Sedi­tions

Win­ston Smith and Frank Kozik

Feb­ru­ary 2 — Feb­ru­ary 23, 2013

The sedi­tious edi­tions in the show are works of “rebel­lious dis­or­der” that act as an intel­lec­tual call to arms to the pub­lic at large to stand against com­pla­cency. Each artist repur­poses the pop cul­tural zeit­geist of the 50’s post­war era with punk rock bones to cre­ate some­times com­plex some­times bone chill­ingly sim­ple mes­sages chal­leng­ing us to look harder at the pol­i­tics and gov­ern­ments we take for granted are work­ing in our best inter­ests. On exhibit will be orig­i­nal works and lim­ited editions.

Kozik and Smith share the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing lived in post­war Europe in the early to mid 70’s, a period of intense upheaval. Kozik’s child­hood in Franco Era Spain was full of visu­ally influ­en­tial author­i­tar­ian acts and imagery, evi­denced by his use of the pro­pa­ganda poster for­mat. By con­trast Win­ston Smith’s time in Italy as a teenager was full of class strug­gle and socio-political tur­moil turned to vio­lence that one writer claims “amounted to anar­chy.” This state of chaos mixed with a 50’s child­hood in a “fly­over” state comes into stark relief in his polit­i­cally tinged collage-montages.

Using imagery of the 50’s and beyond as his start­ing point, Smith “kid­naps” them from their orig­i­nal con­texts, re-purposing them into polit­i­cally charged tableaus that con­front the viewer with the para­doxes and incon­gruities occur­ring in front of our eyes. With a sub­lime humor, Smith talks to us of deep and trou­bling issues with friendly imagery. Kozik uses the tem­plate of the pro­pa­ganda poster preva­lent dur­ing and post WWII in the US and Europe to cre­ate art print and music poster edi­tions full of visu­ally grip­ping and supremely graphic sce­nar­ios rife with cul­tural mes­sages of chal­lenge. He has recently turned his graph­i­cally keen eye to the world of sculp­ture, cre­at­ing lim­ited edi­tion works of some of his most well known images.

About Win­ston Smith

Smith first became known (and later beloved) for his col­lab­o­ra­tions with punk leg­ends Dead Kennedys and his numer­ous album cov­ers, inserts and fly­ers for the band in their for­ma­tive years. His tech­nique of cut­ting out by hand and glu­ing each indi­vid­ual ele­ment has inspired a gen­er­a­tion of artists. He is clas­si­cally trained in Renais­sance art, hav­ing left the U.S. in 1969 to study at the Acad­emy of Fine Arts in Flo­rence, where he lived for sev­eral years before mov­ing to Rome. Over the last 35 years, Win­ston has had numer­ous one-man shows in San Fran­cisco, Los Ange­les, New York City, Lon­don, Berlin, Antwerp, Rome and Tokyo, as well as group shows through out the United States and Europe. He lives and works in San Francisco.

About Frank Kozik

Frank Kozik is an entirely self-taught artist whose artis­tic career rose largely out of his enthu­si­asm for Austin’s grow­ing unde­ground punk rock scene in the early 80’s. He tran­si­tioned to silkscreen­ing large col­or­ful con­cert posters, cre­at­ing art­work for a diverse array of musi­cians such as Pearl Jam, The White Stripes, The Beastie Boys, Green Day, Neil Young and Nir­vana. He moved to San Fran­cisco in the 1990’s where he started his own music label. In 2001 he tran­si­tioned full time to cre­at­ing fine art, design and art toys. He cur­rently lives and works in San Fran­cisco with his wife, Sharon, and their four cats.

Exhi­bi­tion pre­view avail­able at VarnishFineArt.com

Open­ing Reception

Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 2nd, 6-9pm

Gigan­tic Brew­ing Company’s The Time Trav­eler Porter will be avail­able at the open­ing recep­tion, label designed by Win­ston Smith!

Direc­tions

16 Jessie Street, #C120 — San Fran­cisco, CA
(415) 433‑4400