The upcoming exhibition “Pop Nightmare” celebrates the work of painter Sidney Teodoruk
August 6, 2021 – August 20, 2021
July 27, 2021 (London, UK) — D’Stassi Art is pleased to announce the launch of its new gallery located in East London’s Shoreditch. Formerly home to the legendary “Boiler Room Events,” D’Stassi Art will open on August 6th with the inaugural exhibition, Pop Nightmare, featuring new paintings by Australia-based artist and musician, Sidney Teodoruk. Drawing on the nostalgia of childhood and the evocative signage of circus sideshow banners, Teodoruk’s work is a playful and poetic exploration of color and lyrics. With London reopening for in-person events, D’Stassi Art will host a public reception for Pop Nightmare on August 6th from 7 pm till late. For more information and to RSVP, please visit www.dstassiart.com. Founded by friends and fellow art enthusiasts, Michael Howes and Edward Sanders, D’Stassi Art is inspired by the ethos of the radical inclusivity of the 1980s graffiti and street art
movements and aims to infuse greater passion, approachability, and experimentation into the traditional gallery format. Prior to launching their first official space, the duo was known for fostering collaborative exhibitions between brands and artists that transcended art world conventions in favor of a new era of creative partnerships, most notably facilitating a project between the fashion brand Fiorucci and graffiti artist Endless in 2019. The gallery roster is made up of some of the most exciting emergings and established artists who carry on the legacies of neo-expressionism, neo-pop, and street art, including Peter Opheim, Al Diaz, and Richard Hambleton.
Sidney Teodoruk
D’Stassi Art is located in Shoreditch, an area of East London known for its music scene and legacy of public art. Prior to the launch of D’Stassi Art, the gallery site previously housed the legendary “Boiler Room Events,” hosting artists like Joey Bada$$, Skepta, Kaytranada, and Steflon Don. Today, the renovated rooms retain the vivacity of the former club, transitioning comfortably between a white-walled gallery, nightclub, and immersive event space which can host 200+ guests. D’Stassi retained remnants of space’s original identity while adding contemporary design elements, including a street-level atrium that floods the main room with natural light and an old lift shaft converted into a print room. The sprawling basement includes galleries, a multipurpose bar and event space that will be used as a lounge for forthcoming programming, and even a canvas storage area available for collector use.
Pop Nightmare marks Teodoruk’s debut UK solo exhibition, featuring a new series of paintings that mix figuration and abstraction in brightly-colored works that reference circus sideshow art depicted in a pop aesthetic. Spread across two floors, Sidney’s work draws heavily on childhood nostalgia and the transmission of cultural memory, revolving around poetic contradictions and
liminal paradoxes that exist somewhere between reality and fantasy. For Pop Nightmare, Teodoruk captures a mix of cultural references, past and present, combining fragments of text, recycled poster imagery, and expressionistic mark-making in works that turn inner darkness into light through a joyous exploration of color and imagery.
About the Gallery
Since the brand’s inception in 2017, D’Stassi Art has established a unique platform for the world’s most inspiring emerging talent. In the traditionally exclusive art world, D’Stassi Art looks to discover, encourage and help introduce clients to works of art based purely on how passionate we are about them. The gallery has helped to introduce a variety of the art world’s clientele to important contemporary artists through immersive and inclusive events.
D’Stassi Art’s main goal is to be as open and transparent as possible with a clear purpose to diversify contemporary art audiences. In its reluctance to simply follow the traditional gallery formula, D’Stassi Art is quickly becoming a key player in a world where art doesn’t have to be experienced in an elitist, sterile, and often silent white-walled room. The gallery and its staff act as storytellers: primarily introducing clients to the story of some of the world’s most gifted artists.
About the Artist
Sidney Teodoruk (formally known as Brad Teodoruk) is an artist of contrasts. Using every visual device at his disposal, he weaves strange narratives drenched in dichotomous imagery and text, then obscures large areas in swathes of block color, inviting the viewer to fill in the blanks. Nostalgic, childhood objects are randomly scattered throughout fractured, neo-expressionist scapes, simultaneously evoking feelings of playfulness and unease.
For Teodoruk, opposing forces are clearly a point of confusion, contention, and humor. Heavy, dense concepts such as religion or the prison system are contrasted with subjects of either physical or metaphorical lightness – a beach ball, a bird, the sky…
Teodoruk uses the language of juxtaposition to explore the way he perceives both the world and himself.
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