AVANT, also known as AVANT

street art Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art. Street art has evolved from the early forms of defiant graff ...

guerrilla collective, was the artist group active in New York City from 1980 to 1984. By 1984 AVANT had produced thousands of acrylic on paper paintings and plastered them on walls, doors, bus-stops and galleries citywide. Principal artists were Christopher Hart Chambers, David Fried, and Marc Thorne. AVANT was a group of five young New York artists working

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an ...

ly who wheat pasted handmade original poster sized works of non- calligraphic art in the streets of NYC. While the members of Avant assert that they began in the winter of 1980, the earliest available press documentation of their street art or art

exhibition An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibition ...

s is found in the New York Native from June 1982, wherein a later article published in the Villager places their origins at January 1981. By 1984 avant had produced thousands of

acrylic Acrylic may refer to: Chemicals and materials * Acrylic acid, the simplest acrylic compound * Acrylate polymer, a group of polymers (plastics) noted for transparency and elasticity * Acrylic resin, a group of related thermoplastic or thermosett ...

on paper paintings and plastered them on walls, doors, bus-stops, galleries and museums citywide, concentrated mostly in lower Manhattan. As a group, they were capable of producing hundreds of individual paintings per week, and deployed them in the streets on a regular basis. They also mounted three-dimensional artworks to street sign poles and commandeered bus stop advertising light boxes, replacing the contents with their own original works of art, then relocking the cabinets. Over 40 exhibitions of AVANT's work were held in New York galleries and nightclubs between 1981 and 1984. Over a typical artist-gallery financial dispute, they actually managed to commandeer a gallery in Soho to open the 1982 September season with a self curated exhibition. Another fresh concept was to start an exhibition in the street that would continue into a gallery. They called this the “Drive-In Show,” which started with a dozen numbered oversized paintings pasted high up on a parking lot wall in Soho, and continued up the block in Gabrielle Bryers Gallery starting with painting number 13.{{cite news , first=Guy , last=Trebay , title=Arts - photo caption , date=January 1983, url=http://avant-streetart.com/avant_street_art_press_nyc_80s.htm , work =The Village Voice , access-date=2009-08-29

References

External links

AVANT historical archive
Large collection of images, press, essays. Artists from New York (state) Guerilla artists Public art Visual arts genres Street culture American artist groups and collectives Arts organizations established in 1980