Steve Powers

12/08

The exhibition was in two parts, one at colette and one on the street.

Don’t miss Steve Powers’(aka ESPO) exhibition “A True Provider Is Good To Find” and his new unseen before paintings made in Paris...

The street exhibition is called "l'attraction de la boue".
Steve Powers (aka ESPO) designed raincoats for Canal Street flyer touts in 2006 and rock stars and parking lot attendants in 2007. In honor of World Aids Day 2008, he and Matt Goias reach out to the ultimate nexus of entertainment and street life; Parisian Prostitutes. It’s a project Mr. Goias titled, "L’Attraction De La Boue" or the "Pull Of The Mud", after a term the French use to describe the desire to patronize working girls.

In the week leading up to World Aids Day on December 1st, Mr. Powers and Mr. Goias will design and distribute raincoats to the street workers in the red light districts of Paris as a functioning metaphor of the protection we as a society should extend to those most at-risk. Powers said of the project, “We strive to protect you from the elements in high fashion and function, from the slick yellow vinyl shell to the latex condoms in the pockets. It’s the most we can do.”

As a commemorative token from "L’Attraction De La Boue”, Goias has designed a limited run of custom hotel key cards that echo our yearning for escape and the search for physical and psychological safety. Led by the hospitality industry’s promise of manufactured comfort, the cards are symbolic of the ways we look for emotional shelter. They act as both a transient and a transformational item that helps unlock (and contain) a separate reality.

A limited edition run of 100 hotel keys will be signed by Powers and Goias and on sale at Colette beginning December 1.

Stephen Powers was born and raised and Philadelphia, and moved to New York City in 1994. After stints as publisher of On the Go Magazine, author of the book The Art Of Getting Over, and full-time graffiti writer, Powers opened his studio practice in Janurary of 1998. Since then he has shown at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Deitch Projects, The 49th Venice Bienalle, and The Luggage Store in San Francisco. In 2003, He founded the Dreamland Artist Club and partnered with Creative Time to commission over 45 artists to paint signs and rides in Coney Island. This summer he returned to Coney Island with Creative Time and opened The waterboard Thrill Ride. As a 2007 Fulbright Scholar, Powers painted a love story in the streets of Dublin and Belfast. He lives and works in Manhattan.

Matt Goias is a New York City artist who has created works conceptual, recorded, and visual. Most notably, Goias created “The Bench” a summer-long, conceptual, media sensation, and “Fannypack”, a musical project which achieved international fame, infiltrating popular culture with performances, sights and songs.