Michael Bevilacqua & Louis Granet

When Louis Granet and I decided to have an exhibition together we had no idea what we were going to do. I said, “I’m into flowers and Annihilation.” He said, “I have allergies.” Louis went back to Paris and I stayed in New York and we let the summer unfold.

We are both cultural scavengers of the urban jungle: Think graffiti artists of the ’80’s, except the sound of the street has changed. The way we consume culture on the Internet Highway has forever changed the way artists make art. Louis works with photographs, manipulating, collaging, and then transferring them to canvas in a painstaking free-hand style. I take images from my iPad and print them on canvas and later embellish the printed works with paint. Our finished pieces express the energy of a single moment in time with what seems to be a single brushstroke.

Sitting in the gallery and looking at what we made over the summer, I was reminded of Henri Rousseau. I had never really thought much of Rousseau as an artist before, but I began researching articles about his work. Oddly enough, I came across a wonderful 2006 review in the Times written by Roberta Smith. She writes mostly about his jungle painting series and simply describes it as “A Terrible Beauty.” The connective metaphor of the (urban) jungle became very apparent to me in each of our paintings. Louis painted these chaotic flower clusters, tightly folding in and out of themselves with completely saturated color and acidic detailing. My self portraits of the “hoodie” figure are set in gestural jungles completely overgrown with wild flower contortions. The “hoodie” is a cultural artifact of the urban streets. Louis’s flowers are the moments of isolated beauty that we pass in community gardens or in front of curbside bodega flower stands ... all unique moment of bustling nature as we walk through the streets of the concrete jungle that is New York.

All the best,

Michael Bevilacqua and Louis Granet

Special thanks to our musical and critical reference points:

Roberta Smith

Alpha Wan

Koba Lad

Niska

Caballero et Jean Jass

Kendrick Lamar

The Stranglers

Echo and the Bunnymen

The Gun Club