DDB New York Brings Urban Artist FAILE to New York City Ballet

New York, NY – January 8, 2012 – DDB New York announced today a new campaign in support of the newly launched New York City Ballet (NYCB) Art Series, which will feature annual collaborations with contemporary visual artists who will create original works inspired by NYCB that will be exhibited at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, the home of NYCB. Co-created by DDB New York and the New York City Ballet (NYCB), the New York City Ballet Art Series is an effort to introduce ballet to a younger audience that have an interest in culture and art, but have not yet experienced the ballet.

For its inaugural year, NYCB is partnering with celebrated artist FAILE, the Brooklyn-based team of Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. FAILE is recognized as pioneers in the urban art movement and has attained global recognition for their work across media from the streets to the museum wall. FAILE is best known for its urban-style, pop-culture collages, which apply colorful visual imagery.

For the launch of the NYCB Art Series, NYCB will host two special performances on Friday, February 1, 2013 and Wednesday, May 29, 2013. At the conclusion of each of these performances, audience members will be given an original piece of art created by FAILE to commemorate the series. For these two performances every seat in the house will be just $29. Tickets go on sale January 8, 2013 at 12pm. As a complement to the ballet performances, FAILE will create a unique exhibition featuring iconography inspired by several months of research at New York City Ballet and its archives.

In addition to NYCB’s unparalleled history of commissioning new work from some of the most influential choreographers and composers of the past 60 years, the Company also has a long tradition of working with visual artists such as Isamy Noguchi, Julian Schnabel, Roy Lichtenstein and Keith Haring, all of whom have created artworks and other visual elements for NYCB performances. With the NYCB Art Series, the Company plans to engage with a new generation of visual artists and audiences.

To create awareness of the NYCB Art Series, DDB New York will launch a creative campaign featuring FAILE artwork, skewed towards the younger New Yorker. Print and out-of-home executions, such as billboards, subway posters, urban panels above the subway, night video projections and postcard inserts will be viewable in New York neighborhoods where ads for Lincoln Center institutions are not often seen, such as Williamsburg, the Lower East Side and East Village. Print ads and digital banners will run in media outlets such as Time Out New York, Arts News, L Magazine and VICE. All elements of this campaign will feature images of FAILE’s artwork for NYCB.

New Yorkers will begin to see the campaign supporting the New York City Ballet Art Series beginning December 27, 2013.

About FAILE
FAILE is a Brooklyn-based artistic collaboration between Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. Since its inception in 1999, FAILE has become recognized as one of the leading artists in the contemporary Urban Art movement and distinguished themselves in the contemporary art world. Their work explores duality through a fragmented style of appropriation and collage. Working in a range of media from canvas, prints and stencils to multimedia installation and sculptures, FAILE’s work is constructed from resampled visual imagery and blurs the line between “high” and “low” culture. The duo has been exhibited in various galleries, museums and non-traditional venues throughout the world, including shows at Gagosian Gallery (Los Angeles), The Tate Modern (London) and a public installation in Portugal, called “Temple,” in which Faile fabricated a full-scale church in ruins in Lisbon’s Praça dos Restauradores Square. Most recently, FAILE unveiled a new monumental work called “Wolf Within,” a 16-foot-high fiberglass, steel and concrete sculpture that was created for the 1650-acre National Garden Park in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The project marked the first U.S.-Mongolian collaboration of this nature. For more information and to see other works by the artists, visit www.faile.net.

About DDB
DDB Worldwide (www.ddb.com) is one of the world’s largest and most awarded advertising and marketing networks. In 2012, DDB was named Advertising Network of the Year by Campaign, as well as Agency of the Year and Digital Agency of the Year by Strategy magazine. At the prestigious 2012 Cannes International Festival of Creativity, DDB won 82 Lions, the most ever for the network. In addition, The Gunn Report has listed DDB as one of the Top 3 Global Networks for the last 12 years. The agencies clients include VW, McDonalds, Unilever, Mars, Johnson & Johnson and Exxon Mobil, among others.

Founded in 1949, DDB is part of the Omnicom Group (NYSE) and consists of more than 200 offices in over 90 countries with its flagship office in New York, New York.

About New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet is one of the foremost dance companies in the world, with a roster of more than 80 dancers and an unparalleled repertory of modern masterpieces. The Company was founded in 1948 by the legendary choreographer George Balanchine and arts patron Lincoln Kirstein, and quickly became world-renowned for its athletic, contemporary style and a repertory of original ballets that has forever changed the face of classical dance. Now under the direction of Ballet Master in Chief Peter Martins and Executive Director Katherine Brown, NYCB continues its commitment to promoting creative excellence and nurturing a new generation of dancers and choreographers. For more information visit www.nycballet.com.

Primary Contact:
Christie Giera
(212) 415-2186
[email protected]