Very Important People - EOA.Projects

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photography—is noted to be one of the most influential pioneers ... and artist and moved from Wall Street into a facto
EOA. PROJECTS

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Very Important People

EOA.PROJECTS GALLERY 40 ELCHO STREET LONDON SW11 4AU Mon- Sat 10:00 - 17:30

Alex Katz, Vivien in Black Hat, 2010, Silkscreen in 34 colors, 73 x 102 cm, Edition of 75

Sir Peter Blake, Mel Bochner, Chuck Close, Damien Hirst, Noorah Kareem, Alex Katz, Jeff Koons, Eric Parnes, Mohammed Shammarey and Joe Webb PRIVATE VIEW FRI 6 FEB / 6.30 - 8.30 PM EOA.PROJECTS GALLERY 40 ELCHO STREET LONDON SW11 4AU

A Very Important Person (VIP) is a person who is accorded special privileges due to his or her status or importance. The special treatment usually involves separation from common people, and a higher level of comfort. ARTISTS Sir Peter Blake is perhaps the most recognized and highly regarded artist of the British Pop Art movement. Much of his output – such as the sleeve for The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ – has achieved iconic status. Blake’s work reflects his fascination with all streams of popular culture, and the beauty to be found in everyday objects and surroundings. Many of his works feature found printed materials such as photographs, comic strips or advertising texts, combined with bold geometric patterns and the use of primary colours. The works perfectly capture the effervescent and optimistic ethos of the sixties, but are also strikingly fresh and contemporary. There is also a strain of sentimentality and nostalgia running throughout his work, with particular focus towards childhood innocence and reminiscence, as can be seen clearly in his recent Alphabet series. Blake is renowned for his connection with the music industry, having produced iconic album covers for the Beatles, Paul Weller, The Who, and Oasis.

Mel Bochner’s approach and materials constantly vary; in fact, the artist formally disavowed allegiance to a single material in his famous essay titled “the Medium and the Tedium” (2010). Bochner—who has produced paintings, installations, and photography—is noted to be one of the most influential pioneers of Conceptual art, and the organizer of the first Conceptual art exhibition in 1966. A recurring theme in Bochner’s work is the relationship between language and physical space or color. This is famously demonstrated in his “Measurement” installations of the late 1960s, visualizing the exact dimensions of rooms and exhibition spaces, and thesaurus-inspired paintings of a single word and its synonyms. Bochner formally studied under Douglas Wilson and Wilfred Readio, though his eventual style would draw strong influence from the works of Clyfford Still and Jean Dubuffet. Chuck Close reinvented painting with his monumental portraits, rendered with exquisite, exacting realism from photographic sources. Playing with ideas of scale, color, and form, Close has become famous for his rigorous, gridded application of individual color squares, which, although abstract up close, form unified, highly realistic images from afar. “I think most paintings are a record of the decisions that the artist made,” he said. “I just perhaps make them a little clearer than some people have.” Close’s artificially restrictive painting techniques stem

in part from physical limitations—he suffers from an inability to recognize faces, and had a spinal injury in 1988 that left him largely paralyzed. Close is particularly known for his portraits of artists, having depicted Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, and Richard Serra, among countless others. His work links him not only with Photorealists but also to Conceptual Art.

from contemporary and historic references. Past projects have addressed pop culture, consumerism, corporate life, and violence, as well as the Persian Empire and ancient Mesopotamia. His works also build upon the artist’s experiences as an IranianAmerican: “I do see the two worlds from both ends—from the East and from the West,” he says. “I can be found somewhere in there.

Damien Hirst Undoubtedly the most acclaimed contemporary artist of his generation. Genuine star of the YBA (Young British Artists) movement, Hirst has always made a point of mixing up his genres. Artist, entrepreneur and celebrity, he has produced much of the most spectacular works in recent years and helped to revolutionize the art market. From Freeze, the artist’s first exhibition which he organized while still at Goldsmith’s College in 1988, to the prestigious Turner Prize awarded to him in 1995, from the diamond-encrusted skull (For the Love of God, 2008) to the controversial sale of his work at Sotheby’s in the same year, Damien Hirst always seeks to subvert the system and thereby create some truly emblematic pieces of art. Inspired by such diverse themes as life, death, art, science and medicine Damien Hirst makes use of many varied techniques including installation, sculpture, painting, drawing, etching and silkscreen.

Mohammed Shammarey is a self-taught artist; he works with painting, photography, silk-screen printing and sculpture. He has held many solo exhibitions including shows held at his atelier in Baghdad (in 1988, 1991 and 1999); FA Gallery, Kuwait, 2010, and Word, Object, Motion (with Simeen Farhat), Anya Tish Gallery, Houston, Texas, in 2010. He has also participated in group exhibitions such as Word into Art, British Museum, London, 2006; Dafatir: Contemporary Iraqi Book Art, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas, travelling exhibition, 2005–2008; Iraqi Artists in Exile, Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas, 2008; and Modernism and Iraq, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, 2009. 2013 - an Exhibition of Works by Mohammed Al Shammarey ARTSPACE Dubai. 2012 Anya Tish Gallery Houston Tx Collective Reaction: FotoFest 2014 work is often inspired by literature and poetry, particularly the writings of Rumi, Mahmoud Darwish and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Since 2008, he has lived and worked in Houston, Texas.

