There's "Something Wonderful," which is filled with movie references, and "Easy Rider," which he made with spray paint after declaring himself a street artist.
Peter's art is splashed all over the theaters and he even has his own secret room. It's a private bar filled with treasures from Peter's past.
Press the bookcase and enter his world. Life's Imponderables is the book you have to press, Peter says.
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“It takes nine years to put together the canoe trip for your friends in New York,” says Peter Tunney, reclined on a couch in his art studio underneath one of his mounted word collages. “Nine years. You start out when you meet them — ‘oh my gosh, its’ so nice to see you guys, oh my gosh, let’s go on a canoe trip next weekend! It usually happens in about nine years. It takes a long time to put that together,” he continues. “You really have to make time for those things. You’re not going to be given that time, you have to steal that time.”
The 57-year-old artist is a living example of this philosophy. Tunney, freewheeling and energetic, also runs a gallery in the Wynwood Walls neighborhood of Miami (he was one of the now-bustling area’s first tenants, and he also partnered with Jessica Goldman Srebnick in 2015 for the Goldman Global Arts project), and has approached time as art throughout his 30-year artistic career. He’s full-steam ahead, all of the time. Tunney works with a lean staff from his space on Leonard Street, where he has three floors — a gallery on the street level with a studio downstairs and an archive downstairs from that. On a recent afternoon, a couple from Cleveland had wandered in and walked out the owners of a new piece of artwork.
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Though one artist can do only so much to confront a social problem as massive as health disparities in the U.S., Tunney is a part of a massive artistic movement.
Call it street art, mural art, untrained art, or graffiti, it’s arguably the largest art movement in history.
Social justice isn’t an abstract concept to street artists. “I have an army of artists who have participated with us in Wynwood, and many are dispatched on their own projects. Sometimes we ask them to participate in new projects with us,” said Tunney, who also runs two galleries in TriBeCa.
“If I asked you to name me ten impressionists—ten—you’d have a hard time. You’d run out at about five or six. If I asked you to give me five big pop artists. Well, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, then you gotta start thinking. There’s usually a few at the forefront of every movement.
“I believe now there’s over a million of ‘street artists’ in the world. They’re all coming from a place of social activism. We do all have equal rights, but we’re not treated equally.”
Tunney spoke with Paul Goldberg, editor and publisher of The Cancer Letter.
Paul Goldberg:
I have a big question, and I might as well start with it. What is the role that you as an artist can play in addressing social problems in today’s America?
Peter Tunney:
Well, good for you. That is the big question. It’s one that I live with.
Every artist can define their role their own way. Most of the “street artists,” which is a name I don’t love anymore, spend a lot of their time thinking about this question. Their goals are not to become multi-millionaires. Their goals are to change the status quo in certain places on Earth.
I am so grateful just to be here, and breathe the air, and be alive, I’m just compelled to help people who are still suffering. It’s not a thankless job, but it’s heavy lifting.
You’ve got to be a lifelong warrior. I consider myself in service for the rest of my life.
PG:
How did the opportunity to help Sylvester with the outreach van project materialize?
PT:
I had a meeting with Erin Kobetz. She came here to pitch me, to talk me into lending some of my time and human energy.
About a half a sentence into it, I said, “Erin. I’m going to save you the whole spiel. I’m in. What do you want me to do? I’ll do it.”
She was kind of taken aback.
I said, “I mean it! What do you want to do? Give me your dream scenario, and then I’ll see if I can execute it.”
She gave me her scenario, and I said, “I’ll do an original painting. We’ll sell the painting. That money will go to Sylvester. We’ll make prints. The money from the prints go to Sylvester and your projects. Who’s going to buy that? A doctor, a lawyer, a philanthropist; right? They will end up hanging it up in their office with pride. It’s going to say “Game Changer.” They’re going to refer to it. It’s going to be in the dialogue in that lawyer’s office and that philanthropist’s kitchen.”
In fact, that’s exactly what did happen.
They came to me with the words “Game Changer,” and the history of Sylvester center, and cancer going back to Nixon, and I gobbled all that stuff up.
When we were done and that van pulled up, that was an exciting moment for me. It was so cool to see the manifestation of that artwork on that van, and it sparked a lot of dialogue from the second it pulled up.
What is this? Who is Sylvester? I got to meet Stephen Nimer. What a guy! Who’s going to say no to that guy? We need 10,000 guys like that. We’d change the world. I’ll do whatever he says.
In dealing with people like Erin Kobetz and Dr. Nimer, I get leverage. I give them a little bit of my human energy, and they turn it into 100 orders of magnitude more stuff.
My guess is that van’s probably going to roll to some neighborhood, and someone that wasn’t responding to normal outreach says, “Well, I’ll go get tested. That’s cool. That looks fun. That looks funny. Everyone’s crowding around it.”
That’s probably going to trickle down, those dominoes will fall, and lives will be changed for the better.
What’s better than that?
PG:
What does “Game Changer” mean here? Is it your word? Is it their word?
PT:
They came to me with “Game Changer.” I’m going to steal it, co-opt it, and do other works that say “Game Changer,” because I just love it.
PG:
It’s interesting, because they were also playing with translations, which is a thankless task. It’s so Anglo, the concept.
PT:
It’s a real Americanized thing, “Game Changer.” We had to translate it into many languages, which was also their idea, which I though was genius. They may not have a perfect translation, but nothing’s perfect. Who cares?
PG:
What’s the game? How do you change it?
PT:
I think the game is the accepted-by-default status quo. Changing the game is literally waking up to a little bit of perspective. The real game changer is when we open our minds, when we can have an open mind to look at things differently.
Your mind will get opened when it happens to you; right? When your aunt that you loved, or your mom, or your brother, or your son gets diagnosed with cancer, and your life changes on that phone call—never to be the same again—your game is changed.
