Best Friend Forever (BFF)
On View
2022.April.30 Sat –May.30 Mon
Galleria Benetti Pattaya
Organizer
Curated by Galleria Benetti (Private Collection)
Venue
Galleria Benetti Pattaya
Galleria Benetti is exhibiting never before and rarely seen works by legendary artists from pop-art icon Andy Warhol, along with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring who ushered in a new era with their vibrant neo-expressionism and street art movements. Their legacy and friendship live on through their art and stories. The gallery was founded in July 2020 with the purpose to invigorate Thailand’s vibrant art scene and offering the general public for the very first time the rare opportunity to view works from all three legendary artists without the need to view them overseas. The exhibition also aims to build awareness and educate viewers regarding the history and the current contemporary art market. Best Friends Forever (BFF) exhibition showcases highlights from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s several original works, including the most sought-after major canvases that are made in 1982, at the peak of his artistic career such as Radiology worth 1.8 billion Thai baht. The exhibition also displays Andy Warhol’s iconic works such as his Campbell Soups and Keith Haring subway drawings as well as silkscreens, drawings, polaroids and a presentation of several collaborations between the three artists, many of them never exhibited or seen in public.
Artists
Andy Warhol
Known as the “King of Pop,” Andy Warhol was the leading face of the Pop Art movement in the United States in the 1960s. Following an early career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol achieved fame with his revolutionary series of silkscreened prints and paintings of familiar objects like Campbell’s soup tins, and celebrities like Marilyn Monroe. Obsessed with popular culture, celebrity, and advertising, Warhol created his slick, seemingly mass-produced images of everyday subject matter from his famed Factory studio in New York City. His use of mechanical methods of reproduction, notably the commercial technique of silk screening, wholly revolutionized art-making. Working as an artist, but also director and producer, Warhol produced a number of avant-garde films in addition to managing the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founding Interview magazine. A central figure in the New York art scene until his untimely death in 1987
Jean-Michel Basquiat
One of the most famous American artists of all time, Jean-Michel Basquiat first gained notoriety as a subversive street poet in the late 1970s. Operating under the pseudonym SAMO, he emblazoned the abandoned walls of the city with his unique blend of enigmatic symbols, icons and aphorisms. A voracious autodidact, by 1980, at 22-years of age, Basquiat began to direct his extraordinary talent towards painting and drawing. His powerful works brilliantly captured the zeitgeist of the 1980s New York underground scene and catapulted Basquiat on a dizzying meteoric ascent to international stardom that would only be put to a halt by his untimely death in 1988.
Keith Haring
Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, Keith Haring moved to New York City in 1978 at the age of 20 to study at the School of Visual Arts. By the early 1980s, Haring rose to prominence for his graffiti drawings made in the New York subways and streets. Alongside his friends Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf, who he met at the SVA, Haring became a leading figure of the East Village art scene through the 1970s and 1980s. Best known for his cartoon-like imagery developed through bold lines and vibrant colors, Haring refined a visual language of symbols that simplified forms to their most essential elements. Exploring the themes of birth and death, sex and war, social inequality, and love, his art bridged the high and low, erasing the distinctions between rarefied art, political activism, and popular culture. Despite his tragically brief career, Haring created a universal visual language embraced throughout the world,
Installation Views
