Cosby Hayes
[NOn]organicO

14.11.16 23.11.16

Cosby Hayes participated in the Palimpsest Project [4] residency. Palimpsest is a mural painting residency that invites artists to produce visual dialogues between the works of each other in the terrace of ´ace’s studio. Cosby’s mural will add new images and conversations among previous interventions, which begun with Colombian artist Felipe Garcia and continued with Kiik Create (Puerto Rico-USA), Buck Teeth Girls Club (Canada) and ALMA (Brazil).

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work employs recognizable imagery from eras spanning centuries, woven together as a personal narrative. I reference historical imagery from movements and cultures that never encountered one another, yet through them, a common thread is found. Using architecture and symbolism through a lens that references the aggressive and sometimes audacious nature of graffiti, I explore the need to enshrine one’s existence.

The desire to be noticed or remembered through an idolized infamy leads many to vandalize and destroy in the name of one’s altar ego. My work aims to harness this vandalistic mentality in an attempt to explore the innumerable styles and techniques used throughout time to make one’s mark on the world.

Whether motivated by religion, politics, or spirituality, the figures I paint combined with the domiciled heads, initiate a visual dialogue with regard to man’s struggle for existence beyond his physical limitations while leaving with a sense of permanence, no matter the cost. I aim to provoke the viewer to search for some resolution within my work when comparing current and past cultural phenomena.

BIO
Cosby Hayes
1991 | Born in Tallahassee, FL, USA

EDUCATION
2014 | Bachelor of Fine Art in Studio Art at Florida State University, Tallahasse, Florida, USA

EXHIBITIONS
Stuart Riordan Retrospective, TCC Fine Art Gallery, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
It’s Political, Art Center Sarasota, Sarasota, Forida, USA
25th Art in Gadsden, Gadsden Art Center, Quincy, Florida, USA
Shift: Emerging Artists from Florida State University, Thomas Dean Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Views From The Otherside, 621 Gallery, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
Average Joe Group Exhibition, Concrete Beach Brewery, Miami Florida, Curated by Yo-Miami, USA
5TH Annual Paint Me Miami, Bakehouse Art Complex, Miami, Florida, USA
2ND Biannual Perez Art Museum Miami Staff Art Exhibit, University of Miami Gallery, Miami, Florida, USA

Related Activities

Exhibitions

NoN organiC
Artists in Dialogue

23.11.16

In the last ´aceNITE of the year, the terrace of our house presented a new intervention of the Palimpsest Project mural painting residency. This time, a mural made in collaboration by Cosby Hayes and local artist, Toia Grehan, selected through an open call.

The artists occupied a new wall with their mural of a car smashing that seems to be flying towards us, and which already reaches us when climbing the spiral staircase. They reached an excellent dialogue of organic figures (Grehan) that demarcate the open transports from which we can see their skeleton (Hayes).

Palimpsest is an international project that started to develop in 2014, inspired by the mural that the artist Felipe Garcia (Colombia) did on our terrace during his residence in ´ace, in 2013. The proposal of Cosby Hayes (USA) and Toia Grehan (Argentina) was the 4th intervention, after the groups KiiK Create (Puerto Rico-USA), Buck Teeth Girls Club (Canada) and the artist ALMA (Brazil).

Related artists

BIO
Toia Grehan
1987 | Born in San Antonio de Areco, Argentina

EDUCATION
2010 | Studied Visual Arts in ISSA (Instituto Superior Santa Ana), Buenos Aires, Argentina
2017 | Postgraduate in Media and Technologies for the Pictoric Production at UNA Visuals (Universidad Nacional de las Artes), Buenos Aires, Argentina

AWARDS
2016 | Fellowship artist through an open call to work in collaboration with Hayes, at Proyecto´ace, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Encounters

Meeting of Styles
Artists in Dialogue

18.11.16 20.11.16

During the month of November, artists Cosby Hayes (USA) and Toia Grehan (Argentina) made a collaborative mural within the mural painting residency Palimpsest Project [4]. This collaboration gave rise to a second project beyond ´ace, as Toia and Cosby participated as a team in the international event Meeting of Styles, held in Martinez, Buenos Aires.

MEETING OF STYLES: BUENOS AIRES

“Some people want Graffiti to stay traditional, some people write their names, others do images. Some people do Graffiti-Writing, others do Street-Art, some use brushes other cans. In Buenos Aires all different disciplines create one giant gallery among the entire city. ESTILO LIBRE finally brings back Meeting of Styles to Buenos Aires! Former MOS in BSAS have been a blast of styles and creativity!”

Related artists

Meeting of Styles is an international network of graffiti artists and followers who sponsor the creation of graffiti murals in more than sixty countries. The purpose of these events is to promote and legitimize graffiti as an art form. The idea emerged in Germany in 1995 and was re-organized in 2002 under the current name. In the events, murals are created in varied places, commonly in public spaces and metro stations. The events have taken place in over sixty countries in Europe, Asian Russia and America.

´aceNITE

To Inhabit and Remember
Artists in Dialogue

23.11.16

For the last ´aceNITE of 2016, occupied all the rooms occupied with an impeccable variety of international and Argentinean artists.

In the Políglota Room, invited artist Shaurya Kumar (India) presented artworks from the series Cast in Ruins, of great technical and conceptual subtlety. Kumar is an artist with a very consolidated international trajectory.

The Central Hall presented the video in progress of the project The reason, by the artist-in-residency Kiwon Hong (South Korea), and the Dialogue Space hosted a site-specific installation by Min-Hyung Kang (South Korea)—both artists were able to do their residencies thanks to ARKO (Arts Council Korea). The installation of Kang’s project Eye of the Hawk, which was a re-creation of a room of the smallest type of residences in the Korean cities, also reached La Torre studio through the windows and involved the performance of security agent who “protected” the ´ace house by taking care of the ´ace logo.

In the Transversal Space, Amanda Coimbra (Brazil), artist selected through the Semillero 2016 call, presented her book Memories of a Travel Album, made from the recovery and selection of photographs of a family album that had suffered a flood.

Finally the Terrace inaugurated a new mural realized in collaboration by the U.S. artist Cosby Hayes and Argentine artist Toia Grehan. The mural resulted in a very good interaction of two quite different imprints towards muralism, Cosby on the one hand with an urban and political iconography and on the other hand Toia Grehan with a bucolic and romantic iconography.

As always, we thank all the people who collaborated with the artists in residence: Germán Gaspar, Julián Matta and Nieves Varela.

Related artists

Invited artist
Shaurya Kumar (India)

Palimpsest Project
Toia Grehan (Argentina)—Fundación´ace fellowship

Artist from Semillero 2016
Amanda Coimbra (Brazil)