You’re going to go through what everyone goes through, which is grief, anger, denial, and then—helping others. That’s the path we take. We’re just people. We get sick, and we’ve got to take care of each other.
It’s so easy; right? It’s so easy.
PG:
Cancer is a political problem, though, which is why I’ve been covering this for so long and not getting tired. The Game Changer van is going to communities that were badly served by science, or what passed for science. Think of Henrietta Lacks, or Tuskegee. How do you overcome the distrust? I think that’s where the artist has to come in.
PT:
Well, it’s where we would hope the artists come in, and we would like them to come in harder. Remember, the role of the artist, for me, is not to solve the problem. The role of the artist, specifically, is to articulate the problem and bring it to your attention.
I’m not going to solve cancer, but I may be able to get people to think about something differently, whether it’s mental health, wrongful incarceration, or cancer, which are the areas I’m involved in.
We just want to get a little dialogue in front of your face, let you think about this for one minute of your busy day. There’s people around you that are suffering from something you don’t have to suffer from, because you’re in a more privileged position.
PG:
There’s a political aspect to art, or can be—and should be. Think, for example, of Bread and Puppet Theater and their buses. At political protests, Bread and Puppet uses buses as puppets. And here you are with this Game Changer van, and you are using it as a puppet.
PT:
The van is a puppet. That’s right. It’s an extension… I can’t go drive the van every day. I’m just one guy. I’m always looking for leverage.
PG:
You are addressing the Tuskegees and so forth, and the mistrust towards science, because how can anyone not trust a puppet? Tell me if this is a crazy question.
PT:
Well, we trusted Sesame Street puppets; right?
PG:
Yeah.
PT:
Listen, a puppet is a vehicle. A billboard is a vehicle. A giant mural is a vehicle.
PG:
I know that you use the New York Post in your collages a lot, but Miami is really different. There are so many languages used, and everyone’s speaking at the same time. Is there a common language of art that enables you and your puppet to communicate within, say, Little Haiti, or Liberty City? Is it the same language or is it a different language?
PT:
I use text a lot; right? I just got back from Dubai, and this artist eL Seeduses Arabic text. He studied Arabic. He didn’t know it. He started studying it when he was, like, 20. He loves the calligraphy, and the beauty of this text.
He was doing this big wall right at the base of the Burj Khalifa, in the center of Dubai, just the most massive construction site on the planet. I think about this one little human being pulling it all together, adding the human element to this incomprehensible construction site. He is adding the soul to the sea of glass, steel and concrete.
I said, “Why are you starting over there?”
He said, “I write right to left.” I didn’t even think of that. It was so beautiful, I was forgetting there was a message in there. I don’t know how many people are going to be able to read that message. I could not read that message. It had to be read for me.
When you’re using text, there’s always a level of translation.
PG:
Right.
PT:
The Wynwood Walls—there’s very little text in here. One guy, Pixel Pancho, has robots and foliage that he mixes into his art. He is really against deforestation on the planet. That’s what he does, that’s his flag.
A lot of people come here and do a selfie in front of it, because they like pink or whatever. That’s going to happen, too.
On the whole, I think art, like music, is the universal language.
PG:
Are you going to be on the Game Changer bus at some point?
PT:
At some point, I’d be happy to go there and be on it, if they feel that is a productive thing for me to do.
I will go spend a day with them on the van, sign stuff, give stuff away. My role, normally, is I’m a funny eccentric person, and that’s just the way of engaging people. It’s better than being a stiff, dry person.
PG:
Right.
PT:
I don’t like to add to the negativity. I could put up billboards that say the world is going to hell in a hand basket, but they’ve already got that covered. I’m just on the positive side.
A lot of time people get it wrong. I put up a New York City billboard that says, “Welcome to the CITY OF DREAMS.” That’s where I live.
I just want to show you the other side.
I’m going to have an opportunity to do a big show in Washington, D.C., that I can’t tell you about. Very visible and very public. Everyone thinks I’m going to go down there and do this big anti-Donald Trump thing, which is way too obvious for me. Here’s a quote for you, “Art is never obvious.”
My show’s going to be called something like, “Beautiful, Beautiful World.” I’m going the other way, man!
PG:
What are you going to do with the next several puppets? Because the folks at Sylvester say they’re going to have some more.
PT:
I don’t know anything about the future, but I’ll do whatever they ask me to, and then try to add my own unique kind of mojo into it.
Just in defense of what we did here, we did this little event in my gallery in Wynwood Walls, about 100 people for cocktails, the unveiling of the van. Their whole team, by the way, is just aces. No clunkers in the crew, from the guy taping the thing on the van to the smartest doctor there, they were all rowing the same boat.
There was dialogue. There was money raised. There was awareness. There were questions. “Peter, why would you be involved in this cancer thing? Do you have cancer?” You know, all this kind of stuff.
PG:
Oh, absolutely.
PT:
It was in the context of the Wynwood Walls, with the truck parked outside.
PG:
Where was it?
PT:
There was nothing here.
Right in front of the Wynwood Walls—that street was one of the most blighted streets in the middle of the worst neighborhood in Florida. There was nothing here but despair and violence.
And now we have the Game Changer van and Dr. Stephen Nimer here, and Erin Kobetz talking about cancer treatment.
The amount of people that they’ve been able to attract to Sylvester, I read somewhere, 140 doctors or something. That’s a lot of talent. You can’t do any of these things by yourself. You need Dr. Steven Nimer to be compassionate and smart with his patients. You need Erin Kobetz. You need the guy who cleans the floors at the hospital. Without the janitors, you cannot operate your hospital. Period.
PG:
Well, you’re working with Sylvester, but other cancer centers could probably use some of this experience. What would be your advice to Steve Nimer’s counterparts at other cancer centers?
PT:
Send me an email.
PG:
You would work with others as well?
PT:
I have an army of artists who have participated with us in Wynwood, and many are dispatched on their own projects.
