Exhibition Feature - DON'T WORRY, EVERYTHING'S COOL at Alchemy Gallery

Don’t Worry, Everything’s Cool is a group exhibition curated by American artist John Copeland, which brings Copeland’s neo-expressionist figurative paintings together with the multi-media works of sculpture artist Rose Eken, artist/designer Erik Brunetti, and filmmaker Ada Bligaard Søby.

Drawing from a wide range of materials and techniques, the artists featured in Don’t Worry, Everything’s Cool create paintings, sculptures, and videos, which explore their own connections to the constant state of reinvention that epitomizes the NYC experience.

In this feature, each artist responds to a question about their work in the show.

The exhibition will be on display at NYC’s Alchemy Gallery through January 15.

John Copeland

As the curator of Don't Worry, Everything's Cool, what were your parameters for selecting artists and work which meshed well with your neo-expressionist figurative paintings, especially regarding the show's focus on the "constant state of reinvention that epitomizes the NYC experience"?

Everyone in this show is someone that I've known and been close with for quite a long time, and we’ve all previously shown together in all kinds of formats in the past. The idea for this specific show was actually something we all started working on in 2020, and while Covid may have gotten in the way at that time, when the opportunity came to put it together for Alchemy Gallery, we thought it would work even better.

We all have vast connections to NYC and the city's various subcultures, especially downtown, in that neighborhood. I’ve lived here for 25 years. We may each work in very different mediums, but our themes are similar, and that makes our individual artistic creations work really well together. Perhaps even more so, centered around this theme. The culmination of this exhibition is a group of pieces that have a unique dialogue with one another; both serious and playful, with some dark humor all at the same time.

Erik Brunetti

You're best known for your logo re-appropriation lifestyle and clothing brand FUCT, but for Don't Worry, Everything's Cool, you're showing a series of black and white India ink drawings - have you worked much in this form before, and how do you think the series fits with the themes of this show and with your overall approach to streetwear design?

I’ve been making art from the beginning of my life, at a very early age. Painting, drawing, sculpting, long before I started my brand, FUCT. My artworks and my brand have maintained a separate existence from each other throughout the years but have eventually merged as of the last 15 years. This was not a conscious decision; it was just a natural progression I believe.

During the early 90s I worked with Ivan Karp. (Karp discovered and helped develop Andy Warhol’s rise to success). I suppose Ivan saw similarities in my work with FUCT and Warhol, but at that time, I was reluctant to show FUCT as my “artwork,” it was just a job for me. At this time I had unknowingly helped create a multi-billion dollar industry we know today as “streetwear” (at that age and time in my life, I still had not recognized how art and commerce could work).

I have been drawing with India ink for well over 30 years, it’s my preferred medium. The drawings in this show depict a fascination but at the same time also a criticism of American values or American exceptionalism that fuel today's landscape and prior. Pam Anderson running out of the ocean (opening scene of Baywatch), Obama-era predator drones and so forth. I try to avoid titles for my works, as they speak for themselves, nor do I want to direct the viewer into a thought process other than their own thoughts of the work.

I also draw from real life experiences, for example when I was in Sinaloa, Mexico, attending a cock fight, I sketched the champion cock on a piece of Harley Davison stationary. The juxtaposition of the subject matter and the stationary it is rendered on makes a very poignant statement.

Rose Eken - “NYC Ghosts and Flowers”, 2020 – 2022 -Glazed Paper Clay - Dimensions variable (approx. 300 ceramic objects)

Rose Eken

Your installation “NYC Ghosts and Flowers” includes almost 300 hand-painted ceramic miniatures, many of which are reproductions of the detritus you had to clean up after working in music venues in Copenhagen as a teenager – “cigarette butts, beer bottles, soda cans, lighters, discarded clothing, and lost cell phones.” The installation has a meticulous, shrine-like presentation – what was your intent and process for the arrangement of these pieces?

“NYC Ghost and Flowers” is a “shrine” to the old New York. It mirrors a makeshift temporary street memorial, occurring as a spontaneous collective need to commemorate something or someone; a way to express shared sorrow. Yet there is also a permanence about this particular collection, as each and every object has been meticulously hand modelled, fired and glazed in ceramic.

The almost three hundred objects in this shrine all refer to a place, a period, a person, an artist, a musician, an author, or a specific event relating to New York City, spanning a timeframe from around the 1900s until now. Amidst flowers and candles, you will for instance find a small bust of Emma Goldman and a copy of her biography Living My Life next to a mandolin with the words “This Machine Kills Fascists” written on it, as it was on Woodie Guthrie’s guitar. Other items are The New York Dolls’ debut album, the front page of the Daily Mirror from the day John Lennon was shot and killed, several stuffed crochet animals from Mike Kelly’s installations, also used on the cover of Sonic Youth’s 1992 studio album Dirty. A sketchbook by Patti Smith, an Andy Warhol souvenir mug, Ramones worn out black Converse, Aron Rose’s hand painted skateboard and spray cans, flyers, pins and prayer candles from Alleged Gallery by the artist surrounding the Lower East Side gallery space in the 1990s – and much, much more.

Crisscrossing collective history and personal memory, “NYC Ghosts and Flowers” accumulates and superimposes diverging moments in time. Shrines usually act as memorials for the lost, but here, these artefacts of creativity, rebellion, and the desire for emancipation seem to evoke the progress we have made so far, while supplying hope for an uncertain future.

Ada Søby

For this show, you're presenting your 2005 documentary American Losers, which "follows two individuals living quintessential NYC experiences, albeit via very different paths." How do you think the themes of this film help to round out the show and possibly underscore the difficulties of trying to rebel in a society where even most forms of "rebellion" have been appropriated for commercial uses or material gains?

In American Losers, Kimberle and Kevin had both left their forced-upon-habitat and moved elsewhere enduring even more struggle. That alone deserves recognition. I think the hardest way to rebel is to flip the middle finger to where you come from. That includes parents, religious beliefs, and social standards. Kimberle and Kevin are the ultimate winners because they do not succumb to anyone’s expectations but instead continue to live a restless and insecure life with room for the unforeseen. In my experience most people do not have the imagination nor the courage for this type of lifestyle.

True rebels do not think about being appropriated by the masses, they are simply too involved in sailing down their own river spreading their message, most commonly without really being aware themselves of what impact they have. While the rest of the world is trying to catch up, the rebels continue to inspire and alarm with their sexy, disaffected, and honest selves.

When the Met Gala had a punk “from chaos to couture” theme in 2013 and the red-carpet guests were asked to name their favorite punk song upon arrival, very few could. They simply did not know a single punk song. That threw me off as I expected more from the cultural movers and shakers of the world, and I guess this pretty much sums up what happens when ideas like do-it-yourself travel from the riffraff to the power mob. It becomes I-buy-what-you-do-and-fuck-it-up-badly.

Don’t Worry, Everything’s Cool is on display through January 15 at Alchemy Gallery, 55 Delancey St., New York, NY 10002