K11 MUSEA presents City As Studio, China’s first major exhibition of graffiti and street art, tracing the evolution of a global movement

Curated by Jeffrey Deitch and supported by K11 Art Foundation, it will feature works by genre pioneers including Jean-Michel Basquiat, CRASH, Fab 5 Freddy, OSGEMEOS, Keith Haring, Lady Pink, and Lee Quiñones.

20 March 2023 to 14 May 2023

'City As Studio is the most extensive exhibition on the history of street art to be presented in China. The exhibition features major works by the innovators in street art from New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, São Paulo, Paris, and Tokyo. It provides an immersive introduction to this vital movement which continues to resonate today.' 

– Jeffrey Deitch, Curator of City As Studio

'Jeffrey has been at the forefront of the institutional acceptance of street art, and we're delighted to be working with him to bring this landmark exhibition to China. The cultural innovation embodied by works that defined a generation, street art's global artistic influence and its ability to powerfully engage diverse audiences is reflective of our wider mission.'

– Adrian Cheng, Founder of K11 Art Foundation

HONG KONG, Feb. 1, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Curated by Jeffrey Deitch, City As Studio, China's first major exhibition of graffiti and street art opens at K11 MUSEA this Spring. Running from 20 March to 14 May 2023 to coincide with Art Basel Hong Kong, the monumental exhibition will feature over 100 works by more than 30 artists, showcasing the breadth and depth of the graffiti and street art scene across generations, styles and geographies.

City As Studio traces the global history of graffiti and street art from its emergence in the subway yards and parking lots of 1970s New York to its rise as a worldwide phenomenon. It begins with the movement's pivotal innovators such as Fab 5 Freddy, FUTURA and Jean-Michel Basquiat who were part of the dialogue and the Downtown art scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and goes on to highlight artists such as Barry McGee, Mister Cartoon and OSGEMEOS, and the groundbreaking styles they created in San Francisco, East Los Angeles and São Paulo. The exhibition also documents the emergence and evolution of artists such as KAWS and AIKO who represent a younger generation of New York street artists.

Highlights include Basquiat's Valentine (1984), on loan from the personal collection of Paige Powell, alongside works by other seminal artists such as The Bomb (1983) by CRASH and Untitled (1983), a spray painting by Keith Haring spanning three metres. Portraits such as Keith Haring (Red) (2010) and Basquiat (Red) (2010) by Shepard Fairey demonstrate how early practitioners of the genre continue to inspire younger artists, while FUTURA's work El Diablo (1985) - part of KAWS' personal collection - exemplifies the intergenerational dialogue and influence between street artists working today. JR's work Eye Contact #13 (2018) evokes old school rail yards as model trains on tiny tracks move back and forth, creating an optical illusion on each run.  Examining how the movement shaped other genres, the exhibition will also display works such as Charlie Ahearn's film Juanito, which captures the story of his twin, sculptor John Ahearn making casts of people in Bronx and immortalising them in plaster. Elsewhere, works by AIKO and Lady Pink will explore how female artists responded and contributed to a genre traditionally dominated by men.

City As Studio will also present a series of compelling photographs by leading figures such as Gusmano Cesaretti, Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper that document the artistry and urban impact of street artists in the 1970s and 80s.

Jeffrey Deitch has been involved with modern and contemporary art for nearly five decades as an artist, writer, curator, dealer, and advisor. During his tenure as Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), Deitch presented some 50 exhibitions and projects and published extensively about graffiti and street art. An advocate of graffiti art since the 1980s, Deitch brings curatorial expertise and a wealth of knowledge to City As Studio, which is a culmination of years of research. The exhibition looks back on half a century of development, traversing generations to uncover the past as a way to discover what the future has in store for the movement.

To accompany the exhibition, K11 Art Foundation will present a diverse range of events and activities, including talks, screenings, audio guides, docent-led tours, and an education corner featuring online learning resources and an interactive graffiti tagging activity, and more-for visitors across all ages and seek to enrich the exhibition viewing experience and deepen understanding of street art online and offline. To further enrich the visiting experience, a special edition of TÖÖF cards with fun art facts printed on the back will be introduced to inspire visitors as they navigate the exhibition.

 

About Jeffrey Deitch

Jeffrey Deitch has been involved with modern and contemporary art for more than 40 years as an artist, writer, curator, dealer, and advisor. A 1974 graduate of Wesleyan University, Deitch went on to receive an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1978. Before opening his own art advisory firm in 1988, Deitch was a Vice President of Citibank where he developed and managed the bank's art advisory and art finance businesses. In the 1970s, Deitch served as Assistant Director of the John Weber Gallery in New York and as Curator of the De Cordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Best known for his vanguard commercial gallery, Deitch Projects, Deitch produced more than 250 projects by contemporary artists during the gallery's existence from 1996 through 2010. There, he championed artists such as Tauba Auerbach, Vanessa Beecroft, Cecily Brown, Barry McGee, Yoko Ono, and Kehinde Wiley. In 2014, Rizzoli published Live the Art, a major monograph detailing the history of Deitch Projects.

Deitch has been active as a critic and curator since the mid-1970s. Deitch's first important curatorial project was Lives, a 1975 exhibition about artists who used their own lives as an art medium. He coauthored a monograph on Keith Haring, published by Rizzoli in 2008, and wrote the introduction to Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1981: The Studio of the Street, published by Charta in 2007. From 2010 to 2013, Deitch served as Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, where he organized major solo exhibitions of work by Urs Fischer, Weegee, and Kenneth Anger and curated thematic group shows including The Painting Factory: Abstraction After Warhol and Art in the Streets, which had the highest attendance in the museum's history.

Deitch has now reestablished his art advisory firm and his art gallery, operating in both New York and Los Angeles. Recent exhibition projects include an outdoor museum of street art on Coney Island, New York; Overpop, presented at the Yuz Museum, Shanghai in 2016-2017; and Jean-Michel Basquiat at Museo Delle Culture, Milan in 2016-2017. Deitch's book on new figurative painting, Unrealism, was published by Rizzoli in the fall of 2019. City As Studio will open at K11 MUSEA with the support from K11 Art Foundation in Hong Kong in March 2023.

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ABOUT K11 MUSEA

Hong Kong's Silicon Valley of Culture, K11 MUSEA, is the latest cultural-retail destination in Victoria Dockside located on the harbourfront of Tsim Sha Tsui. Inspired by 'A Muse by the Sea', K11 MUSEA is designed to enrich new consumers' daily lives through the power of creativity, culture and innovation. A destination 10 years in the making, K11 MUSEA opened its doors in August 2019 to usher in a new era of cultural-retail which speaks to the growing consumer demand for immersive experiences in art, culture, nature and commerce.

About K11 Art Foundation

Founded by Adrian Cheng in 2010, K11 Art Foundation is a non-profit organisation in Hong Kong dedicated to fostering the development of Chinese contemporary art. In pursuing our mission, we are committed to supporting artists through K11 Art Foundation's exhibitions, artist residencies, and educational programmes. We also actively establish partnerships with leading art and cultural institutions around the world, collaborating with curators and other industry specialists to create impactful cross-cultural exchange and contribute to the expanding global contemporary art discourse.

Over the years,  K11 Art Foundation has collaborated with the Royal Academy of Arts, Serpentine Galleries, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, and Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris; Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and MoMA PS1, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; and Videotage, British Council Hong Kong, Design Trust, and Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong, among others.

www.k11artfoundation.org