Emek

Infobox Artist
name = Emek


imagesize = 10
caption = Emek with his 2006 gig poster for High on Fire. (click for quote)
birthname = Emek Golan
birthdate = 1970
location = Israel
nationality = American (United States)
field = Posters, Music, Flyers, Painting, Rock Concerts
training = California State University at Northridge
movement = Aaarght, Gig Posters, Post Neo Explosionism Indie rock, Propaganda, Lowbrow Art, Punk rock

Emek (born Emek Golan in Israel in 1970) is a popular artist/graphic designer/illustrator designs concert posters since the early 1990s. He is widely credited with helping to revive the rock poster sceneFact|date=July 2008. He has become popular with collectors in the recent years. A November 27, 2006 profile of Emek in The Oregonian described how people from miles away flocked to a San Francisco poster show sponsored by The Rock Poster Society to get a chance to see and buy his work. The article hailed him as "a savior of rock 'n' roll. Not the music, but the art."Fact|date=July 2008

In December 2007, Billboard (magazine) named the top 25 rock posters of all time. EMEK garnered 3 spots on the list, the most of any single artist.Fact|date=July 2008

Emek's style, known for its attention to detail and layers of meaning, infuses socio-political commentary into pop culture imagery.Fact|date=July 2008 In the tradition of psychedelic posters from the 1960s, Emek still draws his posters by hand.

He was shaped by both rock art posters from the 1960s, and punk flyers from the 1980s. He studied art at California State University at Northridge.

Emek's poster-making career accelerated in the 1990s with alternative rock acts from Europe and North America, including Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, Marilyn Manson and the Decemberists. Over the last decade, Emek's work has been shown in galleries across the United States, in Berlin, London and Tokyo.

Also a fine art painter, Emek lives in Portland, Oregon, and comes from a family of five artists in California. He was born in Israel while his artist parents lived on a kibbutz. In the states, his family, including Emek's younger brother and sister, lived in the Los Angeles area. His father worked as a caretaker. There was no TV at the home, just a radio and a well-equipped art studio. His parents also stayed active in political causes ranging from social justice and the peace movement to environmentalism. ["Artist's gig posters rock his fans' world," The Oregonian, Nov. 27. 2006]

"Aaarght" History 1992-2007

His first commissioned rock poster was for a political benefit after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The image -- a scratchboard visage of Martin Luther King Jr. rising above a concert crowd -- was stapled to the city's burnt-out buildings.Fact|date=July 2008

Emek incorporates traditional styles, from Russian constructivism to Asian woodblock. But he is also known for melding the mechanical with the organic, part of a statement on technology, consumerism and conservation.Fact|date=July 2008The poster promoting a show for Ween and the Flaming Lips, for example, shows a robot riding a robot horse, a green plant in his pouch, bowing his head in the middle of a barren field of tree stumps.

"At the end of the trail, tired old robots are the only ones left to mourn mankind's destruction of the planet," Emek explained in The Oregonian profile.

College professors use his political imagery in classes and textbooks.Fact|date=July 2008 Punk rocker and poet Henry Rollins dubbed Emek "the thinking man's poster artist." Showing a cunning, wry sense of humor often found in his art, Emek has described his own work as "aaarght."

Ten years ago, he had a hard time getting record stores to sell posters left over from a Pearl Jam show. The poster was only $12.50. Today, when the poster shows up on eBay, it goes for [http://www.expressobeans.com/public/detail.php/683 more than $1,500] . His poster for Phish at Cleveland State University on 12/08/1995 has sold for over $3,000.Fact|date=July 2008

In 2007, a European gallery tour that took him to Belgium, where he was honored by one the government's art and culture officials, and the Richard Goodall Gallery in England.

2008

In 2008 Emek completed the art and packaging for Erykah Badu's album, New Amerykah. In addition to a gig poster for Badu's 2/2/2008 concert in Israel, he created much of the art featured in her first video from the album, "Honey." The video starts with Emek's signature hand-drawn lettering.

On February 7, Emek's 2007 posters for the Coachella and 10,000 Lakes festivals won 1st and 3rd place, respectively, in Pollstar's annual poll of the year's best rock posters. It was the third year in a row that Emek swept the awards.

References