A troubled economy, a planet in peril, a new leader taking the helm…so many questions left unanswered … IT HURTS. Brooklynite Gallery however, will pass on the government bailout in favor of something better. Instead we present— ZBIOK and REMED, “IT HURTS”, the new exhibition a.k.a. gallery-size healing force.

Parisian street artist, Remed takes every style past its due date and makes it fresh. Art Nouveau and “Free to be You and Me” graphics of the seventies are made strikingly contemporary. If you were to synthesize into a single body of work, the “New Image” of the early eighties with the graffiti writers who entered the New York art world at that time. . . . Remed would emerge. Experienced with a limited time frame for execution, Remed solves color interactions quickly and accurately. The English language is manipulated with formidable typographic skill and a vicious sense of style. You know Remed is special when you see his transmutation of the curved arms of the French avant-garde. He’s paid his dues, he’s dubbing over history.

“Addicted to color”. . . Polish street artist- Zbiok makes work that can have the same effect on its viewers. Rooted in post-Iron Curtain Poland, he has ties to punk and hip-hop, but his work looks like no other artist’s associated with either. The feel of eighties graffiti is there as an intangible, not limited to any one visual cue. His imagery is far reaching in the sources of influence it indicates. Sometimes matching a political sensibility to his electric colors and pop savvy, Zbiok’s pieces are immediate, while inviting longer meditation on their full complexity. In a recent interview he noted the influence of music on his work, highlighting his all-inclusive scope as “jazz to death metal.” His characters and iconography feel refreshingly alien to American street art thus far.

“IT HURTS” is an acknowledgment that everybody feels things strongly—-that each of us is viscerally affected by people and events near to us. Yet, even halfway around the world, a person or event can hit us like a force of nature. Loving someone so much it feels like an entity unto itself, feeling an overwhelming urge to change the world – nothing can make you more vulnerable. But nothing else will go as far to amplify your joy.