ANDY VALMORBIDA & VLADIMIR RESTOIN ROITFELD Present “RETNA: The Hallelujah World Tour”
Location: 560 Washington Street, NYC
Photo Credit: Neil Rasmus/BFAnyc.com
See all photos: http://www.billyfarrellagency.com/home/event/690
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Retna, the 31-year-old artist from Los Angeles, opened his first New York solo exhibition last week, and I got to see what it’s like to be an artist at the peak of his powers.
Retna, whose real name is Marquis Lewis, comes from a graffiti background. The nom de plume – derived from a Raekwon song – was originally given to a friend. “I gave him a sketch, and he went and battled some dude and he lost,” Retna said previously in an interview with Upper Playground. “He wasn’t even supposed to battle anyone anyway with my sketch that I gave him. And on top of that he lost, so that really pissed me off, so I took the name back.”
Over the past few years, Retna has been known less for his graffiti pieces than a unique written language derived from various ancient scripts.
“It draws on Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Mayan glyphs, as well as Mexican and pre-Columbian heritage,” Jeffrey Deitch, director of MoCA in Los Angeles, said. “He filters those traditions through the tradition of tagging and graffiti that has been seen in Los Angeles since the 1970s. Within these traditions, he has come up with something entirely his own.”
The New York exhibition, majestically titled The Hallelujah World Tour (Venice and London are the two other stops) is Retna’s biggest show to date.
Inside a big pop-up space one block away from the West Side Highway, 35 large paintings – almost exclusively black, white and silver – covered virtually every inch of wall space. An installation of block letters, spelling Retna’s name occupied the centre of the gallery. There was a line of waiters in black holding glasses of white wine on silver trays. A team of publicists pulled the show’s two organisers, Andy Valmorbida and Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, through the gathering crowd for interviews and photo ops.
“It’s a million-dollar show,” said Valmorbida, who owns an eponymous gallery in Manhattan. He was wearing a white shirt (untucked), black tie and black jeans. Restoin-Roitfeld, sporting a dark suit with a finely sculpted scarf situation, stood next to him, surveying the crowded gallery.
The two profess to be star makers to mid-career artists. “We set up a package for the artist, with gallery and exhibitions and publicity,” Valmorbida said. “We look at thousands of artists and pick one.”
In 2008, they plucked Richard Hambleton, a street artist and contemporary of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, out of relative obscurity and promoted him as the forgotten connection to that golden age of graffiti. They set up star-studded shows for Hambleton in New York, London, Moscow, Milan and Cannes. The show in New York is sold out.
Valmorbida and Restoin-Roitfeld have the same plans for Retna, who sold almost all his paintings (at prices upward of $25,000) before the night was over. “He has what it takes to make it big,” Valmorbida said.
“The Hallelujah World Tour” is on view at 560 Washington St., New York, NY, through until February 21.
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A plane with artwork by Los Angeles-based graffiti artist Retna. VistaJet, Swiss operator of 31 private aircraft, commissioned Retna to paint the tail of its largest corporate jet, the Bombardier Global Express XRS, this spring. Source: Nadine Johnson PR via Bloomberg
Los Angeles-based graffiti artist Retna used to get arrested for spray-painting buses, trains and other commercial property.
Now, he gets paid to do this.
VistaJet, Swiss operator of 31 private aircraft, commissioned Retna to paint the tail of its largest corporate jet, the Bombardier Global Express XRS, this spring.
“It’s a $60 million canvas, so we decided to start with just this one,” said Nina Flohr, head of branding and communications at VistaJet.
Together with Bombardier Business Aircraft, VistaJet is also sponsoring a traveling exhibition of Retna’s paintings, “The Hallelujah World Tour,” with a $4 million budget.
First stop: A 13,000-square-foot warehouse in New York displaying 35 large canvases and one sprawling sculpture of the artist’s name.
Hung cheek-by-jowl around the perimeter, the works bristle with mysterious symbols, resembling a cross between Asian calligraphy and Egyptian hieroglyphics. Retna’s imaginary alphabet has roots in Old English, gang graffiti, Arabic and Hebrew.
Furious Mother
“Even though I don’t understand them, I’m really intrigued by them,” said Retna, 31, who speaks English and Spanish. “I just really love writing.”
Retna, who grew up in downtown Los Angeles, got into graffiti as a 9-year-old Catholic-school student.
“I’d see graffiti on a freeway going to school,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anything else. I just wanted to draw, draw and draw.”
Over the years, he tagged freeways, public parks and bridges. Along the way, he got arrested for vandalism, he said.
His mother, who moved to the U.S. from El Salvador and had to work two jobs (including a night shift as a parking-lot attendant) to put Retna through a private school, was furious.
“She was worried that something would happen to me,” said Retna. “I put her through a lot of pain.”
He said his pieces include Spanish curses his mother hurled at him as well as names of dead friends.
Retna completed the largest piece — an 8-by-20-foot canvas filled with five rows of squat black and red runes — in a single day this week.
“That speed comes from working on the street,” he said, as he walked around the freezing warehouse while a production crew was busy arranging his paintings and adjusting the lights. “I am talking about hanging on a bridge. We’d have to finish in 45 minutes before the cops got there.”
Middle East
Decoding these enigmatic messages could take a lot more time. You’d need a guide to explain how a sparse composition of silver symbols — vertical lines, zigzags and curved shapes — translates into “stoned to death.” And that’s the simplest piece in the show.
The exhibition’s producers, Andy Valmorbida and Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, are still working on the tour’s next destinations.
