Walt Cassidy, born in Los Alamitos,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, is a New York City-based artist, notable for his

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...

and participation in the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

Club Kids The Club Kids were a group of young New York City dance club personalities popularized by Michael Alig, James St. James, Julie Jewels, Astro Erle, Michael Tronn, DJ Keoki, and Ernie Glam in the late 1980s, and throughout the 1990s would grow to i ...

culture. His exploratory art and design emphasizes narrative abstraction, aestheticism, and conceptualism.John E. Mitchell, "Following the Ritual," North Adams Transcript, May 2007

Walt Cassidy Studio (Design)

In 2014, Walt Cassidy Studio was established as a unisex brand encompassing jewelry, silkscreen printing and hand painted murals. The jewelry gained attention through social media platforms, such as

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

, and was discovered by Mark Holgate and profiled in

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in 2015. Walt Cassidy Studio created jewelry for

Derek Lam Derek Lam (born 1967) is an American fashion designer. In addition to designing his own line, Lam was Tod's creative director for ready-to-wear and accessories from 2005 until 2010. Read full biography Background Lam was born in San Francisco, C ...

's Spring Summer 2016 collection, and has collaborated with the Long Life China Company and the Brazilian brand Melissa. The design works have been featured at The Limited Edition (Miami), The Feathered (Mexico City) and Maison 10 (New York). In 2016, Walt Cassidy Studio began a series of interior based murals for private collections, largely focused on atmospheric color storms and muscular flower motifs. The murals extended to public spaces such as Leslie-Lohman Museum, The Pod Hotel and HOWM Restaurant at Selina Hotel in New York City.

Artworks

Cassidy's artwork evolved from an interest in still life photography, sculpture, and illustration. ''The Kitchen Spells'' (2005) and ''The Inferior Orbs'' (2006) were first exhibited in ''The Believers'' at

MASS MOCA The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing ar ...

and operate symbolically on multiple levels, indicating religious spiritualism and secular cultural resonance, while also working as deep autobiographical portraits. ''The Protective Motif'', Cassidy's first solo show in New York, debuted in 2010 at

Invisible-Exports Invisible-Exports is a contemporary art Art museum, gallery located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. It is co-owned and directed by Risa Needleman and Benjamin Tischer and recognized for housing provocative and controversial exhibit ...

gallery in Manhattan's

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

. The show included ''The Paper Photographs'' (2008), ink drawings, and the wall based sculptures, ''Nail Bomb'' (2009) and ''Through'' (2010). Cassidy works in cut brass, weaving, stripping, and hooking abstract patterns and textures on a wood frames. These works are minimalist in material but maximalist in emotion, and operate where autobiography meets methodology. ''The Nervous Peal'' (2011) drawings were exhibited in The Displaced Person at

, alongside works by Sue Williams and

Ron Athey Ron Athey (born December 16, 1961) is an American performance artist associated with body art and with extreme performance art. He has performed in the U.S. and internationally (especially in the UK and Europe). Athey's work explores challenging ...

. In this series of ink drawings of athletic sculptures, Cassidy examined structures that impose both conformity and alterity on the body. Carbon photography prints of idyllic male youths, framed within hand-drawn structures, reflect an eroticization of and dislocation from the male form. Tellingly, Cassidy's choice of settings includes New York's

Jacob Riis Jacob August Riis ( ; May 3, 1849 – May 26, 1914) was a Danish-American social reformer, "muckraking" journalist and social documentary photographer. He contributed significantly to the cause of urban reform in America at the turn of the twen ...

beach, honoring a man who documented the blight of the industrial era's downtrodden.

