Kingston pop museum has the honor to present the first ever exhibition of the Kostabi brothers in the United States!
Artist and composer Mark Kostabi was born in Los Angeles in 1960 to Estonian immigrants. Raised in Whittier, California, he studied drawing, painting and music at California State University, Fullerton. Kostabi moved to New York in 1982, and by 1984, emerged as a leading figure in the East Village art scene where he cultivated a provocative media persona by publishing self-interviews reflecting on the commodification of contemporary art. By 1987, his work was widely exhibited in New York galleries as well as prominently throughout the United States, Japan, Germany and Australia. He inspired extensive international press coverage in 1988 when he founded Kostabi World, his Manhattan art studio.
Brother, Paul Kostabi (b.1962) is an expressive figuratist painter who lives and works in the East Village of New York City. A native of Whittier, California, his wildly colorful paintings pay homage to the characters he encounters in his other career as a record producer. His distinctive personal style emanates a sense of closeness and familiarity while expressing the shrill and aggressive spirit and atmosphere of the east side of Manhattan below 14th Street.
Human faces, landscapes, musical instruments, and flowers are all brought to life with distorted and abstruse colors juxtaposed and intertwined into his personal narrative. As the artist explains, “Oftentimes when I’m alone I paint the face of the person to whom I would like to be speaking with right now.”
As a teenager Kostabi began playing music in the seminal punk rock band Youth Gone Mad. From a young age he has believed in “Using Your Illusion,” a phrase which was modified and became the title of two multi-platinum selling albums by the band Guns N’ Roses. He produced and helped define the aesthetic for another influential rock band, White Zombie, and found continued success as the owner/operator of his own recording studio, Thunderdome Studios, in Piermont, New York.
Kostabi’s artwork has been shown in exhibitions in the U.S. and Italy, including works presented alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in 1984, and “Un Newyorker ai Docks” at Casati Arte Contemporanea. His paintings are also in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum, MOMA – The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim, MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, MUSEION – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano, and many others.
Mr. Stavros, A close friend with both Kostabi brothers promises this exhibition will be of great importance to all in the great Hudson Valley.
Opening night for the Kostabi exhibition will be Friday November 12th closing night will be Friday November 26th.
Press and Media : 4PM to 6PM
General Public: 6PM to 10PM
