JULY 16, 2021 - OCT 3, 2021

In a career milestone, Tristan Eaton: All At Once presents a 25-year retrospective of the LA-native’s ongoing work and studio practice. Like Eaton’s career, the fully loaded exhibition transitions between guerrilla street art, iconic murals, game-changing design, and well-defined fine art, giving the viewer an atlas map of Eaton’s illustrious career.

Eaton’s exhibition transcends categories. The retrospective is meant to explore both his commercial appeal and his fine art abilities, juxtaposing and weaving them together seamlessly. As one of the few Urban Pop Artists to demonstrate both, Eaton highlights the synergy and creativity that become possible when the artistic side and the business side are embraced as cooperative, rather than opposing forces. Like the works of Murakami and KAWS, high art and product fill the same space making merchandise, public art, and fine art equally relevant.

For 25 years, Eaton has been at the forefront of multiple urban art movements. For the first time ever, the highlights of this journey will be on display for all to see. In the 90s he was drawing underground hip-hop posters in Detroit. In the early 00s he was designing ‘art toys’ that sparked an international craze and working as a creative director in New York, leading the crossover of graffiti into the mainstream via commercial advertising. All the while, Eaton was tagging streets across the globe and cultivating an alter ego that subverted the norms of street art with hundreds of illegal art installations. All of that effort and exploration culminates in a massive body of work with Eaton’s mural art and studio practice over the last 10 years.

When viewers enter the museum, they’ll be met with a massive full-color window installation and display of toys & sculpture in the museum lobby. Entering the exhibit, Eaton creates a visual timeline of his early career, featuring hundreds of sketches, ink drawings, paintings and posters from his early life. Also on display on the first floor are various toys representing Eaton’s pioneering place in the designer toy phenomenon. Eaton immerses visitors in KidRobot memorabilia including the ever popular Dunny and Munny, Eaton’s signature toy designs which are now in the MOMA permanent collection and The Smithsonian. This part of the exhibit, like everything else we’ve seen from Eaton, includes both the significant--toys featuring art from Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Basquiat, and more--and the playful, in the form of a 5-foot-tall Munny toy coated in chalkboard paint so visitors can interact with the iconic form and leave their own signature behind.

In a specially curated section, museum goers can experience TrustoCorp, Eaton’s alter ego. Eaton cultivated anonymous volunteers across the nation to take part in this clandestine approach to public art hoaxing which led to hilarious results and national news coverage. This collection of work spans from 2008 to 2014 and includes just a few of the many illegal street works and exhibitions he created under the alias, with 72 Street Signs, a Lowrider Shopping Cart, and a fully functional 6-foot-tall Operation game.

Upstairs there is a room decorated to resemble the void of space, as a means to feature the historic launch of Eaton’s work into space. The actual works of art that lived on the International Space Station by way of SpaceX will be on display, rotating behind glass. Continuing on, viewers can visit UPRISE, a series of paintings celebrating the powerful history of human protest and resistance. These paintings celebrate the efforts of the Black Panthers, the suffragettes, Martin Luther King and more.

The much anticipated highlight of this exhibition will be Eaton’s ‘American Dream,’ an entire room filled wall to wall with a spray painted, carnival game mural made to spoof and skewer the notion of American Exceptionalism. Every 15 feet of this mural is a unique, fully interactive game created with the hand made charm of an old school fairground and the new school attitude of a generation dedicated to protest and resistance. Viewers can ’Stir the Melting Pot,’ ‘Throw Money at Their Problems,’ and play ‘911 Roulette’ where they spin a wheel to see what happens when the cops show up.

The exhibit culminates in the present day, with a behind the scenes look at Eaton’s art studio and an in-progress example of his celebrated Marvel fine art prints. This room features the rarely seen copper plates used for the foiling process in these sold out works. Also on view are Eaton’s historic designs for the 2020 NFL Super Bowl tickets.

These special rooms and interactive experiences are just the tip of the iceberg. From this quick breakdown alone, it’s clear that both Eaton’s career and this retrospective are jam-packed, filled with engaging, poignant, and downright fun work. With this landmark exhibit comes not only entertainment, but community engagement and cultural experience.

