Skullphone Solo Exhibition at Ivory & Black Soho

vory & Black Soho proudly presents London, 2012, Skullphone’s much-anticipated solo exhibition in conjunction with the Summer Olympics. Comprised of Skullphone’s hand-painted Digital Media series and sculpture installation, London, 2012 encapsulates the spirit of the Olympic Games within the context of contemporary Great Britain. Reflection paintings depict the United Kingdom’s celebration and tumult. Rectangular paintings show Skullphone’s “advertisement” in rotation with British branding. The adjoining sculpture installation features a work cast from the artist’s foot and adorned with customized running socks — a reflective display of street art, studio practice and marketability — equally representing mankind’s life on the run and the eternal desire for faster, higher, stronger.

Skullphone’s Digital Media paintings are calculated fabrications for indoor viewing, a departure from the large-scale outdoor work for which he first became known. The paintings document our modern world – one which is increasingly defined by connection and communication via brief technological encounters. Here, advertising, government, private enterprise signage, real- and digital-scapes are represented. This work employs a deliberate grid system of red, blue, and green paint applied to reflective aluminum panels one dot at a time, creating pointillistic images that dislocate when approached.

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Los Angeles-based Skullphone first gained notoriety on city streets in 1999 for his iconic image of a black-and-white skull holding a cell phone, an image which pointedly welded humanity to technology. He sparked controversy and conversation when his artwork appeared on the first digital billboards found throughout Los Angeles in 2008. Positioning his artwork as both megaphone and white noise, he raised the issue and left local and online audiences to their own devices in appraising issues of connectivity, personal privacy, advertising, street art, urban blight and life in Los Angeles.

Ivory & Black Soho is a gallery dedicated to New Contemporary Art, located on 94 Berwick Street in the heart of London’s Soho. Founded in 2011 by Pedro Matos and Rui Da Paz Louro – Ivory & Black shows the most exciting artists working today, such as Andrew Schoultz, Cleon Peterson, Cheryl Dunn, Deanna Templeton, Ed Templeton, Geoff McFetridge, James Jean, Pedro Matos, Richard Colman, Ryan Travis Christian, Skullphone and Erik Brunetti.