The Mark Kostabi Band: Kostabeat. Feat. Tony Esposito

Artist and Composer Mark Kostabi was born in Los Angeles in 1960 to Estonian immigrants. Raised in Whittier, California, he studied drawing and painting at California State University, Fullerton. Kostabi moved to New York in 1982, and by 1984, emerged as a leading figure in the now legendary East Village art scene where he cultivated a provocative media persona by publishing self-interviews reflecting on the commodification of contemporary art. By 1987, his visual art was widely exhibited internationally. He inspired extensive international press coverage starting in 1988 when he founded Kostabi World, his Manhattan art studio, where he openly employs numerous painting assistants.

Beginning in the early 1990s Kostabi's work has been widely exhibited throughout Italy. Kostabi established a second home in Rome in 1996.

Kostabi produces a weekly cable TV show, The Kostabi Show, where noted art critics and celebrities compete to title his paintings for cash awards.

Kostabi has designed album covers for Guns 'N' Roses (Use Your Illusion) and The Ramones (Adios Amigos), Jimmy Scott (Holding Back The Years) Seether (Holding onto Strings better Left to Fray) and numerous products including a Swatch watch, a Bloomingdales bag, Alessi vases, Rosenthal espresso cups, and a Giro d'Italia pink jersey.

Kostabi is also known for his many collaborations with other artists including Enzo Cucchi, Arman, Howard Finster, Tadanori Yokoo, Enrico Baj, Tony Esposito and Paul Kostabi.

Kostabi has performed his music as a soloist and with other musicians including Ornette Coleman, Jerry Marotta, Tony Levin, Tony Esposito and Paul Kostabi. His CDs include I Did It Steinway, Songs For Sumera and The Spectre of Modernism.

In recent years Kostabi has performed his music extensively in collaboration with Tony Esposito in concerts and television shows throughout Italy.

Retrospective exhibitions of Kostabi's paintings have been held at the Mitsukoshi Museum in Tokyo (1992) and the Art Museum of Estonia in Tallinn (1998). The famous Italian art historian and curator, Vittorio Sgarbi, curated an exhibition of 150 Kostabi paintings at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome in 2006. Kostabi's work is in over 50 permanent museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery in Washington D.C., the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.

Kostabi is also known for his writing, including art reviews and an advice column for artists called Ask Mark Kostabi, for Artnet.com.