EOAPROJECTS.COM EOA.PROJECTS GALLERY @EOAPROJECTS 40 ELCHO STREET EOA. #EOAPROJECTS LONDON SW11 4AU PROJECTS Mon- Sat 10:00 - 17:30

Alex Katz, Vivien in Black Hat, 2010, Silkscreen in 34 colors, Very Important People 73 x 102 cm, Edition of 75 Sir Peter Blake, Mel Bochner, Chuck Close, Damien Hirst, Paul Insect, Noorah Kareem, Alex Katz, Jeff Koons, Eric Parnes, Mohammed Shammarey, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Andy Warhol, Joe Webb and Russell Young

PRIVATE VIEW FRI 6 FEB / 6.30 – 8.30 PM

EOA.PROJECTS GALLERY 40 ELCHO STREET LONDON SW11 4AU

A Very Important Person (VIP) is a person who is accorded special privileges due to his or her status or importance. The special treatment usually involves separation from common people, and a higher level of comfort.

ARTISTS

Sir Peter Blake is perhaps the most recognized and highly industry, having produced iconic album covers for the Beatles, regarded artist of the British Pop Art movement. Much of his Paul Weller, The Who, and Oasis. output – such as the sleeve for The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ – has achieved iconic status. Blake’s work reflects his fascination with all streams of Mel Bochner’s approach and materials constantly vary; popular culture, and the beauty to be found in everyday in fact, the artist formally disavowed allegiance to a single objects and surroundings. Many of his works feature found material in his famous essay titled “the Medium and the printed materials such as photographs, comic strips or Tedium” (2010). Bochner—who has produced , advertising texts, combined with bold geometric patterns installations, and photography—is noted to be one of the and the use of primary colours. The works perfectly capture most influential pioneers of Conceptual art, and the organizer the effervescent and optimistic ethos of the sixties, but of the first Conceptual art exhibition in 1966. A recurring theme are also strikingly fresh and contemporary. There is also a in Bochner’s work is the relationship between language and strain of sentimentality and nostalgia running throughout his physical space or color. This is famously demonstrated in his work, with particular focus towards childhood innocence and “Measurement” installations of the late 1960s, visualizing reminiscence, as can be seen clearly in his recent Alphabet the exact dimensions of rooms and exhibition spaces, and series. Blake is renowned for his connection with the music thesaurus-inspired paintings of a single word and its synonyms. EOAPROJECTS.COM EOA.PROJECTS GALLERY @EOAPROJECTS 40 ELCHO STREET EOA. #EOAPROJECTS LONDON SW11 4AU PROJECTS Mon- Sat 10:00 - 17:30

Bochner formally studied under Douglas Wilson and Wilfred Alex Katz is the outstanding protagonist of figurative , Readio, though his eventual style would draw strong influence and one of the most influential painters in the world. Alex from the works of Clyfford Still and Jean Dubuffet. Katz was often said to be one of the father of the Pop Art movement, but his style was always independent on the borderline between abstraction and realism. His paintings Chuck Close reinvented painting with his monumental are the result of a transformation of the three-dimensional portraits, rendered with exquisite, exacting realism from word in simplified landscapes and portraits of sophisticated photographic sources. Playing with ideas of scale, color, and woman on canvas. Katz is well known for featuring his own form, Close has become famous for his rigorous, gridded social milieu often depicting parties, portraits of friends application of individual color squares, which, although and fellow artists, and most notably, his wife Ada. Katz also abstract up close, form unified, highly realistic images from worked with collage, printmaking, and set design, increasingly afar. “I think most paintings are a record of the decisions concentrating on these mediums and developing freestanding that the artist made,” he said. “I just perhaps make them sculptural cut outs. He later painted large-scale landscapes a little clearer than some people have.” Close’s artificially and continues to work with natural themes in form of large restrictive painting techniques stem in part from physical scale flower scenes in his works today. limitations—he suffers from an inability to recognize faces, and had a spinal injury in 1988 that left him largely paralyzed. Close is particularly known for his portraits of artists, having Jeff Koons playfully tests the boundaries of commerce, depicted Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, and Richard celebrity, banality and pleasure. He turns banal commercial Serra, among countless others. His work links him not only or everyday objects into art icons by using seductive materials, with Photorealists but also to Conceptual Art. a shift of scale and a contextual displacement. Koons’ large- scale vinyl “Inflatables”, his enormous chromium stainless steel “Balloon Dog” or the giant “Puppy” and “Split Rocker” Damien Hirst undoubtedly the most acclaimed contemporary made of hundreds of flowers all follow this principle. Originally artist of his generation. Genuine star of the YBA (Young British licensed as a commodities broker, in the late 1970ies Koons Artists) movement, Hirst has always made a point of mixing decided to become an artist and moved from Wall Street into a up his genres. Artist, entrepreneur and celebrity, he has factory-like studio in SoHo with hundreds of assistants. Since produced much of the most spectacular works in recent years then, he has produced different series like the Pre-New, a and helped to revolutionize the art market. From Freeze, series of domestic objects in strange new configurations, The the artist’s first exhibition which he organized while still at Equilibrium Series, consisting of basketballs floating in distilled Goldsmith’s College in 1988, to the prestigious Turner Prize water tanks, or the Banality Series culminating with a awarded to him in 1995, from the diamond-encrusted skull of Michael Jackson and his chimpanzee Bubbles. Koons is (For the Love of God, 2008) to the controversial sale of his work widely regarded as one of the most important, influential, and at Sotheby’s in the same year, Damien Hirst always seeks to controversial contemporary artists. He constantly tests the subvert the system and thereby create some truly emblematic boundaries between art and commerce, high culture and mass pieces of art. Inspired by such diverse themes as life, death, culture, readymade and art object, by decontextualizing his art, science and medicine Damien Hirst makes use of many objects and lifting them to iconic statuses. He has lifted art varied techniques including installation, sculpture, painting, out of the enclave of the genius-driven artist into the realms drawing, etching and silkscreen. of nowadays pop and commerce driven culture.

