Futura 2000: Breaking Out

Over his career span of five decades, FUTURA has built a reputation and continues to be an unrelenting innovator. He has inspired and influenced multiple generations of creative purists and polymaths while intersecting his enigmatic oeuvre with various disciplines and remains at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist. FUTURA2000: Breaking Out is a comprehensive survey featuring paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, studies, collaborations, and archival paraphernalia. The exhibition will also feature new site-specific works. Breaking Out examines one of New York’s most-loved artist’s essential themes and polyphonic output.

FUTURA2000 is the nom de plume of Leonard Hilton McGurr. In his late teens and early twenties, he was an influential figure in early New York City’s formative graffiti-meets-art scene in the 1970s and 1980s, wherein his unique combination of abstraction, pop-culture references, and traditional graffiti elements made him a generational standout in this burgeoning sub-culture. His oft-celebrated and infamous 1980 whole NYC subway car piece, Break Train, was a progressive leap for both the genre—and the artist. He created album art for the iconic punk rock band THE CLASH during the same era. FUTURA was also invited on the band’s 1981 Combat Rock European tour, where he painted captivating, large-scale backdrops behind the band as they performed live to fervent audiences. 

UBCFA INSTALLATION
September 23, 2023 - Spring 2024

Futura 2000: Breaking Out
Subway Wall

In dialogue with UB Art Galleries exhibition Futura 2000: Breaking Out, this mural installation is a place for visitors to tag themselves and be a part of a collaborative environment. This places all of us in the conversation with Futura and the vast history—and present—of street art.

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Design and installation by betty.red, inc.
Presented by the UB Center for the Arts