BLACKLI$TED AND BANNED / JOEY KREBS AKA THE PHANTOM

"BLACKLI$TED & BANNED”
  A one-person exhibition of paintings by
  Joey Krebs a.k.a. The Phantom Street Artist
  In collaboration with L.A. Art Machine
  Milepost 5’s Denizen Gallery
  Hosted by I’klektic Gallery
  Curated by Rene Rodriguez
  850 NE 81ST Ave.
  Portland, OR 97213
  Opening reception:
  June 3rd 2011, 6-10PM
  Exhibition dates:
  June 3rd – June 28th, 2011  

Portland, Oregon

Los Angeles, California

The Phantom Street Artist a.k.a. Joey Krebs, internationally renown as Rage Against the Machine’s Album Cover Artist, responds by tagging the  “vacuous narrative and contrived criteria” of MOCA’s Art in the Streets.

Los Angeles, CA (May 20th, 2011) With “BLACKLI$TED & BANNED” the Phantom Street Artist takes bulls-eye aim at the simultaneous exploitation, misrepresentation, and commodification of street art and its culture. Using Socratic irony the contemporary political street artist calls into question hegemonic institutions that exploit such visionary movements through conjured, gratuitous media campaigns and other disseminated forms.

The Phantom Street Artist states: “BLACKLI$TED & BANNED” is a response to “the vacuous narrative and contrived criteria of the so-called “Museum of Contemporary Art” curators and its staff who present themselves as sole arbiters of the Graffiti Movement”.
“Their history is not our history”, asserts Joey Krebs  The Phantom Street Artist. Rose, Gastman and Deitch, the exhibition’s co-curators and MOCA’s Director, radically alter the epistemology of graffiti culture through varied means, particularly ahistorization and Post Colonial methods and practices, he continues.

Their attempt to survey a broad historical movement offers us a lens that is distorted through acts of censorship as well as by sophomoric omissions from both the exhibition’s timelines and its roster of artists. They attempt to fabricate fictitious histories of Graffiti’s true logos without conveying transparency and integrity, and all the while concealing conflicts of interest.

In “BLACKLI$TED & BANNED” the Phantom Street Artist employs a critical and ironic language that stakes new claims. Via deliberately ironic forms of simile that are used in sarcasm and varied motif litotes that emphasize underlying subtleties of meaning, the Phantom questions the manufactured campaign of public relations, opinion management and its systems. Through clever crass word play and such disclaimers as “One Nation Under Deitch”, he strongly challenges the policy of MOCA’s curators and staff in defining street art's graffiti roots.

To highlight the conflict between the Museum’s exploitation of street art and its oft-challenging subject matter, Krebs refers to Blu’s mural, which was commissioned for Art in the Streets but quickly painted over at the order of Jeffrey Deitch. “…in contradiction the catalogue includes Blu's censored work, yet the institution has whitewashed its castled walls clean of Blu’s commentary”.

The Phantom adds: “I praise the many GREAT Graffiti Artists who have participated in the overthrow of institutional authority by taking part in MOCA’s Art in the Streets as a covert coup d'état, yet  the Phantom defy its curators and its staff who support the value of mammon and commodity in place of responsible community dialogue!”

Based on their diverse philosophical and economic differences Krebs has openly called out one of the exhibiting artists, Shepard Fairey, to meet for a charitable Cage Fight in addressing such philosophical differences.  Krebs encourages individuals to question institution’s like MOCA and its myopic media perception through the very act of DIS-OBEY.

“We'll strike a match and it'll catch

And spread the insight we need

A tiny fire burning bright

Shedding light on the darkness of greed.”
Darkness, Rage Against the Machine

i'klektic is located at Milepost 5, an intentional art community in Portland, Oregon. I’klektic aims to feature contemporary regional artists with solo and group shows, participates in Portland's First Friday and hosts monthly rotating openings. Each First Friday a new show opens with an artist's reception. This is The Phantom Street Artist’s first exhibition in Oregon.

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