Sometimes we ask them to participate in new projects with us.
I’m doing a project now for the Innocence Project and the Sunny Center, which take care of wrongly incarcerated people after they finally get out.
Only about 6 percent of exonerees get money. Most just get, like, a bus ticket and $20, and they’ve been in jail for 29 years under horrible conditions. I feel it must be our responsibility to take care of the exonerees.
PG:
Well, how about art for health disparities?
PT:
For sure. I can’t do every program. I can’t do everything that they ask, but I pick my spots. I picked Game Changer. I picked Sylvester. They asked me. I was their first choice. I was impressed.
They walked into the door of my gallery. I give a lot of credit for showing up. They showed up, and I’m like, “What can I do for you?”
PG:
I’ve been saying since November 2016 that this is actually a good time for American artists.
PT:
I think so.
PG:
Because they’re giving us material.
PT:
Yeah. Martha Cooper, who’s been photographing street art for a long time, said, “Little did I know when we were running from the police after tagging something, and I was photographing them, that I would be photographing the beginning of the largest art movement in the history of mankind.”
Those words really struck me, and I’ve co-opted those words often. I believe that the street art, mural art, untrained art, whatever category you’d like to call it, is, in fact, the largest art movement in the history of mankind.
If I asked you to name me ten impressionists—ten—you’d have a hard time,” Tunney said in a recent conversation. “You’d run out at about five or six. If I asked you to give me five big pop artists. Well, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, then you gotta start thinking. There are usually a few at the forefront of every movement.
I believe now there’s over a million of these street artists in the world.
They’re all coming from a place of social activism. We do all have equal rights, but we’re not treated equally. That’s the basis, that’s the big movement. I think you’re exactly on point.
That doesn’t mean that they’re having a great time. Many of these artists I know have lost friends and family members to everything you can imagine. In the street art community, I bet we know a lot of people that have overdosed, that have killed themselves.
It’s really a difficult road to be an artist, but I think you’re right. It is a good time to be an artist.
]]>Long before J.Lo and A.Rod were "J.Rod," however, both were apparently just separate customers of Peter Tunney's. "The funny thing is, A.Rod got quite a few pieces of me," Tunney says. "We had an amazing afternoon at Le Bilboquet. I've always loved having A.Rod as a client."
While he hasn't talked to either party since they've paired up, Tunney gives them his blessing (and we can only imagine perhaps someday, an amazing wedding gift) from afar: "I love them together!"
]]>Life-size elephant statues and other discarded relics from the former Trump Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino sat around in the sand, courtesy of artist Peter Tunney. The extravaganza with fire dancers was in part a way to attract the next generation of wealthy buyers who flock to Miami each December for the parties, networking -- and art.
More than 82,000 people attended this year, up 6 percent from 2016, according to the organizers. Celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton and Brad Pitt.
“A new generation of collectors is coming in,” said Lucy Mitchell-Innes, whose gallery was among the fair’s 268 exhibitors from 32 countries. The collectors are in their 40s and much more used to finding art at fairs than at galleries. “And they are quite decisive,” she said.
There is also a new look and new show at the Peter Tunney Experience gallery located in the main courtyard. Tunney took imaginative advantage of failed casino operator and current President Trump’s overblown and bankrupt Taj Mahal boardwalk casino which opened in 1990, and was once dubbed the “eighth wonder of the world” by Trump. But within a year the casino had declared bankruptcy, as Trump had financed it with $900 million in junk bonds. CNN recently reported that the failed casino also broke anti-money laundering rules 106 times during its first year of business.
So to make American great again he held a liquidation sale in July 2017 to sell off all the tacky old Indian designed gilded objects including enormous crystal chandeliers from Austria, gold framed light boxes, trumpeting elephant statues, brocade furniture and swirling patterned rugs. Hard Rock International, owned by the Hollywood Florida Seminole Tribe, bought the casino for $50 million (a bargain at 4 cents on the dollar) and plans to redesign it to open in 2 years.
Tunney bought some select items and has transformed his gallery into an exhibit that is called “Beyond Word” using the casino carpeting, lavish chandeliers and other remnants from the defunct hotel. This is a unique re-imagining, incorporating the Taj Mahal swag and Tunney’s word art into a cohesive, gaudy, installation think piece.
Elsewhere in Wynwood Walls, there are new sculptures and murals under the theme of “humanKIND” to infuse compassion, humanity and empathy in today’s society. This concept aims to manifest hope into the world, with the uplifting artwork curated by Goldman Global Arts.
A new favorite is the giant crouching cat on a plane skeleton sculpture (as shown in the above photo) in the courtyard by Bordallo II.
“I was born in Lisbon, 1987. I belong to a generation that is extremely consumerist, materialist and greedy,” he says. “With the production of things at its highest, the production of “waste” and unused objects is also at its highest. “Waste” is quoted because of its abstract definition: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. I create, recreate, assemble and develop ideas with end-of-life material and try to relate it to sustainability, ecological and social awareness.”
The cat is made from discarded metal scraps, repurposed and painted in bright colors. His tail coyly sits on top of the disconnected nose of the plane on a piece sure to be a new selfie hot spot.
Lady Pink, one of the original street art grrrls from the Bronx Wild Style crew of the 70s, has updated her long wall mural. The new mural plays out like a graphic novel with chapters of smaller murals telling a bigger picture story as the outlines of the murals spell the word RESIST. Scenes of rising tides swallow Paris and polar bears alike. Trump makes another unfortunate appearance as a diapered devil against a wall of human skulls.
Tristan Eaton, who has a huge mural in West Palm Beach on the Alexander Lofts building, has a new work here of multi-ethnic female faces, layered in red, white and blue with a row of white stars blazing across the front. It’s power to the women of America, a timely and insightful way to express solidarity.
