Making Up

Jonathan Levine Projects is committed to new and cutting edge art. Our roots go back to 1995 when LeVine's life-long participation in punk and underground music grew into a curatorial experiment with the visual culture that surrounded him. In 2005, he opened Jonathan LeVine Gallery in the Chelsea district of New York City and had great success nurturing the careers of many celebrated artists. In 2017, the gallery relocated to Jersey City with a newfound focus on community and collaboration. The newly named Jonathan LeVine Projects aims to create engaging programs and interesting partnerships beyond the traditional gallery space. With an eye towards honoring and connecting with the history and context of Post War art, Jonathan LeVine Projects explores the terrain of the high/low and everything in between. Dutch artist Parra (1976) is best known for his curved post-Pop imagery, highly saturated colours, vibrant hand-drawn letters and worlds inhabited by hybrid, surreal characters. Celebrated by galleries and championed by an underground following from the outset, Parra has quickly become a respected and eclectic artist worldwide. Working across drawing, painting, animation and sculpture, Parra creates an enigmatic and instantly recognizable style that defies easy categorisation. Parra is cofounder of cult apparel label Rockwell Clothing and a member of electronic music group Le Le. Parra Lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Yer So Bad showcases a continuation of Parra’s witty and salacious post-pop imagery. Titled after the Tom Petty song, Yer So Bad, which tells the story of a girl who marries a “yuppie” and takes him for all he’s worth, this exhibition features the artist’s signature hybrid figures and freeform typography in works on canvas and paper. With an aesthetic rooted in Pop Art and the experimental graphics of the 1960s, Parra’s multi-disciplinary work spans cohesively across drawing, painting and animation. Parra uses “the everyday and the awkward” as his source of inspiration, creating pieces that he describes as fast and freestyle. His flat compositions are accented with graphic lines and reminiscent of works by Keith Haring and Roy Lichtenstein, both of which attempted to challenge the traditional norms of painting through their depiction of popular culture. Similarly, Parra derives his content from the modern world and produces bawdy scenes that range from sarcastic and introspective, to daring and nonsensical. The esoteric characters Parra creates are curvaceous, nude subjects with bird-like features. Portrayed in a variety of suggestive circumstances, the artist creates this provocative species with a comic-like sensibility. For his works on canvas he uses a bold color Acrylic paint is fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry. Depending on how much the paint is diluted (with water) or modified with acrylic gels, media, or pastes, the finished acrylic painting can resemble a watercolor or an oil painting, or have its own unique characteristics not attainable with other media.