEMEOS and NUNCA, France’s JR, Italy’s BLU, NYC’s FAILE, and Barcelona’s SIXEART to embellish the building’s massive facade and partake in a group exhibition that will remain on display until August 25th. Of course, the most obvious omission in this list is the town’s resident street art kingpin BANKSY, but we suspect the Golden Child is above such institutional fare. And just when it seemed like London would have to build more city walls to support the nonstop barrage of wheatpaste posters and graffiti besieging it, the show has inspired a legion of artists to step up their wallpapering efforts turning the surrounding neighborhoods into an outdoor museum. It seems that Street Art is the British Invasion of the ‘00s (or at the very least, the new black). HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »