EINE "Innocence”

On Saturday, June 15, 2013, CHG Circa presents international street artist Ben Eine’s exhibition “Innocence” featuring an exclusive collection of his famed work, shown on the Victorian subway walls and rail yard fences of an Eine installation experience.

From his recent collaboration with luxury brand Louis Vuitton to his Virgin Atlantic in-flight and departure lounge “Gallery in the Air” exhibitions, Eine is pushing the boundaries of urban art to new dimensions. “None of us could have imagined we would've been celebrated artists. We all were just into graffiti and wanted to push the art form forward. Looking back, it helped that we were so young, because if we were striving to become artists, then it would've affected the work we did. Eine adds about his exhibition in a feature with Interview Magazine. “A lot of our styles were created by the innocence we had. So these paintings in my show are about those layers of graffiti and the street and the interesting patterns they create.”

In the London urban art underground, Eine’s graphic lettering iconified the streets and shutters with a bold, bright style. With vibrant typography, Eine’s letters show as visual artifacts, phonetic with colors and contrasts. In painting an entire London street with epic spray paint letters, the street was renamed “Alphabet Street” and described by UK’s The Times as a “living piece of art,” winning the hearts and minds of England with his inviting work. In 2010, his colorful canvas work “Twentyfirst Century City” was presented to President Obama as a gift from the UK Prime Minister David Cameron, finding Ben Eine world recognition.

Eine’s symbols of color, contrast and form framed by street, shutter, and canvas, create a living syntax: a recognition of letters and words at play, abstract in the street and the gallery. Eine’s art is figuratively laconic with its graffiti origins, and ironic with phrases as “Vandalism” co-opting criminal mischief for the bright aesthetics of his urban art. In the graffiti underground, Eine conceptualized the outlaw tag as a medium of innocence resistant to control - art versus vandalism. Within the exhibition space, his street themes find new mercurial contrasts - art versus business. Art’s innocence, resilient to control, is what Eine calls happy graffiti.

The opening reception for Eine’s “Innocence” exhibition takes place Saturday, June 15, 2013 at CHG Circa. The reception is open to the public, and the exhibition will be on view through July 13, 2013.