Out of the Blue: Michael De Feo

Hexton Gallery Aspen, in collaboration with Authier and Performance Ski, presented Out of the Blue, an exhibition of paintings by renowned New York-based artist Michael De Feo. Included was a new selection of works pairing De Feo’s now-iconic fashion photography takeover project with Authier’s recent print campaign. The exhibition was staged across two locations, Hexton Gallery and Performance Ski.

At the forefront of the early 1990s street-art movement in New York City, De Feo’s spray painted and wheat pasted flowers quickly earned him the moniker, “The Flower Guy.” For nearly thirty years, Michael has planted his flowers in numerous cities across the globe, cementing his status as a guerrilla gardener.

Michael has continuously explored the inherent allure of the natural world through the creation of flower-inspired paintings symbolizing beauty, ephemerality, ritualistic expression, and the cycle of life. De Feo moves seamlessly through the worlds of contemporary art, street art, and appropriation as he investigates these ideas.

In 2015 the artist was gifted a key that provided illicit access to the advertising vitrines in New York City’s bus-stop shelters. De Feo removed the fashion advertisements located inside, painted over them with his iconic flora and fauna, and then reinstalled them in the street-level glass cases. Soon after, De Feo continued the project onto the pages of fashion magazines. Both these large and small format works highlight his characteristic style of cascading, multicolored petals, frequently resulting in images that blur the line between fashion advertising and fine art. De Feo’s interventions are at once subversive yet harmonious to the underlying images.

The exhibition at Hexton Gallery was the first time De Feo’s large-format Polaroid paintings were exhibited.