Kareem Rizk solo exhibition at Phone Booth Gallery.

Kareem Rizk is having a solo show at Phone Booth Gallery in Long Beach, CA. If you are near the gallery be sure not to miss this one. Kareems work is amazing and he will be in attendance at the opening.

You can see more here and here.

Here is the press release:
Phone Booth Gallery is proud to present "Collagephile," Kareem Rizk's long-awaited second solo exhibition in Southern California. The exhibition, which celebrates the weathered, worn and layered medium of collage, opens with a reception on June 19, 2010 from 7-10pm. It continues through July 10, 2010, and is viewable online at www.phoneboothgallery.com, and at Phone Booth Gallery's new exhibition space, 2533 East Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90803.

A mesh of vintage consumerism, post-war sophistication, and classic car culture, Rizk's work explores nostalgia with understated virtuosity. In "Collagephile," worn advertisements, fashion images, colored shapes and tactile wood surfaces put minimalism into conversations with sentimentalism. "Buy a Dream," a bottom-heavy image with a red and teal color scheme, shows a gloved, gowned woman emerging from a 1967 Holden HR. Above her, barely legible billboard-style text reads "So Bright and Beautiful." All the dated glamour represented in this image is, of course, no longer bright, but it still evinces an antiquated beauty. This sort of defunct classiness courses through much of Rizk's work. "Got Me a TV," a droll collage informed by the brazen culture of street art, shows a grinning man holding a brand new, circa-1960 television. The layered text in the background looks like the faded detritus that lines a subway tunnel's walls.

Each of the eighteen images in the exhibition takes a sleek, design-inspired approach to composition, making the baggage of cultural history look concise and cultivated. In the age of mash-ups and remixes, collage fills an essential and singular visual niche, allowing artists to re-interpret and rearrange visual history. "Collagephile" surveys that niche.

Born in Australia in 1982, Rizk is a Melbourne-based artist. He received a B.A. in Visual Communications from Monash University in 2004 and has since exhibited his art internationally. His work has appeared in numerous high-profile art and design publications, including Varoom Magazine and juxtapoz.com, and is held in private collections worldwide. Rizk will be present at the opening.