FIRST FRIDAY FOCUS: Video and Q&A with AntiPop Ltd.

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FIRST FRIDAY FOCUS: Video and Q&A with AntiPop Ltd.

POSTED: Friday, November 6, 2009, 9:17 PM

Filed Under: Arts Arts Events

myspace.com/antipopltd

Xerox Number Three, by AntiPop Ltd.

If you happened to be anywhere near the corner of Third and Race streets this morning at 8 a.m., you might have noticed Stephen and Ophelia Clark ' the creators of AntiPop Ltd. ' plastering boarded-up windows, guerrilla style, with their art. This week's First Friday Focus gets into the meaning behind the mostly-black-and-white multimedia collages that have popped up in Old City and other neighborhoods as a fitting juxtaposition to gallery-bound First Friday. Here's a snippet from the column:

"As experience tells us, art and creative expression suffer greatly under corporate control," says Stephen. This is not a diss on First Friday but a call to action for artists living in a world where expression is trumped by advertising, capitalism and the Internet. "Our concern is for the next generation of artists, since we are witnessing individuality being co-opted by pre-packaged rebellion, creating youth that will be bereft of culture, independent thought and artistic intent."

Our very own Neal Santos got up bright and early this morning to follow the Clarks as they installed their public exhibition. Watch the video below; then read a Q&A with the artists, who want to make sure you don't get the wrong idea about what they're doing. "We're not political or anti-technology or anti-popular culture," says Stephen. "What we're trying to do is put these things into perspective in a world that is seemingly becoming more and more reliant upon them."

City Paper: Your work is heavily collaged found art with tons of pop-culture references ' like the CBS symbol. Can you talk a bit about the work and the meaning behind it?
AntiPop: For the most part our paintings are a combination of collage and acrylic paint. We are interested in using images in a context that is reactionary to corporate controlled media's abandoning of fact-based news for agenda-based propaganda and exploratory of the effect this poses on the society at large. The pieces range in size and scope. Along with paintings and collage we incorporate installations, original music and photography and we are now beginning to experiment with short films. We have seen all of these mediums in recent years scooped up into massive corporate conglomerates and as experience tells us, art and creative expression suffers greatly under corporate control as finance becomes the priority.
We attempt to look ahead and explore the role of the artist in such a society and how the relevance of art will change with greater leaps in technology and possible restraints on individuality.

CP: Where did AntiPop come from?
AP: The name AntiPop is more a reflection of style and aesthetic choice than anything else. We take the name as it describes our attempt to combine the bold imagery of '60s Pop with the reactionist questioning of artistic and societal standards of early 20th-century Dada. The similarities in the movements are clear, both movements being reflections of the society in which they were created.

CP: How long has this idea been brewing? Have you done any public installations like this before?
AP: A year or so ago, I began noticing by and large it seemed the trends in art were not reflecting the society I was living in. In the last 10 years we have seen the world change more dramatically, and faster, than any 10-year period since perhaps the '60s. The only difference seemed to be a lack of public reaction, which seems contradictory since surely people are better informed now. I talked about it with Ophelia who was already painting (I was still doing photography at this point) and we collaborated on a piece (Death and Tax Attorneys) that became our first painting.
We had maybe completed six or seven pieces when we had our first opportunity to participate in a group show at a new gallery in our neighborhood called Skylight 307. The organizer of the exhibition liked and wanted to include all five pieces we submitted and the public reaction seemed genuinely positive. That was in April and since then we have primarily taken to the streets in our neighborhood and others. We have reproduced some of our canvases on stickers and smaller canvas boards and put on public exhibitions. We are currently working on putting together a series of five individually themed shows, each show being a piece of a larger concept. They would include installations, original music and short films displayed with the paintings. We have recently sent this proposal out to a few galleries.

CP: What do you hope audiences will gain from the Friday-morning art installation?
AP: Friday [was] a continuation of the series of public exhibitions we have been putting up. The paintings will explore the replacement of the conventional with new iconography based on celebrity and technology worship. Art is interpretive by nature. We hope that people don't misunderstand where we're coming from. We're not political or anti-technology or anti-popular culture. What we're trying to do is put these things into perspective in a world that is seemingly becoming more and more reliant upon them.

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