When discovering a series of currency-themed street art in the city this week, we were reminded of the relentless daily pressure there is today to make ends meet—and of the regular headlines showing how the big players run their own schemes to squeeze the public. It also calls to mind the 1980s hip hop track “What People Do for Money” by Divine Sounds, with its sly reminder: “They’ll sell their soul to the devil, just to make a dime.” (See video at end of posting)
Whether it’s war profiteering, scamming public programs, turning charities into piggy banks, buying up public goods to squeeze ratepayers, or preaching salvation from the cabin of a private jet, corporations, banks, and street hustlers only differ in scale, not intent.
From the street perspective, this may look like the same hustle that they do – but with a press release accompanying it.
Here’s a survey of our weekly interview with the street, featuring Atomiko, Cash4, Drones, Grouchy, Jappy Agoncillo, Rene Lerude, Skewville, TFP Crew, and Zexor.
If you’ve ever wandered down Frost Street and caught a whiff of turpentine, weed, and burned toast, you may have walked right past the unmarked doorway where Williamsburg still quietly seethes and happily bubbles with creative resistance.
A community center, performance space, art gallery, flea market hybrid, the space welcomes you to the latest show, “Money Talks,” which doesn’t need an opening reception flier. It has its gravity and pull — the kind that draws a packed audience into a labyrinth of rooms, exhibition spaces, and performances. A sign of success, it spills onto the spring Friday night sidewalk, where smokers and sharp talkers hold court between sets by a shaggy 70s rock band that might or might not be ironic.
Inside, four artists — Specter, Rene, CASH4, and ITIN — served up a visual demolition of American currency and its cultural metaphors. It wasn’t bitter, but it wasn’t sweet. Like the Williamsburg of old, before the glass condos, this was salty, smart, funny, blunt. No manifestos on the wall, just wry, sharp-tongued critique told in paper pulp, paint, and political memory.
The anchor piece? Gabriel Specter’s massive currency-redesigned The State of America. A redux of the reverse of a dollar bill — if it had lived through January 6. The Capitol dome smokes like a symbol under siege, while foregrounded rioters pose in shades of government green. It’s beautifully executed, deeply personal, and visibly furious — a portrait of patriotism cracked in half. The loft is loud, the floor sticky, the ideas sharp. Money Talks doesn’t have a social media campaign, instead you feel like it has conviction. It doesn’t need a QR code. The rent may be high, but the spirit here is still gloriously low-rent — and unbought.
Specter, a visual bard of the 2000s and 2010s Brooklyn scene, known for work that didn’t just decorate the streets but spoke to social realities, talked to us about this piece — and about the spirit of a space that still knows how to host shows that mean something.
BSA: How would you characterize the space where “Money Talks” took place — not just physically, but in terms of its function as a creative platform? Is it more of a cultural incubator, a performance venue, or a kind of underground laboratory for dissent?
GS: The best way to describe the space is talking about the people who occupy it. Each person coming in and out of the studio, the workshop, performance and gallery space shapes it into a one-of-a-kind arts venue. To answer whether it is a cultural incubator, performance venue, or underground laboratory of dissent, I would say all three apply. We’re inclusive of all forms of expression but we have an anti-establishment edge. Respect and kindness overrides difference of opinion.
BSA: Your painting The State of America, featuring figures from the January 6th Capitol riot, was a powerful centerpiece. What emotional or psychological space were you in while creating it, and how did the act of painting become a way to process or confront that moment in history?
GS: Because of the amount of detail required to execute the work, I had to focus on the rendering of each figure in the painting. I was physically trying to individualize them, an accurate representation of what was happening. My brain was not focused on anything other than the actual painting of it. It put me in a meditative state creating it.
As I would take breaks from the laborious rendering, I would take a step and look at what I’d completed so far. Because I was trying to be so accurate about representing each individual, the stepping back and seeing them altogether, it honestly brought up a lot of hatred. For what they represented, and what they did on that day. In doing this painting, I was painting a lot of patriotic things and my version of patriotism is a lot different than what the scene depicts.
