White Walls is pleased to present New Works by ROA, a collection of highly detailed hand-painted works by acclaimed Belgian street artist ROA. This will be ROA’s very first project with White Walls, and his first solo gallery exhibition in the Bay Area.
The opening reception will be Saturday, April 9, from 7-11 pm until May 7.
The work for the show is shrouded in secrecy, as the notoriously elusive street artist has decided to wait until opening night to reveal the work he’s been busily constructing. Shortly after landing in San Francisco, ROA began working around the clock to complete 10-20 new pieces for the exhibition; utilizing custom-constructed panels he crafted using found metal from his hometown in Ghent, Belgium. Viewers can expect ROA’s signature stunning, yet totally disquieting depictions of animals, with some interesting surprises thrown in for these smaller works. He has been given the entirety of White Walls to create a massive installation for the exhibition, and the project will be something not to be missed. Check out words from the artist himself after the jump
“For me painting murals means free expression, and creatively, it liberates me from a lot of restrictions. As an urban painter you get the privilege to interact with the environment and to intervene within the local situation. For me, painting became a lifestyle, traveling trough towns and villages, looking for walls and being a part of a larger international movement of creative people from North and South America, Europe, Russia – who are simply are connected through the pleasure of painting. These people inspire me every day. The texture of the wall, the challenge of painting, the environment – everything inspires my ideas of that particular moment, and the whole process of public painting involves working with an unpredictable situation. This ephemeral act change a place for maybe a few days or sometimes even for many years. This is the beautiful part of painting outside, the fact that nothing is defined. The motivation to paint animals instead of so many other things is because I am completely fascinated by them. For me, represent so much more symbolically than humans do. I prefer to paint the ordinary animals from a certain town or country; the rodents, the domestic animals, the birds, all kinds of animals that are forced to adapt to their situation because humans altered their natural habitat, for the sake of infrastructure. I have such a deep admiration for these displaced species, and I find their situation so tragic, and moving.“
Growing up in the small town of Ghent, Belgium, street artist ROA got his start by painting intriguing murals of animals in hidden places – underneath bridges and on walls that strayed from the beaten path. His large-scale works are some of the most compelling pieces of evidence in the argument of street art vs. “vandalism,” as the pieces are visually evident of the artist’s deep passion for painting. He has major public works in many European cities, including Berlin, London, and Barcelona – in the U.S. his work can be found in New York, Los Angeles, and now the Bay Area. A darling of the underground street art scene, photos of his work regularly appear on Vandalog, Wooster Collective, Unurth, and a fury of London newspapers and blogs running to his defense when a street piece he did in Hackney faced removal late last year.
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