July 1st, 2021, New York, New York – Avant Gallery is pleased to announce a new exhibition at its Hudson Yards location, titled “Art is Life”, which comes accompanied by the expansion of the gallery’s exhibition space, which is doubling in size. The new 6,000 square foot venue has been designed like an art fair accommodating booths for dedicated artist presentations, and reflecting on the experience we all have been longing for since the world’s leading art fairs were canceled last year.
The exhibition will feature new artworks produced during quarantine by some of Avant’s most prized artists such as Skyler Grey, Tim Tadder, BNS, Will Kurtz, LaSso, Paul Rousso, as well as its new roster additions including Mark Khaisman, Asante Malik, and Jean-Luc Maniouloux.
Skyler Grey, the 21-year-old prodigy who has been dubbed by Forbes Magazine as “The Fresh Prince of Street Art”, will launch his highly anticipated new series “America the Beautiful: Act II”. This series was conceived as a sequel to his show “America the Beautiful: Act I”, which offered commentary on the uncertainty we have experienced collectively in 2020 while using striking imagery from comic books and telling a story through the eyes of superheroes. Now, the second act represents the triumphant comeback, joyful and colorful images that still draw inspiration from Pop Art masters like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, albeit with a nostalgic feel.
LaSsos’s new figurative oil paintings bring to the public a very intimate feeling: objects, landscapes, and characters from the artist’s life, such as the neighborhood bodega’s clerk, are represented with brushstrokes of subtle pastel colors, with elements of surprise revealed in form of books by the artist’s influencers such as De Kooning, Le Corbusier and Georg Baselitz that are juxtaposed with rolls of Bounty and jugs of Clorox. Personal memories are changed into forms that have been simplified or schematized but that still haven’t completely abandoned their figurative design – it stays there just under the surface, like a secret to be unveiled.
A dedicated researcher of Western art movements and history, American-born artist Paul Rousso contemplates how the digital era is replacing paper and ink and putting an end to a cultural revolution that impacted society ever since the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. In that sense, Rousso’s work is also an homage to the printed word and all the brands and trends that forever changed us. The artist’s new creations feature oversized dollar bills, newspapers, Broadway tickets, and recognizable labels shaped into dynamic, gestural sculptures.
Rousso has become known for having created a new approach to sculpture, one that he has researched for over twenty years and that has guided his artistic practice ever since. The artist’s choice of material is polystyrene, a type of highly malleable resin. The artist transfers the image to a flat sheet of material and gives it his final touches, like the application of different substances to give it a realistic feel. Rousso then hand molds the pieces using welding torches in a similar fashion to glass sculptors. This remarkably specialized process results in large wall-mounted and free-standing sculptures that entertain and astonish the viewer.
With the intent to offer even more excitement for collectors and art lovers eager for the art world’s next big thing, new artists will be debuting at Avant New York.
Daniel Adel has worked as an artist, portraitist, and illustrator since 1984. His award-winning work has graced the pages of the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and the cover of Time Magazine with an iconic portrait of George W. Bush.
The artist’s particular brand of abstract art, which he defines as HyperAbstraction, is a combination of measured movements and fluidity, practiced gestures and improvisation, order and chaos. The series has its genesis in Adel’s desire to visualize musical form fused with calligraphy. With very gestural paintings, the artist combines the spontaneity and strict discipline that are common to all great musical compositions. The motivation to create the HyperAbstraction series that will be part of the “Art is Life” collective exhibit is explained in the artist’s own words: “I found myself drawn to three sources of inspiration at one and the same time: Asian calligraphy, Baroque music, and abstract expressionism”.
In order to compensate for the current travel restrictions, this exhibition will commence at Avant’s New York City location and will then be mirrored at its Aventura and Miami locations. In an unprecedented move, new works by Avant’s exhibiting artists will be disseminated between all locations simultaneously to allow for a greater multi-city audience to experience them in-person in symphony.
Since its launch in Miami Beach in 2007, Avant Gallery has become an exciting and cutting-edge presence in the art world, committed to showing both established as well as early-to-mid-career contemporary artists.Avant currently operates from the following venues: in the heart of Miami at Brickell City Centre; a New York City cornerstone gallery space and part of the world’s largest mixed-use development, The Shops at Hudson Yards; at the Aventura Mall in South Florida; and at the Four Seasons Jumeirah Resort in Dubai.
