by SAVAGENYC
RETNA, an LA-based graffiti phenom, who has tagged trains, buildings, Billboards and rooftops world-wide, set his sites on Soho (and possibly Sotheby’s) last month, with his first one-man show at the 560 Washington Street Gallery, a hangar-sized, industrial cavern lodged amidst UPS loading docks and MTA parking garages, right off the West Side Highway. On opening night, the gallery evoked the dark, catacomb-like structure of a subterranean Mayan temple, providing a uniquely inspired context for the intricate but large-scale works, which depict a type of parallel-universe hieroglyphics, violently rendered in black, red and white ink, on neutral, or pitch-black fields of wall-size paper. The show also includes large-scale sculptural work by RETNA, depicting oversize fragments of a similar, inscrutable script, or calligraphy.
