RAMMELLZEE: THE EQUATION, The Letter Racers opens this week

The Equation,The Letter Racers exhibition by Rammellzee (credit: Susan Geiss Company)

For six weeks only, Suzanne Geiss, from RAMMELLZEE's estate, with the help of Mrs. Carmela Rammellzee, is presenting a posthumous exhibition of RAMMELLZEE’s artworks and installations.

This unique show includes some of RAMMELLZEE’s work first seen at Los Angeles's MoCA "Art in the Streets." The 52 Letter Racers represent RAMMELLZEE’s philosophies: “Iconoclast Panzerism” and “Gothic Futurism” whose meaning is best explained by Magical Secrets as "the battle between letters and their symbolic warfare against any standardizations enforced by the rules of the alphabet..." 

Letter Racers by Rammellzee (credit: Susan Geiss Company)

Spacetime  These spaceships from another civilization were made 15 years ago from street junk which Susan Geiss describes as, "Canal Street perfume caps, spray can triggers, and king’s crown air fresheners.." With these, RAMMELLZEE unknowingly created the first "green" hip hop art installation!

Opening night: RAMMELLZEE: THE EQUATION, The Letter Racers




Back to basics But before we get lost in the complex Gothic Futurism, let's take a step back to the 80s and remember what put us onto RAMMELLZEE in the first place.  

"Always ahead of his time, New York artist and performer Rammellzee is credited with being one of the inventors of graffiti art as we know it. Through writing, drawing and painting on subway cars in spray paint and felt-tip pen in the late ‘70s, he became interested in the symbolic value of letters, seeing for example the letter “A” as a pyramid or taking “W” to mean “double-you.”

He continued to explore these ideas through a variety of media, from the paintings that in 1988 Gerrit Henry described in Art In America as having “a Star-Wars-via-Jackson-Pollock look” to the legendary hip-hop single “Beat Bop” that was produced by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and became not just one of the most collectible hip hop releases ever, but a model for generations of witty and experimental musicians after him." Magical Secrets

Letter Racers collages, 1989 (Credit: Susan Geiss/New York Times)

After the Susan Geiss show closes, RAMMELLZEE’s influence will continue uptown at the prestigious The Museum of Modern Art which is will exhibit a third set of RAMMELLZEE’s Letter Racers as part of the Print/Out exhibition on view from February 19th through May 14th, 2012.

Hoi! Here's a dope interview from Dutch TV...This is a real education.



Thanks to Patti Astor for the heads up on this show.

RAMMELLZEE: THE EQUATION, The Letter Racers
March 8 - April 21, 2012
Susan Geiss Company
76 Grand Street, New York, NY 10013

PRINT/OUT
Feb 19 - May 14, 2012
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019

R.I.P. - The legendary Rammellzee died yesterday!

Checking out Twitter today I saw that Stones Throw and HVW8 posted links to pay respects to Rammellzee who died yesterday. There's no update on the cause, but he was only 49 years young!

Like a lot of folks, I was hipped to Rammellzee by Charlie Ahern's "Wild Style" film. Then, I got myself a copy of the "K-Rob vs Rammellzee" 12" vinyl on Profile Records via mail order from collector. That tune was produced by Basquiat! I paid about $18 and at the time Huw, from Mr. Bongos in London, reckoned it was worth $75. Who knows now. Later in Japan, I found a re-issue of the K-Rob joint with the original Basquiat picture cover!! What a prize.

When I used to dig for tunes I also came across the Death Comet Crew that released some tunes with Rammellzee in Europe which were a bit too "Tackhead" for my liking. Very industrial electro. Most recently, in 2004, Death Comet Crew released “Bi-Conicals of the Rammellzee,” Rammellzee's first full-length record.

A New York Times' article pays tribute to Rammellzee and explains how complex this hip hop pioneer was.

"He cast himself as an urban philosopher whose overarching theory, which he called Gothic Futurism, posited that graffiti writers were trying to liberate the mystical power of letters from the strictures of modern alphabetical standardization and that they had inherited this mission from medieval monks...

He legally changed his name to Rammellzee — which he described as not a name but a mathematical equation — when he was younger, Mr. Ahearn said. As to the name he was born with, Mr. Ahearn said that he knew it but would keep it to himself, as his friend would have wanted. Ms. Zagari Rammellzee likewise declined to reveal it: “It is not to be told. That is forbidden."

Rammellzee's distinctive rhyme style is captured in this rare Jean-Michel Basquiat video.


Toxic cuts up Billy Squier "Big Beat" in 1983 (around the same time Randy Murray recorded the Run-DMC performance "Live at the Funhouse.") Check out the ski googles...pure b-boy! Love the vibe. Check out Basquiat three minutes into the video: "Jean-Michel rocking that gangster bass!"

Legendary performance at the Wild Style amphitheater 1983