REDEFINING THE RULES: A Conversation with FUTURA, CRASH & DAZE, moderated by Carlos Mare
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
7:00 – 8:30 PM
(Doors at 6:30 PM)
At The Bronx Museum
(1040 Grand Concourse)
FREE! Ticket Required
About The Artist Talk
In conjunction with our exhibition FUTURA 2000: BREAKING OUT, The Bronx Museum is proud to present REDEFINING THE RULES: A Conversation with FUTURA 2000, CRASH (John Matos) & DAZE (Chris Ellis), moderated by artist and educator Carlos Mare.
These trailblazers will dive into the shifting art world, redefining the rules of contemporary painting and the categorizations of “street” art and “high” art.
They’ll talk about how the spray can became the ultimate paintbrush and explore what it means to build a lasting legacy in both the community and the larger art world.
Moderated by Mare, who grew up alongside these artists in The Bronx during the early graffiti movement, the panel will delve into the complex dynamics of artistic legitimization and recognition—the importance of being in dialogue within the canon of art history. Our esteemed guests will share their experiences navigating the contemporary art scene while staying true to their roots and practice.
Together, they’ll examine the bigger picture with street art’s global appeal and reach, discussing how this cross-cultural exchange has influenced not just the art scene, but also music, fashion, and artistic trends over the decades.
Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear these influential artists reflect on their journeys and offer insights into the ever-changing relationship with the broader art world.
Waitlist & Standby
- At this time, no more tickets are available for this program.
- If a ticket-holder has not checked in by 7:15 PM, we will give their seat(s) to people waiting in the standby line on a first-come, first-served basis. Standby queuing begins when doors open at 6:30 PM.
- Due to capacity restrictions, we are not able to admit additional people once all seats have been filled
Please Note
- This is NOT a meet-and-greet or signing event, it is a sit-down panel discussion. Please be respectful of the artists’ time and personal space.
- Limited pre-signed copies of artist publications will be available for purchase from the Museum’s gift shop on a first-come, first-served basis beginning at 6:30PM (a half hour before the artist talk begins) as well as for thirty minutes after the talk concludes, or for as long as supplies last.
- A video recording of the conversation will be made publicly available in the days following the event on The Bronx Museum’s digital channels including YouTube
FUTURA 2000
FUTURA 2000 is the nom de plume of Leonard Hilton McGurr.
FUTURA 2000’s work is included in collections such as The New Museum, New York; MOCA, Los Angeles; Groninger Museum, the Netherlands; Yvon Lambert, Galerie De Noirmont; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, and Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
His collaborations include Virgil Abloh and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons.
In 2020, the Isamu Noguchi Museum presented FUTURA Akari, an installation of Akari light sculptures customized by FUTURA 2000. In the same year, the artist created a large site-specific installation at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and was included in the exhibition Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip Hop Generation at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Eric Firestone Gallery is the artist’s U.S. fine art representative. The creative and artist management agency ICNCLST represents the artist’s fine art and commercial projects globally.
CRASH (John Matos)
Born John Matos in 1961, CRASH was raised in the Bronx, New York.
At the age of 13, he began following the older teens from his neighborhood to the train yards and began “bombing.” Taking the name “CRASH” after he accidentally crashed the computer in his school, his name began appearing on trains circulating throughout New York City.
By 1980, he began transitioning from train yards to galleries, he curated the ground-breaking Graffiti Art Success for America at Fashion MODA, launching the graffiti movement that has remained very active to this today.
CRASH’s career took off and he gained popularity throughout Europe, America, and eventually Asia. CRASH has been part of numerous museum and gallery shows around the world focusing on Graffiti and Street Art, and has works in many permanent museum collections.
Visually iconic, he has partnered with many companies for projects including Absolut Vodka, Fender Guitars, SoBella Handbags, Levi’s, and most recently, Tumi luggage and Morphik.
He continues to work and show both locally and internationally. He is the co-owner of contemporary art gallery WALLWORKS NEW YORK and the co-owner of Wallworks TWO, a locally driven retail boutique. Both are located in The Bronx, New York.
