Charlene Weisler

Charlene Weisler’s urban art – photography, painting and mosaics – is inspired by the transience and impermanence of street art.

Photography

Her photographs of decaying street art concentrate on the evolving nature of layered graffiti. She captures a timeline of competing efforts and messages. The result is a rich compendium of texture, color and form that juxtaposes energy with urban decay. It is a unique expression of environmental art which is made all the more beautiful by time and weather.

The transitory, impermanent nature of street art arguably stands as this generation’s art movement. Steeped in tradition of portraiture, landscape, collage and abstract expressionism, urban montage street art is, in fact, more than the sum of its historical parts. It is one of the few art movements that shift its tactile physicality on a minute by minute basis. Street art has a limited lifespan and, more frequently, shortly after creation, changes or is totally destroyed.

Weisler’s haunting photographs maneuver between these worlds, doing so in a way that makes the viewer see something totally new and self-contained. It is a brand new work created from the competition, chaos and erosion of the old. Notably, the photographs are “as-is” – as she finds them on the streets – and are not edited or changed in any way.

Street art also informs her Mosaics and Paintings.

Mosaics

Weisler explores the re-use of discarded objects in her mosaic work, creating a new world in the spirit of the found object collages of Kurt Schwitters and boxes of Joseph Cornell.

Paintings

Street art owes much to the art of the graphic novel. Her series of acrylic paintings uses the meme of graphic novel art including her series of “selfie” portraits.

Weisler is a New York City based artist who has been chronicling street art since 2003. Her perspectives on the subject have been featured in a video at The Wooster Collective, The Soho Journal Magazine and The New York Sun newspaper. In addition to numerous group shows, Ms. Weisler has had numerous solo shows including an international solo show in Kyoto, Japan.

Her educational background includes a fine art diploma from NYC’s Music & Art High School, B.A. cum laude in Art from City College NY and MBA in the Arts from SUNY Binghamton. She also completed a year’s study of Art Historiography and Criticism at the University of Essex, UK.