#554 ... Fresh Art

Art work by Dick & Otis Frizzell in the new Moore Wilson's Fresh store between Lorne and College Streets in Wellington. Both Dick and his son Otis are well known in the NZ art scene and this artwork softens the harder edge of the new store ... much more spacious than the former facitlties but does not yet exhibit that fresh market, hustle & bustle feel of the former.

Dick Frizell
One of Dick's well known prints is "From Mickey to Tiki"
b. 1943 Auckland, New Zealand
Dick Frizzell has often slipped through the nets of traditional critical and curatorial definition and the success of his artistic career is, in part, due to the number of dramatic diversions he has made between different art styles and genres. Before moving into visual arts Frizzell worked in advertising. He has worked as an animator, commercial artist and illustrator and has no qualms about blurring the categories between his commercial work and art. His paintings are often a pastiche of images drawing on modern art and graphic design.

His work has always been characterised by a highly skilled handling of paint and an endlessly inventive range of subject matter and styles: faux-naive New Zealand landscapes, figurative still-life, comic book characters and witty parodies of modernist abstraction. His taste is conveniently broad and he has a penchant for fondly remembered and well-worn clichés. His work also portrays a sense of exuberance, ironic humour and baby-boomer nostalgia. An anti-traditionalist, Frizzell often makes a deliberate effort to mix up the categories of high and low art - poking fun at the intellectualisation of 'high art' and the existential angst of much New Zealand painting in the art culture of his youth.

Although primarily a painter, Frizzell also produces an extensive range of works on paper including lithographs and screen prints.

Otis Frizell
Otis Frizzell (1971-) entered public life in his late teens as half of popular hip hop duo MC OJ and Rhythm Slave. (Frizzell is also the son of well known New Zealand artist Dick Frizzell). Otis has more than 15 years of public graffiti art experience and is New Zealand's highest profile graffiti artist. His work is on walls in Saatchi and Saatchi, IE Music (Robbie Williams' London management office), in celebrity collections, on KFC packaging, breast cancer T shirts, Playstation Ads, TV2 promos and the record sleeves of Che Fu and Concord Dawn.
Through New Zealand Fine Prints you can buy the full range of limited edition screenprints, giclee prints and posters available by Otis Frizzell and the Weston Frizzell collaborative identity where Otis works with Mike Weston