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Tattoo Artists Trade Skin for Canvas in West Village Art Exhibit

By DNAinfo Staff on July 15, 2010 6:54am  | Updated on July 15, 2010 7:21am

By Jennifer Glickel

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

WEST VILLAGE — A new West Village art exhibit is taking the tattoo artist out of the parlor and into the art gallery.

"Metanoia," which opens Thursday at P.J.S. Exhibitions, presents artwork of various media — none of which is body inking — created by some of New York’s most renowned tattoo artists.

"What really attracted me to put this show together is that its art that specifically isn’t tattoo art," said gallery owner and the show’s co-curator Patrick Sullivan.

"In talking about the show, I've tried to take the focus away from the artists as simply tattoo artists and shift it to their other work as artists more broadly," he added.

Pieces on display in the show will include drawings, paintings and etched metals, ranging in theme from dark religious iconography to bright fantastical images. While one artist incorporates coffee into his painting, another is showing a motorcycle that he built by hand from the ground up.

"The tactile properties of the pieces really speak out," explained Bevin Robinson, the show’s other curator. "Their surfaces tell as much of a story as their colors and content."

The exhibit’s artists include Chris O'Donnell, Stephanie Tamez, and Thomas Hooper from New York Adorned, Jason June of Daredevil Tattoos, Josh Egnew of Three Kings Tattoo, and Ryan Bonilla of Bellum Concepts.

"Whereas people could see a certain tattoo and know immediately that it was the work of, say Chris O’Donnell or Thomas Hooper, when looking at the pieces in this show you wouldn’t necessarily know whose it was, which makes this unique," Sullivan said.

While the show is made up of New York-based tattoo artists, Sullivan said that their pieces do not necessarily have a New York flavor to them. Instead, the work represents global influences as, Sullivan explained, the high-end tattoo world of which "Metanoia’s" artists are a part is composed of a small, close-knit group of artists from around the world.

"Metanoia" opens on Thursday at P.J.S. Exhibitions and runs through Aug. 29. P.J.S. is located at 238 West 14th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.