Very Important People

A Very Important Person (VIP) is a person who is accorded special privileges due to his or her status or importance. The special treatment usually involves separation from common people, and a higher level of comfort.

EOA.Projects presents VIP, the first show of 2015 at the London gallery. The group show includes works by serveral artists.

Sir Peter Blake (b.1932, Dartford) is perhaps the most recognized and highly regarded artist of the British Pop Art movement. Much of his output – such as the sleeve for The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ – has achieved iconic status. Blake’s work reflects his fascination with all streams of popular culture, and the beauty to be found in everyday objects and surroundings. Many of his works feature found printed materials such as photographs, comic strips or advertising texts, combined with bold geometric patterns and the use of primary colours.

Mel Bochner‘s (b.1940, Pittsburgh) approach and materials constantly vary; in fact, the artist formally disavowed allegiance to a single material in his famous essay titled “the Medium and the Tedium” (2010). Bochner—who has produced paintings, installations, and photography—is noted to be one of the most influential pioneers of Conceptual art, and the organizer of the first Conceptual art exhibition in 1966. A recurring theme in Bochner’s work is the relationship between language and physical space or color.

Chuck Close (b.1940, Washington) reinvented painting with his monumental portraits, rendered with exquisite, exacting realism from photographic sources. Playing with ideas of scale, color, and form, Close has become famous for his rigorous, gridded application of individual color squares, which, although abstract up close, form unified, highly realistic images from afar.

Damien Hirst  (b.1965, Bristol) is undoubtedly the most acclaimed contemporary artist of his generation. Genuine star of the YBA (Young British Artists) movement, Hirst has always made a point of mixing up his genres. Artist, entrepreneur and celebrity, he has produced much of the most spectacular works in recent years and helped to revolutionize the art market. Damien Hirst always seeks to subvert the system and thereby create some truly emblematic pieces of art.

Noorah Kareem (b.1990, Riyadh) graduated with a diploma from the Arts & Skills Institute, Riyadh in 2009. In 2012 Kareem pursued a degree in the field of special Education- Behavioural Disorder & Autism, Riyadh. Alumni of the Crossway Foundation Create & Inspire competition 2011.

Alex Katz (b.1927, Brooklyn) is the outstanding protagonist of figurative Painting, and one of the most influential painters in the world. Alex Katz was often said to be one of the father of the Pop Art movement, but his style was always independent on the borderline between abstraction and realism.

Jeff Koons (b.1955, York) playfully tests the boundaries of commerce, celebrity, banality and pleasure. He turns banal commercial or everyday objects into art icons by using seductive materials, a shift of scale and a contextual displacement. Koons’ large-scale vinyl “Inflatables”, his enormous chromium stainless steel “Balloon Dog” or the giant “Puppy” and “Split Rocker” made of hundreds of flowers all follow this principle.

Eric Parnes (b.1979, New YorK) is a multimedia artist and considers his art to be “Neo-Orientalist,” meaning that which delves into the visual appropriation and socio-political dynamics between Eastern and Western culture. In a body of work that includes photography, sculpture, painting, installation, and video, Parnes draws equally from contemporary and historic references.

Mohammed Shammarey (b.1962, Baghdad) is a self-taught artist; he works with painting, photography, silk-screen printing and sculpture. Since 2008, he has lived and worked in Houston, Texas.

Joe Webb (b. 1976, UK) uses vintage magazines and printed ephemera that he has collected to create hand-made low fi collages, no computer trickery in sight. Webb re-invents the imagery taken from his collection of printed materials to create simple and elegant, yet surreal, images that explore love and longing.

Rirkrit Tiravanija (b.1969, Buenos Aires) goes beyond performance to create socially-engaged conceptual works that blur the boundaries of art in novel ways and bridge the division between public and private. Tiravanija initiates ways to enable the public to be a part of the art-making process, what has been called relational aesthetics. He won a Hugo Boss Prize in 2004.