Paul Insect is best known for his exhibition “Bullion” at the Eric Parnes is a multimedia artist and considers his art to Lazarides Gallery. He also goes by the name PINS and works be “Neo-Orientalist,” meaning that which delves into the with artist Luke Insect as the collective ‘Insect.” He has also visual appropriation and socio-political dynamics between previously worked alongside Banksy at the London Cans Eastern and Western culture. In a body of work that includes Festival. photography, sculpture, painting, installation, and video, Insect’s work has evolved from Victorian graphics to Dada- Parnes draws equally from contemporary and historic esque collage. There is a primitiveness to his aggressive references. Past projects have addressed pop culture, subject matter that is almost disguised by his joyous use of consumerism, corporate life, and violence, as well as the colour and entertaining style. Insect’s dark content lends itself Persian Empire and ancient Mesopotamia. His works also to a fun, playful display of baby heads split open, Bishops build upon the artist’s experiences as an Iranian-American: on i-books and smoking joints with clown hair and mice “I do see the two worlds from both ends—from the East and noses, skeletal playboy bunnies adorned in bling and angels from the West,” he says. “I can be found somewhere in there. clutching syringes. His images are provoking yet light-hearted and demand a sense of morality that transcends common acceptance. Mohammed Shammarey is a self-taught artist; he works with painting, photography, silk-screen printing and sculpture. He has held many solo exhibitions including shows held at his Noorah Kareem born 1990 graduated with a diploma from the atelier in Baghdad (in 1988, 1991 and 1999); FA Gallery, Kuwait, Arts & Skills Institute, Riyadh in 2009. In 2012 Kareem pursued 2010, and Word, Object, Motion (with Simeen Farhat), Anya a degree in the field of special Education- Behavioural Disorder Tish Gallery, Houston, Texas, in 2010. He has also participated & Autism, Riyadh. Alumni of the Crossway Foundation Create in group exhibitions such as Word into Art, British Museum, & Inspire competition 2011. Kareems work had been featured London, 2006; Dafatir: Contemporary Iraqi Book Art, University in Design Magazine, Ayadi Magazine, Al Riyadh newspaper and of North Texas, Denton, Texas, travelling exhibition, 2005–2008; Al Hayat Newspaper and held in private collections in Saudi Iraqi Artists in Exile, Station Museum of , Arabia, the and Australia. Houston, Texas, 2008; and Modernism and Iraq, Wallach Art EOAPROJECTS.COM EOA.PROJECTS GALLERY @EOAPROJECTS 40 ELCHO STREET EOA. #EOAPROJECTS LONDON SW11 4AU PROJECTS Mon- Sat 10:00 - 17:30

