Futura 2000- Futura 2012 Expansions

Description

Book: FUTURA 2000 Futura 2012- Expansions
Hardcover
Published: 2012
Pages: 48 Colour Offset Printing
Language: French, English
Dimensions: 33 x 24,5 cm.

STILL SHRINKWRAPPED!

Catalogue of Futura’s Exhibtion ‘Expansions’ in 2012 (13 Jan.- 29 Feb.) at the Galerie of Jerome de Noirmont.

Futura’s very last show with his Parisian gallerist – a year before it permanently closes its doors.

From January 13 to February 29, 2012, FUTURA 2000 unveils his latest works: fifteen paintings, all created in 2011, a kind of fresco with urban energy where instinct and spontaneity take precedence over theory, in the pictorial tradition of the abstract expressionists of the New York School.

“EXPANSIONS… is the subject of my recent works [presented] at the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont. For the past thirty years, I have tried to define a style and a technique that would differentiate my work from that of other artists in this universe of mine. This approach allowed me to explore the field of the Abstract and the spontaneous. »

A neophyte heir to Pollock’s “Action Painting” and Clyfford Still’s “colorfields”, FUTURA 2000 updates what the art critic Harold Rosenberg wrote in 1952: “One after another, American painters began to consider the canvas as an arena in which to act, rather than as a space in which to reproduce, redraw, analyze or express an object, real or imaginary. What was born on the web was no longer an image but an event. »

It is also on the ground, like Jackson Pollock, that FUTURA’s canvases most often take shape. He can thus apprehend the medium as a whole and adapt it to his “brush”, the aerosol can; a way of controlling the energy and impulsive creativity that he projects onto his paintings.

Born in 1955, FUTURA 2000 (real name Leonard McGurr) began painting at the age of 15 in subway tunnels and carriages. Co-founder of the S.A. (Soul Artists) collective, he frequented the New York underground scene of the 70s and 80s and is one of those rare artists who evolved the styles of graffiti as an art form.

Alongside Basquiat, Haring, Warhol, Rammellzee, Zephyr and Dondi White, he participated in 1981 in the decisive exhibition of the PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York/New Wave. With them, he brought legitimacy to “graffiti” by taking it out of underground spaces to present it to a wider and more informed audience. This transition from wall to canvas will highlight the stylistic diversity and heterogeneity of this new artistic genre.

Very quickly, the young artist distinguished himself from other “writers” by developing an abstract and pictorial approach to graffiti. His abstracts – the name given to his abstract compositions at the time – are scattered along lines 1 and 3 of the New York subway; In 1981, he was the first to paint a “whole car” without lettering. He also finds his inspiration in cyberpunk and science fiction films. 2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1968, and was the origin of its signature: Future 2001, which became FUTURA 2000.

FUTURA hijacks the classic iconography of graffiti and reinvents it. His “tag” is first of all legible, far from the wild style that raged in the streets of New York at the end of the 70s. But it gradually disappears behind its flat colors and abstract projections, to finally evolve itself towards a geometrization of forms.

“The approach (in these new works) is not a matter of SCIENCE; nor SCIENCE FICTION. It is the discovery of physical limits of SIZE and SCALE and the methods with which an individual can EXPAND… to expand one’s horizons; In search of creativity… in the name of COLOR and COMPOSITION. »

Whether it is large formats such as Blues Brothers and Panic Button or works with more intimate dimensions such as Rumors, FUTURA plays with our senses, our impressions of unfinished business. Colour seems to take over the line, but its expressive spray jets impose on us an organised vision of these colourful disorders, where gears, ellipses, pylons and architectural forms punctuate a lively and sensitive palette.

As the art historian Paul Ardenne points out in the exhibition catalogue, colour, often intense, punctuates a pictorial space that does not necessarily abhor a vacuum, where large areas in reserve serve as breathing space for the eye. (She is) considered in terms of its supersensible or even metaphysical effects; a desire for visual impact that goes beyond the simple effect of style and pulsates towards transcendence.

These motifs, which are now recurrent in his work, echo both his inspiration for new images – methodically indexed on his Flickr every day – and his military experience (FUTURA joined the Navy in the mid-70s and worked on an aircraft carrier) and his taste for cycling (he was also a bicycle courier). The street, the challenge, the speed have thus given birth to a dynamic iconography that has become its signature today.

This same energy is still visible in the set of new works exhibited at the gallery: spontaneity, speed, transgressive freedom and wild energy merge on the canvas. The codes of the street mix with abstract realism and sublimate the space.