"Waltpaper"

Throughout the 1990s, Walt Cassidy (then called ''Waltpaper'', a reference to his early illustration work) was at the center of the New York City

, an artistic and fashion-conscious youth culture. The group was a definitive force in New York City's underground club culture at the time and made long-lasting contributions to mainstream art and fashion. According to Cassidy, "The nightclub for me was like a laboratory, a place where you were encouraged and rewarded for experimentation." He lived at the Chelsea Hotel during this time period. Cassidy founded the band BOOB (1995–98), a conceptual hardcore rock band, composed of various club kids, that began amidst the infamous

Peter Gatien Peter Gatien (born August 14, 1952) is a Canadian club owner and party promoter. He is best known as the former owner of several prominent New York City nightclubs, including Club USA, The Limelight, Palladium, and Tunnel. Life and career Gatien ...

-owned nightclubs—

The Limelight The Limelight was the name of a chain of nightclubs owned and operated by Peter Gatien. It had locations in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, London and Hallandale. Context During the 1980s, club culture had died down because of the AIDS ...

Tunnel A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...

Palladium Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself na ...

, and Club USA—as well as the downtown venues

CBGB CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan's East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for '' Country'', '' BlueGrass'', and '' Blues'', Kri ...

and Don Hills. The band was known for their elaborate and over-the-top image, which sought to challenge gender social norms during the growing conservatism of

Rudy Giuliani Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 198 ...

's "Quality of Life" campaign in New York City. In October 2019, Cassidy’s first book, NEW YORK: CLUB KIDS by Waltpaper, is published by Damiani. A high-impact visual diary of New York City in the 1990s, NEW YORK: CLUB KIDS is a comprehensive visual document of the decade's colorful nightlife and street culture. The book grants special access to an underground world, providing exclusive insight into the lifestyle of this celebrated and notorious clique. In New York Club Kids, Cassidy details the trajectory of the movement, illustrating his story with over 500 images by 18 photographers and artists who documented the scene. The images capture the driving members of the scene, as well as the thousands of other club-goers, along with the fashion, iconic clubland graphics, extravagant interiors of the mega-clubs they frequented, and the bustling city-scape of New York City in the 1990s. “There was a vast scene of people who were doing so many different things creatively,” says Cassidy. “The book is really a love story to New York, told from the vantage point of the Club Kids.”)

Exhibitions

*2006 ''Gay Art Now'', curated by Jack Pierson, Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York City *2007 ''The Believers'', curated by Elizabeth Thomas and Nato Thompson,

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) is a museum in a converted Arnold Print Works factory building complex located in North Adams, Massachusetts. It is one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing ar ...

, North Adams, MA *2008 ''Womanizer'', curated by Kembra Pfahler, Deitch Projects, New York City *2010 ''The Protective Motif'',

Gallery, New York City *2010 ''Closed for Installation'',

303 Gallery 303 Gallery is an art gallery in Manhattan, New York. It was established in 1984 by owner and director Lisa Spellman, described by art critic Jerry Saltz as "one of the greatest New York gallerists of our time". The gallery hosts contemporary works ...

, New York City *2011 ''The Unseen'', curated by Adela Leibowitz, Torrance Art Museum, California *2012 ''The Displaced Person'',

Gallery, New York City *2013 ''The Wishing Well'', Galeria Melissa, New York City *2013 ''Drawing Down The Moon'', curated by Andrew Suggs, VOX POPULI, Philadelphia *2013 ''ARTCORE'', Galerie Melilli Manchinetti, Berlin *2014 ''Trip The Lights Fantastic'', curated by Natalie Kates, High Line Gallery, New York City *2014 ''The Botanica'', curated by AA Bronson and Michael Bühler-Rose, Invisible Exports, New York City *2015 ''Interface: Queer Artists Forming Communities Through Social Media'', curated by Walt Cessna, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York City *2020 ''Things On Walls'', curated by Benjamin Tischer / New Discretions, Affective Care, New York City *2022 ''The Dance Of The Plumeria'', Mural Installation, Selina Hotel, New York City

References

External links

Invisible-ExportsWalt Cassidy
on the

Internet Movie Database IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cassidy, Walt 1972 births Living people Artists from California Club Kids