Permission to Bail Out
Chris Hamer
March 15th - April 10th, 2021
Permission to Bail Out is a solo exhibition by Chris Hamer presented by The Artifice in Atlanta, GA.
Created during a period of pandemic, personal upheaval, and reinvention, the exhibition brings together an expansive collection of paintings, drawings, mixed-media works, and transformed objects.
Through the dark humor and restless visual language of URBNPOP, Hamer turns anxiety, memory, discarded materials, and everyday experience into an energetic record of survival through making.
Chris Hamer
Permission to Bail Out brings together a sprawling body of work created by Chris Hamer during a period marked by disruption, isolation, personal change, and the need to keep moving.
Working under the moniker URBNPOP, Hamer approaches art with the immediacy of drawing in a sketchbook or marking a wall. Figures, skulls, ghosts, fragments of text, repeated symbols, scribbled lines, sprayed color, and accumulated marks collide across the surfaces. Paintings move freely between abstraction and figuration, while discarded objects—including used spray-paint cans—are pulled back into the process and transformed into artworks themselves.
Throughout the exhibition, humor operates alongside anxiety. Characters grin, grimace, disappear, reappear, and seem to negotiate with the circumstances surrounding them. Titles such as This Is My Curse, Find Me In The Crash, No Where To Run To!, and Dream Of Better Days! reinforce a visual language that can be funny and confrontational while remaining deeply personal.
That mixture reflects Hamer's larger practice. His work has long drawn from comics, street art, music, urban environments, and overlooked materials, allowing polished imagery and rough improvisation to occupy the same space. Hamer has described the dark humor and distinctive drawing style of URBNPOP as central to the way audiences recognize his work.
In Permission to Bail Out, however, making itself becomes particularly important. Produced through a period of pandemic, divorce, breakdown, and reinvention, the collection records an artist processing instability by continuing to work. The accumulation matters: one painting leads to another, one character gives way to the next, and discarded materials become new surfaces.
Permission to Bail Out is less about escape than endurance—the possibility that when everything else becomes uncertain, the act of making something can provide a way through.
April 2nd, Let’s Get This Party Started
48 x 24 in / 121.9 x 61 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$400
Covid Sleepover
48 x 24 in / 121.9 x 61 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$400
This Is My Curse
48 x 24 in / 121.9 x 61 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$400
Glass Jaw
16 x 12 in / 40.6 x 30.5 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$150
The Ghost Of You And Me
20 x 16 in / 50.8 x 40.6 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$175
Color Pop
11 x 14 in / 27.9 x 35.6 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$150
Style Wars #1
8 x 3 x 3 / 20.3 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm
Mixed media on spray paint can
$100
Style Wars #2 (Black Magik)
8 x 3 x 3 / 20.3 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm
Mixed media on spray paint can
$100
Style Wars #3 (86)
8 x 3 x 3 / 20.3 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm
Mixed media on spray paint can
$100
It’s Funny How Your Teeth Look In My Knuckles
30 x 24 in / 76.2 x 61 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$350
No Where To Run To!
16 x 12 in / 40.6 x 30.5 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$150
I Vote You Leave
16 x 12 in / 40.6 x 30.5 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$150
Yeah, I’m Just That Funny
24 x 12 in / 61 x 30.5 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$200
It’s What’s Not Seen
24 x 12 in / 61 x 30.5 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$100
Eat The Meek
24 x 12 in / 61 x 30.5 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$230
Don’t Tell Me!
12 x 36 in / 30.5 x 91.4 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$280
Be Safe
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$200
The Three Of Us And A Closet Full Of Skeltons
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$300
Man, It’s Just Ink Spill #2
14 x 11 in / 35.6 x 27.9 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$100
Man, It’s Just Ink Spill #1
14 x 11 in / 35.6 x 27.9 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$100
My Only Fans Page Is For You...
24 x 20 in / 61 x 50.8 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$200
SAMO Was Here. JMB Was Not.
8 x 5 in / 20.3 x 12.7 cm
Mixed media on panel
$80
Southside Southern Mexican Empire
8 x 5 in / 20.3 x 12.7 cm
Mixed media on panel
$80
Pick My Brain Clean, Baby!
7 x 7 in / 17.8 x 17.8 cm
Mixed media on panel
$80
Style Wars #4 (This Alarms Me)
8 x 3 x 3 / 20.3 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm
Mixed media on spray paint can
$100
Style Wars #5
8 x 3 x 3 / 20.3 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm
Mixed media on spray paint can
$100
Style Wars #6 (Slave To The Grind)
8 x 3 x 3 / 20.3 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm
Mixed media on spray paint can
$100
You Got A Heart Behind Those Tits?
24 x 12 in / 61 x 30.5 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$180
Take What You Want From Me
20 x 16 in / 50.8 x 40.6 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$150
October 25th, 9:45 PM
36 x 48 in / 91.4 x 121.9 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$600
Just Drowning... Drowning... Drown... Ing...
24 x 20 in / 61 x 50.8 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$250
Speak Up. It’s What Will Get You Through.
30 x 24 in / 76.2 x 61 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$350
Amy Whines About Nothing. Amy Is Dead?
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$300
Blessed By Your Own Ghost
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$280
Find Me In The Crash
36 x 24 in / 91.4 x 61 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$500
I Make Rainbows, Like Whores Make Babies
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$250
Yeah, It Might Have Been A Mis-Steak
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$250
Klimt Was Ahead Of The Curse
36 x 24 in / 91.4 x 61 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$400
Build On These Blocks
36 x 24 in / 91.4 x 61 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$400
The Anonymous Nobody
30 x 24 in / 76.2 x 61 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$400
Every Breath Is A Bomb
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$300
Ride On Buttercup This Is Fucked
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$250
Feed Yourself To The Monster
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$250
Be Quiet And Drive
20 x 20 in / 50.8 x 50.8 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$300
Hot Damn Every Time I Die, I Live
36 x 24 in / 91.4 x 61 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$450
Dream Of Better Days!
48 x 36 in / 121.9 x 91.4 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$650
Educate Your Friends
36 x 12 in / 91.4 x 30.1 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$300
Bright Idea Robert Paulsen
40 x 30 in / 101.6 x 76.2 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$450
Stand Tall. Stand Proud. Stephen King Is Being Creepy.
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$250
Just Last Night
24 x 12 in / 61 x 30.5 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$150
Split My Feelings Into Two
24 x 18 in / 61 x 45.7 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$200
Rise My Lovely's, We Got Shit To Do
24 x 12 in / 61 x 30.5 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$200
Yeah, It Really Hangs Like This!
30 x 40 in / 76.2 x 101.6 cm
Mixed media on canvas
$450