This summer, street artists Amanda Marie and X-O are on a tour around the US creating murals, installations and gallery works in order to raise awareness for several worthy charities. The project, titled Beautiful Times, will bring them to Denver, Philadelphia, Beacon, Boulder and finally to New York City, where they plan to host, in collaboration with Masters Projects, a pop up show titled Beauty/Beast. On view at 111 Front Street Galleries, the exhibition will include new paintings by Amanda Marie as well as new collages and site specific installations by X-O.

Amanda Marie use of nostalgic storybook like imagery is an invitation for viewing allegorical and highly painterly compositions . Signature in her very graphic work is the use of children and young adults as imagery tools to deliver clever often subtle messages that can straddle a line between comforting and spooky. Other signature and recognizable traits in her work are the common use of ‘twin imagery’ and the consistent use of vintage sewing patterns as backgrounds to inform the compositions of her paintings.

X-O is the moniker of Hyland Mather, a street artist based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. His artwork is made of found, recycled objects, which he gathers while roaming streets of various countries, visiting urban areas and industrial scrap and waste fields. He prefers to call his pieces Lost Objects, while they truly resemble a lost wonderland of detail, an illustration of an imaginary world, or rather a portal into a different, dynamic and happy dimension. After collecting the ideal source materials for a piece, X-O then transforms them into striking, geometric assemblages.