“Twenty Years Under the Influence of Juxtapoz” Opens at Barnsdall

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ButcherBunnyMAG

February 22 celebrate two decades of groundbreaking art, celebrated with a mega show featuring over 100 artists popularized through the genius of Juxtapoz Magazine. Founded in San Francisco Robert Williams, Craig Stecyk, Greg Escalante, Eric Swenson and Fausto Vitello as a West coast nose-thumb to the New Your art establishment, Juxtapoz slammed contemporary street culture, figurative art, California car culture, gig posters, tattoos, graphics, psychedelia and comics onto gallery walls, championing a return to figurativism with an entirely new pop culture twist.

Now the most widely disseminated art publication in the world, Juxtapoz has launched careers, inspired gallerists and museums, and helped keep MFA programs full. Big eyed girls, antlers, hotrods, cartoon characters, sides of meat, bunnies, religious figures, robots…these are some of signifiers of those inspired by Juztapoz. Painting, printmaking, sculpture, scratchboard taxidermy, collage, traditional crafts like embroidery all have been fingered by Juxtpoz’s ethos, exploding into the mainstream and shaking up the art world status quo.

Juxtapoz created, and still creates, a foundation and vision that allow young artists to express themselves in the vocabulary of their time and to push their imagination to extremes.

From February 22’s opening party at 5pm through April 19, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park will overflow with Low Brow, Pop Surrealism, New Figurativism and whatever you wish to call these styles. Curated by Andrew Hosner of Thinkspace Gallery and Gary Pressman, “Twenty Years Under the Influence of Juxtapoz” takes a long lingering look at what the magazine has wrought while continuing to inspire.

At 3pm on Sunday February 22, the exhibition will kick off with a free screening of Robert Williams: Mr Bitchen, totally perfect since Williams, one of Juxtapoz’s founders, will be presenting select works from “SLANG Aesthetics!” The screening is in the Barnsdall Theater.

Both exhibitions are sponsored in part by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. The LAMAG is located within the beautiful Barnsdall Park at 4800 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. Twenty Years Under the Influence” and “SLANG Aesthetics!” special opening February 22, 5pm. Regular gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5PM; free onsite parking–or take the Metro to Sunset and Vermont exit!

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