Obey Dallas 2012

[admonkey]

Late entrant, published last Thursday in the Dallas Morning News. It was written by Peter Doroshenko (who runs the Dallas Contemporary) and has several photos as well. Below, the text only:


Dallas had its Shepard Fairey moment. We were there.

In a hit-and-run visit, the polarizing artist left his marks, literally, all over West Dallas. What was the point? And what do Fairey's murals mean?

by Peter Doroshenko, photographs by Nan Coulter
Published: 29 March 2012 02:08 PM

Like a chronicler who appropriates ideas and culture , graphic muralist Shepard Fairey is always on the lookout for whatever pushes our buttons. Fairey’s work is the result of intense deliberations. He references historical touchstone moments, offering up only that which is already embedded in our memory. Fairey’s works are born from issues concerning the individual, the social and, at times, the political.

Shepard Fairey was invited to create a series of murals in West Dallas and the Design District by Dallas Contemporary, the city’s contemporary art museum, as part of its public art program. Dallas Contemporary strives to generate a multidisciplinary mix of contemporary culture and significant artworks in public spaces. The project took a year of planning. The timing couldn’t have been better, knowing the influence of Fairey’s work on regional and national street artists, and considering the opening of the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. Viewing the large-scale works, we find that Fairey’s murals have more to do with actions, creating active pieces that often — but not always — last for a limited time.

Fairey does not indicate a place in his works, many of which address personal and complex issues. He creates intrigue or suspense in his art, but he does not resolve the tension. That lack of resolution entices the viewer to long for another scene from his strange narratives — but, unlike a series of movie stills, the next image never appears.

Fairey’s work involves a kind of mise-en-scène in which the position and attitude of the viewer are paramount. Just as Jean-Luc Godard’s Dziga Vertov films — exploratory and cinéma vérité in style — were often seen as crude and intentionally provocative, so can Fairey’s work be seen as simple or easy.

Fairey’s art explores meanings that exist in between the material and the theoretical. He refines those meanings by focusing on oppositions: masculine/feminine, architecture/space, represented/real.

Working in a world where appropriation of images and styles is the norm, Fairey has been, to some extent, slowed down by copyright issues. A 2011 settlement with The Associated Press concerning the source photograph for his iconic Barack Obama Hope poster and his February 2012 plea of guilty to criminal contempt surrounding his destroying of documents and manufacturing of evidence in the court case (his sentence will be decided this July) only reinforce his status as a real-life, Hollywood-style antihero.

PETER DOROSHENKO is the director of the Dallas Contemporary museum. He was the president and artistic director of the Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev, and held directorship positions at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst-SMAK in Ghent and the Institute of Visual Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. From 1991 to 1995, he was the curator of the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston.

http://www.dallasnews.com/lifestyles/st ... there..ece

[stuckeyc37]

I am assuming the murals are still up, correct? Heading to dallas this wk and definitely want to check them out

[ryanstandifer]

I made this after I met Shepard while I was on a field trip and saw him when he was doing these murals

[admonkey]

One down.

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/mixmast ... y_lost.php