In what is sure to be another major selfie spot, artist Leon Keer has created an old school mural of a Polaroid camera called ‘Picture Perfect’.
Ironically he is against the craze saying “The forced selfies will consume the unique identity you have and blur upon the existence of the person you are. Humanity and kindness does not arise from selfieshness.”
Sorry Leon, this work has already appeared thousands of times online.
With all the new work, Wynwood Walls is well worth a new visit.
Wynwood Walls is the winner of the 2016 “Global Award of Excellence” – from the Urban Land Institute.
Eat at Wynwood Kitchen, stroll the courtyard, peruse the more affordable art in the back gallery. And don’t forget to take photos of favorite murals, as these will be gone when the new winds of change blow through.
]]>Opening May 1, The Lost Warhols brings together a collection of 66 artworks that use one of 10 never-before-seen portraits of the pop art icon as their inspiration at a SoHo gallery space (178 Sixth Ave.).
The original images were taken by photographer Karen Bystedt, who got Warhol to sit for a portrait session in 1982 by cold-calling the artist. Though she was just a 19-year-old film student at New York University at the time, Warhol agreed.
Bystedt published two of the 36 photos she took during that session in her 1983 book Not Just Another Pretty Face, and put the rest in storage. Forgotten until 2011, the negatives were damaged to the point that she and a friend spent four months restoring the 10 salvageable images pixel by pixel. She then invited artists, including neo-pop legend Peter Tunney, to use her pictures as the basis for their own interpretations of Warhol.
“The art in this collection is close to my heart and having it here in New York — where Andy was a king — is something I know he would have loved,” says Bystedt.
The Lost Warhols will remain on view through May 22, where when all of the images will be sold at a live auction. Half of the proceeds going to benefit the hunger-relief organization God’s Love We Deliver.
And for more Warhol, look for the Whitney Museum’s massive retrospective From A to B and Back Again, set to open in November.
]]>Karen Bystedt, who has made a career of photographing actors like Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves and Johnny Depp when they were still just pretty mugs knocking on the doors of Hollywood, had perhaps her most career-making encounter when she was still a student at New York University. Bystedt rung up the Interview offices in 1982, and to her surprise, Andy Warhol answered the phone in his baby voice. She convinced him to sit for a portrait in the magazine’s conference room when it was still located at Union Square. She also interviewed Warhol and published the resulting portraits in a book of male models titled Not Just A Pretty Face in 1983.
Then, fait accompli, she stored away the negatives and forgot about them. Until 2011, when she saw a Warhol artwork fetch $100 million at auction and decided it was time to dig them up. To her horror, most of the 36 negatives were eaten away by termites or covered in termite poop and it took a painstaking pixel-by-pixel process of Photoshop magic to bring ten of The Lost Warhols back to their former glory. Now, returning to the city where she originally photographed the Pope of Pop Art, Bystedt is exhibiting the original images as well as a number of reworks of the photos by artists Tommii Lim, Dom Pattinson, and Peter Tunney, among others. Here’s how it all began.
KAREN BYSTEDT: I was probably 17 or 18 when I first saw Andy Warhol. I was a club kid when I was 17. I would go to Area, Limelight, Nell’s … Then I somehow started photographing male models. I was gonna be a film student, and I had this boyfriend who had a camera and he had me photograph him. I fell in love with it. I took a photography class and started photographing all my friends, and then someone heard about me and asked if I would test. He said he’d buy the film. So we did three rolls, and he took them to his agency and I went in there and showed them my portfolio. And [the agency] said, “You’re really good with men.”
I was very cultured, so of course I knew who Andy Warhol was. I even saw him and Basquiat once at a gallery opening in Chelsea, huddled in the corner. But I got the idea to photograph [Andy] when I was perusing through GQ magazine to look for models. I saw an ad at Barney’s with him modeling. He had this white wig, and I thought, wouldn’t it be great to have Andy in a book on male models? I knew he was at Interview magazine and I knew people around him, but I didn’t know him himself. But once I saw him in the ad I wanted him as a model in the book, which was called Not Just Another Pretty Face. So I called Interview magazine—apparently André Leon Talley was answering the phone then—but Andy answered the phone, which was crazy. Like, unheard of.
I recognized his voice because he had a very specific voice. He spoke very slowly, almost like a baby. I said, “Look, this is Karen Hardy”—that’s my maiden name—“and I would love to photograph you as a model for this book I’m working on.” He just said, “Oh, really? Who else do you have?” I said, “Well I have—” I rattled off a bunch of names. I had two of the Calvin Klein underwear guys, I had the Ralph Lauren guy. So then he said okay, and we set it up.
I’d been photographing everyone else with a Nikon at sunset, and I’d been doing body shots, with their shirts off. But of course, I wasn’t gonna do that with Andy! Now I might’ve had the courage to say, “Let’s take it off.” [laughs] Anyway, I rented a Hasselblad, because Robert Mapplethorpe was using a Hasselblad, and I wanted, out of respect, to photograph Andy with a Hasselblad. He met me in the [magazine’s] conference room. He was wearing a tweed Perry Ellis suit. I guess Perry Ellis was one of his favorite designers. He had put on his own makeup. It was really bad. He had caked it on, so I actually had to ask him if I could help him spread it around a little. First, he literally jumped back, because I don’t think people touched him, but I really wanted to make him look as good as possible. Then he said, “I wish everyone would do that because I wanna do those day jobs and hang out with all the beautiful models and get paid the day rates. Instead, they’re all afraid to touch me, and they just book me for half an hour and just shove me in the shot.” [laughs] So that was it.
I also interviewed him for the book. One of the things he said was that he had been in a store in Paris and this guy that worked there was staring at him and he thought, “Well, this guy must be staring at me because I’m Andy Warhol or something.” That’s how he said it: “Or something.” But the guy came up to [him] and said, “Aren’t you the model that was in the Barney’s ad in GQ?” And he said, “That made my day, it made my week, it made my year.” I always thought it was so crazy that Andy Warhol, who was such a famous figure, had agreed to photograph with me. I hadn’t even been published. He didn’t even ask to see my work, he just let me in.
