Bucky Turco of ANIMAL was shocked and a bit angry when he thumbed through the gallery guide for Jeffrey Deitch and the Leila Heller Gallery's "Calligraffiti: 1984-2013" show, and rightfully so. Turco noticed that the tags on canvasses featured in the guide were mislabeled and wrongly accredited to "graffiti writers who visited Michael Anderson’s studio" in 1983-84 when they were in fact tags from artists who visited Turco's SOMA NYC studio in 2002. Graffiti writer DSENSE (Matt Trumino) organized the project (known as the Graffiti Compilation Project) 11 years ago.
When Turco contacted the Leila Heller Gallery, he was told that the Michael Anderson had sold the pieces to John Hammond, who then loaned them to the gallery for the show. After such a long period of time, mistakes happen, right? But Turco makes a great point in saying that Deitch, as "the gallerist who has positioned himself as an authority on graffiti and street art" should have picked up on the mistake. But wait...there's more.
ANIMAL also found that one of the pieces in the show had been printed upside-down and that the materials for a Keith Haring piece were incorrectly captioned. This does not look good for those who organized the exhibit. Turco said via Twitter that he has yet to receive an apology from Jeffrey Deitch. For more information and photos of the errors, click through to ANIMAL.
RELATED: Jeffrey Deitch's "Calligraffiti" Kicks Off With a Body-Painting Party At Leila Heller Gallery
[via ANIMALNewYork]
