Rebel Bomb Gallery Presents the Utopia Collection Via Rising Artist Ariel Klein on 11/3/22 @ 25 Howard Street, Soho New York

Alejandro Meneses, creator of the Rebel Bomb Gallery, proudly presents the art of quickly rising artist Ariel Klein in an edgy, avant-garde exhibition. What is not only a subject, but it is also a passage through which we can recognize ourselves. Rebel Bomb cordially invites you to give us the greatest gift of your presence as we celebrate this auspicious moment beginning on November 3, 2022 at 25 Howard Street in Soho New York from 6:30-10 PM ET and continuing throughout the month of November.

Utopia: A Stop in the Universe

“We can only know what we can truly imagine.”

– Marge Piercy

“In Utopia: A Stop in the Universe, visual artist Ariel Klein transports us to a place after humankind has fled their home planet. The exhibition imagines earthlings guided by an eternal sense of optimism and an instinct for survival. This utopian landscape is a journey into a vibrant world, with just the right balance to sustain life. Among its images are towering flowers painted in broad brushstrokes set off by a brisk atmospheric spray. The flowers sway or explode into deep rainbows, within cityscapes composed of an array of buildings, parks, bars and blocks of color. Water here is reimagined as molecules stenciled in hazy tones, accessible to make life possible. We see these works as a gateway to the future, a testament that our imagination can carry us to an inner utopia beyond our dreams.”

Ariel J. Klein

Alejandro Meneses, Rebel Bomb Gallery

Ariel Klein

Ariel Klein is an emerging artist whose paintings combine inventive abstract and figurative images, with whimsical graffiti. His portfolio includes portraits, murals, and projects across genres and in cooperation with other artists.

Klein won Maryland state accolades and scholarships to the Maryland Institute College of Art (BFA 2012). His undergraduate studies included a year at the Fine Arts School of the Universidad Complutense in Madrid.

His career took off with a well-received solo show at the Purple Coconut, a pop-up gallery he produced in urban Silver Spring, MD (2013). He also promoted musical talent in the Washington, DC metro area. He then worked as a set painter for GALA Hispanic Theater in Washington, where he also exhibited a series of Spanish-themed paintings.

In 2014 Klein was named artist-in-residence at Strathmore, a performance venue in Bethesda, Maryland. During the year-long fellowship he shadowed “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band and painted portraits of this acclaimed national cultural icon. Several are currently on the walls in the Marine Barracks in Washington, where the musicians rehearse.

After a year of graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Klein was hired at the James J. Peters Veteran’s Hospital in the Bronx, NY and Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital to create natural looking facial prostheses. What he learned on the job – use of specialized lathes, hand pieces, casting and compression-molding machinery – helped him expand his artistic vision on paper, canvas and wood in his then studio in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood.

Following George Floyd’s murder in 2020 Klein was among a group of artists who transformed plywood covered storefronts into giant murals. When he moved to North Adams, Massachusetts, that same year, he mounted Rise Up: Urban Protest Art with selected materials from that period at the Eclipse Mill in North Adams.

Recently Klein is known for his series of portraits of well-known rap artists. In collaboration with icon artist Susan Kelly von Medicus, Klein painted El Trainn at the center of a Byzantine style icon. Ola Runt’s likeness appears on aceramic Greek Amphora, and Sauce Walka is painted as a samurai in the style of Japanese printmaker Mori Yoshitoshi.

All three works are in the musicians’ collections.

Klein’s latest work are the subject of a pop-up exhibition in New York this fall alongside the release of a new collection of high-end sneakers manufactured by Rebel Bomb, a Mexican brand.

Klein explores themes of utopia with immense flowers and futuristic cityscapes saturated in vibrant colors. As the artist worked out this vision from a studio in Madrid last spring, Rebel Bomb CEO Alejandro Meneses flew in leather pieces for sixteen pairs of shoes to catch serendipitous drips and swishes of paint.

Klein often applies unconventional techniques to oil painting. In his news works he paints with a Chinese ink brush the size of mop maneuvered on a long pole. “Working with stencils and a mechanical sprayer allows me to get an atomized effect on canvas, he says.

Klein’s work appears on album covers, and on skateboards commissioned by Bureau Skate Shop in Washington, DC, which also hosted Caressing the Asphalt (2018), a solo show of his skateboard drawings. He has exhibited in New York, Washington, DC, Bethesda, Maryland, Wilmington, Delaware and China. His works are also in private collections in the United States and in Spain. Klein is represented by Rebel Bomb CEO Alejandro Meneses.