Thomas Santhori “I Spy With My Bold Eye…”

Buddy Warren Gallery

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“…again and again it is the eyes that you find yourself confronting, eyes looking into eyes…”
— Santhori

New York, August 2016
Buddy Warren Gallery is pleased to present I Spy With My Bold Eye… a collection of paintings and sculptures by Swiss artist, Santhori. The work explores our culture of surveillance through the lens of Santhori’s playful, distinctive visual vocabulary. Internationally recognized for vibrant performances and a sly satirical slant, with I Spy With My Bold Eye… Santhori initiates a cultural dialogue around encounter. Using his signature style, a sharp dialect of red, yellow, blue, and green—in combination white and black, his figures stimulate in 2D, but then unify and expand new dimensions in the viewer’s mind. Beyond the gallery show, Santhori will take to the streets of New York expanding the conversation via large-scale interactive pop-ups at various sites around the city. In this quintessential setting for his work, he invites the general public to partake in this creative mystery and wonder of observation.

In his visits to New York, Swiss pop artist, Santhori, has always found the Big Apple to be a hub of throbbing cultural exchange and diversity. The city eternally poses the lure of exciting challenges for his work. In September 2016, the Buddy Warren Gallery in the heart of New York’s Lower East Side presents Santhori’s I Spy With My Bold Eye… This selection of paintings and sculptures explores our culture of surveillance, through the lens of his playful, distinctive visual vocabulary.
I Spy With My Bold Eye… juxtaposes human observation and encounter against a backdrop of increasing surveillance. We comprehend our world through our visual apparatus, our observations transmute internally, creating internal weather conditions: thoughts, memories, ideas, emotions… The “Eye” represents a two-way gaze, one subjective, looking inward, the other gazing out onto the surroundings, objectifying. Caught in these crosshairs, do we experience the delights of a “peek-a-boo” effect, or are we overwhelmed by the dread of “Big Brother is Watching You”?

We Spy NY @ First Street Green
We Spy NY (August 27) is an interactive double feature: both a community workshop and an opening event at First Street Green Park, on the Lower East Side. The workshop brings children and teens from the community, to create a collective mural in collaboration with Santhori. The artist will kick off by painting a central ‘All-Seeing-Eye”, and then everyone is invited to express their ideas about public space, observation and surveillance, through their artwork. All ages welcome!

Since the 1990s, the artist Santhori has participated in numerous European and international exhibitions and performances notably in Germany, France and Switzerland. With notable performances like “Pont du Diable“ (France) und “Man-borders-encounters“ (Bridging Germany-Switzerland), he placed ideas of metamorphosis at the center of his practice. In 2012 he was artist in residence in Miami, where he realized his project Miami 63. Santhori’s paintings are borne from his dreams. In 1990 he developed a signature style, using only the colors red, yellow, blue and green, and the non-colors white and black in his artworks. His works are often large-scale paintings in the figurative tradition. He sees his role as shepherding powerful internal currents into the flow of everyday life:

“Anyone who looks truth in the eye, reconciles himself to the fact that he can only give meaning to his life, by developing his powers.”