Opening on December 8th, 2011 in Monty Art Space in Antwerp, Belgium is Guns ‘N Fucking Roses curated by Jan Van Woensel. The exhibition intends to travel to several different venues in Europe and then tour the USA allowing fans on a global level to experience and enjoy the work. It promises to be the most important contemporary art exhibit paying homage to one of the greatest hard rock bands of all times: Guns ‘N Roses.

I met Jan several years ago after he curated UN-SCR-1325, an exhibit that took place spring 2009 at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York City and included artists such as Marlene McCarty, Kathleen Hanna and Vanessa Albury, who also co-curated. I recently asked him via email how he arrived at the desire to make an exhibition about Guns and Roses. Was the idea inspired by his own personal experience, relationship with the band and a Rock-n-Roll lifestyle or was it brought on by something else completely?
From the curator:
You know, the idea for doing a GNR art exhibition goes back to 2008. I was living in NYC and L.A. part time, and got intrigued by the still persistent hard rock scene out there on the Left Coast. I thought, wouldn’t it be fucking great to curate an exhibition about Axl Rose, with Axl Rose as my co-curator. After all, we’re practically neighbors. The timing was bad though, ’cause the new GNR were releasing their Chinese Democracy. Irving Azoff’s assistant told me that they didn’t want to commit to a project that might be critical about Axl. No negative image in the press! Couple of months later, at my last-day-of-teaching-party in San Francisco, a student of mine stole a Slash t-shirt out of my closet. She was a fan, she said, and till today she doesn’t want to return it to me…This made me realize that there’s still a shit load of people out there that think that GNR is a truly great hard rock band. They deserve an art exhibition, and so, “Guns ‘N Fucking Roses” will be the first, important, and fucking good contemporary art show about GNR.
I’ll raise my PBR Tall Boy to that!
Jan Van Woensel is an independent curator previously based in NYC, L.A. and San Francisco, and currently based in Brussels, Belgium.

I submitted a drawing to the show which will be in three parts “GNFR: Teenage Fantasy, Parts 1, 2 & 3”. If you are interested in submitting, the official deadline is November 10th, 2011. Email inquiries to office.janvanwoensel@gmail.com

Check out the GNFR Blogspot & the Facebook group for further information!
More soon
xo