The Shotcaller: Aaron Rose

The connector of the cool-guy art world wants you to go out and make something.

In a world full of self-anointed Renaissance men, Aaron Rose is the real thing: an artist, curator, and collaborator. He’s the man behind NYC’s Alleged Gallery and the Beautiful Losers art exhibitions who helped bring a laundry list of artists into the spotlight, including Todd James, Terry Richardson, Geoff McFetridge, Barry McGee, and ESPO. In other words, you have Aaron Rose to thank for your T-shirts, sneakers, and skateboards. This summer, Rose drops two more projects: August’s Beautiful Losers, a documentary focusing on the lives of his artist friends, and a DC sneaker project that he made with a little help from his crew.

By Bradley Carbone
Photographs by Estevan Oriol

Beautiful Losers really gives a face to the artists behind the sneakers, T-shirts, and ad campaigns—those guys who might have just been a name in a collab title.

Aaron Rose: Totally. And in conjunction with the film, all of the artists included are going to be involved in D.I.Y. workshops, teaching classes to at-risk kids. Mike Mills and Geoff McFetridge are going to do graphics, Spike Jonze is going to do skate video workshops, and Barry McGee is going to do mural projects. I’m almost more excited about that than the film.

You also have a shoe in the works with DC.

Aaron Rose: That whole shoe, and pretty much everything I do, is all about collaboration. Working on my own bores me a lot.

How did this one come about?

Aaron Rose: Damon [Way, of DC] was always supportive of the artists that I work with, but we never worked together. DC was doing art shoes way before anyone else, and now that the art shoe thing is kind of over, Damon wants to start doing shoes with not just artists, but also with people who are cultural facilitators.

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BY A. ROSE

FROM EDITING MAGAZINES TO SHOWCASING “LOST” ARTISTS TO PLAYING IN AN EXPERIMENTAL BAND, ROSE HAS MORE PROJECTS THAN THE NEW YORK CITY HOUSING AUTHORITY.

ANP QUARTERLY
anpquarterly.com
“It’s put together by me, Ed Templeton, and Brendan Fowler. We’re into such totally different things, it ends up becoming a weird ‘What is this?’ art magazine.”

DEFORMER BY ED TEMPLETON
allegedpress.com
“When I work on a book like this, I always let the artist be the artist. Ed’s been working on it for 11 years, so it’s really his opus.” the artist.

HAND-PAINTED GUITAR
“That’s a guitar that I painted for Chan Marshall, who’s Cat Power. I really like the shape of guitars and they’re really fun to paint on. I rarely paint on canvas.”

“PASSION FOR THE POSSIBLE”
Rose-curated show at Circle Culture Gallery in Berlin, spring ’08 “Sister Corita was a nun in the ’60s who did politically charged work. I’ve done a few of these shows.”