AN ECLECTIC ROSE

Aaron Rose has an interesting take on street art. It’s like Blues or Jazz, he says: initially frowned upon but increasingly understood. It’s a neat comparison, and right now, with the emergence of urban art auctions and the great celebrity of Banksy, it seems we’re in the midst of that mainstream acceptance. But Rose has been involved since the very beginning, since he was 19, when he found himself alone in New York having recently moved there from the San Fernando Valley in LA. A woman he met there offered him a rundown store space:

“It was very cheap in a bad area of town. The neighborhood was just heroin and crime etc. We opened this art gallery not knowing what we wanted to do. I never wanted to be an art dealer. I didn’t have any art world experience. I just had a space and so we started putting up shows and we called the gallery Alleged after these (alleged) good luck candles that they sold in the Puerto Rican grocery stores. It was an Alleged gallery, not a real gallery.”

Perhaps, were it still around, it might be considered a ‘real’ gallery today. There would be plenty of things to put in it, that’s for sure. Rose is clearly in love with creativity - in a head over heels kind of way. He’s always doing something, pushing something, helping someone, getting people to express themselves in whatever medium they like. His Beautiful Losers film just premiered in the States, he has a travelling exhibition that goes by the same name, and is one of the four co-editors of the wonderful ANP Quarterly, a magazine born of their own dissatisfaction with most of the titles available on shelves:

“Our goal is not to focus on current events or who’s hot but rather to bring forward people and phenomena that deserve acknowledgment and coverage regardless of their place in time. For as long as we can make it happen, this magazine will be completely free and without advertising. We are beholden to nobody, save our own conscience.”

That seems to have been the attitude that has guided Rose throughout his eclectic career from naive but exuberant gallery owner to editor and film director. He’s simply a tireless promoter of creative expression, and if he wants to do something, then he’ll just do it. Just do it eh? Yep, and he’s done loads of stuff for Nike.

“I’ve just kind of stumbled into stuff. I guess I have ideas and then just try to follow through with them. It looks far more impressive from afar!”

It certainly does.