CURATOR'S STATEMENT
A détournement is a detour of sorts, but not so much along the scenic route as over the tougher road that goes more directly to the truth. A more proximate translation from the French might be a derailment, but I’m not sure English is so well suited to get both the violence and hilarity of the term. Since coined by the Lettrist International in the 1950s, it has served various generations as a common strategy by which to subvert consensus visual language so as to turn the expressions of capitalist culture against themselves. The most typical folkloric version we encounter of a détournement is when someone writes a word at the bottom of a stop sign, so that with say just three letters this mundane road command might read “Stop War.”

Employed brilliantly by the Situationists, whose great philosopher Guy Debord laid out the socio-aesthetic framework for this practice, détournements twist the terms of mimicry in ironic parody using the a semblance of the easily recognizable to dissemble and redirect the literal meaning of signs so as to construe a more honest picture of their deceptive intentions. As such they are a mediation of the media, a way of transgressing the fine art of persuasion that dominates our visual landscape to offer alternative readings and deviant possibilities to the hegemony of mainstream corporate culture. A natural response to the lies and coercions we are fed on a daily basis, the détournement has been the reactive impulse of all those who question reality, from the Punks who adopted it in the 1970s through Culture Jammers, Adbusters, contemporary street artists and the winding legacy of protest movements from WTO to Occupy.

This exhibition is meant to both celebrate the lineage of detournement and bring attention to some of its current practitioners who embody its continued vitality through their art. We live in a forest of signs that are meant to confuse, distract and numb us to the more dire consequences of the human condition as it is. We do not need to follow these signs, we need to make our own so as to find a way out of the mess we are in. I cannot thank these artists enough for their contributions towards helping us find another way.


ABOUT CARLO McCORMICK
Carlo McCormick is an esteemed pop culture critic, curator and Senior Editor of PAPER magazine. His numerous books, monographs and catalogs include: TRESPASS: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture, The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984, and Dondi White: Style Master General. His work has appeared in numerous publications including: Art in America, Art News, and Artforum.


ABOUT THE ARTISTS

• AIKO was born in Tokyo, Japan and has lived and worked in New York City since the mid 1990’s. She received an BFA at Tokyo Zokei University in the field of graphic design and filmmaking, as well as an MFA (with honors) in Media Studies from The New School in New York. AIKO directed Super Flat, the seminal biography on Takashi Murakami, released in 1998, while working in the artist's Brooklyn studio. Subsequently, she collaborated for a period of five years with two young American artists, known collectively as FAILE, before embarking on her solo art career. Recently, Aiko completed a large-scale public mural on the famed Goldman Properties wall, located on Bowery at the corner of Houston street, in New York City.
   
• Dan Witz was born in 1957 in Chicago and is currently based in Brooklyn. Witz attended Rhode Island School of Design from 1975-77 and came to New York in 1978 to attend Cooper Union, receiving a  BFA in 1980. In 1982, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992 and 2000, he received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 1998 he received a fellowship from the Public Art Fund. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide and featured in numerous books and publications. Witz’s first monograph In Plain View was published by Gingko Press in 2010; the book spans 30 years of the prolific artist’s career in creating works “illegal and otherwise.”
   
• David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) was born in in Red Bank, New Jersey. From 1970 until 1973, he lived on the streets of New York City as a street hustler. He was in a band called 3 Teens Kill 4 and exhibited his work in well-known East Village galleries, notably Civilian Warfare, Ground Zero Gallery and Gracie Mansion.  In the 1990s, he fought and successfully issued an injunction against Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association for their distortion of his work in violation of the New York Artists' Authorship Rights Act. Wojnarowicz died of AIDS-related complications on July 22, 1992 at the age of 37. Rimbaud in New York was most recently shown in full during I Am a Cliché: Echoes of the Punk Aesthetic at Les Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France.
   
• Dylan Egon  was born in 1966 in New York City and is currently based in Jersey City, NJ. He studied Anthropology and Archeology at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. He later studied Film at City Tech University in New York. Egon currently works in tabletop design and product styling of commercial photography for luxury fashion editorial and advertising clients. His personal artwork combines his talent in assemblage, love of objects and extensive knowledge of the history of design. In a review for The New York Times, Benjamin Genocchio referred to Egon's work as “sites of cultural compression, fetishization and wonder.”
  
  
• EINE (Ben Flynn) was born in 1970 in London, England. In the 1980s, as a graffiti writer, he tagged all over London before developing a distinct typographic painting style. EINE specializes in painting large-scale letters on storefront gates. His bright, colorful type has transformed streets of cities around the world. In 2011, his work was included in the Art in the Streets exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Los Angeles, CA.
   
• Ilona Granet was born in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA and an MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL. She also studied dance at Collumbia College in Chicago, IL and Chicago Acadamy of Music. A visual and performance artist since 1979, Granet has held numerous residencies, fellowships, lectures and exhibitions across the United States and Europe.
   
• Jack Pierson was born in 1960 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. In 1984, he finished studies at the Massachusetts College of Art, in Boston. Pierson is currently based between New York and Southern California. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, and reviewed extensively in publications including: Artforum, Art In America, ARTnews, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Time Out, and many more.
   
• John Law (Jack Napier) is CEO of the Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) and co-founded the group with Irving Glikk in 1977. Law is best known for co-founding the Burning Man Festival. Additionally, the San Francisco-based troublemaker has been intimately involved in various urban exploration and underground arts cabals such as The San Francisco Suicide Club, The Cacophony Society, Dark Passage, Survival Research Labs, SEEMEN, Madagascar Institute and Cyclecide. The BLF is the longest lived  "billboard improvement" crew in the country and maybe the world. The Joe Camel / Am I Dead Yet and Apple / Think Doomed campaigns were co-written by BLF CIO Blank DeCoverly. This exhibition marks the first time that a BLF artifact has been exhibited in a gallery.
   
