Chuck Sperry

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“Serigraph” Group Show in SF at Spoke Art July 13 to 31

Earlier this summer, from July 13 to July 31, 2021, SPOKE ART was proud to present SERIGRAPH, a dynamic group exhibition celebrating screen printing and analog print making as both a medium and a process. This comprehensive survey included artists from a variety of genres, backgrounds and styles.

“Each artist brings their unique experience in screen printing from their broad ranging experience in the world of concert posters, movie and film work, street art, fashion and beyond. Working with single or multicolor screen prints, each artist has created a new limited edition, melting the boundary between traditional art mediums and the analog printing process.”

Chuck Sperry • Erica Williams • Murugiah • Nikita Kaun • Eelus • David Moscati • Arna Miller • Tom Whalen • Jeremy Fish • Ian Glaubinger • Marc Spusta • GATS • Petite Luxures • Justin Santora • Luke Martin 

I was away in France when this show opened in San Francisco and I would like to document it here on chucksperry.net to mark the auspicious occasion. My participation was discrete, as we feared a large crowd might gather during the pandemic, and my art piece “Primavera, Pampinea” was offered at the opening as a surprise, and the edition sold out swiftly.

Installation view from “Serigraph” a group exhibition at Spoke Art San Francisco

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Chuck Sperry’s “Invisible Reasons” Art Tour Coming to Pisa in June 2019

Invisible Reasons
A solo exhibition of new work by Chuck Sperry

Argini e Margini di Arno

Scalo dei Renaioli, Lungarno Galilei
Pisa, Italia

Opening Night Reception: June 28, 2019, begins 6:30pm
with DJ Dome La Muerte

Leningrad Café, Argini e Margini di Arno is pleased to present “Invisible Reasons” a solo exhibition by San Francisco-based screen print master Chuck Sperry. 

For his upcoming solo exhibition in Pisa, Chuck will be showing his recent rock posters and art prints – from the last two years. Chuck will also present his newest art book: “Chthoneon: The Art of Chuck Sperry”

American artist Chuck Sperry is known for his ethereal and psychedelically saturated screen prints that draw crowds of dedicated fans around the world. He draws inspiration from graffiti, pop art, Symbolism, Art Nouveau and ukiyo-e.

Moving past his early work devoted to subverting the memes of advertising, trash-culture, and comics — he currently imagines a verdant garden of new work tended by his signature shimmering muses, calling this work a “utopian provocation.”

“Motivation for my art can be psychological or philosophical – emerging from the realm of the psyche, from the realm of ideas, or from spiritual dimensions. Drawn together my work is the visible effect of these invisible realms making their mark in the physical world – in short it’s psychedelic.”

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Edwardian Ball 2019 Poster

Edwardian Ball 2019
19 x 35
Edition of 125
3 colors on cream paper
Signed and Numbered

Sold Out – Thank You!

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This poster is officially available at the show in SF and LA. I will be making a very limited online release of this poster on Sunday, January 27, 2019 at a random time.

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It’s Edwardian Ball time again, and as always, it’s a great pleasure to work with Justin Katz, the Edwardian Ball impresario, and once again I had a lot of fun making this poster!

My Edwardian Ball posters always have an edge of social critique in them. They are done with a wink and a nod, in keeping with the enjoyment of attending such an elaborate period pageant.

Most of the attendees also realize that the Edwardian era was one of unabashed and ostentatious oligarchy, unrivaled economic imperialism and a presumed European superiority complex. It’s all of these things that makes the period so bizarre to us today. I’ve always endeavored to reveal this outrageous and bizarre sense of imperial entitlement in my Edwardian Ball posters, and keep them wild and fun.

I try to channel the spirit of our age in a non-linear way with each year’s Edwardian Ball poster, making allegory, or touching a simple parallel between our 21st Century experience and the far-away world of Edwardian “Society.” 

2019 was the year we entered “The Post-Truth World.” I’m not buying the ticket to that ride, really-but-really, but it made me think of the eminently Edwardian and irrational — Rasputin — spiritualist, con-man and emotional vampire to the Czar Romanov family. 

Spiritualists were fashionable to the ultra-wealthy oligarchs of the period. Rasputin boasted the mirror-image of a perfect pedigree: a peasant and holy man. His ferrel lack of charm and grace was thrilling to the elite circles he traversed in imperial Russia. Rasputin’s folksy and disarming gnosticism was — I’ll use a word we hear a lot today — “unprecedented.”

Clever and conniving, Rasputin snaked away the patronage of Czarina Alexandra Romanov, empress of Russia, with its ability to bestow wealth and prestige. By degrees, he would hold a nation’s leader mesmerized, and participate in bringing about the self-destruction of Russia’s imperial order. 

Soon the fabulously wealthy dynastic Romanov family would abdicate their empire, be brought down by the Bolsheviks, become prisoners of the revolution, and be bound for bleak incarceration and execution. I guess the moral is: Don’t be a sucker to a con-man.

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Chuck Sperry x Spoke Art at Designer Con 2018

The Oracle
21 x 31.5
Edition of 150
7 colors on cream paper
Signed and Numbered

Variant editions of Gold, Silver, Black, Holo Sparkle Foil, Holo Lava Foil

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Spoke Art is heading South to Anaheim this week for DesignerCon 2018! It’s our first time at D-Con and we wanted to do it right, so we are bringing all new exclusives, breaking open the archives and we’ll have a fantastic array of art you won’t want to miss!!

Here’s a first look at our DesignerCon 2018 exclusive from artist Chuck Sperry. Join us at booth 2613 all weekend to get yours before they’re gone.

Sperry poster release will be Saturday, November 17th at Noon at DesignerCon at Spoke Art booth 2613!

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“Litmus Test” Exhibition at Fort Wayne Museum of Art on September 14

Litmus Test: Works on Paper from the Psychedelic Era

Fort Wayne Museum of Art

Exhibition Opening Party: September 14, 6-9pm

September 15 – December 9, 2018

The Psychedelic Era was, among many things, a cultural frontier for colors and imagery. Music, politics, and drugs ignited an unprecedented expansion of art revolving around these elements. College campuses around the country, now seen as the birthing grounds for much of the psychedelic era’s ideals, were hotbeds for bright young minds to organize politically and artistically. From Berkeley College to the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, young idealists organized and the art of the era came to fruition. This exhibition will be our bridge to that time, showcasing a variety of psychedelic era works on paper.

Highlighting this experience is the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan. The poster work and ephemera of Gary Grimshaw and the photography of Leni Sinclair will showcase the art that poured out of that time and place. Blotter sheets from Mark Mothersbaugh, H.R. Giger, S. Clay Wilson, Chuck Sperry, and more will represent the creative fuel for many of the artists of the time. Also featured will be the work of the poster artists of the time: Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, Rick Griffin, and Alton Kelley. Lastly works by artists Alex and Allyson Grey and Isaac Abrams will display the fine art guided and influenced by the era and movement.

Exhibition Opening Party: September 14, 6-9pm

Celebrate opening weekend of this exhibit and Litmus Test: Works on Paper from the Psychedelic Era with live music, cash bar, appetizers, with many of the artists in attendance!

This exhibition is curated by independent curator and critic Carlo McCormick and FWMoA Curator of Contemporary Art Josef Zimmerman.

Archives

Sperry Books: “Color x Color” • “Helikon” • “Chthoneon” • “Idyllion”

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