In the book I did this thing called vital statistics with all the models, and in all the vital statistics boxes. Instead of putting people’s nicknames—like Matt—I would’ve put Matthew. So for Andy, I put Andrew. [laughs] Some of the things I asked were: “What are your favorite hobbies?” He said, “Everything I do is a hobby.” I said, “What’s your age?” “Boys don’t have to tell their age anymore.” Who’s your hero? “Walt Disney.” Favorite movie? “Coming attractions.” Just the coming attractions, that was his favorite movie. He was quick, but very slow and deliberate in the way he delivered. It was almost cartoon-like. While he was talking you were like … “Wow. What is he saying?” It was very confusing, the way he delivered it, but it was all brilliant.
[At some point] I lost track of the negatives. I believe I gave them to a photo agency, but they never did anything with them. Then I read a story about how Andy had just sold something for 100 million and a lightbulb went off. I was like, “Oh shit, I have to go find the negatives.” For about a week I looked and then I finally found some of them in a cardboard box. Not even metal or plastic. Termites ate them. They were big negatives in wax sleeves. Some of the sleeves were okay, but some of them the termites had eaten through. Then I was introduced to a guy who was in the archival department at the J. Paul Getty Museum, who scanned them on $50,000 machines up at the museum. I hired him, and for four months we sat there and I watched him restore the images back pixel by pixel. I’ve never seen anything like it. I retouch, but this is crazy. Seriously, we were just looking at pixels. Then what happened was, because there was dirt or whatever it was as we were fixing, Andy started to look better. So it almost went into retouching, and I had to make the creative artistic decision to be okay with that. I feel like Andy always wanted to look beautiful, and I did photograph him as a model, so I made the artistic decision to make him look as good as possible.
My idea was to do a cohesive show in New York City, where I photographed him, with the right people. And then I was introduced to God’s Love We Deliver, one of the largest charities in New York City. I really wanted to do a cohesive show of my photographs and all these incredible interpretations that other artists have done, making Andy Warhol into the art.
THE LOST WARHOLS: BRINGING ANDY HOME IS ON VIEW UNTIL MAY 22, 2018 AT ONE VANDAM, 178 AVENUE OF THE AMERICAS.
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Quirky Manhattan collage artist Peter Tunney — who drew crowds at Art Basel Miami Beach last week with his “Planet of the Apes”-style sunken pieces of President Trump’s now-defunct Taj Mahal casino — explained Tuesday how he uses the New York Post in almost all his works.
“I’m addicted. I’m the last guy buying newspapers,” Tunney quipped.
“I buy 10 New York Posts per day. And if I’m not around, it’s someone who works for me’s job to buy 10 New York Posts per day. I incessantly clip the New York Post, so I have, like, 10,000 New York Posts in my studio that are organized by headlines and by topics.”
The clippings are stored in “a giant bookcase,” Tunney said.
“I find that The Post’s word-smithing and puniness and relevance is so great,” he added. “So I’ve lived and died clipping The Post and used it in almost every piece of art.”
Tunney — a former Wall Street exec known for hob-nobbing with the rich and famous — works in a Tribeca studio and also has a gallery in the city, as well as one in Miami.
One of the works in his Miami gallery in Wynwood, titled “The Elephant in the Room,” is entirely covered in Post clippings. Other pieces that he has on display involve recycled Trump trash — including a chandelier, carpeting, and signs from the former Atlantic City casino.
Tunney titled his Art Basel installation “Excerpts From The Taj Mahal (The Truth Always Happens).’’
But Tunney‘s true love still lies with The Post — it got him a wife, after all.
“I met this girl 12 years ago, and she loved Page Six — we used to read it together when I was courting her,’’ Tunney recalled.
Then the pair split. So Tunney asked Post gossip columnist Richard Johnson to do a story saying he loved her and wanted to marry her, although the artist lied that the pair had been engaged.
“He wrote a story called ‘Fiancée flees,’ ” Tunney said of Johnson.
“It was, ‘Artworks oddball is heartbroken’ and goes on to say, ‘Amy, if you’re out there, Peter loves you, and he wants to marry you.’
“She read it, she called me, and now we’ve been married for 10¹/₂ years and have a 2-year-old son’’ named Art, Tunney said.
“How could I not like the New York Post? You gave me my two most treasured things.”
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This year, a glut of competing art events has put pressure on the fair to wrangle collectors’ attention. Of course, the main event, which started in 2002, retains its art-world cachet as the year’s last art-buying hurrah,drawing the usual hordes of collectors wearing chunky neon sneakers and flip-flops.
But all over town, artists have set up eye-candy installations. They range from a colorful neon-lined nightclub with a black-and-white interior designed by German artist Carsten Höller to a group of spindly turrets and gilded pianos that Miami artist Peter Tunney salvaged from an Atlantic City casino and half-buried in the sand beyond the Faena Hotel Miami Beach, “Planet of the Apes”-style.
Miami’s museums have also jockeyed for time. The Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami is using fair week to open its new, expanded building. Earlier this week, the Bass Museum of Art opened an exhibition of the often-surreal work of Argentine Mika Rottenberg to showcase its own recent overhaul.
The exterior of the new building for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami. Photo: Iwan Baan
But fair organizers said collectors are still carving out time to shop. Hundreds lined up outside the Miami Beach Convention Center on Wednesday morning to attend the fair’s VIP preview, including celebrities like actor Brad Pitt, supermodel Cindy Crawford and pop singer Ricky Martin. Organizers expect at least 70,000 people to attend the fair before it ends on Sunday.
Boulders and rocks turned up in artworks throughout the fair this time around. Berlin artist Alicja Kwade suspended rocks in oversize metal rings, and Ugo Rondinone piled rocks into colorful totems. At Revolver Gallery, artist Ishmael Randall-Weeks set chunks of silver and copper on a rotating, circular staircase that led to nowhere. Other artists like Carl Mannov toyed with furniture, turning sofas on their sides or attaching oversize claw feet to metal desks.
Major sales included Hauser & Wirth’s $9.5 million sale of Bruce Nauman’s suspended foam creatures, “Untitled (Two Wolves, Two Deer), 1989,” to an Asian collector. The gallery also sold a triptych by abstract painter Mark Bradford for $5 million. Pace Gallery sold Yoshitomo Nara’s 2012 painting of a “Young Mother” for $2.9 million. With some exceptions, most of the first-day sales hovered around $1 million or less.
Plenty of dealers also brought lesser-known artists, betting on the fair’s reputation for transforming young or overlooked creators into international stars. A few highlights:
FRANCESCA DIMATTIO
The daughter of a New York ceramist, this artist first broke through as a painter but has lately won raves for her topsy-turvy vases and ceramic sculptures that sit at the intersection of anthropomorphism and “Alice in Wonderland.” Major collectors like Dennis Scholl, Charles Saatchi and Anita Zabludowicz have purchased her work. For the fair, Salon 94 showed “Boucherouite V,” a new glazed porcelain and stoneware piece that looks like a woman covered in a black-and-white patterned tribal print. As of Friday afternoon, it was still available for around $50,000.
Francesca DiMattio’s ‘Boucherouite V.’ Photo: Elizabeth Lippman for The Wall Street Journal
SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
Born in Burundi and forced out of his home—and later, Rwanda—by civil war and genocide, Mr. Nitegeka is best known for arranging black planks of wood at odd angles that require visitors to tiptoe around them, a nod to the fragile instability of life as an immigrant. Newer works at the fair by the artist, who is now based in South Africa, involve thin, wooden sheets bent into curled, cleanly formal shapes. The Stevenson gallery booth was selling them for $22,000 apiece. “He’s interested in tension,” said Lerato Bereng, the South African gallery’s associate director.
Serge Alain Nitegeka’s ‘Found Form IV,’ left, and ‘Found Form V.’ Photo: Elizabeth Lippman for The Wall Street Journal
LUCY DODD
This New York painter might someday be sighted shopping for art materials at a farmers market: Her earthy abstractions contain a range of organic materials rarely combined, even on a plate. “Jupiter’s Folly,” her 12-foot-square work at the booth of New York gallery David Lewis, includes ingredients like charcoal, wild walnut, yerba maté, squid ink and kukicha, or Japanese twig tea. Last year, her career got a boost when the Whitney Museum of American Art gave her a show. “Jupiter’s Folly” sold the first day of the fair for $125,000, and her gallery said the buyer has promised to give it to a U.S. museum.
Lucy Dodd’s ‘Jupiter’s Folly.’ Photo: Elizabeth Lippman for The Wall Street Journal
CHANNING HANSEN
Crafts meets math for this Los Angeles artist, who hand-dyes and spins yarn, then knits it into patterns he’s created using algorithms derived from research into his own DNA. Major museums own his work, including hometown institutions like the Hammer Museum as well as Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. For the fair, London dealer Stephen Friedman brought a group of Mr. Hansen’s latest knit works, including 2017’s “Software,” a $50,000 piece stretching across a pair of wooden frames.
Channing Hansen’s ‘Software.’ Photo: Mark Blower
Artist Peter Tunney critiques and mines through 1990’s American culture with his anticipated exhibit, Excerpts from The Taj Mahal. The new defunct Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City serves as both inspiration and physical medium for Tunney and his project. The shutter mega hotel served as a symobol of the “American Dream” and Tunney’s exhibit is a depiction of that overarching theme. The Exhibit Opens December 5, 2017 during Miami Art Basel Inside the Wynwood Walls
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In his new show, titled Excerpts from the Taj Mahal (The Truth Always Happens), artist Peter Tunney acts as critic and entertainer mining 1990s American culture. Atlantic City’s now defunct Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino, once a monument of excess is now being dismantled piece by piece and loaded into dumpsters. It has become a symbol of the fragile and ever changing ‘American Dream’. The Taj Mahal, which shut its doors in late 2016, serves as both inspiration and physical medium for Tunney’s upcoming exhibit.
]]>Peter Tunney—known for his creation of "Tunney Money"; formerly residing inside the nightclub Crobar; his close relationships with the rich and famous; and for being one of them himself—was one of these people. The famed visual artist, who is friends with a new owner of the hotel (which will become the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino), visited the space in August while the sale was still in process. "A friend of mine bought the Taj Mahal hotel, and called me up and said, 'You got to see this,' so I got in a helicopter, walked around and really had a 'Holy cow' moment," Tunney, who will debut Excerpts From The Taj Mahal (The Truth Always Happens) during Art Basel inside the Wynwood Walls, explains. "Vast. No one there. There's so many different warheads going off in your head. It's like, what happened?"
The juxtaposition of Atlantic City—from the broken Ferris wheel and dilapidated oceanfront property to the colossal looming hotels—was Tunney's initial motivating inspiration behind his new show. But it was his access to the Taj Mahal's remnants that was the most important factor. "My friend said, 'Peter, you can have anything you want,'" Tunney reveals. "And I'm a real dumpster diver. I love to take things out of some guy's garbage on 80th Street and make some connection with it, and then you can turn it into something that will last for 100 years. And this was the greatest pile I've ever walked into in my life!"
Items that Tunney acquired from the Taj Mahal include two golden marquees that weigh approximately 1,000 pounds each, oil paintings, wallpaper torn right off the walls, headboards, rugs, and a 30,000-piece chandelier. (Less than a week before his show for Art Basel, he was still attempting to have a crane extract three 15-foot-tall letters off the exterior of the building, which he hoped to have shipped down to Miami.) "A lot of things I overshot," he admits.
