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February 13 | 2013

Dave Matthews and Beezy Bailey Exhibit Opens in New York

An artistic collaboration between Dave Matthews and longtime friend and fellow South African, Beezy, Bailey will be on view at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York, NY from March 5 – April 13. ITICA PRITICA is an exhibition by Matthews and Bailey comprising 28 silkscreened works and a film made in collaboration, as well as a large scale sculptural installation by Bailey. The exhibition will be the artists’ first together in New York.

Long-time friends, Bailey and Matthews, both born in South Africa, first worked together in 1999 creating six paintings that were exhibited at Africa’s first World of Music, Arts and Dance festival in Johannesburg. In 2012 they collaborated on the present body of work, a homage to Warhol and Rauschenberg in enamel, oil and silkscreen on canvas. The Statue of Liberty, the “fatman,” and Bailey and Matthews themselves are reoccurring motifs. The film, ITICA PRITICA, was made on the first day of their collaboration in New York while scouting for source imagery to be used in the silkscreened works. Settling on a graffiti backdrop on the Bowery, Bailey, who is known for alter egos, began dancing around dressed in the “fatman” costume (a stylized fat suit) while Matthews filmed the impromptu performance with his mobile phone. Matthews had recently produced a melancholic yet humorous musical composition, and this unreleased material later became the film’s soundtrack.