sanding sculptures "stemmers"

preparing and pouring mould

final sanding of a 30 kilo concrete "sos" sphere

enlarging photo-artworks in darkroom

inspecting prints 

polishing marble-dust and epoxy-resin "sos"- spheres

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Link to artists' earlier works (1989-1999): coming soon!

Link to artists' early 80's NYC efforts: http://www.avant-streetart.com

1980 lower Manhattan. The streets are strewn with refuse, there are layered graffiti tags, peeling decrepit walls, and manipulative advertisements for crap everywhere you look. The daily public street-experience a pounding affront to our culture’s deeper sensibilities and priorities, a selfish self-interest landscape void of its inhabitants' poetic expressions.

Avant, the first artist group in NYC to adorn public spaces with their handmade unique works of non-calligraphic art was born out of that vacuum. An apparent cultural niche was explored that begged evolution in New York’s short-lived cycles of natural selection.

Until that point, everything that was street was done on the street. Beyond graffiti, early Basquiat SAMO texts and Haring’s crawling baby began to appear. Until Avant’s efforts as artists to use the street as an exhibition space, where works were created in the studio on paper that may otherwise be owned, exhibited and collected had never been explored. Ultimately, Avant produced thousands of acrylic on paper paintings and plastered them on walls, doors, bus-stops and galleries city-wide.

The idea of forming an anonymous group of young artist guerillas that would be capable of mass distribution tactics like commercial ad-agencies was a radical idea that aimed at a mass shift in public accessibility, awareness and engagement in visual art.

The street-as-gallery tradition was born. After avant, this venue has become an evolving world wide establishment as countless artists and creative people make sure that the avant-guard is not restricted to the elite institutions of art alone. - DF

Archive images:http://avant-streetart.com/avant_street_art_1980s_New_York.htm

See Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVANT