South African ‘Mushroom Man’ launches new exhibition in London

South African street artist Christiaan Nagel, famed for his guerilla art installations of giant mushrooms, is launching a major solo exhibition at Hoxton Gallery in London, featuring a new sculpture concept called The Fi Of The Underworld.

 

South African artist Christiaan Nagel has been leaving his iconic mushroom sculptures around the world, including New York, Berlin, Johannesburg and Cape Town for a few years now. Anyone who has looked up at the skyline in London will have become accustomed to the man-sized brightly coloured shrooms.

“Mushrooms grow spontaneously yet need the perfect climate and environmental conditions to sprout. Just like a uniquely creative idea by any artist or scientist,” the artist explained in a 2010 interview.

Nagel has risen to prominence as one of the few sculptural street artists. He climbs buildings late at night to mount his pop art installations. “My initial idea was for people to wake up one morning and see all of these mushrooms spouting about the streets.”

His biggest challenge is the dangerous climbs to erect his guerilla art, with Shoreditch High Street Overground Station, in the wet, his hardest.

mushroom nagelNagel’s oldest surviving mushroom in London is a three-year-old blue specimen at the junction of Kingsland Road and Old Street.

The full-time street artist’s mostly does illegal, unsolicited installations but also gets commissions to install his mushrooms on the buildings of businesses in East End that want to be in keeping with the area.

“It’s become a really hip place to live. A lot of young money coming in here and I think street art has had a big influence on that,” he told eNCA last year.

long street mushroomsSales of the polyurethane mushrooms are good, selling for anything from £500-£3,500. His most expensive artwork fetched £12,000.

While his client pieces are meticulously coated in layers of resin and polyvinyl to ensure they last, the street versions, costing only £30 to make, are not as durable but survive when placed out of reach.

Now the full-time street artist is launching a major new solo exhibition at Hoxton Gallery in London, featuring a new sculpture design.

He has been working on a fishy new concept entitled “The Fi Of The Underworld” of works made from his signature material.

According to the artist, Fi are metaphysical fish:

“It’s an exciting, but unknown and bizarrely strange time for mankind. The Fi of the underworld is the first sign that we are entering the spiritual world. The Fi are shoals of fish that appear in great numbers, hundreds of thousands. They swim vertically from deep below the ground and trust their way through the earth’s surface.

“Gravity and natural laws have long surpassed us now. This is where we get deeper and deeper into our own subconscious minds. This is where rational takes a back step and the self is being played out in a harmonious and automatic fashion.

“This world is accessed by consuming a type of Psilocybin [a naturally occurring psychedelic compound produced by more than 200 species of mushrooms].  This is not a bio-chemical reaction but a spiritual merging of the person and nature.”

The Fi Of The Underworld  – exhibition details:

Hoxton Gallery, 9 Kingsland Road, London, E2 8AA

Private View Thursday 7  Aug / 18:00-19:00

Public Opening Thursday, 7Aug / 19:00-22:00

Opening times 7-12 Aug / 12:00-20:00 (weekends open till late)

info@christiaannagel.co.uk

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