MODERN/ART/PUNK
MODERN/ART/PUNK is a special temporary exhibition by Jack Walls. Open September 24th from 6 to 11pm. Join us for the opening reception at Co-Prosperity.
Jack Walls’ Art Exhibitions, are usually shown in outlaw galleries in downtown New York. His first one-man-show, ‘ADA’, A Series of Collages’, was presented at FUSE GALLERY, 2008. In 2010, his second one-man-show, ’The Ebony Prick of the White Rose’s Thorn’, (TEPWRT), an epic prose piece laboriously writ on fine paper, was also presented there. Erik Foss, had the foresight and the vision to make these two landmark events, happen for Walls. FUSE GALLERY, was located on Second Avenue in the rear of a bar called ‘LIT’. LIT, and FUSE GALLERY, co-owned by Foss, was the intellectual hub of the burgeoning outlaw downtown art scene in the 2000s.
In 2015, Walls exhibited his first collection of paintings at ’BACK GALLERY, BASILICA HUDSON’, Hudson, New York. In 2016, he presented a show of paintings at CARRIE HADDAD GALLERY, Hudson, NY. Through the largesse of Basilica Hudson co-founder Melissa Auf der Maur. Walls, would briefly become a part of Basilica Hudson’s thriving hive of local artists. Before departing back to his hometown of Chicago, in 2019. Where, over the past three years, throughout the pandemic, Jack Walls created much of this body of work for his upcoming show at CO-PROSPERITY, Saturday, September 24, at 6pm.
Jack Walls’s storied existence began in Chicago, Illinois in 1957. He was born in Cook County Hospital. He attended Ambrose Plamondon Elementary School. While growing up in Chicago, Walls spent his early teens in Pilsen. Specifically, as a member of the Morgan Deuces, a street fraternity of delinquent youths. He attended Tilden High School. After a stint in the Navy, he arrived in New York in 1981. Where he met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Jack Walls has lived a colorful life.
“I realize that in my artwork I am carrying on a running conversation with other artists. Basquiat, Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, and Andy Warhol. My work is informed by this quadrangle of inspiration. They are ingrained in the marrow of my day-to-day existence. My subconscious, in my bones.
Through this dialogue, my work, becomes something wholly my own. Whether it be in my paintings, drawings, or writing’s.”
“Generally, if not in the act of physically making art, I am thinking about making art. The physical part of making art is only ten percent of my process. The other ninety percent is the hardest part. That’s where the real work lies, the work that sometimes keeps me up late at night. Spinning the running thread through my work. Connecting my past with the here and now.”
