SaveArtSpace has partnered with Van Der Plas Gallery & Al Díaz to bring more public art to New York City!

The SaveArtSpace x Van Der Plas Gallery x Al Díaz selected artists are Darlene Deloris, Tslil Tsemet, and Michael McLaughlin.

Curated by Al Diaz.

During the week of September 13, SaveArtSpace launched public art installations for each selected work on billboard ad spaces throughout New York City. An exhibition with the original artwork will mount at Van Der Plas Gallery, 156 Orchard St, NYC from September 17 to October 3, 2021, with an opening reception on Friday September 17, 6p-9p.

Selected Artists

Location: Atlantic Ave & Classon Ave, Brooklyn, NY

Born in Atlanta, GA in the 1980s, Brooklyn based artist Darlene Deloris also uses the moniker Lena Love. She studied History and African American Studies at the University of Georgia and in 2014, began pursuing an art career. In 2018, she moved to New York City where she flourished with the opportunity to instruct art classes, orchestrating hundreds of art projects for children between the ages of 2-11. She also holds a license in tattooing. In 2019, she joined Brooklyn based gallery sk.ArtSpace, and proudly continues to create & curate as a member and Chief Curator of the SK Collective.

Artist Statement: I am a Brooklyn based multi-disciplinary artist who centers my paintings around emotional intimacy within the Black diaspora. I use reference photos to create portraits of Black people, typically women, frozen with stoic reactions or moods, and then use symbols, textures, patterns, and vibrant colors to portray emotion. Giving voice to the Black woman who is constantly transposing between a state of angst and of regality, I strive to make conscious, direct, and whimsical art that presents a stoic gaze to the viewer.

Connect with Darlene on Instagram at @love.lenalove.

Location: McGuinness Blvd & Calyer St, Brooklyn, NY

Tslil Tsemet was born in 1988 in Nahariya, a small town in Israel located next to the Lebanon border, defined as a War zone territory.

She started painting at the Age of 3, and from early childhood she integrated surprising and thought provoking concepts in her art.

At 2011 She got her B.F.A in conceptual art from the Bezalel Academy of art and design, Jerusalem. Due complex hyper politically charged life in Jerusalem, and the fact that part of her family is extremely religious, she was highly influenced and inspired by different cultures mixed with religious fusion, and her artwork is a constant attempt to break global barriers and social structures.

After that she lived and created in Tel-Aviv for few years, but due to the high censorship around Art and culture in Israel, in 2014 she immigrated to the U.S in order to Pursue her goal to become a full time artist (though her subject matter is often get censored in the U.S as well). The journey as a female immigrant artist was full of challenges, and she worked as a tattoo artist in order to support her art practice.

She has shown at both group-shows and solo exhibitions in galleries and museums in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Israel.

Artist Statement: Through art, I examine the human species via the social and cultural values that we bond ourselves to and the collective ideals we grasp in order to maintain sanity. My work is inspired by a variety of cultures, religions, mythologies, and philosophies. I like to create art that stimulates various parts of the brain at the same time; it is simultaneously funny, disgusting, attractive, twisted, sad, happy, scary, mysterious, confusing, beautiful, and ugly — just like life.

I paint to communicate my personal thoughts, using visual metaphor while always seeking to connect to the socio-cultural and political aspects of what we call "reality." Art is a language, it’s about connection and communication. It has a fast immediate access to the viewer’s subconscious mind, and it has the ability to help us evolve, expand, and shift our perception.

Connect with Tslil on Instagram at @The.girl.with.the.brushes.

Location: 5th Ave & 39th St, Brooklyn, NY

Michael McLaughlin graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 1995 majoring in photography and art therapy. He was influenced by teachers such as Gregory Crewdson, John Schlesinger, Abby Robinson and Stan Gaz. He lives with his two sons Liam and Riley in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

To put oneself out there is a risk not many are willing to take, especially knowing the chances of failure. The ones that do and succeed, we look at and wish we made the attempt. The ones that try and fail, we figured it wouldn’t have worked anyway and are glad we didn’t try. We are watching and waiting, and when it happens, we are more likely to take out our phones to film it than to offer a hand up when they fall. This body of work, “And When It Happens”, focuses on this interaction between the viewer and the subject. What being human and experiencing life is about. Risk, reward and failure.