The amount of effort needed to install a chandelier from the Taj Mahal into his studio in Miami may have been one of those things. "I said, 'Can I get one of the chandeliers? I would love to put one of the chandeliers in my studio in Wynwood.' And you have to remember where we are: It was one of the worst neighborhoods in Miami about eight years ago. Talk about incongruity," Tunney laughs. "This chandelier goes from the ceiling to the floor. It came in five crates the size of automobiles. I'm so committed; I didn't realize, I think it's going to be about 1,000 hours of man work."
Tunney is so committed, in fact, he has what he's dubbed an entire "chandelier team" to help him reconstruct the lighting fixture which once hung in the Taj Mahal along with 16 others. "They all came to my house for Thanksgiving," he says of his team. "And everybody's so into it. But it's just a stop-you-in-your-tracks moment." It took Tunney and his team five days to get the platform for the chandelier on the ceiling, due to the fact the glass alone weighs two tons. The effort, according to Tunney, is worth it, however. "I have dreams about this chandelier," he says. "I think it's a work of art."
Those venturing to Tunney's gallery searching for obvious jibes at Donald Trump, due to the nature of the materials used in the show, might come up empty-handed. "I have not used Trump in my narrative at all," says Tunney, but he admits "there’s an obvious connection. I kind of wish he didn’t own the Taj Mahal, because it’s too easy of a target."
Still, Tunney feels confident that visitors won't be disappointed. "It's pretty f**king crazy and over-the-top," he asserts. "It's the craziest thing I've ever done." Considering Tunney's past work, that certainly says a lot.
Excerpts From The Taj Mahal can be seen starting December 5th at The Peter Tunney Experience (located at 220 NW 26th Street, Miami, Florida 33127; 10 A.M.–12 A.M.)
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“The Peter Tunney Experience” Debuts in Wynwood Walls
Opening December 5th, Peter Tunney’s newest expedition, Excerpts from the Taj Mahal (The Truth Always Happens), offers a reflection of 1990’s American culture as seen through the recently-dismantled Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City. A symbol of the fragile and ever-changing ‘American Dream,’ this exhibit will be made of upcycled pieces from the hotel: from gigantic 15 ft. chandeliers, massive oil paintings and two-ton elephants, to lamps, casino carpeting, headboards, wallpaper torn right off the walls, and even signs.
The Peter Tunney Experience will be located at 220 NW 26th Street. It will be open during Art Basel daily, from 10 a.m. to Midnight. For more information about Peter Tunney, click here.
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Art Basel is here, which means your Instagram game needs to be on point.
Whether you’re swimming in a pool of sprinkles at the brand-new Museum of Ice Cream, wandering the Upside Down at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, or traveling through Kanye’s brain at Basel House, there’s no end to the exhibits for you to immerse yourself in.
We’ve gathered the most selfie-friendly spots, so get your smart phones ready, pick a favorite filter, and get ready to hashtag.
The grandiose Taj Mahal hotel in Atlantic City shuttered its doors in 2016, and artist Peter Tunney has used pieces — including 15-foot chandeliers, giant oil paintings, 2-ton elephants, lamps, headboards, and wallpaper — to create massive works of art.
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Thirty years ago, before he made his foray into politics, Donald Trump had this crazy idea to create the most opulent, over-the-top casino the world had ever seen. He set his sights on Atlantic City, New Jersey; outbid rivals to purchase a monstrosity called the Taj Mahal; and slapped his name on the front for good measure.
At a cost of almost $1 billion, the Trump Taj Mahal was as outrageous as both of its namesakes. Trump ordered an ornate crown of onion domes to rest on top, a pair of two-ton concrete elephant statues, and 17 crystal chandeliers to hang within his gambling chapel. The whole thing was too big for its britches and seemed destined to fail. A little more than a year after opening in 1987, the Trump Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy. On October 10, 2016, it closed its doors for good.
But the Trump Taj Mahal is being rebirthed by artist Peter Tunney, whose "Excerpts From the Taj Mahal (The Truth Always Happens)" explores the opulence, grandeur, and illusions of what was once arguably the most flamboyant casino, built by a goon who would one day become president of the United States.
“Here was the idea: Make the world’s largest golden-plastic carnival of crap with the most slot machines in the world, borrow a billion dollars in 1990 at 14 percent interest, and think you’re gonna kill it. Probably not your greatest idea ever," Tunney says.
"The truth always happens,” he adds. "It ends up in the garbage can.”
Tunney, who runs the gallery the Peter Tunney Experience at Wynwood Walls, has taken on the task of recycling Trump’s trash into pieces of art, in the process turning his gallery into something of an homage to the Taj.
"Excerpts From the Taj Mahal" includes salvaged items from the hotel and casino that Tunney has branded with his own aesthetic and go-to slogans such as “It’s all good,” “We live in a beautiful world,” and “Don’t panic.” Among the items are marquee light boxes, torn wallpaper, and construction blueprints.
"Every square inch of the place was laid out in these plans," Tunney says. "And it never worked. It was just a slow grind to the dumpster and basically didn’t serve anybody in any way."
But the artist is most excited about the 15-foot chandelier, with 25,000 to 30,000 pieces, which Tunney's team is slowly reassembling.
"No one ever took one of these chandeliers down, let alone put it back up,” he says. "It’s been hanging there since the day Donald Trump ordered it to the Taj Mahal. As it turns out, it goes from the ceiling there to the floor of my gallery.”
Peter Tunney's "Excerpts From the Taj Mahal (The Truth Always Happens)." 10 a.m. to midnight through Sunday, December 10, at the Peter Tunney Experience, Wynwood Walls, 220 NW 26th St., Miami; petertunneyart.com. Admission is free.