“We want to show it in the Middle East,” said Valmorbida. Egypt would have been a good idea a month ago. Not so much now.”
Prices for the paintings range from $25,000 to $180,000. The show runs through Feb. 21 at 560 Washington St.
– Katya Kazakina
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As darkness fell on the first day of New York Fashion Week, we headed west to check out some art courtesy of Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld’s curation, and show off our faux fur at PETA’s fashion week party.
The first stop was a warehouse on the desolate Washington Street where Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida were hosting RETNA: The Hallelujah World Tour. The open and dim space smelled of fresh paint (there were splatters of it on the floor) and graffiti artist RETNA’s canvases filled with abstract black and white symbols lined the walls. The crowd, sipping on what we’re pretty sure was straight vodka, was as eclectic as the art itself. Fashion folk like Eddie Borgo and proud mama Carine Roitfeld mingled with a young flock of skateboarders (boards in tow), older women in hulking fur coats, and disheveled yet chic Parisian-looking men.
Next, we hit up Stella McCartney’s meatpacking boutique for the PETA Fashion Week Party. DJ Lady Bunny manned the turntables while Tim Gunn held court in a corner entertaining a cluster of giddy girls. Attendees kept their eyes on the step and repeat for anti-fur celebs like Joan Jett and Taraji P. Henson, who recently posed for PETA’s ‘I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur’ ad campaign.
source: http://fashionista.com/2011/02/fashion-week-parties-graffiti-and-peta/
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Behind gate 37E on Washington Street lies a warehouse with a Buick Regal parked inside. Photographers are snapping away, laptops are out, and well-dressed critics buzz throughout the space. This was the scene when I visited “Breaking Bread,” the first stop on Retna’s three-continent-spanning Hallelujah Tour on the day before its opening.
Sponsored by VistaJet and Bombardier, the tour will see the L.A. graffiti legend spend the better part of the next year on the road, painting all original material in NYC, Hong Kong and London—and with a just-announced surprise show in Venice along the way. The series of shows comes on the heels of Retna’s successful solo show at L.A.’s New Image Art gallery, where powerhouse Museum of Contemporary Art director Jeffery Deitch compared Retna to Keith Haring, positioning it as “one of the most exciting exhibitions that I have seen this year.”
For someone arguably at the peak of his career, Retna speaks casually about the worldwide tour, describing how the origins of the show started with a studio visit from the concept’s impresarios Andy Valmorbida and Vlad Restoin Roitfeld. “I thought it was cool, I was down with the cities. Then the sponsors came in and they wanted to put the ad on the plane digitally. I was like, ‘Nah, if my work’s gonna be out there it’s gonna be real, I don’t photoshop shit. If you want my work on that plane it’s going to be one 100% real.’ So now they’re locking down some super hanger so I can paint in it.”
If this newfound big league is unexpected or overwhelming, Retna doesn’t show it. “You know that’s why I still listen to the same music as I did back then. I’m still that same kid trying to get up on walls chasing the dream. When I was young I didn’t know what it was, but now that I’m here I guess this is the dream, I’m living it now.” Just after Retna shares these insights, a scruffy group of men who could be Hell’s Angels approach us. “You really out did yourself this time bro, looks great.”
The man clamps my hand, “Haze, good to meet you. This is my girl Rosie.” As in Perez, and Haze himself is one of graffiti’s inventors. Our corner of the room starts to fill up with members of Retna’s MSK crew, making it feel like a celebration. And there’s a lot to celebrate, not only Retna but the culture he represents—a kid from the gang-infested streets of L.A. who desperately wanted to join a gang at 13 but was told to focus on art instead. “You know they didn’t do that for just anybody,” he recalls. “They told me you can chill with us, you can smoke with us, you can paint our walls, but you ain’t a gangbanger.”
Retna introduces me to Revok1, who was recently arrested in Australia in what was called “the vandal vacation.” Revok1 explains, “Something like 10,000 kids went out to Melbourne from all over the country when they heard what was going down. They painted like 70% of all of the trains. The mayor came out and declared a state of emergency and called it a disgrace.”
Retna asks if we should continue the interview at a bar so he can relax, but before we can decide where, two enthusiastic assistants corner us saying, “This dinner is a huge deal! It’s like $100,000 a plate, and they’re auctioning off your painting. Bill Clinton is going to be there.” Retna, seemingly unaffected, is more interested in rounding up his friends for a quiet night downtown somewhere. After some back and forth with the assistants, it’s decided that his presence is required as an ambassador of “street art” culture. This is his world now whether he likes it or not. “I’m not a street artist dude, I mean, they can’t do what we do. I’m a graf writer. I always have been. Graf writers were getting gallery shows since the ’80s. This isn’t new, they just like that tag because it’s safe.”
With no suit on hand for the black tie event, we begin shopping through Soho, punctuated by “Fear and Loathing” moments, like Retna walking around Hugo Boss shirtless. The manicured men standing at attention find his antics less than amusing, even scoffing at his lack of interest in their style.
With the same courage he showed when he faced jail time and the same unflagging desire to paint, Retna does it all for the culture now so warmly embraced by high society. Before he disappears into the crowds of Soho, he turns with eyes open hugging the sky, “not bad for a lil nigga from the hood!”
Kicking off the Hallelujah Tour, “Breaking Bread” opens 10 February 2011 and runs through 21 February 2011 before moving on to its next port.
SOURCE: http://www.coolhunting.com/culture/retna-halleluja.php