Connect with Michael on Instagram at @8toast8.

Curator

Location: Morgan Ave & Harrison Pl, Brooklyn, NY

Al Díaz’s career spans five decades. Born and raised Puerto Rican in New York City, by age 15 he was an influential first-generation subway graffiti artist known as “BOMB-ONE.” His friendship and artistic collaboration with high school schoolmate Jean-Michel Basquiat on SAMO©, (a late 70s Avant-garde graffiti tag project) has been noted often in contemporary art history. Díaz later contributed percussion to numerous musical recordings and performances, including Basquiat’s historic 1983 record, “Beat Bop,” (considered to be one of the earliest hip-hop albums).

Díaz is sought-after as an expert of New York City counterculture art. He appears often in publications, as a highlighted speaker for a variety of panel discussions at universities and museums (including Smithsonian Institution, the Brooklyn Museum, The New School and Christie’s Education), and has been featured in several films, including Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat, BBC’s American Masters — Basquiat: Rage to Riches and Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child.

Díaz’ current creative practice in Brooklyn includes gathering the standard “WET PAINT” signage used throughout the NYC MTA, and reconstructing them to create clever, poignant anagrams in various mixed media and public art formats. His work is shown and privately collected internationally.

In 2018, Diaz authored SAMO©...SINCE 1978, an in-depth, color illustrated history of the street art legacy that he began with Basquiat in the late 70s. A notebook that Díaz made with Basquiat in his teens is currently held in the collection of the Yale University Beinecke Library.

Connect with Al on Instagram at @albert_diaz1

Participating Organizations

Founded in 2015, SaveArtSpace is a non-profit organization that works to create an urban gallery experience, launching exhibitions that address intersectional themes and foster a progressive message of social change. By placing culture over commercialism, SaveArtSpace aims to empower artists from all walks of life and inspire a new generation of young creatives and activists.

Connect with SaveArtSpace on Instagram at @saveartspace.

Van Der Plas Gallery is a contemporary NYC art gallery located on the Lower East Side of Manhattan specializing in Outsider and Street Art. With an emphasis on contemporary figuration and abstraction, the gallery represents artists whose work is born of an authentic vision.This Orchard Street gallery has the inside track to 1980’s New York Street Art like no other in downtown New York City. In recent years, most of the real innovators and outdoor conceptual mavericks of the 1980’s street art movement have begun to cluster around this exhibition space. Adriaan Van der Plas has brought much of the lost history of street art during the 1980’s East Village art scene back to life via the walls of his gallery in group and solo exhibition settings.

Van Der Plas represents artists such as Jean Michel Basquiat’s partner in graffiti, Al Diaz; 1980’s outdoor spray-paint installation artist and street art curator, Scot Borofsky; notorious downtown art-world scamp and Van Gogh of the East Village, Kevin Wendal aka “FA-Q” (1956-2011); subway-card collagist and artista de la calle Carlos Pintos; graffiti/street art/fine art fusionist, Will Power. The gallery has also occasionally exhibited work by the actual inventor of street art, Richard Hambleton (1952-2017); 1980’s sign-pole artist, Bob Dombrowski; hammer and chisel carver of sidewalks, Ken Hiratsuka; and “COP-SHOT-DREAMS” street collagist, Steve Hagglund, along with early N.Y. Graffiti writers and artists from the “Rivington School”.Other gallery artists include Argentinian art brute/neoexpressionist, Alejandro Caiazza, and the ever quirky and autobiographical Canadian multi-medium artist, Jason Mclean.

Austrian native, Adriaan Van Der Plas, opened his first gallery in Gramercy Park in 1986. In 1992, he opened his gallery “Adriaan,” on the South Street Seaport, before moving to his current location in 2013. Located on historical Orchard Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Van Der Plas is within walking distance to Soho, Chinatown, Little Italy and important cultural institutions such as the Tenement Museum and the New Museum. The gallery’s operating hours are 11am-5pm Sunday-Thursday and 11am-7pm Friday-Saturday. Van Der Plas is also open till 8pm every third Thursday of the month for the Lower East Side’s “Gallery Walk.”

Connect with Van Der Plas Gallery on Instagram at @vanderplasnyc.