Complexcon x Tom Yoo
Tom Yoo is the artist best known for creating both the world’s 1st sneaker NFT and the 1st sneaker made from LEGO bricks. Yet he never imagined when he walked away from a career in investment banking/private equity that he’d become a pioneering NFT artist. Over the span of his career, Tom has collaborated with the likes of Nike, Gucci, Adidas, and LEGO, to name a few. He’s proud to represent as an Asian American artist and his mission is to raise up the next generation of younger BIPOC creatives.
For Complexcon Tom will also be debuting his most ambitious sculpture to date, the first ever 10 ft tall Lego “Jordan 1”. Tom has also created an immersive experience based off his deeply personal character Chie. The story of Chie, follow an Asian American girl who becomes the first woman to play in the NBA.
As part of the experience Tom will recreate Chie’s childhood apartment, featuring exclusive limited-edition merch and the digital release of ““CHAPTER 4: HELLO WORLD” our first glimpse of Chie as an adult. However, the introduction is bittersweet as we witness the hate she encounters simply because of the color of her skin. Yet, she endures… eventually turning a deeply, wounding experience into a powerful, motivating force.
“Innocence Lost” by WhIsBe
“Innocence Lost” by WhIsBe
Legendary NY street artist WhIsBe brings his unique brand of social commentary to Band of Vices for his first LA solo show, "Innocence Lost". A focus of the show is a commentary on gun culture in the US, as it relates to our youth, in particular, mass school shootings. WhIsBe aims to use art as a powerful, emotive tool to keep the discussion relevant and urgent, as opposed to this happening only in response to news reports of the next mass shooting. Shootings that are happening with a worryingly increasing frequency, lulling the nation (with the help of politicians and media) into a state of numbness and acceptance, that mass shootings of children is unavoidable, and ludicrously, the status quo.
Whisbe's work first appeared on the streets of Brooklyn in 2013 with the iconic "Vandal Gummy" garnering the attention of the art world and fashion world. 10 yrs later monumental sculptures of the Vandal Gummy can be seen in museums and public spaces globally, the largest to date, a 27ft tall behemoth in the Hong Kong harbor, and Whisbe has collaborated with numerous fashion brands, such as Coach and Playboy. WhIsBe has also taken the NFT/digital art space by storm with multiple seven figure sales, as well as sales at Sotheby's and Christie's.
“For All (Man)kind”
On January 22 1973 Roe v. Wade ruled in favor of abortion rights. On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade is overturned. The impetus of oppression is dependent on others' weaknesses. This has been true throughout history and is no more prevalent than in the power disparities of gender. Whether it’s the Polish government’s ongoing attacks that harm the rights of the LGBTQ community, the blind eye turned on violence against women in India, or the simple lack of autonomy women have for their own healthcare, in every instance the powerful gain more power while those most affected by these choices feel more powerless. We’re told that these decisions are made for the betterment of “mankind”, but the reality is it's for the betterment of only half of that word. How can you make choices for lives you never experienced? How can you know what is best for society if you don’t listen to their needs?
“For All (Man)kind” brings together six female artists from different backgrounds who through their personal experiences seek to represent the voiceless and reclaim their power through their work. Each artist presents a different perspective on inequality in women’s rights, freedom of sexual expression, gender bias, and prejudice, across cultures.
Featuring selected works by Abi Salami, Angela China, Edyta Pachowicz, Emiliana Henriquez,Jaz Harold, and Radhika Gupta-Buckley
SPRING BREAK ART SHOW, NYC 2022 , Sam Tufnell/Radhika Gupta-Buckley
"The Tank Man" by NFN Kalyan
Presented at Band of Vices 5351 W. Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016
The Tiananmen Square tank man has been a central part of NFN Kalyan’s work for years. The anonymous protestor became famous, the world over, for standing in front of an oncoming row of Type 59 tanks. He represented the best in all of us; the courage we all hope we have. Kalyan’s work is always a visual assault on the viewer. It represents what’s coming and we can’t stop it. In The Tank Man series, the viewer is put into the paintings themselves. Desaturated figures and landscapes face the oncoming gold frames. We stand with them. Through the progression of paintings, that motif is stretched, examined, rotated, and finally broken. Human innocence is questioned, and the mirror is turned on the viewer. In turn, we march, invade, get assaulted, or simply brush our teeth. In each case, the gold frame says something to us about our actions. We can’t stop what’s coming because it is us. The harder we push the further forward we move. We are both the man and the tank.
