Chemical X is a pseudonymous British contemporary artist. His main works to date have addressed British rave culture via his 'Ecstasy Collection' and the plight of the homeless community of Skid Row in Los Angeles via the installation 'Skid Rodeo Drive. [1]
Chemical X is credited [2] as the designer of the original logo [3] for the Ministry of Sound nightclub and record label in 1991.
In 2002 Chemical X, via the creative agency Third Planet International, worked alongside another British anonymous artist Banksy on two projects, starting with the Greenpeace campaign Save or Delete [4] in which the final campaign image was a collaboration between the two artists.
Chemical X's first show was 'THE ARK', [5] a group exhibition at the Crypt On The Green in Clerkenwell, London in 2014 curated by the now defunct Bear Cub Gallery. The exhibition highlighted the plight of endangered species and supported the International Union for Conservation of Nature.[ citation needed ]
On 28 September 2017, Chemical X held his inaugural solo exhibition, 'CX300', showcasing the 'Ecstasy Collection', in London's Soho.
The exhibition featured collaborations with Hayden Kays (Dollar, Euro, X, Yen) and Schoony (The Spirit of Ecstasy [6] - featuring Cara Delevingne).
In June 2018, Chemical X donated a pieces entitle Rush to the drug testing charity The Loop to auction to help raise funds. [7]
Later the same year Chemical X moved the Ecstasy Collection to Los Angeles, California in the United States.
Whilst in Los Angeles Chemical X encountered the houseless community in Skid Row. This led him to devise the installation 'Skid Rodeo Drive' as a response. [8]
Juxtapoz magazine quoted Chemical X as saying, "I find Rodeo Drive pretty offensive, but Skid Row is just obscene. Not the community, but the fact that these places exist in the same town only a few miles apart. Luxury and poverty side by side is a very uncomfortable but powerful image."
Working with the Los Angeles Community Action Network, on May 30, 2019, Chemical X and his team installed 12 four person tents into San Julian in the Skid Row district. Each tent was covered in the livery of a luxury brand with a retail presence on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The houseless community helped install the work and occupied the tents whilst being filmed and photographed for their reactions and those of local residents. Once completed, the tents were donated to the Skid Row community. [8]
Following the Skid Row installation, Chemical X exhibited the Ecstasy Collection in the Tower Records building on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood in a show entitled CXLA which took place on 9 and 10 November 2019. [9]
In February 2020 Chemical X returned to Skid Row to make the second part of the Skid Rodeo Drive installation. This installation featured a single tent pitched in a different location each day for a week, starting in Skid Row and moving across the city of Los Angeles completing the work on Rodeo Drive.
Each tent was accompanied by an individual occupant - a person who was genuinely experiencing houselessness - and who was anonymised via a flesh coloured mask that covered their head. [8]
The work consisted of a series of videos entitled 'From The Row To Rodeo' interviewing passing members of the public about their interpretation of the work's meaning. The installation began on San Pedro in DTLA, and continued via City Hall, Echo Park, Route 101, The Frieze Art Fair, The Hollywood Walk of Fame, Fairfax and finally Rodeo Drive. Prior to the final installation, Beverly Hills Police informed the artist that pitching a tent on Rodeo Drive would result in his immediate arrest. [8] Subsequently, Chemical X hired three flatbed trucks, pitched a tent on each of them and drove along Rodeo Drive but was not arrested. [10] The event was reported by NBC and CBS. [11]
Netflix commissioned Chemical X to create a piece of street art in Berlin to commemorate a new season of the show, How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast). In July 2020, Chemical X installed the 10 x 3m artwork consisting of 130,000 fake ecstasy pills [12]
In early 2021, Chemical X co-founded ThisIsNumberOne.com. The 'Genesis Collection' was a series of five NFT artworks created in collaboration with Cara Delevingne, Fatboy Slim, Dave Stewart and Orbital, along with his own work entitled 'This Is Number One'. Cara Delevingne's 'Mine', a spoken word affirmation of female empowerment, drew global media coverage [13] and was viewed over 1.8m times, and later sold for $20,000.
A skid row, also called skid road, is an impoverished area, typically urban, in English-speaking North America whose inhabitants are mostly poor people "on the skids". This specifically refers to people who are poor or homeless, considered disreputable, downtrodden or forgotten by society. A skid row may be anything from an impoverished urban district to a red-light district to a gathering area for people experiencing homelessness or drug addiction. In general, skid row areas are inhabited or frequented by impoverished individuals and also people who are addicted to drugs. Urban areas considered skid rows are marked by high vagrancy, dilapidated buildings, and drug dens, as well as other features of urban blight. Used figuratively, the phrase may indicate the state of a poor person's life.
Skid Row is the unofficial name for a neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles officially known as Central City East.
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The Weingart Center for the Homeless is a comprehensive human services center for homeless men and women living in Skid Row, Los Angeles. It provides on-site short and long-term services including transitional residential housing, medical and mental health, permanent supportive housing, substance abuse recovery, education, workforce development, long term case management. The Weingart Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
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Cara Jocelyn Delevingne is an English model and actress. She signed with Storm Management after leaving school in 2009. Delevingne won Model of the Year at the British Fashion Awards in 2012 and 2014, and has also received three Teen Choice Awards and nominations for a British Independent Film Award and an MTV Movie & TV Award.
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The Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a Los Angeles–based performance group closely tied to the city's Skid Row neighborhood. Founded in 1985 by director and activist John Malpede, LAPD members are mostly homeless or formerly homeless people.
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Carnival Row is an American fantasy television series created by René Echevarria and Travis Beacham, based on Beacham's unproduced film spec script, A Killing on Carnival Row. The series stars Orlando Bloom, Cara Delevingne, Simon McBurney, Tamzin Merchant, David Gyasi, Andrew Gower, Karla Crome, Arty Froushan, Indira Varma, and Jared Harris. The series follows mythological beings who must survive as oppressed refugees in human society, as a detective works to solve murders connected with them.
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Shirley Raines is the founder of the non-profit Beauty 2 the Streetz, which provides hair and makeup services, food, clothing, hygiene and safety items to thousands of homeless people in Skid Row, Los Angeles. In 2021, she was chosen to be the CNN Hero of the Year.
Los Angeles Community Action Network (LACAN) is a grassroots organization based in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1999, LACAN works to organize low-income and homeless residents through advocacy, community organizing, litigation and education. The organization focuses on issues such as housing rights and the civil rights of the unhoused population.The organization is known for prioritizing the leadership of those directly affected by the issues it addresses.
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