Gardar Eide Einarsson
Not just any arts program would have kids tagging a wall with street art godfather Blek Le Rat. The Details Guild, a partnership between Details magazine and non-profit Free Arts NYC, has given teens the opportunity to shadow artists as they create a mural on the corner of West 13th and Washington. Since the first program with Blek in September 2010, The Details Guild has invited a growing list of young and challenging artists: Slater Bradley, Nate Lowman, and now Gardar Eide Einarsson.
Leslie Russo, Associate Publisher at Details Group, initiated the program “to create interest in what art is today and help young teenage boys see the transformative power of art.” Russo brought the idea to Free Arts, which runs educational arts and mentoring programs for under-served teens, and they started calling up artists who would command the respect of boys from difficult backgrounds. Nate Lowman invited the kids over to pick out letters for his mural, and, as for Blek’s workshop, Free Arts Executive Director Liz Hopfan recalls "literally standing on the street with spray cans tagging the walls.”
Represented by Team Gallery, Einarsson analyzes American rebellion and youth culture, layering his pieces with references to gangs, graffiti, Freud, and comic books. His past public murals include a Philip K. Dick quotation over the entrance to a Norwegian high school, reading in full: “1. Those who agree with you are insane. 2. Those who do not agree with you are in power. 1. Some of those in power are insane. 2. And they are right." Einarsson discusses his Details Guild mural below.
You can support The Details Guild’s Street Studio program by purchasing Gardar Eide Einarsson’s print, a limited edition of 100. The prints are $250 and can be purchased here.
What is the source of the image in the print and mural?
The image is from a cult self-defence manual from the 1980s. I wanted to use an image that could talk about issues of power without being too direct and explicit about it. I also liked that the background of the image is a gate similar to the one on the Details Guild wall, so it made this cropped, abstracted image from another time relate directly to the setting of the wall. Just the close-up of the hands, the male and the female, repeating and switching, for me acquired quite a poetic quality.
Does the repetition allude to wheatpasting? To serial composition in art?
The repetition does relate to the way concert posters, for example, would be put up around the city, as well as to the modernist grid, but it was also a way to make the image itself become a bit more abstract. There are already so many explicit images out in the public space that it is important to retain some of the ambiguitiy that in my mind is one of the strenghts of art. It also dissolves the narrative structure of the kind of “educational” photo series the image was originally lifted from, so that rather than a movement from A to B there is an ongoing back and forth about which hands hold the power in the image.
Did the cause play into the artwork?
I always try to be sensitive to the context for the work, and I think one should never underestimate the audience. Young people might lack some of the references that I work with, but with other references they might be more clued in than, say, a collector or museum visitor in their 60s. I also think young people, especially young people who come from a difficult background or from a challenging neighborhood, will have experiences with and be sensitive to some of the issues I work with, such as repression, authority, and (latent) violence.
