ToyCyte: Toy Culture Collected

The story goes like this: when Adam Neate was still an unknown artist leaving his painted cardboard works out on the street, he wrote to Ron English in New York to say how much he admired his work. For the first time, THE ADAM AND RON SHOW brings together these two urban art painters, both masters of their own style, in a major heavyweight show at London’s Elms Lesters Painting Rooms. Per Elms Lesters’ press release:

The exhibition includes a 50’ site-specific painting by Ron English, recreating Picasso’s Guernica. Over the past few years, Ron has created dozens of versions of Picasso’s masterpiece, transforming the original Spanish civilian characters into Disney characters, Peanuts characters, soccer players, schoolchildren, and many others. Ron English first hijacked billboards when he was an art student as a way of displaying his art to as many people as possible – it was later that he realised he could make political statements by the same means. Since then Ron has ‘pirated’ or ‘liberated’ over one thousand billboards, replacing existing advertisements with his own hand-painted “subvertisements.” getting his own socio-political messages across.

Adam Neate is a fearless painter who is constantly experimenting with styles and techniques, and continually pushing forward with his work. As well as a series of his coveted self portraits, the show includes a collection of his narrative, social documentary paintings. His gallery pieces, the majority of which are still painted on cardboard, have immediacy and a raw energy, through the use of aerosols, marker pens, and acrylic and gloss paints.

Both artists signed catalogs this past weekend. Juztapoz has images from the show here.

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