Punto618 Art Gallery in Turin, Italy announced about a week ago the opening of HEX CODA a new joint show by London-based artists James Carey, aka O. Two and Italian Andrea Riot.
The two artists started their careers on the streets in (respectively) early and late 1990s, eventually developing a style that fitted their gallery work.
On the one hand we have O. Two’s gestural paintings, based on the interests he developed as a teen in London. He describes his paintings as “urgent and precise motions, drawing together traditional typography, a hopeless addiction to Black Sabbath, and shattered interpretations of New York graffiti in rapid, abstract gestures amongst mists of ambient colour.” Probably, one of the most prominent influences in his work comes from the skateboarding culture which he was part of until a knee injury at the age of 19. Art became then a new passion to follow. His murals and canvas work combines abstract motifs accompanied by text, often playing with different layers and adding new dimensions to the work.
On the other Andrea Riot whose work combines traditional graffiti and calligraphy. Working since his early 20s as a designer, his work was heavily influenced by Ver Sacrum, the official magazine of the Vienna Secession, published between the years of 1898 and 1903, as well as Japanese art and European modern design. As the image below shows, the result is a unique style that combines stylistic traits of traditional calligraphy with the contemporary visuals of street art.
The title of the exhibition, HEX CODA, is a combination of words that mean curse and a written passage, respectively. Put together, they mean something like “written spell” referring to the philosophy of the Wizard Kings, an art collective of which both Andrea Riot and O.Two are part of.
The exhibited works make use of a very unique colour palette, the introduction of calligraphy, gestural painting, and abstract expressionistic tendencies.
Hex Coda opens on Sunday, March 19 at 5pm at Punto618 Art Gallery located on Via Cesare Battisti 2 in Venaria Reale, Turin. The exhibition will be on view until April 29, 2017.
Author: Fran
Founder and editor of Urbanite. Street Art lover who after the finishing her MA thesis on the Mexican and Norwegian muralist movement in the 1920-50s, developed a fascination for street art and graffiti that eventually led to collaborations with different art blogs, including the creation of this one.
