Christina Varga

NEW YORK CITY GRAFFITI ART
August 11 - September 9, 2007

CLOSING EVENTS @ VARGA Gallery

GRAFFITI IN ACTION!
Saturday, September 8th from 10 AM - 3PM
KR. ONE, Whipser, TEAM & Wolf paint the Tinker Street Cinema

Graffiti TALK
with Steve Hager and Carlo McCormick
Saturday, September 8th from 3 - 5
Panel Discussion with Q&A featuring TEAM, FLINT, KR. ONE, WHISPER & LSD Om

THE OFFICIAL NYC GRAFFITI ART WRAP PARTY
Saturday September 8th from 6 - 9pm

Catch the Graffiti Show on "Astoria Dreams" Queens Public Access TV with host Richard Buccola
taping ALL EVENTS on Saturday, September 8th

WORKS BY: LSD-OM, KR. ONE, TEAM, WHISPER, FLINT... ZEPHYR & REVOLT
Curated by Christina Varga / Curatorial Associate Stacy Fine

CLICK HERE to see IMAGES & PRICES of works in the show
or scroll over images as the sssssslide by....

THE VARGA ART FACTORY PRESENTS:
"New York City Graffiti Art"
Featuring works by
LSD-Om
KR. One
FLINT…
TEAM
Zephyr
Whisper
and
Revolt

VARGA Gallery Presents: "NEW YORK GRAFFITI ART"
Opening: Saturday, August 11, 2007
Artists Reception 6 - 9 p.m.
Exhibit runs through September 9, 2007
NYC Graff Historians Will Give a Panel Discussion To Close The Show

VARGA Gallery, on Route 212 in Woodstock, NY presents, "New York City Graffiti Art", with works by LSD-Om, ZEPHYR, REVOLT, FLINT..., TEAM, KR ONE and WHISPER. The show opens Saturday, August 11th at noon with a "Meet and Greet" artists' reception happening from 6 – 9 p.m. "New York City Graffiti Art" runs through September 9, 2007.

"New York City Graffiti Art" exhibition is curated by Christina Varga with curatorial associate and NYC native Stacy Fine.

Closing panel discussion includes special guest historians Steve Hager and Carlo McCormick. Steve Hager was the first journalist to put the words "hip hop" into print when he covered the South Bronx for the "Daily News" and "The Village Voice". He is the author of "HIP HOP" and "Art After Midnight" - two of the earliest books about 80's counterculture art and scene. Hager currently edits "High Times" Magazine. New York curator and art critic Carlo McCormick is an editor at "PAPER" Magazine. "New York City Graffiti Art" is the first graffiti show in the Hudson Valley.

"Expression by Graffiti is akin to cave painting and hieroglyphics more so than any other art form therefore graffiti is unstoppable and significant. Graff is natural and important to youth as it conveys immediate expression like nothing else. Graffiti is a way of leaving your mark on an urban social structure and scheme that cares less about your existence. VARGA's graff show is a landmark in graff history because LSD-OM is in it." -Stacy Fine, associate curator NEW YORK GRAFFITI ART

Come see works by legendary graff writers:

LSD-Om started was writing from 1971 - 1975. He started "The Rebels" with FLINT... and is a pioneer in the graffiti movement most known for his tag. He wrote with graffiti luminaries Stay High, FUTURA 2000, Phase 2, and TRACY 168 among other notable writers of the day and has eschewed gallery representation until now because graffiti is an act of unlawful artistic expression.

ZEPHYR was active on the trains from 1977 – 1985 and never imagined a time when the trains would be graffiti-free. The trains were the graffiti movement's creative outlet and tagging the subway cars a common teenage rite of passage and practice among the youth of New York City. The Graffiti movement took a blow when the Metropolitan Transit Authority enforced their clean train campaign and the MTA has buffed all graffiti as soon as it appears on subway cars since 1989. He regrets the constant and relentless demonizing of graffiti and notes "If it's something that someone gave you permission to paint you aren't doing graffiti."

REVOLT met up with The Rebels hanging out in Central Park. He's an all-city writer that credits LSD-Om as the "groovy graffiti guru" and TEAM's "GO Club" as one of the greatest crews of the 1970s. One of the most influential writers of his time he looks at the writers of today as ambitious and happening with a wealth of resources unavailable to the graffiti movement's earlier artists: wider selection of paint, graffiti books and films as style guides, high-tech markers and spray paints for graffers. He sees the graffiti movement as an international scene with people hitting transit all over the world.

FLINT… was writing with LSD-OM for a few years before they started "The Rebels" (TR for short) and is now part of the "EX VANDALS". The three dots following Flint's name have become his claim to fame. Dot, dot, dot precedes his original remarks or comments. The well known ones were also the fastest to write: FOR THOSE WHO DARE... , BAD, BUT NOT EVIL..., FOR LADIES ONLY... MINDS WERE MADE TO BE BLOWN..., BE ALL YOU CAN...

TEAM's writing was influenced by taking the train to school in New York City, seeing pieces and tags on trains and names on books and the black board. He started writing in 1974 hitting trains and trucks. TEAM started "The GO Club", originally a crew of writers which grew and later was associated with violence.

Queens based KR. ONE credits ZEPHYR as an influence. He started writing in 1977, putting most of his effort on trains during the early 1980's. He calls himself a "Graffiti Purist" concentrating on the form of the letter. "To me that's what Graff was all about, the letters, the style of them... taking the fixed system that is our alphabet and bending them." He used pen and ink, paint, canvas, sheet metal, and any other surface he could find.

In addition to being a painter and graffiti artist, Chip Wolfson aka Hesher a.k.a. WHISPER was an MTV-2 VJ, host of MTV's reality show "I Bet You Will," singer/songwriter for "Roguish Armament", toured the world with the legendary band "Bad Brains" and was the opening act at Woodstock 1994. He started tagging in Queens about 1980, had his first art show at "Downtown Beirut", and was part of the 80's emerging LES "neo-expressionist" movement. He exhibited for three years at the East Village Gallery.

please note:

The show wraps up with an open forum "Graffiti Talk" with some of the artists, Carlo McCormick the Senior Editor of Paper Magazine and will be moderated by Steven Hager Editor-in-Chief of High Times Magazine on September 8th. "New York City Graffiti Art" closes September 9th. VARGA Gallery is open Thursday through Sunday from 12 – 5 and by appointment. The Studio is open most days at noon. For more information please call 845.679.4005, visit www.VARGAgallery.com, or email gallery@vargagallery.com.

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VARGA Gallery & Studio
130 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498

845.679.4005
http://www.VARGAgallery.com
http://www.myspace.com/vargagallery

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