“Linear Empires” Group Show at White Walls Gallery

Moneyless Installation Golden Gate Park

Moneyless

Greg Ito

Kofie One

Richard Pearse

Mary Iverson

Diana Ruiz and Geoff Campen

Moneyless Installation

Moneyless

Kofie One

Mary Iverson

Greg Ito

Diana Ruiz and Geoff Campen

Diana Ruiz and Geoff Campen

Diana Ruiz and Geoff Campen

Mary Iverson

Kofie One

Moneyless

Greg Ito

Diana Ruiz and Geoff Campen

Diana Ruiz and Geoff Campen

Moneyless

Mary Iverson

I was able to catch up with Moneyless at White Walls Gallery in his first ever exhibition in America. Augustine Kofie was also featured in the show, as well as some other great artists. Many of the artists work I was seeing for the first time. The show titled “Linear Empires” focused on where art and design intersect. Moneyless had a strong showing of paintings that utilized his strength of linear compositions. His floating graffiti geometry installed floating above his work created a sense of lightness to the whole installation. Moneyless has plans after the show to do some installations around the bay area before he heads home to Italy. He has already done one install at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Kofie’s work as usual was worth the trip to see, as he continues to push deeper into his collage work with these pieces involving some great images that don’t overpower his precise and powerful line work. I really was impressed with all the artists in the show, Geoff Campen and his wife Diana Ruiz teamed up for some great collage mix media work that was very well done. Geoff is a great guy as well, really looking forward to seeing their future work. Greg Ito, Mary Iverson and Richard Pearse all had amazing paintings. As a whole a great show, and i am very glad White Walls Gallery was able to bring Moneyless to town, showing him with Kofie was a bonus. Here are some excerpts from interviews they did with the artists, you can read the full article following this link to the White Walls Gallery Blog.

“Because it aesthetically appeals to me. I am developing a style that envelopes all of my inspirations and loves. I am very heavy with technique and application when it comes to work on woods, a solid natural surface. Applying layers of found paper to a surface, then building a structured painting on to top helps me with my overall end result, which is the exploration of controlled layers, balance of line, space and form.”

Tell us about you interest in old-school drafting and related processes. How are you attempting to bring a fresh perspective to these processes as a fine artist/street artist?

“For some time I have found inspiration from late 50′s to late 70′s graphic design as well as music. Majority of these adverts were hand built ‘cut and pasted’ then drafted together using now outdated applications. I passionately collect various ephemera based around engineering, drafting and ‘DIY’ booklets and incorporate them out of sheer inspiration and admiration. I consider my assemblage artworks to be a sort of evolution of this same ‘cut and paste’ technique, just updated with my linear painting style. The hybrid of old and new interweaving intrigues me, the beautiful Vintage Futurism contradiction at work.”

Moneyless

Why do you choose to work with such pure and precise geometric forms and color blocking above any other visual devices? How did your relationship with these types of forms begin?

“I guess it’s a consequence of my graffiti period. Considering my entire artistic path, I’ve found the seeds of my actual works in the period I was experimenting the graffiti’s world. Back in 2004 I started writing “Moneyless” in a more geometric way, and while the lettering was still the protagonist, I started feeling the needing of gradually move away from it. The “type face” thus became a constriction, but mainly the writing rules were constraints for me, I found them quite outdated. The blossoming period of writing had ended already and what was left turned out in some boring verbal fights with rare authenticity.

I thought I could be able to use the wall – our medium par excellence – in a quite different way. My bond with lettering was slackening little by little. As far as I was concerned, I only cared about its shape, but being able to see it alone forced me to cut any reference to the sign itself. The world of simple and pure geometric thus became the ground of my endless investigation on shapes, which extends to the present time. Minimalism and geometry are the fundamental elements of my constructions, which heavily try to face the system of communication that traps us with information chaos. Given this, only simplicity and subtraction can give another point of view.”

When you’re working on pieces of gallery art, how is it similar or different to the work you do out in the street? What are some of the challenges you face when doing this kind of work outside of the studio? What are some of the benefits?

“What I do inside the galleries is normally the result of what I produce outside, it’s bringing my outer experience closer to somebody. I need a sort of intimate scene when I’m creating on the outside: I look for calm, nature, woods, abandoned spots… at the same time, galleries permit me to show my work to a public, as well as giving me a chance to come out of that kind of isolation that investigation on art may require.”

White Walls Gallery