'Ruined Billboard: Matterhorn' by Roamcouch x Jeff Gillette, 2021
22 x 26 Inches
55.9 x 66 Centimeters
Giclée print on 308gsm Hahnemuhle Cotton Rag fine art paper.
Limited Edition of only 50 (#16/50)
Hand-signed by Roamcouch in pencil bottom left.
Hand-numbered bottom left.
Hand-signed by Gillette in pencil bottom right.
Includes original hand-numbered gallery COA.
ARTIST BIO (Roamcouch)
Ryo Ogawa, better known as RoamCouch was born in Gifu, Japan in 1976. He is a street artist and Ukiyo-e painter. He began to draw in his childhood, influenced by Japanese comics and started working as a designer at the age of 18. Afterwards, he was diagnosed with a serious illness, which made him rethink his life and career and he subsequently made up his mind to become an artist.
In 2011, now dubbed “RoamCouch”, he began his transition into a full-time artist. He produces his exquisite and romantic works of art by using over fifty different layers of the hand-cut stencil and has been showcased at solo and group exhibitions both within and outside Japan. His detailed and rich stencil paintings redefined the stereotypical image of stencil art.
In 2014, he opened his first solo show titled “A Beautiful Life” in New York and achieved an amazing feat of selling out the entire collection. RoamCouch started a project named “Emotional Bridge Project” in 2014 and has painted murals voluntarily to revitalize his hometown. His aim is to attract art fans to his hometown by publicly exhibiting his works of art. Calling his new style “Neo Ukiyo-e”, RoamCouch works on art pieces to clearly indicate Ukiyo-e of modern times by blending stencil art with Japanese handmade paper “Mino washi”.
ARTIST BIO (Jeff Gillette)
Jeff Gillette's paintings examine the aesthetic structures and visual patterns of human settlement, specifically that of shantytown style slums in India and South America. To the artist, there is something ineffable behind the obviously chaotic and desperate appearance of these places — a universality of human spirit and a strange beauty which comes out of the necessity and raw honesty of the will to survive.
Despite the seriousness of his observations, he is also aware of the ironic and amusing juxtapositions that occur when the debris of consumer culture makes itself evident in the waste stream and thus into the building blocks of shanty settlement construction. References to Disney, corporate logos, and pop icons appear here and there. His small collages reflect these ironies as well as add a playful dimension to art historical relationships.