One of our favorite young American painters, DAVE CHOE has come a long way from his early days as a graffiti artist to become one of the most interesting and original imagists of his generation, a fact plainly on display at his latest show “Murderous Heart” with the art star-making LAZARIDES GALLERY in London, which opened in SoHo on February 29th. Best known for launching Banksy into the stratosphere followed by Faile and Anthony Micallef among others in quick succession, Lazarides kept Choe’s prices in this show nicely in line with his recent sales, avoiding the three-ring circus mentality of some of his more hype-laden pop up shops of last year which commanded dangerously unheard of prices for work by the aforementioned painters. Featuring an impressive array of mainly large-scale paintings on board augmented by smaller (read: affordable) watercolor paintings on paper, the real attraction of Choe’s London show was his masterful use of color which was heavily showcased throughout this very evenly balanced exhibition. Of course it wouldn’t be a proper Lazarides show without a dash of flamboyant excess which the gallerist managed to provide by having a second show of equally powerful new work by Choe open simultaneously at his second gallery outpost in Newcastle (see next entry). HAVE A LOOK:

London’s gallerist-to-the-stars Steve Lazarides gives Dave a taste of what’s to come at the afterparty… (Photo by Eric Nakamura)

The scene of the crime (formerly a SoHo sex shoppe)…

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Graffiti, London, News, Openings, Street Art, art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.