SWELL in NYC (July 1st - Aug 6th)

Here's an interesting looking exhibition of "art inspired by surf and beach culture", opening July 1st at 3 locations in New York (gallery addresses on image below), involving COTW artists Ned Evans, Wolfgang Bloch, Jim Evans and Sandow Birk…Curated by Tim Nye and Jacqueline Miro. This survey of art inspired by surf and beach culture will open to the public on July 1st at the three locations in Chelsea and will include work by most members of the group of Venice Beach artists known as Light and Space and Finish Fetish.The show historically contextualizes beach culture and its poetic and freeing nature on the Beat Generation, Assemblage, Light and Space, Finish Fetish, and early Pop Art. From this group of California artists, works by Wallace Berman, George Herms, Bruce Conner, Llyn Foulkes, Ed Kienholz, Billy Al Bengston, Tony Berlant, Ed Ruscha, Laddie John Dill, Dewain Valentine, Peter Alexander, John McCracken, Larry Bell, Craig Kauffman, and Helen Pashgian will be on view. One of the main axes of the show is the obvious yet sensual relationship between Shapers and the Finish Fetish movement of the 60's. As the show focuses on two cities, L.A. and New York, it attempts to place the Ocean and its proximity to both cities as an antidote to a cacophony of quantities, speed and competing images. It also addresses how later generations of artists have looked back at assemblage, ephemera and graffiti as a way to either incorporate or reject the piercing presence of branding, advertisement, and information technology.SWELL is a state of mind, but it is also our way of understanding distant forces, the beyond.www.nyehaus.com

Carla Campbell Carla Gugino Carmen Electra Carol Grow