Chris Daze Ellis
Chris Daze Ellis was born in 1962 in New York City.
He began his prolific career painting NYC subway cars in 1976 while attending The High School of Art & Design. He remains one of the few artists of his generation to make the successful transition from the subways to the studio.
His first group show was the seminal Beyond Words at the Mudd Club in 1981. Soon after his first solo exhibition was held at Fashion Moda, an influential alternative art space in the South Bronx. One year later the Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen, Germany acquired the first of several paintings for their permanent collection.
Since then he has exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions in such cities as Paris, Monte Carlo, Singapore, Beijing, Florence, and Buenos Aires. Ellis’ work has continued to be included in many group shows and museum surveys internationally.
Notable solo exhibitions include Sidney Janis Gallery, NY, 1984; Palais du Lichtenstein, Feldkirch, Austria, 1999; Musee d’Art Moderne, Nice, France, 1999; Galleria del Palazzo, Florence, Italy, 1998; Fortune Cookie Projects, Singapore, 2010; Addison Gallery of American Art at The Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, 2014; The Museum of the City of New York, New York; The Russ Berrie Medical Science Pavillion at Columbia University, 2018; and PPOW Gallery, New York, 2018.
Alongside these exhibitions, Daze has completed many public art projects over the years including a mural for The Star Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong in 1993; the design for a train station alongside artists Lee and Crash in Hannover, Germany in 1995; a mural for the Dreamland Social Club, Creative Time, in 2004; art for Baz Luhrmann’s Netflix series, “The Get Down”, 2017; and a mural for the law firm, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in Washington D.C., 2018
In addition to the many public projects he has completed, Daze has successfully collaborated with students since 1994. He has worked with communities in cities like New York; Seoul, Baton Rouge, Rio de Janeiro, Palaia, Port au Prince, and Andover, Massachusetts. He is a regular contributor to the Leap Arts Program and Thrive Collective in New York.
Daze’s paintings are in many private collections including Eric Clapton, Natalie Imbruglia, and Madonna. His work can also be found in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum, NY; Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Museum of the City of New York, NY; The Ludwig Museum, Aachen; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; and the Addison Museum of American Art at the Phillips Academy, Andover.
Chris Daze Ellis continues to live and work in New York City.
Carlos Mare
Carlos M. Rodriguez (Carlos Mare, aka Mare139) is a Puerto Rican-American sculptor, painter, and scholar with a distinguished interdisciplinary artistic career.
Born in 1965 in Manhattan and raised in the South Bronx, Mare began writing graffiti in 1976 and would go on to paint with the most notable artists of the time and eventually follow route into the mainstream art world.
He gained early acclaim as a subway graffiti artist featured in the seminal 1983 documentary Style Wars. Early in his artistic career, art history would become central to his creative and intellectual development—using it as a lens for interpretation in his work and as a roadmap for his peers to follow.
In 1984 he created his first modernist graffiti sculpture with a nod to Dadaism and began giving public lectures about urban art and art history. He continues to lecture in Universities and Museums around the world.
Mare’s artistic evolution draws from modernist movements, combining graffiti’s dynamism with influences from Cubism, Futurism, and Constructivism. His groundbreaking sculptures and paintings are featured in major collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, Pera Art Museum, and Urban Nation Museum in Berlin.
He is a Technologist and advocate for employing advanced technologies alongside analog processes for making art. At the onset of the internet age, he was among the first to integrate Hip Hop culture into digital platforms—earning a coveted Webby Award in 2006 for the Style Wars website. He also designed the iconic BET Awards trophy in 2001, which has been presented to luminaries such as Stevie Wonder, JayZ, Beyoncé, and Kobe Bryant. In 2019 he was a co-founding member of the Museum of Graffiti in Miami.
In 2024 Mare exhibited B-Boy Abstracts, a series based on break dancers, at The Olympic Museum in Paris for the inaugural Breaking competition, as well as created a large-scale sculpture on the River Seine for the ceremonies. His series continues with four large-scale sculptures at Miami’s famed Wynwood Walls during Art Basel Miami’s 2024 events.