"The great people we have killed, the environment we have destroyed and the lies we tell ourselves are terrible things. But we are supposed to hate the sin and love the sinner. The sinner is everyone who looks at my work. And the sinner is me. Because we are all human."- NFN Kalyan
Enigma by Dakarai Akil
"Enigma" by Dakarai Akil in Collaboration with Band of Vices, curated by Elliot Clarke.
The burden of the black artist is the audience's expectation of them to only be informants on topics of racism, societal norms, and trauma in their communities. Dakarai wants to portray a different view of the black experience—specifically, the experience itself. "Though my work is always centered around blackness, this time I'm approaching this work as my true, raw self. Exposing my own humanity and the humanity of us all from my culture. Going outside of our trauma– by simply just existing. We exist beyond our trauma. This collection is a radical approach to allowing things to just be. No meaning, no agenda, no lesson or hidden messages."
Inspired by conversations Akil had with his mother, Dakarai explores the concept of existing without the necessity of explanation. "For this show, I opened up about giving very little to no thought into my creative process but instead pulling from feelings that would cause my best work to be essentially void of any explanation. These works are a form of nonverbal communication. Being naturally guided solely by feeling with each cut that goes into a completed collage. It is impossible to prescribe meaning to most of my hand-crafted work due to its nature."
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TO HUG AND TO HOLD by Radhika Gupta-Buckley
"I was at the epicenter of two major COVID outbreaks; firstly, New York in March 2020 and then back in Delhi, India this past April. While the pandemic hit both cities incredibly hard, its harsh tremors were felt the world over. The past 18 months have marked us in away we could never have imagined, and once it’s all over, the bruises will still remain on so many of us for some time. For me, I started this collection as part of an escape from reality but over time it has transformed into my healing process. These works convey my strength and vulnerability flowing in tandem, with the output portraying helplessness, happiness, and hope. As an immigrant in the US, living in these uncertain times and being pregnant with my first child I have longed for the warm comforts of home. Throughout my work, I have intentionally cultivated an Indian story. This can be seen in the protagonists and through the heavy emphasis on color, texture, and patterns." - Radhika Gupta-Buckley
Radhika Gupta-Buckley is a New York based artist of Indian origin. Her life journey enables a wealth of experience, insight and knowledge of the human condition, across multiple cultures and sub-cultures, to be brought to her work. Though painting since six years old, her early career path started with a Law Degree from Oxford and led to practicing law at the Indian Supreme court and at the UN in The Hague. Frustrated by the bureaucratic barriers to facilitating change and highlighting the plight of those suffering injustice, Radhika reverted back to art to inform, educate, and enlighten on cultural issues, from equality, gender bias, sexuality, race, prejudice, across nations and cultures, she aims to use her art to be a voice for the silenced and oppressed.
Black & Blue by Hubert Neal Jr
Hubert Neal Jr. grew up in Chicago and has experienced the toxic relationship between his community and the police dept first hand. A relationship duplicated in other communities across the country. Neal uses a combination of playful, striking and haunting imagery to portray victims of police violence in order to evoke an emotional response, an alternative call to action through art, rather than waiting for the next video of a murder to do it, and a way to keep the memories of the victims alive. The issues with acceptable uses of force, systemic racism, and corruption in the nations police departments are an ongoing epidemic seeded deeply in a historical culture of oppression. Waiting for another person of color to die, for passing off a fake $20, for falling asleep in a Wendy's parking lot, for breaking up a fight, or for simply walking along the street dancing, and being scared and confused when arrested, is not an acceptable method for weeding out "the bad apples" in the police force and showing the inadequacies of police training.
"Black & Blue" aims to be a timeless record of continued excessive police violence on minorities, in an age where social movements are trends that come and go, the power of art as a historical reflection of the times is sorely needed. Neal hopes "Black & Blue" will keep the conversation going, and challenge us to look deeper than the symptoms, police violence on people of color being one. From the outside we may not realize, but there is a war between "Black & Blue" in poor communities, a vicious circle of fear, hate and violence, on both sides. The reasons for the war are the disease. If the quality of education was uniform across the country, not inferior in lower income, underserved communities, if working a minimum wage job didn't keep you below the poverty line, then maybe the culture that led to the "Black & Blue" war wouldn't exist. The bigger conversation is, why is the system set up this way, and why is it allowed to continue? Let's focus on the curing the disease, only then will we be symptom free.
“The Truth You’ve Spoken” By NFN Kalyan
NFN Kalyan’s second solo show with us consists of a series of epic scale oil paintings each depicting his commentary on broad and narrow aspects of humanity, from the purity of creation to the impurity of our inherent self destructive behavior and all of the factors that influence it, some would say that causes it. Or are the factors a product of our behavior? As always Kalyan presents a body of work with many layers, visually, conceptually and metaphorically, a body of work that you can spend hours with and leave with more questions than answers.
