Hands Up: A Campaign for Peace
February 28th - May 3rd, 2020
Hands Up: A Campaign for Peace
PRIME Gallery is pleased to present HANDS UP (A Campaign for Peace) showcasing a group exhibition of local North Jersey artists coming together to raise awareness of our campaign for peace and to promote love and unity through various forms of art and expression.
A tribute to all of those who we have lost and have been affected by the recent 2019 Jersey City shootings. This tribute will also showcase Jahahd Payne, a young artist and victim of gun violence, who’s work will be displayed in remembrance of our mission as we raise funds to support our peacebuilding organizations and the role they play in keeping our communities safe. Coalition for Peace Action’s Ceasefire NJ and the Jersey City Anti-Violence Coalition Movement will be our special guest speakers. A percentage of all proceeds will be donated to both charities in support of this campaign for peace.
Curated by Gallery Director, Maria Kosdan and in collaboration with Chaz Howard, Hands UP: A Campaign for Peace will feature artworks by Maria de Los Angeles, Ryan Bonilla, The Real Love Child, Clarencerich, Leandro Comrie, 4sakn_CBS, D.Tunia, Distort, Jahahd Payne, Rebecca Johnson, Walter John Rodriguez, RU8ICON1 and TF Dutchman.
A sensible performing artist since birth, Jahahd Payne was born on March 5, 1996 to Oylema Lewis and Cheron Payne, and grew up in North Jersey. He spent most of his childhood and young adult life participating in the church as a praise dancer to captivating audiences with his emotionally charged self-choreographed mime and hip-hop routines to displaying his exceptional and unique talents as a painter. Jahahd’s spirit and gifts as a visual artist was undoubtedly remarkable and blossoming into what had the potential to be more than extraordinary. After 23 years of blessing the world with his effervescence and passion for life and art, Jahahd lost his life as a victim of gun violence in Newark, New Jersey on August 5, 2019. Whether affectionately known to some as “Hahd, ” “Hodini” or any other host of nicknames he had, Jahahd’s infectious smile, Peter Pan spirit and creativity were known to all and will be missed dearly.
MEET THE ARTISTS
Maria de Los Angeles
De Los Angeles’s subject is both from personal experience and from the larger political conversations surrounding migration. creating compositions of spontaneous drawings with images and actions, which reference the human experience of moving from one space to another, but convey a fragmentary idea of the larger issues.
Ryan Bonilla is a multimedia artist who was born in the Philippines. His work represents the feeling, culture, and freedom of his lifestyle. Bonilla migrated to downtown New York at an early age and as a teenager, he was engulfed and influenced by the art, skate, street, and fashion cultures of the city. Previously a sponsored snowboarder and skateboarder traveling the globe, he later transitioned his career to the fashion and art worlds. He has worked and collaborated with various fashion houses such as Tommy Hilfiger, Burberry, and David Yurman. His work has also been publicized by Elle, Playboy, GQ, and i-Dmagazines. His work was promoted by international and New York galleries and showcased at Art Basel and SCOPE, and collected by the Museum of Art and Design and private collectors. Bonilla spends his time traveling, skating and creating. He currently resides in New York and Jersey City.
Jay Gittens (aka The Real Love Child) is a self taught painter and former street artist who describes his vision and expression as Pop Abstraction. Through the efforts of his mother, he emigrated on his own to Brooklyn from the island nation of Grenada in 2003. From there, he quickly turned to figure drawing as a means of creating companionship. He imagined and illustrated worlds on paper that he felt isolated from, drawing on the rich organic colors he was surrounded by in his former Caribbean home. In time, his commitment to the arts deepened via the world of photography and other visual arts including painting and collage.
Jay Gittens has since been featured in numerous galleries across New York and the eastern seaboard, in addition to receiving press both domestically and internationally. His works, a mixture of brazen street style, yet intertwined with the depth and earnest emotion of fine art, has garnered him an admiring audience in art, fashion, and design the world over.
Clarence Rich, a street artist that for the last 13 years has not only made his mark on the street, but also has challenged the North Jersey gallery scene. His progressive work has inspired a younger generation of urban artists. Rich describes his loose approach and technique as “letting his hand run wild.” His work is visually aggressive and conceptually deviant. With an incongruous palette of morose shapes, and sickly human-like characters he manufactures a world that is not yours or mine.
Leandro Comrie was born in Brooklyn, of Panamanian and Venezuelan descent, his dedication to art was nurtured in Caracas, Venezuela, where he grew up.
