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Bob & Bob have been making art as a team for 50 Years. Their collaboration began in 1974 when they met in a painting class taught by Llyn Foulkes at the Art Center College in Los Angeles. At that time, Llyn, a famous LA painter, took to mentoring the newly formed art team and encouraged them to be "fearless” in exploring unconventional ideas about art-making. As such, Bob & Bob began doing iconic conceptual performance pieces, producing short films and videos, original audio recordings, and maintaining a steady schedule of drawing and painting.
By 1975, Bob & Bob established their first studio in the heart of Beverly Hills and immediately exploded onto the LA art scene. They were suddenly exhibiting their visual art in one of LA’s premiere galleries and staging controversial packed performances and wild happenings in LA, San Francisco and New York. At this same time, Bob & Bob were also featured in a range of magazines such as High Performance, WET, The L.A. Reader LA Weekly and Slash, which exposed the Art Team to a broad and diverse audience.
Soon Bob & Bob were exhibiting nationally and given an unusually early retrospective at the Otis/Parson College of Art in Los Angeles. At the same time, their short films and video works, which were shown widely on cable TV and in film festivals, were being imitated by conceptual comedians on Saturday Night Live and SCTV, that led to a major label record deal with PolyGram Records that produced their hit song “We Know You’re Alone” which seemed right on target for two artists who set out to find a wider following than their local art scene.
Following their own motto of “Makin' Art That Makes Sense”, Bob & Bob hurled all forms of visual and performance art at all kinds of audiences whenever and wherever possible. This first phase for the Art Team was captured in Linda Frye Burnham’s book, “The First Five Years”, which expanded their audience even further with tours, performances and speaking engagements.
And then, Bob & Bob disappeared:
At the height of their notoriety, Bob & Bob vanished from the public eye to pursue different paths of private art-making in their personal and professional lives. Instead of feeding galleries, dealers, collectors, curators and trends, they created solo works and select collaborations during unpredictable visits to New York, Paris, Madrid, London and Los Angeles.
But after years of traveling, art making, and temporary studios in foreign lands, Bob & Bob lost track of numerous works of their collaborative art. It was also during this time that the Art Team donated and sold many of their early works to the permanent collections of Museums and Foundations.
And now, Bob & Bob are found:
50 Years of Art is a present day collection of all the lost and found archives, portfolios and projects the Bobs could find. Drawings, paintings, ideas and collaborations of artworks never-before-seen from all phases over five decades. The “found” includes their re-discovery of a diverse partnership in art, that withstands time, tests and trends.
JOIN US for the Opening Party of March 21st 4-6pm at the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica!
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Event Venue
Craig Krull Gallery, 2525 Michigan Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90404, United States
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
