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The Lost Warhols


  • Ad Lib Gallery 10 Church Road London, England, SW19 5DL United Kingdom (map)

The Lost Warhols

Curated by Karen Bystedt

18 May - 18 June 2023
Ad Lib GALLERY, London

MEET THE ARTISTS - SPECIAL EVENT - ThursDAY 8 JUNE

We’re excited to have some of the Lost Warhols artists including MAXIM, James Mylne & Louisa Tebbutt at our gallery on Thursday 8th June

Please join us from 6pm - 8pm for drinks, AND elevate your evening with Oxygen Elixirs & 24K Gold Queen Elixirs - botanical and mineral futuristic shots by @elixirbarevents

Thansk to all who attended this event!

Thank you to everyone who came to the private view on 18 May, check out some of the photos on our Instagram page: @adlibgallery

Exhibiting Artists

  • Karen Bystedt (Miami)

  • MAXIM (Czech Republic)

  • Peter Tunney (New York)

  • James Mylne (London, UK)

  • Miguel Paredes (Miami)

  • Cavanagh Foyle (Ireland)

  • Louisa Tebbutt (London, UK)

  • Consumer Art (New York)

  • Will St Leger (Ireland)

  • Janek Janikowski (London, UK)

  • Carlos Manuel (Cuba)

  • Brayden Bugazzi (LA)

  • Nick Munier (Ireland)

  • Benjamin Goetz (Germany / New York)

  • Will St Leger (Ireland)

 

The Lost Warhols

Ad Lib Gallery is proud to present The Lost Warhols, an exclusive exhibition of works portraying the iconic artist Andy Warhol. Curated by American photographer and street artist Karen Bystedt, the exhibition features new interpretations of her archival photographs of Warhol, by a selection of London-based and international contemporary artists.

The original photographs were taken by Bystedt, then a tenacious young film student at NYU, who in 1983 boldly cold-called Warhol at Interview Magazine inviting him to pose for her for her book-in-progress featuring the era’s top male models. Having come across an image of the artist modelling for Barney’s, she had hoped to capture the icon in this unique context, positioned amongst faces renowned for their aesthetic ideal – and on hearing whom else she intended to include, Warhol swiftly agreed to join the fold. Bystedt’s resulting images capture a soft and vulnerable Warhol, the man made infamous by making others his model, now the model himself.

Bystedt included two of the thirty-six photos shot that afternoon in her book Not Just Another Pretty Face published by Nal, and placed the negatives in storage, where they lived untouched for 25 years. After all that time, compelled to unearth the images captured that afternoon, Bystedt was able to locate just 10 of her original negatives, and dedicated the months to restoring her Andy, pixel-by-pixel.

Having turned from photographer to visionary pioneer in the mixed media form, Bystedt conceptualized a new future for her portraits, one that echoed her subject’s inventive spirit, and mirrored his approach to both inspiration and practice. Giving form to a modern, immaterial Factory of her own, Bystedt invited contemporary artists to interpret her images in their own artistic language, thus conceptualizing a series of collaborations that would represent community and pay homage to the mixed media form so inextricably associated with the legacy of Warhol.

About Karen Bystedt

One of the first woman street artists to proliferate a male-dominated space, Karen Bystedt's works have been collected by internationally renowned private and public collectors and have been exhibited next to Retna, Cleon Peterson, Big Sleeps, Bradley Theodore, Gregory Siff, Add Fuel, Producer BDB and Speedy Graffito. Karen Bystedt’s photographs of Andy Warhol have transcended from portraits taken by her as an NYU student to the concluding image in Blake Gopnik's definitive biopic, WARHOL (Harper Collins 2020).

Bystedt photographed and immortalized Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves and Djimon Hounsou in her book ‘Before They Were Famous’ well before creating a massive contemporary archive re-identifying Warhols artworks with her own contributions to the street art world, opening the conversation of women breaking barriers in art, hip hop and pop culture today.

The Lost Warhols

18 May - 18 June 2023

@ Ad Lib Gallery, Wimbledon Village

Gallery Opening Hours:
Mon: 11am - 4:30pm
Tues - Sat: 10:30am - 5:30pm
Sun: 11am - 4:30pm

Ad Lib Gallery, 10 Church Road, Wimbledon Village, London, SW19 5DL

Private view photos:

 

Artists:

For further information please contact Ad Lib Gallery here

Earlier Event: 4 May
Art Royale
Later Event: 24 May
Jo Holdsworth - 'Destination London' @ Common Ground, Wimbledon