Gallery, Columbia University, 2009. 2013 - an Exhibition of EOA.PROJECTS Works by Mohammed Al Shammarey ARTSPACE . 2012 Anya Tish Gallery Houston Tx Collective Reaction: FotoFest 2014 EOA.Projects was established in 2009 as a gallery platform for work is often inspired by literature and poetry, particularly the artists working between the , Europe and United writings of Rumi, Mahmoud Darwish and the Epic of Gilgamesh. States. Under the vision of Stephen Stapleton, founder of Since 2008, he has lived and worked in Houston, Texas. Edge of Arabia and The Crossway Foundation, EOA.Projects collaborates with artists in building their careers and realising their potential to an international standard. Through Rirkrit Tiravanija born 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina studied production studios in London and Jeddah, EOA.Projects at the Whitney Independent Studies Program in New York, The supports artists in developing new projects including limited School of the Art Institute in Chicago, The Banff Center School edition fine art prints and special commissions. In 2012, EOA. of Fine Arts in Banff, Canada, and The Ontario College of Art in Projects opened a 400m sq. gallery in South-West London Toronto, Canada. Tiravanija now resides in New York, where he with a curated programme of exhibitions, film-screenings teaches at the School of the Arts at Columbia University. Using and talks aimed at international audiences. human interaction as his primary material, Tiravanija goes beyond performance to create socially-engaged conceptual works that blur the boundaries of art in novel ways and bridge For appointments, a full artist biography and other press the division between public and private. Tiravanija initiates enquiries please contact: ways to enable the public to be a part of the art-making process, what has been called relational aesthetics. He won Mariam M. Hassan a Hugo Boss Prize in 2004. Gallery Manager +44 (0) 20 7350 1336 [email protected] Andy Warhol obsessed with celebrity, consumer culture, and Like us on Facebook: EOA.PROJECTS mechanical (re)production, Pop artist Andy Warhol created Follow us on Twitter: @EOAPROJECTS some of the most iconic images of the 20th century. As famous Follow us on Instagram: @EOAPROJECTS for his quips as for his art—he variously mused that “art is For more information please visit the gallery website what you can get away with” and “everyone will be famous for eoaprojects.com 15 minutes”—Warhol drew widely from popular culture and everyday subject matter, creating works like his 32 Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), Brillo pad box , and portraits of Marilyn Monroe, using the medium of silk-screen printmaking to achieve his characteristic hard edges and flat areas of color. Known for his cultivation of celebrity, Factory studio (a radical social and creative melting pot), and avant-garde films like Chelsea Girls (1966), Warhol was also a mentor to artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His Pop sensibility is now standard practice, taken up by major contemporary artists Richard Prince, Takashi Murakami, and Jeff Koons, among countless others.

Joe Webb (1976-) uses vintage magazines and printed ephemera that he has collected to create hand-made low fi collages, no computer trickery in sight. Webb re-invents the imagery taken from his collection of printed materials to create simple and elegant, yet surreal, images that explore love and longing. His work is inspired by the collage work of Peter Blake amongst others. To create original editions Webb has stayed true to the texture and feeling of collage by using real collaged elements in the silkscreens as well as embossing and glazing.

Russell Young is interested in the places where the glamour of the American dream meets the darkness of crime, addiction, and death. He explores this in series such as “Dirty Pretty Things” (2010), in which screen printed images of notoriously tragic stars Marilyn Monroe and Kurt Cobain are sprinkled with diamond flakes. Young began as a straightforward photographer of celebrities, getting his start shooting the cover for George Michael’s Faith album. Gradually, he shifted his approach to become an artist whose work comments on the phenomenon of celebrity portraiture. Young emulates Andy Warhol’s printing style, applying saturated color over screen printed images in which subjects appear blown up and grainy, as though printed on newsprint. EOAPROJECTS.COM EOA.PROJECTS GALLERY @EOAPROJECTS 40 ELCHO STREET EOA. #EOAPROJECTS LONDON SW11 4AU PROJECTS Mon- Sat 10:00 AM - 05:30 PM

MOHAMMED SHAMMAREY CHUCK CLOSE MOTION KATE 2013 2013 GICELEE PRINT ON EPSON COLD PRESS WATERCOLOUR PIGMENT PRINT NATURAL TEXTURED MATT PAPER FOR MUSEUM QUALITY PRINTS 112 X 137CM EDITION OF 7

PETER BLAKE ERIC PARNES MARILYN NEO ORIENTALIST TM 2010 2011 SILKSCREEN DIAMOND DUST 66 X 117 CM 95 X 75 CM OIL ON CANVAS EDITION OF 15

RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA JEFF KOONS UNTITLED (LESS OIL MORE COURAGE) PINK BOW 2003 2013 OIL ON CANVAS ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT 30 X 40 CM 94 X 112 CM EDITION OF 50