BSA: The exhibition seems to grapple with money not just as currency, but as a symbol of power, manipulation, and social fracture. Was the show intended as a direct critique of American capitalism, or are you also exploring more personal or ambiguous relationships to money and value?
GS: Each artist in the exhibition has their own take and I can only speak to my own. So yes, my work was a critique of money as a tool for manipulation, and how this has seeped into societal values. But as I said, every artist contributing took Money Talks as a way to take back power with money.
BSA: You’ve been making work since the 2000s, including street pieces that captured daily city life and the people who live here. How has your perspective — and your medium — evolved in response to the widening economic divide and the political climate of recent years?
GS: I think my work has evolved to the times we are living in. I feel more than ever that my work needs to draw a line in the sand and represent my values as a human. I don’t try to take sides but I express what I think is right and I feel there is a sickness in our society at the moment.
A pause. It’s unusual to feel this sense in this city – but it’s there – on a sunny day where the sky is clear of clouds and a flock of geese still waddles and honks in the tall weeds and garbage by the Wallabout Channel. Is it a pause of satisfaction at the end of a summer full of fun, or perhaps a calm resignation before a storm as businesses are staying closed or operating at reduced staff. And while the Federal Reserve and ECB and World Bank insist there is just a smidgen of temporary, transitory inflation, tell us why a pound of butter is $6.00 at the local deli, the average price of a used car is $25K, and shipping container prices have soared to $20K?
There is a steady number of new street art pieces going up on doorways, power boxes, and concrete walls, but they are competing all of the triumphal purple and blue and pink Morning Glories flooding fences and walls and garden gates in neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn – a most generous overflow that summer gives as a parting gift.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Cssh4, Cheak, Clown Soldier, Diva Dogla, Drecks, ERRE, Fat Jak, Font 147, Goblin, Goog, JerkFace, Little Ricky, Mort Art, Praxis, Rambo, Seibot, Sinclair the Vandal, and Smetsky.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week and welcome to summer in NYC here on its 2nd day. Also Happy Father’s Day in the US.
Juneteenth. White Fragility.Defund the Police. How to Be an Antiracist. All of these new terms and phrases erupting on the main stage of the public lexicon today speak to a fundamental disgust with the system that’s been in effect. As uncomfortable as it may be, our better selves know that the conversations and changes that have started are vitally necessary to have if we ever want to move forward as a society.
Right now in New York people are marching, protesting, drinking on the street, setting off fireworks, and holding doors open for one another with a new sensitivity thanks to internal bruising. We also see people disregarding safety precautions in the spread of Covid-19, and honking their car horns more often.
But on the streets, the messages and the energy and the defiance and determination and the comedy are all there, running on the hot pavement.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Almost Over Keep Smiling, Cash4, Chris Tuorto, C0rn Queen, Crisp, KAWS, Menacersa, Nico, Skewville, Smells, and Tag Street Art.
A serious bomber and a bit of a barbed bard from Brooklyn has his first virtual contemporary art show with the Museum of Graffiti in Miami. You couldn’t write a sentence like that a decade ago.
Cash4. A Tough Pill to Swallow / Museum Of Graffiti / Miami, FL (photo courtesy Museum of Graffiti)
Straddling his own chaotic line between graffiti and Street Art for a decade and a half now, this smart aleck at times is layering the abstract and hand-styling the letters like a pro sign maker. Profane and smashed imagery, nearly profound snatches of two-edged prose, and a penchant for truth-telling that gets him in trouble are all hallmarks of Cash4’s game, but this selection of new pieces is timely and searingly on-point.
Cash4. A Tough Pill to Swallow / Museum Of Graffiti / Miami, FL (photo courtesy Museum of Graffiti)Cash4. A Tough Pill to Swallow / Museum Of Graffiti / Miami, FL (photo courtesy Museum of Graffiti)Cash4. A Tough Pill to Swallow / Museum Of Graffiti / Miami, FL (photo courtesy Museum of Graffiti)
We’re up to our necks in deep frosty wind-whipping winter, and yet the Street Art right now is verbose, detailed, bright eyed, distinct, political, critical, stylish, dense, richly colorful.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week from Miami, and this time featuring Armyan, Captain Eyeline, Cash4, China, City Kitty, COMBO, CP Won, Food Baby Soul, Glare, Jaroe, Jaye Moon, Jazi, Marameo Universe, Plasma Slug, Rodak, Sara Lynne Leo, Smells, UK WC, and Winston Tseng.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. “Word on the Street” Debut 2. INO – “Freedom For Sale” in Athens 3. Two in a Row from Alex Prager: “La Grande Sortie” & “Despair”
BSA Special Feature: “Word on the Street” Debuts
“Fuck
the old days. Graffiti is now!”