VOLTA ART FAIR NYC 2020, Installation by Sam Tufnell
“Beyond the obvious realization that contemporary art is trash is the role of the artist to interpret that ‘trash’ and hopefully make it aesthetically pleasing. I use the ‘aesthetically’ as I’m not sure if beauty and art share the same values. The artist must ‘salvage’ all the waste all the waste that society creates and figure out a way to present it as art. In the end it’s our refuse that will outlive us all so respect it because one day it will be all that is left of you”
-Sam Tufnell
SPRING BREAK ART SHOW, LA 2020 “Afterparty” by David “Mr. Starcity” White.
Where Celebration succumbs to excess, Where excess succumbs to a downward spiral to destruction. “After party” depicts excess with the ultimate price paid. David White memorializes fallen friends in an installation dedicated to their memory. Their stories act as wake up call, perhaps even a call to action, to viewers that relate to the narrative. While the reference to excessive partying can be considered literally, the underlying message is that a lifestyle of excess can lead to destruction.
“The Empress & The Star” By Jaz Harold
“The Empress & The Star” embodies themes of purification, catharsis, and growth, while consciously appealing to child-like naïveté. The works are at once feminine, sensual, innocent and some could even perceive elements as lewd, which could be a reflection of Harold’s upbringing . Raised in a family that entwined sex with shame and guilt, Harold looked for freedom, independence and balance in her work. In doing so, she created gentle, approachable, and occasionally humorous reflections on sex, love, and spiritual growth.
“Reflections Of Always” by BD White
"Reflections of Always" provides us with a thematic sequel to BD's first solo show in 2017 "Love, Loss, And Longing". The female protagonist represents memories of lost love, memories that never fade as one keeps reflecting on what could have been, what could have been done differently, to save the love that was lost. The astronaut represents man at his most distant, his loneliest self, even when the female protagonist is present in the work, the distance and loneliness are prevalent, maybe even more so. From a technical perspective, whereas the 2017 works were ground breaking with over 90 stencil layers on the larger works, "Reflections of Always" consists of works with 200-250 stencil layers. The level of detail achieved is unprecedented, the process to those that have experience in the technique is almost unfathomable. BD White is revolutionizing the stencil technique, as Dürer did for the woodcut, Rembrandt did for etching, and Picasso did for the linocut.
“Fractured, the long journey back to insanity” by David (Mr.StarCity) White
“Fractured” is based on the writings of David White, specifically a letter in the form of a poem to his idol, his big Brother. David’s brother has been suffering from mental illness for decades, specifically PTSD from an early life of gun violence and crime that landed him in jail and homeless on the streets. The body of work consists of a series of expressionistic portraits, each illustrating a line from the poem, while the many twisted, fragmented facets, and psychedelic aesthetics, gives the viewer a glimpse of the world from a viewpoint of one who does not see the world around us as you do. “Fractured” represents a journey of acceptance, understanding and healing to bring a big brother back to the insanity that we call normality.
The relationship and writings between David and his brother brings to mind the letters between brothers, Vincent and Theo van Gogh in the late 19th century that gave us such a clear insight into the tortured mind of Vincent. The letters demonstrate that mental health issues have and always will be a part of humanity we need to address. White’s experience with his Brother has shown him the many shortcomings in society today with, understanding, acceptance and treatment of mental health issues, especially in poorer underserved communities.
White specifically chose Los Angeles for this show as the city has such a prevalent amount of sufferers of mental health issues living homeless on the streets. White hopes to use the depiction of his brother’s journey to instill, empathy, understanding, even anger, to provoke a call to action at a grass roots level to address, embrace and save an alarmingly fast growing section of our society.
“MIXTAPE” by NFN Kalyan
iv gallery opens its doors on June 28th with a solo show by NFN Kalyan. “Mixtape”, a body of work three years in the making, consists of mostly large scale “old master” style oil paintings depicting the cultural, religious, artistic, and historical influences of the artist, visually remastered into essentially a mixtape of humanities past, present and future, that challenges the viewer to question societal, and their own views on many unchallenged, “accepted” norms of the story of humanity so far.
NFN (No First Name) Kalyan spent his youth in India and the US, being born of Indian and American parents. Add to this upbringing the fact that his Mother (PHD Philosopher) and his Father (PHD Mathematician) reached the heights of academia in their respective fields, it is no surprise that Kalyan’s work comes from a place of deep intellect and cultural/religious/philosophical diversity.