Yo! Street art peaces out

By Vanessa Carr

This Friday and Saturday nights, the internationally traveling “Yo! What Happened to Peace?” art show comes to San Francisco’s Jack Hanley Gallery. Started in 2003 in Tokyo by curator John Carr in response to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Los Angeles-based show has been traveling to cities around the globe, most recently Stockholm and London.

The San Francisco show, which opened last night, is a selection from the show’s total body of 250 handmade prints — mostly silkscreens, linocuts, and woodcuts — contributed by 130 artists worldwide with influences ranging from punk rock and hip hop graphics to the Chicano Poster Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s.

A pro-peace, anti-war art show in San Francisco may seem about as novel as a Charlton Heston fanatic at a gun convention, but “Yo! What Happened to Peace” should not be dismissed with a been-there-done-that yawn.

While some of the pieces fall victim to tired “Fuck Bush” iconography, the majority of the work represents political printmaking at its best: exceptional graphic design, intense colors, expert production, and sharp political commentary.

One of the most gut-wrenching pieces in the show is a striking multilayer stencil print by Oakland graffiti artist Paul Barron memorializing Gary King, Jr., a twenty-year old black man who was shot and killed by an Oakland Police officer in September 2007. Like many of the prints in the show, Barron’s stencil had its debut in the streets, not a gallery, on a concrete pillar near the Oakland BART Station where King, Jr. was shot.

Gary's pillar courtesy of IndyBay

Curator John Carr said his goal for the show is primarily inspirational; he wants to rouse the same sense of possibility and excitement that punk rock graphics roused in him as a kid growing up in a small conservative town. He also wants the traveling show to inspire onlookers to join the street art movement; the live silkscreening at each show is intended to demonstrate how quick, easy, and inexpensive it its to mass-produce prints, Carr said.

Silkscreen prints made by Yo! artists Thursday night at the opening were seen this morning wheat pasted in Mission District near the gallery.

“Yo! What Happened to Peace?” features a number of well-known Bay Area political printmakers, including Favianna Rodriguez and Jesus Barraza of the Tumis design studio in Oakland, Firehouse artists Ron Donovan and Chuck Sperry, Alameda native Jon-Paul Bail, and Oakland-based artist Art Hazelwood, among others.

RA, out of Orange County, travelling with Yo!

Also exhibiting are Eric Drooker, best known for his New Yorker covers; Shephard Fairey; Robert Del Naja of the electronic music group Massive Attack; Los Angeles graffiti artist Mear One , and others. The show is being held in conjunction with Gee Vaucher’s “Introspective” exhibition, also at the Jack Hanley Gallery.

Live spoken work performances by Penny Rimbaud, former member of the anarcho-punk band Crass, with musical accompaniment by saxophonist Louise Elliot will take place on Friday and Saturday nights.

Yo! What Happened to Peace?
Jack Hanley Gallery
395 Valencia Street, SF
415-522-1623
www.jackhanley.com
1/17-1/19
Free

Gallery hours: 11 am to 9 pm daily
Live poster printing and street poster give-away schedule:

1/18, 6-9pm: John Carr and Ra and other Yo! artists
1/19, 6-10pm: Gee Vaucher, Winston Smith, Firehouse, Eric Drooker, Favianna Rodriguez, Karen Fiorito, Art Hazelwood, Kelly Maxxx, Mear One, Doug Minkler, Ra, Chris Shaw, Jesus Barraza, Kevin E. Taylor and Adam Smith

Live performances by Penny Rimbaud and Louise Elliot:
1/18: 9:15 pm
1/19: 9:15 pm

Comments (1)

Jelle King:

wish i could have caught rimbaud - after catching him venting spleen on vbs.tv's soft focus UK i kinda regret lumping him in with sid vicious and all the other crappy faux-political musicians

Posted by Jelle King | January 21, 2008 07:23 AM

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