STRANGE FUTURE was an exhibition by painter & muralist Tristan Eaton who is known for his maximalist collage and illustrative pop art style. The exhibition features a wide range of new works including large assemblages of spray paint on canvas, skateboard grip tape, auto body paint and laser etched textures.

These graphic, abstracted compositions put modern themes of sex, crime, technology and war into Pulp Novel and Comic Book context allowing us to see the present from afar with child-like shock and wonder. Unimaginable sci-fi, horror and sexual fantasy are no longer fiction in Eaton’s STRANGE FUTURE - they are the reality of the dystopian world we live in.

STRANGE FUTURE was an independently produced exhibition by the artist and was be on view from October 9th - 15th 2019 in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, NY.

‘UPRISE’ is a visual history of protest and resistance. As an artist, I am compelled to paint what consumes me. In the age of Donald Trump, rising racism and xenophobia, corporate greed and blatant human rights violations across the globe, I am consumed by the desire for change. I am consumed by hope for a better world and a need to throw out of power those who don’t deserve it. As we all know, history will repeat itself. A look back on human history reveals time and again how the powerless have risen to topple the powerful and how the little man can vanquish tyrants with peaceful protest and the power of ideas. This exhibition is a reminder of that awesome power, a reminder that protest and resistance is a human trait and a human right. Wether it’s Martin Luther King Jr. at Selma, an anonymous man in Tiananmen Square or a Palestinian child with a sling shot, change always comes at a price and with much endurance. In these works, I hope to honor those brave leaders of the past, while emboldening the freedom fighters of our future.

Library Street Collective & Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles, CA

November, 2015

Detroit-based contemporary and fine art gallery, Library Street Collective, is pleased to announce “Legacy,” a solo exhibition of new work by Tristan Eaton. In this exhibition, Hollywood-born Eaton explores the topic of “legacy”, in his most personal and introspective exhibition yet. Eaton looks for ways to pay respect to those who came before him and honor their legacy for infinite generations to-come, with a captivating array of paintings and fabricated metal print works. The canvas works include mixed-media portraits of spray paint, acrylic and silkscreen, involving patterned, symbolic and metaphoric layers inspired by audio interviews the artist conducted with nearly a dozen people who have played an important role in his life.

“A common challenge we all share is adequately describing a loved one to people that never knew them,” Eaton says on his first solo show in the United States in nearly a decade. “It’s so important to pass on the legacy of those you love to your children and grand children but also to the whole world. The sharing of human stories is an ancient tradition that bonds us closer together as people. As a result, we understand each other more deeply and become stronger better people when the context of our legacy is clear. The people that came before me made me who I am, and I intend to pass along their stories and strengths by creating this ‘time-capsule’ of an exhibition that honors their legacy and preserves their stories for generations to come.”

To create the core works for the exhibition which are detailed, abstract portraits, Eaton picked up one of his father’s hobbies as inspiration. “One of his great loves was to listen to life stories. He would sit with someone for hours, take their photograph and ask them never ending questions about their lives.” Eaton conducted similar audio interviews with a select group of people which have been mastered and made public for exhibition viewers to hear in conjunction with the show via Eaton’s website, to further illustrate the visuals. “These stories started out as a simple time-capsule. An audio record to inform the visual portrait. But as the stories poured out, I realized that they were entertaining in their own right. From Oscar winners to civil rights warriors to religious cults, there is a lot to draw from as an artist, but the stories remain strong on their own.’”

The depth of the work is thorough and thoughtful. For example, a portrait of Eaton’s mother, in which elements of her portrait show the brick wall pattern in front of the artist’s childhood home and a pattern from his father’s favorite sweater. Every single element has meaning and every image is a metaphor or symbol linked to the intriguing back story of the subject.

“Legacy” is a highly personal and revealing body of work for Eaton. The artist rarely creates such ambitious works and has spent the last 5 months researching and meticulously painting this detailed, abstract, collection of family portraits.

Other highlights of the exhibition include Eaton’s first ever self-portrait, the highly anticipated release of his first Art Book ‘The Murals of Tristan Eaton’ which documents his many ambitious, international mural projects and the release of his limited edition ‘Art Can’ produced by Montana Spray Paint.

The whole exhibition is catalogued digitally along with the audio interviews in a small, glass bottle USB along with a digital copy of Eaton’s Mural Book. The glass bottle USBs will be limited edition and available to attendees of the exhibition only.