Image slideshow
Pure Evil tells us a little bit about the who, what, when, where, and why about the man, the artist, and the gallerist.
DRAGO: Who are you? How do you define yourself and is it different from how you project your public image?
PURE EVIL: I am Pure Evil prince of fricken darkness.. I am also called Charley. I define myself by a key ‘Deus Ex Machina’ moment in my evolotion when I admitted being an artist for the first time and was banned from entering the USA. I told the Customs officer I had been painting with my friends in California which = work when you are an artist, and since I had no work VISA I had to come back to dirty old London. The dirt in London helps things to grow which makes it an amazing place to be creative. I landed, my wheels started spinning and I haven’t stopped.
D: Why street art?
PE: There is no committee there is no curator there is NO ONE telling you what to do, and the canvas is infinite. There are no boundaries, it is all about the freedom to paint, and there is also an amazing euphoric adrenal rush that you get from doing it, that it is a subculture that attracts so many druggy lowlife scumbags.
D: Do you see a difference between your work on the street and the work you do for the traditional art world, aka galleries?
PE: Completely different, like the difference between a moon rock on the moon and a moon rock on a shelf in a museum. The street provides the context for the art, the gallery makes I an artefact, a memory of an event. Its still a lot of fun though, hanging out in a big indoor space making it look amazing, and not having to worry about THE MAN. Instead you have to worry about THE CURATOR. The curator is the enemy.
D: How do your roles as artist and gallerist play off of each other? Do they ever come into conflict? Being an artist seems to be only a part of your involvement in the art world…as a gallerist you promote the work of other artists instead of your own, seems rather altruistic in such a dog eat dog world…
PE: There is a conflict, and its fun to try and fight the battle. The danger is that I only promote myself through my gallery and just use everyone else to make myself look earnest. It is important that I can find the time to do both things justice, and not let the other artists in the gallery down. Obviously I am going to promote myself, but I have met so many artists through painting walls that I know a lot about the culture and I have a good eye for it, and I know how many artists have been burned by galleries and so I am very careful to be fair and help them to grow . If I wasn’t pure evil the artist though I would have been FUCKED in the last year with the recession. I don’t always pick super commercial art to show in the gallery because I can always make rent money through my own work . If I do a show with an artist I really love and in one month only sell one piece because its weird and wonderful art THAT’S COOL BABY. I can just sell a couple of big paintings of my own and rent is covered.
D: Can you elaborate on your responsibility as supporter of the arts? For example you are serving on a panel of judges for a street art competition, how did you get involved in that?
PE: I said yes to that because I was quite flattered that anyone would think my opinion was worth anything, and also because it was a way of raising money for charity. If I can do some art and make 5K for homeless people then I think that’s brilliant. Its something really pure and good, which isn’t something I get to do that often.
D: Any special project you would like to tell us about? Personal, gallery related, legal, illegal...
PE: I have a music studio in the gallery and I have been collection an arsenal of all of my dream synthesizers, like the Korg MS20 and the Solina Strings keyboard, and I have been recording music every week that goes online the same week as we finish it all. I am going to release a double vinyl box set of some of this soon, and make a print portfolio of a number of 12” x 12” artworks to accompany the music. Here is the link to some of the music : http://pureevil.podbean.com/
D: Do you consider “Street” to be a movement? Drago believes that the “street movement” is the only avant-garde of the moment that the combination of street and the Internet creates a global attitude of civil society. Do you agree or disagree?
PE: I think it is a massively important movement, the mainstream is trying to consume it but I think it will go undergound again to camouflage itself from mainstream culture. The mass will move onto something newer and easier to control . This happened with skateboarding where it ended up on TV channels playing in Sports bars in airports everywhere.
I was reading about the Darknet which is a huge portion of the internet that is almost invisible. Maybe we need to take it to the Dark side for a while.
Heres a question to ponder : Where did all the other subcultures go ?
D: Are the streets united or divided?
PE: Divided into likes and dislikes of people. Some think street art is massive and amazing and some people think it is just poop. That’s fine with me.
D: Who is your Mona Lisa?
PE: Ava Gardner or Monica Bellucci
D: “I had a dream.” Tell us about it.
PE: I was traveling through Egypt on a camel and I found a small papyrus boat, I brought it back to the east end to a science lab I have in my dreamland, and an orange juice that was in the lab began to mysteriously drain itself.. The papyrus boat began to grow and oscillate and I realized that it was a trojan boat device that was activated by orange juice that had been sent from space … everybodys bones started to turn to jelly all over the world and we all turned into blobs. END OF DAYS !!! GAME OVER.
Please pick five of the following topics and write a list of your 5-favorite/top picks so we can learn a little more about the man/artist/gallerist.
1. musicians/bands Amon Duul , Black Moth Super Rainbow, Neu , Can, Television
2. books/authors John Gray , Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
4. people you would like to meet 5 of my kids. I have 12 kids in California because I was a sperm donor, so I’d like to meet 5 of them and see how they are doing.
6. things you would like to see change global warming (less) , genocide (less) , peace (more) love (more) understanding (bit more)
8. things you would like to try kill Mugabe , then do some time travel , kill young Hitler , do some more time travel , give Jesus a high five
9. things you would never do again I have no regrets about anything I have ever done
Heres a mix for you: http://www.theworldsbestever.com/2009/08/21/sound-advice-14-pure-evil/