Of his work, Leandro states, “Through painting, I am able to connect not only with other people’s stories but also with my own. No painting reveals a specific story, but instead, they are the sum of many stories. My subject matter tends to be broad, and inclusive for this reason. I don’t wish to paint solely about one story or focus on one sentiment. The human experience is a combination of emotions that rise and subside. Therefore, my work can be a mix of heartbreak, love, death, friendship, lust, kindness, sexuality, spirituality among other things, things that as human beings we can relate to.
As an artist, I am intrigued by how we negotiate these aspects of our lives and how we navigate life itself in different times and spaces, always striving to make the best of our lives.”
“I am 4Sakn-One-CBS. I reside on the East Coast in Jersey City. I have been writing since 1999. So 19 years, seems long in some aspects of my life but not in writing, heads have been rockin for 40 plus and counting. Too much work to do a lot of the Graffitis that needs to be done. I like doing big burners. To me this is graffiti. Giant wildstlyez with strong letter structures that can stand with or without color. Ever changing and evolving letter styles that refrain from becoming stale or stagnant. Or at least striving for that. From burning out in BK to the Bricks there is no shortage of heads that can burn and are extra motivated to keep it fuckin moving and productive. And that’s just this little side of the country. I am in no shortage of amazing artists around me that keep me striving for the next big mission, and keep me grounded and humble. From my crew CBS to my local brethren. No longer in graff can you be a one hit wonder when you have homies like my boy Elser rockin for many generations, and no longer on the east coast can you say we do small sticker pieces with homies like Hoacs and many others putting in Big One day burners. In my direct area my homies, Veer, Tiper and Distort keep me racking my head for new styles, color combos and letter tech. This is only to name a few. SO to put it shortly when I think of graff and the stuff I have done or places I have painted I cant help but to think, No ones cares keep painting more!” -4SAKN_CBS
Derek Tunia (aka D.Tunia) is full-time pop artist who lives in the Lafayette neighborhood in Jersey City.
DISTORT
Combining classical training with the intense creative energy of graffiti, DISTORT has impacted the streets and galleries alike. Now living in Jersey City, DISTORT earned a BFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a Certificate in Painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Following this period, DISTORT developed a body of work combining sculptural installation and painting. In 2016, he presented these now-iconic “scrolls” and “shields” in a solo exhibition at the Works on Paper Gallery in Philadelphia. DISTORT has exhibited extensively in the Tristate Area and completed murals in Miami, Istanbul, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York, as well as locations across North Jersey. His project, located just outside of the Holland Tunnel, is one of the largest murals by a single artist in New Jersey. DISTORT continues to create challenging work inspired by his admiration of classicism and the intensity of the present.
Rebecca Johnson is an artist and designer who splits time between NYC & JC. She graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Communication Design, concentration illustration. She is the founder of swimclub.studio, and one half of Frankie restaurant + natural wine bar. An avid traveler, she believes that visual communication allows universal connection.
Walter John Rodriguez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1981 and has spent most of his life in New Jersey. He earned a BFA degree from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia in 2002.
Since then, his work has been included in many private collections and used for other public commissions. He has participated in multiple group exhibits in the New York City area over the last ten years and his themes derive from particular reflections on life, social issues, politics and power relationships. His style employs experimentation with mixed media, drawing, anatomy and expressive brushstrokes in order to develop meaning in his compositions.
Ru8icon1 creates paintings and murals. He lives in Barcelona for the most part and is represented by Deep Space Gallery in Jersey City.
The inspiration behind his works, as told by the Artist, himself, “I find out what I’m all about by waiting to see what I do. That is to say I let intuition guide me, which may or not be a ridiculous strategy. It comes from a visual place, I have a vague sense of the effect I want to generate, a balance of strokes and colours and shades that becomes jewel-like with lots of angles and depths that then crystallises at some point into a representation of three-dimensional space. I really need to play around on the canvas to build up what I’m after and it doesn’t work as often as it does. Choice of imagery comes hard to me. Again, certain things feel right others don’t and I have to use a lot of trial and error. Looking back to find a theme I notice that there is often a historic element, in particular referring to the last 500 years when the old world met the new world and race and culture crashed into each other worldwide. The wave is still receding from that high point and ripples throughout everything we see today. It’s a good theme. Inexhaustible.” -Ru8icon1
TF Dutchman studied formally at duCret School of Art in Plainfield, New Jersey, and is a trained painter, stained glass artist, and muralist with strong roots in graffiti and street art. He is also Co-Founder of Deep Space, a Contemporary art gallery in the Bergen-Lafayette neighborhood of Jersey City. Their goal is to serve as a creative incubator and launchpad for their roster of formally-trained and outsider contemporary artists.