March’s First Friday Art Walk marks the official kickoff of the Art Whino show, Sewn Well: The Solo Show of Toobz Muir, at the Richmond Art Whino Gallery.
March’s First Friday Art Walk marks the official kickoff of the Art Whino show, Sewn Well: The Solo Show of Toobz Muir, at the Richmond Art Whino Gallery. Muir, a self-taught visual artist, picked up a fascination with graffiti art in his mid-twenties. His work is inspired both by him being color-blind and by his father’s history of living with a calcium deficiency.
His father’s unique disorder led to many facial reconstructive surgeries, and Sewn Well refers to that family history–life experiences which have allowed Muir to see past the arbitrary idea of what perfection and beauty are, and into a more subtle and unsettling one-of-a-kind beauty. Through these life event,s Muir was brought to the bizarre and unique aesthetic perspective of his work today.
As a talent in the DC-based art gallery Art Whino, Muir is bringing his homebase to Richmond at 202 West Broad, Art Whino’s recently opened Richmond branch. The gallery’s mission is to bring together artistic pioneers and the freshest new talent from around the world, ranging from California to Japan. Art Whino’s roster sports 1,200 artists and counting.
Even if they don’t know it yet, most Richmonders at this point have already seen what Art Whino artists can do, thanks to last year’s G40 Art Summit. Twenty-three bold, beautiful, and massive murals, concocted from the minds of the top twelve mural artists from around the world, were created and displayed all over the buildings of Richmond. 2012’s G40 Art Summit was the third edition of that festival, focusing on the “Art Of Murals.” This year, the G40 Summit will take place in Washington DC, while here in RVA, the Richmond Mural Project will carry on last year’s work of creating large-scale outdoor paintings around the city.
While Toobz Muir is not one of the contributors to this year’s mural project, his free show at next month’s First Friday Art Walk will certainly get RVA art lovers pumped for what Art Whino has in store for this year, and what the art district of Richmond promises to become. Sewn Well opens with a reception on Friday, March 1st, 2013 from 7-10 PM, at Art Whino Gallery’s Richmond branch, located at 202 W. Broad St, on the First Friday Art Walk.
