Saturday, Apr 26, 2014
Dubai: Two visiting US artists known for their graffiti said the local graffiti, signage and architecture exudes art.
Jordan Nickel and Jason Williams, known in the art world as Pose and Revok respectively, said sporadic slogans on walls, Arabic signage, mosque decorations and Emirati architecture were bursts of creativity in the urban sprawl.
The duo flew into town for the first time to exhibit their latest work at The Mine gallery in Al Quoz area. The ‘POSE+REVOK DUBAI’ event ran from Thursday to Saturday, featuring their studio work.
They recently toured Old Dubai areas, including the Gold Souk, regarded as bastions of local culture in modern Dubai.
“It’s like mosquito bites here and there, on a body that is so big,” Nickel, who lives in Chicago, said about random graffiti here.
He also drew attention to the hand-painted shop signs, still in fashion with some stores, describing their “cracked up and replaced” look as aesthetic and nostalgic.
Los Angeles-based Williams said that the Arabic script lends itself to art, adding he couldn’t stop taking pictures of signage in Arabic as well as the local architecture. He was particularly impressed with the art and design of mosques.
“We’re here to meet people, soak in the culture. Art and culture go hand in hand,” Nickel told Gulf News at the exhibition opening on Thursday night.
Both said their studio work has been “informed” or influenced by their graffiti past.
Williams, who has some 25 years of experience with graffiti, used to sneak out of the second-story window of his parents’ home to add his touch to the graffiti landscape.
“With graffiti, everything’s temporary. I’ve nothing to show for it, it’s all gone,” Williams said, referring to graffiti artists superimposing their work over each others art. He added graffiti was a never-ending “battle”, with one artist’s work getting painted over by another’s, and so on.
Nickel described the process as a running “dialogue in the street that you can’t control.”
Nickel has practised graffiti since 1992, when he was only 12. He recently exhibited in Detroit, New York and Los Angeles, with each show selling out.
Williams, who had discovered art through comic books and his father’s album covers collection from the 70s, recently participated in a mural project in Detroit with the Library Street Collective. His success in the gallery setting includes two sold-out exhibitions with the Collective - in Detroit and in Miami — among others in New York, Los Angeles and Berlin.
By Faisal Masudi Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2014. All rights reserved.
