Pace Prints is pleased to present Harmony & Discord, an exhibition of new works by Shepard Fairey, created in the Pace Editions studios in New York. This is Fairey’s first exhibition with Pace Prints and premiers his first works in handmade paper as well as the largest screenprints he has done to date. The exhibition will be on view May 5-July 6.
Harmony & Discord references the global dichotomy of politics; what forces it creates on the grand scale and how that reflects on the actions and awareness of the individual. Responding to the energy of New York, Fairey worked on this technically complex body of work in a series of sessions at the Pace Editions studios. During this residency he also went out on the streets and made a number of large murals.
On view will be a number of silkscreens done with collage and spraypaint, as well as handmade paper, embossment and relief prints, and large metal plates with screenprint. Though Fairey approached the work in the same way that he does in his studio, Pace Editions provided the opportunity to scale the work to a larger size. Relating to the surfaces of his street work, the hand painted multiple (HPM) works in this series have backgrounds of stenciled pulp, collage, screenprint and embossment, allowing the image to pop off of its vintage, layered surface. This exhibition also marks the first time Fairey presents metal relief plates as art pieces, layered with silkscreen, furthering spatial extent within the work.
Subjects in the exhibition include Fairey’s Imperial Glory and Power images, both of which pay homage to Lichtenstein’s style while referencing issues of the military industrial complex. Also on view will be The Reagan and Friends series, depicting politicians and corporate bosses as manipulative salesmen. A more graphic grouping of works, which all utilize the target as a device, examines symbols, stereotypes and propaganda. Topics include war and peace, political corruption, global warming, and personal empowerment and responsibility.
Shepard Fairey is the artist behind OBEY GIANT, the graphics that have changed the way people see art and the urban landscape. Fairey’s work reached a new level of recognition in 2008, when his HOPE portrait of Barack Obama became the iconic image of the presidential campaign and helped inspire an unprecedented political movement. As Fairey’s body of work reached its 20-year mark in 2009, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston honored him with a full-scale solo retrospective, which drew a record number of visitors for the museum. Entitled Supply and Demand, the exhibit shares its name with Fairey’s career-chronicling book. After its time in Boston, the Supply and Demand exhibition made additional runs at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, and the Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, OH, also breaking attendance records in both museums. In May 2010, Fairey unveiled a new collection of work, entitled MAY DAY, through Deitch Projects as the world-renowned gallery’s final project. In 2011 Fairey was featured in the Art in the Streets exhibition at the MOCA Geffen in Los Angeles. Fairey’s Protester image was the cover of Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2011 issue.