'Post No Bills' Comes to Neuberger Museum of Art

From Harrison Edwards PR:

Work by nine internationally renowned artists who use the urban landscape as inspiration will be on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art in the multi-media group show Post No Bills: Public Walls as Studio and Source, beginning September 11, 2016.

This stunning exhibition explores a contemporary archaeological aesthetic, celebrating the marks made by anonymous hands and examining the evolving history of walls that have been layered over time with paint, posters, and narratives. Their subject matter revolves around the collective human experience, rooted in the people, culture, and physical environment of the cities in which the artists live.

There are twenty works on view by Blu (Bologna), Mark Bradford (Los Angeles), Burhan Dogançay (Istanbul), José Carlos Martinat (Lima, Peru), José Parlá (Brooklyn), JR (Paris), Robin Rhode (Berlin and Johannesburg), Vhils a.k.a. Alexandre Farto (Lisbon), Jacque Villeglé (Paris), each of whom contributes to and captures a unique and public narrative.

“Urban walls layered with graffiti, posters, messages, paintings, and drawings hold the history of a place,” explains Avis Larson, curator of the exhibition. “In our daily lives we often pass them by, barely noticing what appears on their surfaces. Yet these very walls contain a record of human existence that serves as an inspiration for this multi-generational group of artists, who share a humanistic philosophy and have a tremendous sense of social responsibility. In a sense, they archive society.”

The humble materials the artists employ – such as house paint, chalk, wheat paste, paper, and detritus – replicate the elements they find on the walls that inspire them. Their tools are those of carpenters, house painters, and excavators, while their techniques, often borrowed from graffiti culture, are inextricably linked to their subject matter.

Blu actively paints graffiti. His large figurative murals reinvigorate urban walls all over the world. Bradford transforms materials scavenged from the street into large collages that he believes map the “psychogeography” of Los Angeles. Doğançay documents urban walls; the more cluttered and layered, the better. They are “the testimonials of human beings expressing and communicating their history.” Martinat explores what it means to remove murals from public spaces without permission. In particular, he appropriates political banners and bills and recontextualizes them in the gallery. Rhode’s exuberant animations – created in the streets, studios, his parents’ yard in Johannesburg, and Berlin – transform the quotidian into the playful and fantastic. The street is his canvas. Vhils believes destruction is a form of construction. He drills into walls “to free the poetic images hidden beneath urban spaces.” Villegle removes large sections of layered and torn billboards from the street and presents the ready-made abstractions as a historic archive of our time. Parlá’s heavily layered paintings resemble distressed city walls and explore the accumulated history, both physical and allegorical, of the urban environment.

Post No Bills: Public Walls as Studio and Source is organized by the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, SUNY, and curated by Avis Larson, Assistant Curator. Support for this exhibition has been provided by ArtsWestchester with support from the Westchester County Government. Additional support has been provided by the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art and by the Purchase College Foundation.

Public Programs

In conjunction with Post No Bills, the Neuberger Museum of Art has organized the following programs:

Wednesday, Sept 28, 12:30-2:30pm

Film screening: Megunica and Q&A with Director Lorenzo Fonda

Join award-winning Italian filmmaker Lorenzo Fonda for a special screening and conversation of his film, Megunica, which follows the muralist and animator BLU through Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Argentina.

Tickets to public programs are free to Purchase College students, staff, and faculty, and Neuberger Museum of Art Circle Level Members. General Admission: $10.

Wednesday, Oct 26, 12:30 – 2:00pm

Posters, Politics, and Power in Communist Cuba: Screening and Discussion of Wrinkles of the City

Artist-made documentary Wrinkles in the City follows JR and José Parlá as they collaborate in Cuba for the Havana Biennale. Following the screening, Elizabeth Guffey, Purchase College Professor of Art and Design History and author of the book Poster: Paper in the Post-Digital Age, will discuss how JR and Parlá’s project builds off the poster tradition in Communist Cuba.

Tickets to public programs are free to Purchase College students, staff, and faculty, and Neuberger Museum of Art Circle Level Members. General Admission: $10.

Wednesday, Nov 2, 4:30-5:30pm

Trespass Festival: Claiming Space Panel Discussion

As part of the campus-wide, 3-day Trespass Festival, this panel probes issues of urbanism, vandalism, freedom of speech, and the ways in which groups and individuals lay claim to public space.

Tickets to public programs are free to Purchase College students, staff, and faculty, and Neuberger Museum of Art Circle Level Members. General Admission: $10.

Image courtesy of Neuberger Museum of Art