Visual artist Geronimo, aka Jumping Bull, is showing many of his Rolling Stones creations at the The Club at Café Royal in Regent Street. The viewing runs until January 31.
Admission is free of charge, but fans can register to attend by filling in the contact form on Geronimo’s website. The site also carries further details about the event. “From the sofa to the Coca Cola tongue, my new collection has around thirty pieces,” says Geronimo.
A special launch night takes place on January 21. Geronimo has invited several members of the Rolling Stones, but admits he has no idea whether anybody from the group will swing on by. “I don’t really want to comment on that, or hundreds of thousands of people will want to attend,” he says.
Having grown up on a North Dakota reservation, the self-taught Geronimo first met the Stones in 2006, and they became a huge part of his life. “Andy Warhol did pop art, I do rock art,” he tells Classic Rock. Surprisingly, he sees only in black and white, although he’s known for using a range of vivid colours. This is the legacy of a fight that left him blind for three months.
“This one is called Keith Symphony, it’s a painting I did with china ink on metal. Basically, it’s many plates of aluminium. There are twenty different images of Keith’s face, sometimes only the left side and sometimes the right side, all connected together. I wanted to do something classic in its own way, bit not simply a classic portrait. It tells us that there are many people inside one person. Onstage Keith is someone, but in his private life he’s somebody else.”
“I call this one Sympathy For Devil Mick. I wanted it to be dark. When you’re talking about the Devil it had to be very dark. Mick can be dark. In my experience he’s a funny guy, but just like everybody he has another side. That’s what I was seeking to convey here.”
“Yes, it’s a sofa. I wanted to create something very different, but also in its own way very recognisable, with the Rolling Stones tongue. But it’s a different tongue; longer and more straight.”
“Here’s another sofa designed around the tongue. I created these designs in 2014, and I like them a lot. I have one myself in snakeskin. The red leather one costs 30,000 Euros and the version in snake is for sale at 100,000 Euros, it’s made of python.”
