The School of Visual Arts will be presenting "Art Brewer: Surf Evolution", a retrospective celebrating the work of legendary surf photographer Art Brewer, who has spent four decades documenting and shaping surf culture around the globe.
The exhibition will be on view at the SVA Gallery, New York City, from June 8th–30th. Often described as “the court painter” for the world’s surfing elite, Art Brewer is known for his mastery of the numerous technical and physical challenges involved in surf photography.
"Art has thoroughly examined the sport of surf riding with an unparalleled sensitive ferocity...an underlying introspection is seamlessly incorporated into his works via a technical mastery which comes across as easy and elegant", explains filmmaker C.R. Stecyk, in the exhibition essay.
"Art Brewer: Surf Evolution" is curated by photographers Malcolm Lightner and Michelle Mercurio, and include over 150 images from Brewer’s archive, made from the mid-1960s to the present, including many never-before-exhibited works.
The selected work ranges from intimate portraits of surf legends like Corky Carroll, Tom Curren, Wayne Lynch, Marc Occhilupo and Kelly Slater, to evocative landscapes and waterscapes from around the world, to the dynamic images of surf riding for which Brewer has achieved international renown.
Art Brewer began his photo career as a teen shooting local Laguna Beach surfers and freelancing for Surfer magazine. He subsequently served as staff photographer, darkroom artist and photo editor for the magazine until the mid-1980s.
Since then Brewer has been traveling around the world in search of waves and the surfers that chase them. His portfolio spans photojournalism, portraiture and fine art photography in addition to commercial location work.
Brewer’s photographs have been exhibited worldwide, including at the Earl McGrath Gallery in New York, the Annenberg Space for Photography, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Laguna Art Museum in California, the Melbourne Beach Contemporary Museum of Art in Melbourne Beach, Florida and the Museum of Contemporary Art in São Paulo, Brazil.
Discover the best surf photographers in the world.