Karen Carson, Sri Chinmoy, Jack Frost, Masashi Matsumoto, Neon Park, Horace Washington, Paul Whitehead California Billboards

A billboard-sized painting of an astronaut taking a moonwalk makes even blasé New Yorkers stop and look. The giant canvas coincides with the space shuttle landing and heralds the arrival of California Billboards, an exhibition of billboards-as-original-art.

Images of a Martian unzipping the universe with an intergalactic Mastercharge card and a German Shepherd with antlers looking forlornly at a flying bone appear on various billboards around the city. Their locations change throughout the run of the show. Born out of a desire to have the impact of the images felt by as many New Yorkers as possible, the images appear on billboards in Herald Square, the top of an Art Deco building in the South Bronx, and other surprise locations.

For those observers who would rather track the course of the billboard paintings than be surprised, there will be a phone number to call to find out where within the five boroughs the seven canvases by Karen Carson (b. 1943, Corvallis, OR), Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007, b. Shakpura, Bangladesh), Jack Frost, Masashi Matsumoto, Neon Park (1940–1993), Horace Washington (b. 1945, Atlantic City, NJ), and Paul Whitehead (b. 1945, Dartford District, England) will appear at any given time.

The works were originally commissioned by the Eyes and Ears Foundation of San Francisco for a public outdoor exhibition and were installed with assistance from Foster and Kleiser Outdoor Advertising Inc. Each artist was given a canvas of either 16’ x 50’ or 14’ x 48’ to conform to the standardized billboard frames. The finished paintings were mounted in large outdoor exhibitions in California, “home of the billboard.”

Featuring Karen Carson, Sri Chinmoy, Jack Frost, Masashi Matsumoto, Neon Park, Horace Washington, and Paul Whitehead.