At Van Der Plas: Al Diaz and Danny Cortes
The Lower East Sides’ Van Der Plas Gallery is once again proving its street bona fides, hosting a show of new work by New York street art legend Al Diaz and Danny Cortes, the emerging superstar of hyperrealistic urban grit sculpture
Diaz At Van Der Plas Gallery, 156 Orchard Street, Manhattan
Diaz’s “Words, Objects, Notions” and Cortes’ “Disappearing Urban World” both open with a receptions at Van Der Place 156 Orchard Street on Friday, October 20 at 6 PM and run through Nov. 12. The show seems certain to be another example of Adriaan Van Der Plas’ enduring commitment to the NYC art underground.
A Diaz collage feature one of the few photograph of Diaz and Basquiat together
Diaz, who first gained renown in the 1980s as co-founder of the seminal graffiti writing duo SAMO© with Jean-Michel Basquiat, continues to refine his latter day practice. His work continues to communicate through familiar subway sign fonts, but Diaz has greatly expanded the media for his messages.
“My musings constitute a list of categories which includes social commentary, humor and politics. This year I have turned a corner and now headed in a new direction,” he said, noting that he has added collage and geometry into the mix, along with language, philosophy and science.
The new work has Diaz “playing with triangles, circles and squares and accompanying text. Using collage on paper, paintings and sculptures to spotlight, explore and celebrate each of these geometric forms,” he said.
He’s also reviving an old comic book project called MR. PANTS that he created in the 1990s. He describes his protagonist as “part player, part super hero, all badass.”
A U.S. mailbox made small by Cortes
Meanwhile, Cortes brings newly burnished New York underground bona fides to the lower level of Van Der Plas in the form of his startlingly realistic miniatures of urban scenes, buildings, lots, alleys and quotidian street objects like ice machines and mail boxes.
In just a few years since he began making the miniatures, Cortes has leveraged his meteoric rise online into a thriving art practice that has included sales at Sotherby’s and a glowing write-up in the New York Times.
Cortex with a miniature of the dumpster he is sitting against.
Quoted in the Times, Cortes said: “I love everything abandoned, everything rusty, dirty. When you pass by a dumpster, most people usually don’t take time to stop, breathe, forget about your daily life in New York and the hustle and bustle. Take your time, look around. You can see beauty in a rust drip.”