The last five years have been explosive for Street Art worldwide, and with “Word On The Street” you have a good indicator that the graff writing game is alive and well in New York as well – and tenaciously prolific.
Anonymous filmmakers infused the doc with vibrating audio and visual distortion and a sense of ever-present surveillance, or the implication of it cloaked in darkness. Interviews, late night runs, frozen wire fences, loose footing, bloody scrapes, and the sweet smell of aerosol lightly purring from cans across a shadowed wall. The labor of love for the filmmakers is the only thing that pushes a project like this to fruition. And fumes of course.
Featuring 143, AJES, BIO, BRAT, CASH4, CARL WESTON, CLAW, CHRIS RWK, DEK 2DX, DIVA, DSR, EDO, EL7, FAES, FLASH, JAKEE, JESUS SAVES, KLOPS, LEX, LOOSE, MERK, MRS, MUTZ, NEG, NOXER, PANIC, PLASMA SLUG, POE, SCAE, SEO, SILON, SMURFO, SPRAY, STOR, STU, and VEW.
INO – “Freedom For Sale” in Athens
Constantino Mass adds just the right amount of slickly pounding wipes and cuts to this installation by INO in Athens. We published photos from this a few days ago so have a look and enjoy the video.
Two in a Row from Alex Prager
Alex Prager debuted a new short film at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York this month, and it has piqued the interest of many in her work of disconnected, reconnected narratives. Impeccably styled, humorously shot, it’s a staged invoking of old Hollywood and street scenes, enveloped in drama and frequently suspense. Often the LA born director provides just the deconstructed portion of the scene you have seen, and keeps reworking it in surprising ways. Go to the gallery to see the new “Play the Wind”. Below are two of her short films from five and nine years ago respectively.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Brujo, Captain Eyeliner, Cash4, Combo-CK, Dain, M*Code, Mike Lee, New Worx City, Phetus, Raf Urban, Reka, Sinned, and Zimer.
Other than that we have to say to New York, we love you because of your fabulous diversity – and the fact that you prove every day that we can all get along really well even though we are all kinds of cultures and languages and backgrounds.
If only those (primarily) old white men who are legislating from Washington and from corporate board rooms could see and appreciate the richness that we have here in New York – they might realize that they have been completely and utterly foolish and blind to their own people, which is all of us.
It feels like this swing to the right is not about ideology but about protecting power and wealth – and we’re witnessing the dying Old Boy network kicking and screaming to protect the system that has served them best. How else can you explain the contingency that once called themselves the moral majority today exhibit almost zero morality – being brutal, haughty, and defiantly cynical – and still getting support?
On a happier note, how about those Yankees M-I-RIGHT ?
So here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Cash4, City Kitty, d.w. krsna, Dede, Izzrad, Kobra, Mark DiSuvero, Mer, Mr. Toll Troll, Mr. Tongue, Nitzan Mintz, Nobs, Onis, Pleks, Pork, Sickid, Stray Ones, and Subway Doodle.
Boom! There it is! This is springtime and there is a lot of new stuff popping up like tulips and out like cherry blossoms. If you didn’t get to the Martha Cooper opening at Steven Kasher gallery this week it is open during the week- a great cross section of her work during the last four decades or so. Additionally the Richard Hambleton film “Shadowman” debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival Friday night and is making a lot of waves and you can see works of his at Woodward Gallery right now.
