ANTI Art Walk Pop Up
When you think of art exhibitions, your mind might go instinctively towards prim and proper galleries and fashionable people sipping wine. This is not going to be that type of gallery night.
On Friday and Saturday, the ANTI Art Walk will take over the former Paul Weiss Furniture showroom (1534 N. Farwell Ave.) to showcase some of the Milwaukee area’s up-and-coming artists in a grittier fashion, a la the pop-up art events that gave New York City an extra cool factor in the ‘80s. A full weekend of music, art, burlesque, tattoos, food vendors and more will come together for a completely unique experience. A portion of the proceeds will also go towards the Guest House of Milwaukee. Artist Toriano “Why?” Mayek is behind the exhibition, that looks to flip the conventional gallery night on its head.
“Watching ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ was big for me. I got to the point where working in the city with some artists, getting pieces commissioned, I got it in my head that this is in my pedigree to put this together” explained Mayek. “I realized ‘I’m an artist, let me create my own lane.’ I started looking for a place to have a show with about 200 pieces, and I kept walking past the Weiss Furniture Gallery. As soon as I saw it, I was like ‘oh my god this is the perfect place to do this.’ I saw that the building was sold to Fairchild Acquisition, and after some talking, they were eventually down to do it.”
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Eleven artists are confirmed for the exhibition, with multiple floors of displays in the East Side space. ANTI also looks to dive head-first into the future, with art on display in both the physical sense and through digital means. Beyond graffiti, stencils and print work, NFT (non-fungible token) artwork will also be available for sale at the show. Mayak, as well as some of the other artists, currently have work for sale on NFT marketplace OpenSea. The show will act as a marketing tool for their respective online sales.
“A lot of the artists in the city don’t have the NFT pieces up yet” said Mayak. “I’ll have something that people can scan, and it’ll take them to my gallery on Opensea. I’m in that space and have been for a little bit, so we’re going to push the artists forward there too. It’s almost like the music business in a way. People with the clout and following have the resources to push it and make something big there. I got into it early enough that I ended up doing a lot of things wrong along the way. There’s a future in it, but we’re not going to take away from the fun of seeing something in the physical space either.”
Art and music go hand in hand, and naturally, ANTI will have a solid soundtrack of veterans in the Milwaukee music scene as well. Mayak has a history in local hip hop dating back to MATA television show “Yo What’s Happening” and groups like Def Supreme, some of the first of their kind in the city. He would later get a record deal with funk-hybrid Big Bang Theory before coming back to the city. Some of those early connections ultimately led to the artists that will be at the exhibition, with music from Twan Mack, Kid Millions, Kerse One and many more. The pop-up is designed to inspire Milwaukee’s artist community to come together, and Mayek feels like events of this kind will infuse new cultural strides within the city.
“All of these people are friends of mine” explained Mayak. “I’ve known a lot of these people for a long time, and I’m glad to have them be part of this too. It was just about trying to get a diverse group of people together for this. It’s not a dance party, but we’ll be playing all sorts of local music to go with local art. We want this to go beyond just white walls, white wine, and white people.”
For more information about ANTI, visit the Facebook event page here.
