Wild in the Streets

Featured Artists:  Barton Lidice Benes, Jeben Berg, Kiah Celeste, Ezzit Whurr, Nan Goldin, Richard Hambleton, Chris Johanson, Joel Lamere, Thaniel lon Lee, Blake Lipper, Robert Loughlin, Alyx McClain, Barry McGee, Mark Anthony Mulligan, Loren Myhre, Lori Nix / Kathleen Gerber, Tom Pfannerstill, Jack Pierson, Licia Priest,  Marcus Leslie Singleton, Jaylin Stewart, Leo Tecosky, Kenny Tucky, Jeremy Vessels, David Wojnarowicz, Derek Toomes, and Lee Walton.

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City streets are conduits for commerce and civic engagement, thoroughfares that people take on their way to work, shop, and play. The artist who chooses the street as a site for intervention or inspiration will often have to compete with, or surrender to, the business signage and corporate advertising that typically dominates the urban commercial landscape.

Garland Jeffreys released the song Wild in the Streets in 1973 amid a spirit of freedom and rebellion that was being expressed by a new generation of youth that had just come of age during the social upheavals of the 1960’s. The young artists and musicians who were active at this time were tapping into a particular ethos of self-realization and independence that could only come from outside the status quo and beyond the formal institutions that are most often responsible for the standardization of culture.

Artists like Robert Loughlin, Richard Hambleton, and others, who were working in New York during the 1970s and 80’s, a key period when street art was being ushered into the cannon of contemporary art, most notably by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, are presented here in an exhibition alongside artists working today who continue to use the street as the primary spark for their work.  

The Wild in the Streets exhibition showcases the self-expression and creative dynamism that emanates from the overflowing and sometimes vacant life of the street. Artists from graffiti writers and muralists, to photographers, sculptors, performers, and painters have all developed wide-ranging approaches for engaging, finding meaning, and often salvaging a large portion of their materials, from the industrial sites, alleyways, and other nooks and crannies, that course through public spaces.