“The Sinking of the Taj Mahal” an Exhibit by Peter Tunney
Installed at The Faena Hotel, Miami Beach
Opens December 4, 2017
“ The only responsibility of the artist is to know the time in which he lives in.” - E.L. Doctorow
WHAT: With exclusive access to Atlantic City’s obsolete Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino, before it transforms into the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, artist Peter Tunney was granted the opportunity to hand-select and collect pieces to convert one man’s trash into another man’s treasure. The installation is composed of items including ornate chandeliers, spires, and two concrete elephants that are strategically placed/sunken in the sand on the beach in the Faena District. As the show haphazardly materialized, Tunney was inspired by the 1968 classic film, Planet of the Apes, specifically the scene where the Statue of Liberty is decayed and sinking into the sand. This scene stops you dead in your tracks and makes one wonder: what happened? The Sinking of the Taj Mahal initiates the dialogue about the elephant in the room and our society's understanding of excess, obsession, and money.
With assistance from Jingoli Construction, key elements of the casino and architecture were carefully removed and revived at a farm in New Jersey amongst barns, silos and cattle before being moved to their final destination in Miami Beach, Florida.
In addition to The Sinking of the Taj Mahal, Tunney’s gallery in Wynwood will feature Excerpts from the Taj Mahal (The Truth Always Happens), where collectors will have a chance to acquire an upcycle of history. Tunney transformed his gallery into an exhibit that is ‘Beyond Words’ using the casino carpeting, lavish chandeliers and other remnants from the defunct hotel. Collectors will have a glimpse through Tunney’s brilliant mind with stand-out pieces that showcase Tunney as an artist, in a vulnerable way that we have never seen him before. The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men Often go Awry, Expectations Are The Blueprints for Disappointment, and Wild Card continue to carry the theme of this year’s show comprised of over 80 pieces of work.
With gratitude to Joseph Jingoli, as this show would not be possible without him.
WHEN: December 4th, 2017
WHERE: Faena Hotel
3201 Collins Avenue
Miami Beach, Florida 33140
USA
Social Media: @PeterTunneyArt
Website: www.PeterTunneyArt.com
Interviews and Press: Lynn Hason Lynn@Labmediagroup.com 914.643.9687
Artwork Inquiries:
Remi Wachtenheim Francois Banos Remi@Tunneyart.com Francoisbanos@gmail.com 401.952.2301 917.216.4667
Peter Tunney is a New York-based artist, and his work, which frequently mixes and varies in media, is described as relics of the constant performance that is the artist’s life. His recent works, where optimistic phrases are colorfully painted over collaged newspaper headlines, serve as a “subtle attack on our culture of fear and ennui.” As the media relay stories of death, destruction, hysteria, and greed, Peter whimsically overpowers them them with his own headlines, such as “DON’T PANIC,” “BELIEVE,” and “CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE EVERYTHING.”
]]>So it’s something of a surprise to find that Tunney’s most recent series involves skulls. The series, suitably deemed “The Skull Sessions” and opening at New York’s Clic Gallery on Wednesday and Thursday, is laden with what’s usually considered a symbol of death. In Tunney’s case though the skull is about nothing if not life. Unlike the so-called tortured artist, Tunney looks at things for what good they can do or mean or say. If an image can’t provide any of that, well, it’s off to the next image.
For Tunney though, there doesn’t seem to be an image in the world that he can’t skew forward. An electric chair (preferably Warholian), a grisly New York Post headline, an old license plate, a choice detail from a contemporary’s work, there are literally thousands of images he uses to back up his now trademark, bright-eyed sloganeering. The skulls though are different. They are front and center and doubled and tripled. They are the focus. And like everything Tunney focuses in on, they’ve got a past — and a story. Here that past — and that story — dates back to his tenure in Africa with the notorious Peter Beard.
“Peter had this table on his front porch at Hog Ranch that was covered in skulls,” he says, “elephant skulls, leopard skulls, human skulls. It was a smorgasbord of skulls. I took tons of Polaroids while I was in Africa; years later, when I opened the boxes up, it was those skulls that first struck me.”
Tunney’s positive spin on skulls might seem a natural after the last decade’s purely positive message paintings (not his term), but it should be remembered that the man not only created his own set of proverbially rose-colored glasses — he earned them, one mad episode at a time.
There was the near year he lived within the confines of Crobar New York, a period he calls “a parade of priceless pulchritude”, where everyone from new-fangled club kids to old world aristocracy came to sate their inner crazy. And of course there were the many, many moons alongside Beard, where supremely beautiful women were barely out-numbered (and out-bared) by the abounding (yet threatened) African wildlife. Tunney sees it all as pivotal to his education.
“All that death and destruction was important,” he says. “We spent five years immersed in the dark. We saw beyond the end of the world.”
Evidence of that fact can be found in Tunney’s same-titled book, Peter Beard: Beyond the End of the World, just as evidence of his fixation for skulls can be found in the limited-edition Skull Style. Like Beyond, Skull Style pits Tunney with an extremely gifted fellow traveler; unlike the aforementioned, it pits him with over 100 different artists and designers, including Damien Hirst, Jean Michel Basquiat and Alexander McQueen.
“I’m both happy and proud to have made this list,”said Tunney. “And extremely thankful to [Curated Collection editor/publisher] Patrice Farameh for the opportunity.”
This week at Clic, before a crowd which will comprise the best New York has to offer, Tunney will show his gratitude by personally transmogrifying each and every book. Then, within a month or two, he’ll do likewise with the whole of New York itself. The project, which will be splattered on billboards from one end of Manhattan to the other, is to be called “Grattitude,” and it will be the product of a very grateful artist.
“I’m here to say everything is gonna be okay,” says Tunney. “In fact it already is.”
A message like that can only be greeted with one word: “Wow.”
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