CARLOS MARE x VINCENT ABADIE HAFEZ – “Crossing Paths – The Intersection of Memories” – December,18 2015 > January,17 2016
Carlos Mare and Vincent Abadie Hafez present a joint exhibition from Friday, December 18 at the David Bloch Gallery Marrakech.
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Mare is a NYC based sculptor/ painter/ scholar/ US Cultural Ambassador who in 1985 pioneered a novel version of urban graffiti as modern sculpture.
Throughout his career as a sculptor, Mare has consistently brought innovation to the genre’s aesthetic and vocabulary.
His metal sculptures are inspired by his interests of form, light, space in an architectural environment. His admiration of early avant-garde art and sculpture inspired the merging of aesthetics between ‘graffiti’ styles and the modernists of the early 20th century.
As a member of the golden age of subway graffiti (1975–1985), he painted under the moniker “Mare” which was short for “Nightmare”.
He wrote alongside many of the style masters of his generation among them Kel First, Dondi White, Crash, Kase2, Noc167 and others.
This tutelage along with his interest in modernizing the art form lead his interests to contemporary art as a vehicle to re-interpret the concepts and aesthetic of style writing.
As a sculptor, Carlos Mare139 Rodriguez’s breakthrough was with the metal “K” sculpture in 1985.
This led to a series of large-scale sculptures that were true to graffiti lettering format, but peeled and folded into space. By 1986, the sculptures departed from the common vernacular of writing to the more complex study Constructivist, Cubist and Futurist ideas, but yet retained its initial feel of graffiti-style writing.
His sculptures have been exhibited internationally.
Rodriguez also designed and created the award for the annual BET/Black Entertainment Awards show, which is given to entertainers, athletes and actors.
In 2009, Rodriguez did re-skin his first building using his unique sculptural talents.
Works of Rodriguez (as “Mare 139”) were included in the 2010 “Art in the Streets” exhibition of graffiti and street art at MOCA in Los Angeles.
Rodriguez also lectures and writes about the evolution and history of urban art in New York City, where he lives.
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Vincent Abadie Hafez (1977).
Cosmopolitan, Vincent Abadie Hafez’s work is the result of interbreeding, the confluence of several cultures.
Since 1988 it is under the pseudonym Zepha he invests in the graffiti movement. It is in a suburb of Paris that he begins to impose his name and the one of his team, he will not stop since …
He appropriates public space and disrupts certain visual habits: a latent over urbanization is being criticized …
Just as a word written on the sand he wants his art first ephemeral and accessible to all.
Vincent Abadie Hafez developed a visual language and a world in which cross the craftsmanship of ancient civilizations, the movement Figuration, Abstraction lyrical and street art. Aesthetics at the crossroads of two worlds, ancient and modern, showing a balance of instinctive trait and thoughtful composition and cosmic space in which collides with the infinitely small.
The hybrid configurations reveal various aspects, mixing mediums and techniques … Then borned crossbreeding totems anthropomorphic two-dimensional, worn by erosion and which traces appear, signs and symbols calligraphy; hairlines and full that then result found less than writing a construction.
Graph composed of a breath wild forms inhabited a rebellious energy to human will which highlights an inherent order to balance the universe, and which is reflected even in a supposed chaos.
Contrasts, oppositions and complementarity enrich production of works produced in multiple formats gross recovery, worn by time, memory carriers, the result of a questioning of this world seem to forget the principles of its existence …