Steve More
LXONE
Derm
Remi Rough
10th May – 8th June at David Bloch Gallery,?8 bis rue des Vieux Marrakchis, 40000 Marrakech, Morocco.? www.davidblochgallery.com/
Preview: 7pm, Friday 10th May
Unfolding is a group show by six members of the international art collective Agents of Change, renowned for creating environmental work on a monumental scale. It will be the collective’s first show in Africa.
Unfolding showcases artists whose work incorporates a strong leaning toward plasticity – using a wide variety of media to produce work ranging from painting through to sculpture and installation. Through experimentation with new materials Unfolding will bring about an examination of new journeys and the opportunity to exploit future dialogues within a well established aesthetic.
Coinciding with the exhibition Agents of Change will also produce a number of outdoor works in the city of Marrakech.
About Agents of Change
Agents of Change are a collective of 12 artists who attack space. Formed in 2009, the international collective create work that responds on a site specific basis, integrating both the aesthetic and historical resonance of the environment they’re working in. Each project brings greater potential for innovation, both on a practical level in technique and on a more emotive basis in dealing with ever larger historical and political ideas.
Past projects have included the 450m2 mural at the Megaro Hotel in Kings Cross, which was recently awarded No.2 in Time Out’s ‘London’s Top Ten Murals’ article and in 2009 their ground breaking ‘Ghost Village Project’ transformed an abandoned village on the west coast of Scotland into a living art gallery, with the resulting documentary winning awards and accolades at a number of film festivals.
As well as working within the collective, each artist has pursued careers in their own right, showing to audiences throughout the world.
The Ghostvillage Project was created over 3 days on the west coast of Scotland. 6 artists – Timid, Remi/Rough, System, Stormie Mills, Juice 126, Derm – were given free reign to paint in an abandoned 1970s village. Working together on huge collaborative walls and individually in hidden nooks and crannies all over the site the artists realised long held dreams and were inspired by the bleakness and remoteness of the site. Drawing on the history of the village the artists’ stated intent on completion of the project was to populate the ghostvillage with the art and characters that it deserved.
Participating Artists
Carlos Mare aka Mare 139 (USA) www.mare139.com
Mare is a NYC based sculptor/ painter/ scholar/ US Cultural Ambassador who in 1985 pioneered a novel version of urban graffiti as modern sculpture. Throughout his career as a sculptor, Mare has consistently brought innovation to the genre’s aesthetic and vocabulary. His metal sculptures are inspired by his interests of form, light, space in an architectural environment. His admiration of early avant-garde art and sculpture inspired the merging of aesthetics between ‘graffiti’ styles and the modernists of the early 20th century.
Derm (UK) www.dermographix.com
Derm’s work is based on a combination of abstracted typographical forms, architectural influences, and graphic and geometric shape. Taking inspiration from the colours and textures of the natural, urban and industrial environments in Scotland, he makes work in found spaces that responds to and comments on the aesthetics of its environment.
Jaybo Monk (France/Germany) www.jayboisms.squarespace.com
Jaybo (1968) is a runaway, setting out and wandering along in a physical as well as in a creative sense – urban subculture is the driving force behind his artistic activities. This is especially true of his paintings, which are erratic and chaotic as they directly quote various fragments of what surround him – often plumbing great psychological depths, thematically speaking, with lightness meeting existentialistic melancholy, aggressiveness meeting passion and a seemingly standard romantic streak and visionary dimension.
LX One (France) www.lxone.eu
LX explores the pixel, the smallest unit, as a means to research the base of form, and the skeleton of colours. He works to the beat of geometry, the noise of shapes and a system of tensions in free space that response to architecture, urbanism and design. Inspired by Piet Mondrian and Vasarelly, LX One portrays the absolutes in life: Vertical and horizontal lines.
Remi Rough (UK) www.remirough.com/blog
There are few artists whose recent works could be described as “painting visual haikus” without the reader needing to roll their eyes, but Remi Rough is one of them. South London born and bred, Remi has been breaking boundaries with the aid of a spray can and a paintbrush for over 27 years. Transcending the traditional and somewhat idealised vision of a graffiti writer, he is passionate and unforgiving in his creative progression.
Steve More (UK) www.stevemore.net
Steve More uses materials from his surrounding environment to create abstract works concerned with the passing of time, decay and regeneration. In 2005, following 20 years as a graffiti artist, More switched from painting on the city surfaces to focusing on the inherent qualities of the materials that lay beneath. He works with materials such as concrete, bill posters and found objects to explore wider concepts of urban life. His work is often highly textural occupying a space between painting and sculpture.
