Regime Change Starts at Home
Shepard Fairey, Al Farrow, and Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky)
October 18 - December 6, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 18, 6-8PM

Irvine Contemporary announces a politically-themed three-person exhibition, Regime Change Starts at Home, with new works by Shepard Fairey, Al Farrow, and Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky).  Opening reception with the artists, Saturday, October 18, 6-8PM.

About the Works in the Exhibition

Shepard Fairey, Duality of Humanity 2, 2008. Stencil, collage, acrylic on paper. 44 x 60 in.	Shepard Fairey, internationally known for his iconic street art and graphics, will present nine new paintings and collage works on canvas and paper, including the last of three unique hand-stenciled and collaged portraits of Barack Obama. A new limited-edition print created specifically for the exhibition will accompany the artist’s unique hand-finished works. [Preview images. Artist's resume. High-resolution image of the last hand-finished Obama HOPE portrait.]
Al Farrow, Reliquary of the Trigger Finger of Santa Guerra-III. Detail. Gun parts, bullets, glass, human bone. Dimensions variable.	In his first exhibition in Washington, DC, Al Farrow will present welded metal sculptures of religious structures, which are composed entirely of gun parts, bullets, artillery shells, and human bone. The works form striking commentaries on the militarism embedded in the histories of the three major religions. Farrow’s Christian reliquaries (in a series ironically titled “The Trigger Finger of Santo Guerro”) and exact-scale replicas of a Jewish synagogue and a Moslem mosque are based on historical models for which Farrow assembles appropriated gun parts symbolically related to the three religions. [Preview images. Artist's resume.]
Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky), From the multimedia project, Manifesto for the People's Republic of Antarctica, 2008. Poster 1 (detail).	The exhibition will premier Paul D. Miller’s (DJ Spooky) new multimedia project, Manifesto for the People's Republic of Antarctica, which is based on his current work on the political and environmental issues surrounding Antarctica. The video project draws from archival footage of Russian and US explorations of Antarctica remixed with MIller's music and contemporary environmental themes. The installation will combine the new video work with a series of posters and graphics that comment on Antarctica as a contested continent with a long and often suppressed political history. [Preview images. Artist's resume.]

Shepard Fairey
New Print Edition for the Exhibition

Shepard Fairey, Rose Girl, 2008. Limited edition screenprint. 24 x 18 in.
Available only at Irvine Contemporary for the exhibition.

Public Program:
Artists' Dialogue at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Friday, October 17, 7PM

Art Meets Politics: Shepard Fairey and Al Farrow in Dialogue. Shepard Fairey and Al Farrow discuss their innovative work and reflect on the social and political issues that inspire them. Sarah Newman, Curator of Contemporary Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, will moderate the discussion. A reception follows the program. [Click here for information and tickets.]

About the Artists

Shepard Fairey’s paintings and prints have been widely exhibited in galleries around the world, and his iconic street art, recognized worldwide under his Obey Giant identity, is now among the most widely known urban art of our time. His works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. His work has been reviewed and featured in The New York Times, TIME, Salon.com, The Los Angeles Times, Wired, Juxtapoz, Swindle, and many other publications. Two monographs on the artist’s work and career have been published by Gingko Press: Obey: Supply and Demand (2006) and E Pluribus Venom (2008). Shepard Fairey will have a retrospective exhibition at the Boston Institute for Contemporary Art in February, 2009. Shepard Fairey is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and lives and works in Los Angeles.

Al Farrow has been a metal sculptor for 20 years, and his reliquaries and religious structures made from gun parts, bullets, and artillery shells, and human bone have been exhibited in San Francisco at the Catherine Clark Gallery, the Pulse-Miami art fair, and in major museums. His work is in many important collections around the world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the De Young Museum, and major private collections in New York, Germany, Italy, and Hong Kong. The De Young Museum in San Francisco will present a solo exhibition of his works in November, 2008. Al Farrow lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area.

Paul D. Miller (DJ Spooky) is a conceptual artist, musician, and writer based in New York. Miller’s work as a media artist has been presented in multiple venues over the past ten years, including The Smithsonian Portrait Gallery (2008), The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (November, 2007), the Venice Biennale (2007), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2004), the Whitney Biennial (2001), Mass MOCA (2003/2004), and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (2002). As a musician, Miller has composed and recorded a huge volume of music (with a discography of over 100 titles), and he has collaborated with musicians and composers in almost every category from hip-hop, jazz, rock, electronic, and reggae to classical and conceptual. Miller has written two acclaimed books, Rhythm Science (MIT Press, 2004) and Sound Unbound, an anthology of writings on sound art and contemporary music (MIT Press, 2008). Miller is currently working on film and sound projects on Antarctica, both a feature film with original music, Terra Nova: the Antarctic Suite, and an editioned multimedia video and graphics project, Manifesto for The People's Republic of Antarctica, which will be presented in this exhibition.

For further information about available art works, please contact Lauren Gentile, Assistant Director & Director of Sales (lauren@irvinecontemporary.com). Phone: 202-332-8767. Press and media contact: Martin Irvine, Director (martin@irvinecontemporary.com). Phone: 202-332-8767.

Press release in pdf | High-resolution image of Shepard Fairey's "Obama Hope" portrait (pdf)