Recognizable by name and respected for their invaluable contribution, the artists featured in Icons & Vandals have subverted the contemporary art world throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Categorized by their emergence, whether through normative or non-normative means, these artist’s have distinguished themselves through disruption. Icons & Vandals seeks to celebrate and highlight monumental works by notable innovators. 

With artwork spanning 60 years, Icons & Vandals features art-world agitators from across the globe. Modern Masters—such as Alex Katz and Frank Stella—challenged the status quo through aesthetic and technical innovation. While Pop Art icons—like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol—mined ‘low-brow’ culture and transformed it into fine art. Contemporary Neo-Pop legends—such as Takashi Murakami and Yoshitimo Nara—re-explore the conceptual underpinnings of Pop through the lens of global contemporary culture while pushing the visual language of the movement even further. Contemporary Chinese Artists—like Ai WeiWei and Zhang Xiaogang—critique their country’s collectivist society on a global scale. Street art pioneers—from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Banksy—disrupt physical urban space while challenging the boundaries of what can be considered art. In this same vein, artist-licensed Skate Decks and Vinyl Art bring both toy culture and the subculture of skating into the upper echelon of the art world and redefine what it means to be a collector.

West Chelsea Contemporary’s nearly 8,000 square-foot gallery offers the opportunity to highlight work on a monumental scale. From 16-foot originals by RETNA and Cey Adams to colossal sculptural work—including a larger than life mixed media shark and painted aluminum spaceman—the gallery is activated by art world giant’s not only in a metaphorical sense. 

By contemplating ground-breaking movements from the past six decades, Icons & Vandals allows viewers to rediscover and redefine the art world’s most iconic and contentious house-hold names. These artists have left their mark on the development and progression of contemporary art by subverting the norms of their own time.  Through this show it becomes clear that these two labels are not mutually exclusive but in fact ingrained in their interconnectedness.