• Leo Fitzpatrick was born in 1978. He is an artist and actor, who was discovered at age 14 by director Larry Clark while skateboarding in New York City. Fitzpatrick appeared in films such as Kids and Bully, as well as several television series, including The Wire.
   
• Mark Flood was born in 1957 in Houston, TX, where he currently lives and works. His work has been exhibited in various US museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX; University of South Florida Contemporary Arts Museum, Tampa, FL; The Geffen Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, LA; and the San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX. In July, 2012, The New York Times published an interview with the artist by Randy Kennedy.
   
• Martin Wong (1946-1999) was born in Portland, Oregon and raised in San Francisco, California. He studied ceramics at Humboldt State University, graduating in 1968. During the ‘70s he was active in the Bay Area art scene, and was involved with performance art groups The Cockettes and Angels of Light. In 1978, he moved to Manhattan, settling in the Lower East Side, where his attention turned to painting. He was first exhibited in a group show at ABC No Rio in 1982, and went on to have solo exhibitions at Semaphore Gallery, Exit Art and P.P.O.W. Wong was a collector and connoisseur of everything from graffiti to Asian antiques. In 1993, he donated his graffiti collection to the Museum of the City of New York. Wong’s works can be found in collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the de Young Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The Martin Wong Papers reside at the Fales Library, New York University, and include sketchbooks, correspondence, biographical documents, video cassette recordings, photos, graffiti-related materials, and parts of Wong’s personal library. Wong died in San Francisco from an AIDS-related illness in 1999. The Martin Wong Foundation has been created in his memory.
   
• Max Rippon (RIPO) was born and raised in NYC. In 2005, he received a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He then relocated to Barcelona, Spain where he has since dedicated himself to painting and creating artwork both in the streets and the studio. In recent years, the artist's work has become primarily text-based, exploring and communicating through typography, calligraphy and other hand-painted elements. Rippon's works often offer more questions than answers, with a sense of sarcasm and humor crawling beneath the surface. His influences are rooted in his upbringing in NYC, current life in Barcelona, as well as his extensive travels across Europe and Latin America.
   
• Mike Osterhout was born in 1952 in Montgomery, NY and currently lives in Glen Wild, NY. He received a BFA/MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1979, and a CTS from Pacific School of Religion in 1983. From an article in Artnet, Carlo McCormick wrote of the artist: "Never easy to categorize, Osterhout began his career in the 1970s among the Bay Area Conceptualists, whose odd humor and irascible iconoclasm have proven to be as respected by critics as they are suspect to the market. Osterhout’s own efforts most closely approximate the radical life-as-art convergences set forth in the 1986 New Museum exhibition, 'Choices: Making an Art of Everyday Life,' of which he was a part."
   
• Ron English, born in 1959, is a New York based artist. English coined the term POPaganda to describe his signature mash-up of high and low cultural touchstones, from superhero mythology to totems of art history, populated with his constantly growing arsenal of original characters, including MC Supersized, the obese fast-food mascot featured in the documentary film Supersize Me and Abraham Obama, a fusion of the 16th and 44th Presidents of the United States. Ron English’s work; whether in paintings, billboards, murals, or sculpture, blends stunning visuals with the bitingly humorous undertones of America’s Premier Pop Iconoclast.
  
  
• Shepard Fairey was born in 1970, in Charleston, South Carolina, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He received a BA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1991. In 1989, Fairey launched an ambitious campaign of stickers and posters featuring a stenciled image of the wrestler Andre the Giant. In the two decades since then, his artwork has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums around the world. Fairey designed the iconic “Hope” graphic for Barack Obama, used during the 2007-2008 presidential campaign. In January 2009, during inauguration week, the “Hope” image was acquired by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and became part of their permanent collection. In February of 2009, a mid-career survey of Fairey’s work over the past 20 years was the subject of his first major museum exhibition at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In 2010, the show traveled to The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, and Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH. Fairey's work is included in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC.
   
• Steve Powers (ESPO) was born in 1968 in Philadelphia, PA. In 1994, he moved to New York City, where he is currently based. In the 1990s, Powers was graffiti writer and co-publisher of On The Go Magazine. In 1999, Powers gave up graffiti to become a full-time studio artist. In 2007, he was the recipient of a Fulbright grant, which he used for a project in the streets of Dublin and Belfast. Building on what he started in Ireland, Powers created an ongoing mural project about the complexities and rewards of relationships titled A Love Letter for You. In Philadelphia, Powers and his crew painted more than 50 walls along the elevated train along Market Street in West Philly. The project, sponsored by a grant from the Pew Center for Arts produced with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, has generated positive reviews from publications including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The accompanying book A Love Letter for You, shot by photographers Adam Wallacavage and Zoe Strauss, was published by Free News Projects. Powers is the author of a book detailing his personal graffiti history, The Art of Getting Over ( St. Martin’s Press 1999), as well as the graphic novel, First and Fifteenth: Pop Art Short Stories (Villard Press, 2005).
   
• TrustoCorp is a New York based artist (or collective of artists) dedicated to highlighting the hypocrisy and hilarity of human behavior through sarcasm and satire.
   
• Will Boone was born in Texas in 1982. He graduated with a BFA in Painting from The University of Houston in 2008. He lives and works in New York, NY.
   
• Zevs was born in 1977 in France, he currently lives and works in Paris and New York.