Seattle's incredible Roq La Rue Gallery is celebrating its tenth anniversary with an extravaganza of Pop Surrealism. The 10th Anniversary Group show opens tomorrow and it will spank your eyeballs. Featured artists include: Mark Ryden, Marion Peck, Femke Hiemstra, Brian Despain, Travis Louie, Scott Musgrove, Lisa Petrucci, Shag, Liz McGrath, Andrew Hem, Glenn Barr, John Brophy, Viktor Safonkin, Anthony Pontius, Tin, Kay Tuttle, Ronald Kurniawan, Chris Crites, Johnny Bergeron, Mia Araujo, Mike Leavitt, Christian Vanminnen, Gabe Marquez, and Lori Earley. (At top, Ryan Heshka's "Humants" (detail); above left, Mark Ryden's "Turkey Baby," above right, Liz McGrath and Morgan Slade's "Death Before Dishonor" sculpture; below Scott Musgrove's ""Great Lesser Plant Sampler- Extinct ca. 1877.") Congratulations, Kirsten Anderson!!! From the show description:
Roq la Rue is ten years old!The gallery opened with a small gallery space in Belltown in the summer of 1998. Owner Kirsten Anderson had no previous gallery experience, but felt compelled to create a space where countercultural art could be seen and enjoyed in Seattle. At that time, there were only about 5 galleries in the world catering to a subversive new art movement tongue-in-cheekly called "Lowbrow", while ten years later there are almost too many to count, with a "Lowbrow/Pop Surrealist" gallery in almost every major city in the US and many major european cities. Since then, the gallery has hosted some of the world's most well known and regarded underground cartoonists and Pop Surrealists and is considered one of the top galleries world wide for the Pop Surrealism/ New Contemporary genre. (The "Lowbrow" moniker has since morphed into the term "Pop Surrealism" after the publication and success of the book "Pop Surrealism" published in 2004 by Last Gasp Books (selling 20,000 copies at last count) that Anderson compiled and edited.) In addition to hosting approximately 110 openings, the gallery has moved four times over the past decade, finally ending at it's largest and most posh digs yet in the Belltown neighborhood.
For our anniversary exhibition we asked a host of artists artists to participate. Some are old favorites, some are vibrant new talents the gallery is thrilled to have brought on board. All share the technical excellence and rapacious imagination that characterizes the artistic vision Roq La Rue has striven to promote over the past decade.
Online preview of Roq La Rue 10th Anniversary Show