Noorah Kareem born 1990 graduated with a diploma from the Arts & Skills Institute, Riyadh in 2009. In 2012 Kareem pursued a degree in the field of special Education- Behavioural Disorder & Autism, Riyadh. Alumni of the Crossway Foundation Create & Inspire competition 2011. Kareems work had been featured in Design Magazine, Ayadi Magazine, Al Riyadh newspaper and Al Hayat Newspaper and held in private collections in Saudi Arabia, the United States and Australia. Alex Katz is the outstanding protagonist of figurative Painting, and one of the most influential painters in the world. Alex Katz was often said to be one of the father of the Pop Art movement, but his style was always independent on the borderline between abstraction and realism. His paintings are the result of a transformation of the three-dimensional word in simplified landscapes and portraits of sophisticated woman on canvas. Katz is well known for featuring his own social milieu often depicting parties, portraits of friends and fellow artists, and most notably, his wife Ada. Katz also worked with collage, printmaking, and set design, increasingly concentrating on these mediums and developing freestanding sculptural cut outs. He later painted large-scale landscapes and continues to work with natural themes in form of large scale flower scenes in his works today. Jeff Koons playfully tests the boundaries of commerce, celebrity, banality and pleasure. He turns banal commercial or everyday objects into art icons by using seductive materials, a shift of scale and a contextual displacement. Koons’ large-scale vinyl “Inflatables”, his enormous chromium stainless steel “Balloon Dog” or the giant “Puppy” and “Split Rocker” made of hundreds of flowers all follow this principle. Originally licensed as a commodities broker, in the late 1970ies Koons decided to become and artist and moved from Wall Street into a factory-like studio in SoHo with hundreds of assistants. Since then, he has produced different series like the Pre-New, a series of domestic objects in strange new configurations, The Equilibrium Series, consisting of basketballs floating in distilled water tanks, or the Banality Series culminating with a sculpture of Michael Jackson and his chimpanzee Bubbles. Koons is widely regarded as one of the most important, influential, and controversial contemporary artists. He constantly tests the boundaries between art and commerce, high culture and mass culture, readymade and art object, by decontextualizing his objects and lifting them to iconic statuses. He has lifted art out of the enclave of the genius-driven artist into the realms of nowadays pop and commerce driven culture. Eric Parnes is a multimedia artist and considers his art to be “Neo-Orientalist,” meaning that which delves into the visual appropriation and socio-political dynamics between Eastern and Western culture. In a body of work that includes photography, sculpture, painting, installation, and video, Parnes draws equally

Joe Webb (1976-) uses vintage magazines and printed ephemera that he has collected to create hand-made low fi collages, no computer trickery in sight. Webb re-invents the imagery taken from his collection of printed materials to create simple and elegant, yet surreal, images that explore love and longing. His work is inspired by the collage work of Peter Blake amongst others. To create original editions Webb has stayed true to the texture and feeling of collage by using real collaged elements in the silkscreens as well as embossing and glazing.

EOA.PROJECTS EOA.Projects was established in 2009 as a gallery platform for artists working between the Middle East, Europe and United States. Under the vision of Stephen Stapleton, founder of Edge of Arabia and The Crossway Foundation, EOA.Projects collaborates with artists in building their careers and realising their potential to an international standard. Through production studios in London and Jeddah, EOA.Projects supports artists in developing new projects including limited edition fine art prints and special commissions. In 2012, EOA.Projects opened a 400m sq. gallery in South-West London with a curated programme of exhibitions, film-screenings and talks aimed at international audiences.

For appointments, a full artist biography and other press enquiries please contact: Mariam M. Hassan Gallery Manager +44 (0) 20 7350 1336 [email protected] Like us on Facebook: EOA.PROJECTS Follow us on Twitter: @EOAPROJECTS Follow us on Instagram: @EOAPROJECTS For more information please visit the gallery website eoaprojects.com

EOA. PROJECTS

EOAPROJECTS.COM @EOAPROJECTS #EOAPROJECTS

MOHAMMED SHAMMAREY MOTION 2013 GICELEE PRINT ON EPSON COLD PRESS NATURAL TEXTURED MATT PAPER FOR MUSEUM QUALITY PRINTS 112 X 137CM EDITION OF 7

CHUCK CLOSE KATE 2013 WATERCOLOUR PIGMENT PRINT

PETER BLAKE MARILYN 2010 SILKSCREEN DIAMOND DUST 95 X 75 CM EDITION OF 15

ERIC PARNES NEO ORIENTALIST TM 2011 66 X 117 CM OIL ON CANVAS

DAMIEN HIRST SKULL (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD) 2011 HAND COLORED PHOTOGRAVURE 59 X 45 CM EDITION OF 1000

JEFF KOONS PINK BOW 2013 ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT 94 X 112 CM EDITION OF 50

EOA.PROJECTS GALLERY 40 ELCHO STREET LONDON SW11 4AU Mon- Sat 10:00 AM - 05:30 PM