I’ll be showing new work at Stolen Space this July
2009 Summer Show
opens July 2, 2009. runs until July 19, 2009.
more info at-
www.stolenspace.com
Stolen Space Gallery
Dray Walk, The Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane
London E1 6QL
United Kingdom
P: +44 (0) 207 247 2684
info@stolenspace.com
hours- Wed - Sunday 11:00am - 7:00pm
This will be my debut in Palm Springs, and at M Modern Gallery. The crux of this show will be a series of celebrity wedding cake toppers, a la the custom cake toppers I’ve been doing as personalized private commissions over the past couple years. Most will be homages to the beloved and famous gay couples of our time, along with some more “Fabulous” iconography to pay respect to the Palm Springs clientele amidst a tumultuous era for gay politics in California. Gay or straight, the celebration of LOVE will abound in the form of miniature little people paired in wedlock.
Also, new cardboard “hip hopjects”, action figure editions, large-scale works, and other wood sculpture and kitsch paintings will be a part of the show. I’ll be sharing the gallery with the esteemed Joe Ledbetter. More info on the event and art in the show will be posted here as it becomes available. Feel free to drop any questions and write me.
Mike Leavitt
The Gay Cake Topper Show
M Modern Gallery
opens Saturday October 3, 2009
Charlie Krafft & I will be bombarding London in 2010 with some beef from the Seattle underground. Along with Charlie & I’s “Pitchfork Pals” collaborations, new cardboard shoes, “hip hopjects”, and Art Army action figure editions with a U.K. flair will show at Stolen Space Gallery. Proprietors at Stolen Space were fortunate and kind enough to have purchased the first Banksy Art Army figure, and Stolen Space has shown a few of my pieces in their group shows, so my work has seen the light of day in the U.K. before. But this will be my first real London debut.
May 2010 show w/ Charlie Krafft
opens May 13. runs until May 30, 2010
www.stolenspace.com
Stolen Space Gallery
Dray Walk, The Old Truman Brewery
91 Brick Lane
London E1 6QL
United Kingdom
P: +44 (0) 207 247 2684
info@stolenspace.com
hours- Wed - Sunday 11:00am - 7:00pm
Greg Lundgren’s new gallery devoted to “boutique deathcare” is now open in Seattle. The gallery is located 2 doors North of Lundgren’s “5-year performance art installation”, The Hideout, which is actually just an awesome bar and funky art gallery. Feel free to write me with inquiries using the message form at the bottom of this page.
The below action figure depicts the father of Greg Lundgren, is a sample piece at Lundgren’s ’boutique deathcare’ gallery. My action figures is one of several means with which to memorialize lost loved ones via Lundgren’s enterprise. Instead of the standard urn and tombstone fair, Lundgren’s gallery offers several new means of immortilization. The new ‘deathcare’ gallery brings in other work by several of Seattle’s absolute best artists, to compliment Lundgren’s own monuments, including paintings, urns, and other objects crafted by Charles Krafft, Roy McMakin, and Jesse Edwards. Lundgren himself has made exquisite innovations in the art of tombstones, and the rest of us are only trying to offer something beautiful and meaningful as well.
Seattle P-I article on Lundgren’s deathcare boutique online
October 30, 2008
“Obama and The New International Perspective”
organized by the Italian Democratic Party (Partito Democratico)
Theatre Ambra Jovinelli. Rome, Italy
Just in time for the last days before election day the buyer, Mr. Francesco D’Alessandris, of my piece in MoveOn/ObeyGiant’s Obama art contest organized more Obama artworks to show in Rome. Many Obama artworks were be hung including work by other MoveOn/Obey finalists KC Willis and Nick Rock, to benefit the Obama election campaign from abroad. Both Nick Rock and I attended the event in person, but time ran out for our scheduled public discussion. The “Obama and The New International Perspective” event at Theatre Ambra Jovinelli was a very large umbrella event to celebrate the Obama campaign abroad. Over 500 attended.
This was also the public debut of the 12-inch tall, polymer clay Barack Obama Art Army action figure. Along with the figure and “grassroots” piece of mine, I ported several other works for the show, mostly made from two different stencils I made (samples below). The first was very simple and made in 2006 to get Obama off the ground, the second I made more recently to do t-shirts and such. To my utterly ecstatic surprise, the Italians are in love with Obama. Not only is it a testament to the intelligent, informed, and progressive nature of Europeans, it’s just another sign that the fractured world-wide perception of the U.S. have changed literally overnight now that Obama is elected.
December 8 - December 29, 2007
Copro/Nason Gallery
The Art Army returns to L.A! with all-new renditions of low-brow superstars, underground heavyweights, and some L.A. art darlings. being the 3rd show at Copro/Nason in as many years, The Art Army is in metamorphosis. New 10″ editions of artists such as Audrey Kawasaki, Travis Louie, Jeremy Fish, CRAOLA, Chet Zar, Kathy Olivas, Sam Flores and Amy Sol take on new the forms of cyclops, mermaids, centaurs, minotaurs, cyborgs, and sirens. The artists’ human form morph with their painted surrealities into mythical hybrids of figurative form. The small, circus creature sculptures will be installed in a carnival-curio-shop-like atmosphere in the gallery. As a bonus, an over-sized, 20-inch tall, hand-carved, fully-posable wood figure of Mark Ryden will centerpiece the show.
Mike Leavitt/Art Army New York City solo debut show, June 23-30, 2007
on display: hand-made action figures in dioramas and blister packages, hand-drawn trading cards and bubble gum packs, miniature landscape painting pennies, canvas landscape paintings, other mixed media sculpture, product-satire pricing labels, site-specific “building” installations, acrylic-painted street windows
contact ShowroomNYC/ToyTokyo
“Don’t Stop Object Shopping”
Mike Leavitt solo show
March 21 - April 18, 2009
INSTALLATION VIDEO
(PRESS STATEMENT)
Mike Leavitt’s March 2009 show at New York’s Fuse Gallery signals an art market shift. The Seattle artist has a nostalgic foot locker of shoes accurately replicated in cardboard, from ladies pumps to ’80’s sneakers. The cardboard shoe show will be installed like a thrift shop with Leavitt’s famous action figures, trading cards, Barack Obama pieces, wood carvings, and other small collectibles. Leavitt will also show two collaboration pieces with “bag painter” Chris Crites and the notorious counter-culture ceramicist Charles Krafft. Traditionally distasteful, modest and hokey objects consciously designed for sales are suddenly timely in the art world.
Mike Leavitt participates in an art movement that’s maturing with impeccable timing. Designer toys, hand-made prints, tattoo parlors, skate shops, street art, and hand-made kitsch are melting together to consume the art market from the bottom up. Inexpensive but technical works are being keenly tailored for broad appeal. The proverbial nose can no longer be thumbed at small art and affordable sales. Between high art and a crumbling economy, Leavitt finds common ground when he goes back to the basics. Wood shop, kitchen craft, and figurative representation produce his shoe culture milestones. Cheap, disposable material makes an expensive product, oddly resembling the manufacturing of boutique footwear. Yet the labor makes Leavitt’s shoes into art, not shoes. The cardboard shoes are built durable enough to wear, but even the rigid construction would succumb to a few drops of rain. They’re not competitive with the shoe market, but with a clientele that’s changing the way people buy art. Commercial viability is an urgent reality, not just satire or critique.