Also this week a group of New York Street Artists officially are suing McDonalds for using their street work in long-form commercials without permission – a story we first brought to fore and we subsequently discussed – including giving one of the artists who was deeply affected a platform to speak. It remains to be seen who is directly responsible for this infringement but that doesn’t stop the fabulous loose talk and salacious assertions. Some people are lovin’ it.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Add Fuel, C3, Cash4, D7606, Cope, Don Rimx, Hardened Lock, Hervé, Immaker, Isaac Cordal, Jaune, Julien De Casabianca, Lunge Box, Okuda, Order55, Phil, and Queen Andrea.
Stickers, or slaps, are small but formidable graphic and text messages, especially when massed together on a doorway or light pole. They are also fast and surreptitiously placed, as simple as a gesture, undetectable in their ease of application.
Begun exclusively perhaps as vehicles for handwritten or hand drawn missives, usually the tag of an artist, today they are often mass produced and designed on a screen, commercially printed on stock that is weatherproof, yet crumbles into pieces when you try to remove it. Personal and political are often on display, as well as that eternal graffiti impulse to simply spread your name.
Stickers and their creation, distribution, and collection are a culture unto themselves, with fans mounting massive sticker shows and books tracing historical roots and telling stories. On the street, just one sticker can alter your day. Because you know it is made and placed by an individual and not a corporation, it feels like a personal message. Because it is small enough for you to get close to, it becomes intimate.
Here is a selection of recent images of stickers caught by our editor of photography, Jaime Rojo, for BSA readers to get up close to.
Today is Marathon Day in New York City and the leaves on the trees have turned to oranges and reds and yellows to welcome the 26,000 people running through all five boroughs. In two days right here in New York City both Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton will wait at their campaign headquarters to see the results of the longest and slimiest presidential campaigns most of us can remember, with many of us reporting that it made us sick.
There is plenty of blame to go around, and hopefully these are simply the fitful growing pains of a fighting, evolving society and not the stabbing spasms of a dissolute, dying republic.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Amanda Wong, Atomik, Boa Mistura, BK Foxx, Cash4, Giver, Kobra, Lexi Bella, Moter, Olek, Rambo, Reverend, Rocko, Ruben Sanchez, Sheryo, Sokar Uno, Wolftits, and You Go Girl.
We asked Olek about this brand new crocheted billboard she and a small team installed this week in New Jersey. We publish her reflections and statement here for BSA readers.
“This crocheted billboard is my uncommissioned letter to Hillary Clinton, a letter from a woman, an artist, and a naturalized US citizen.
This election has been fueled by hate and negativity. Initially, I did not want to make overtly political art. But then I realized I must, as too much is at stake. I could either make a negative statement about the other candidate or a positive one about Hillary. When a piece of art has 1000 hours of hand labor invested in it, I’d rather it be a positive statement.
Hillary might not be cool, but she is qualified, experienced and competent. I don’t want to hang out with her. I don’t want to drink beer with her. I don’t want to go dancing all night with her. I want her to be our president. I want her to run this country!
This is history happening in front of you, incredible and groundbreaking. The first African-American president will pass the most important job in the USA to the first woman president. No one would have imagined this just 50 years ago. So yes, these are amazing times.
Look at what is happening in Europe. Countries are returning to a conservative stance and people’s rights are being trampled and revoked. Few believed Brexit could take place, but indeed it did. We should learn from this mistake. Hate crimes are escalating. Immigrants, and especially Polish citizens, are being beaten and even killed. We cannot let this happen here in USA. We cannot go down this path of destruction in The United States of America.
I involved people across the USA to help me with this project. It was about a community working together and making a statement. We had two main groups crocheting – one in Virginia Beach and one in NYC. The excitement was tangible as we worked together to realize this vision. Each day we gathered in my tiny studio, those outside of NYC would join via Skype, as we all crocheted around the clock, talking to each other about our commitment to this piece and to Hillary Clinton, listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks. Everyone involved jumped on this project because they believed in it.
We are happy that we have achieved it.
I am an artist. I am a woman. As both I must make a statement. I cannot remain neutral or silent. I wish more people would find a way make positive statements. Unfortunately, negativity sells much better these days.
It is imperative for the future of our country that we succeed in electing Hillary Clinton as President of The United States of America this November 8th.” – OLEK
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
