All posts tagged: Medvin Sobio

“Coachella Walls”: Date Farmers Raise Profile of “Anonymous Worker”

“Coachella Walls”: Date Farmers Raise Profile of “Anonymous Worker”

Seriously, like Coachella is NOT even like in Coachella. It’s like in Indio. True story.

The annual concert festival that brings legions of middle class to somewhat affluent feathered fringed bikini babes and awesome face-painted dudes dropping acid while texting and buying merch? – and which apparently features big-name indie music at some point over two weekends in April? That’s not here. That town is called Indio.

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Coachella Walls Poster at a local farm. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Here in Coachella, the “City of Eternal Sunshine,” no one shoots YouTube videos about “How to Survive Coachella” with hints about SPF 55 sunscreen sticks and personal sized hand sanitizer. Here you will find a mostly rural, agricultural, family oriented community which struggles with poverty regularly. They also pick a lot of your food.

That’s why Armando Lerma and Carlos Ramirez, artistically joined as The Date Farmers, began an “arts-driven community revitalization project” on March 31st, recognized in California as Cesar Chavez Day.

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Armando Lerma of The Date Farmers keeps and eye on the rambunctious fans. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Inviting solidly remarkable street art and mural-painting talents to show some camaraderie with the working men and women in this community, the first annual Coachella Walls has now made its mark in the Historic Pueblo Viejo District of downtown. Here also is the recently opened Date Farmers Art Studios, which they hope will serve as the city’s first art gallery and artist residency.

Thematically joined to honor Chavez and the Anonymous Farm Worker, the festival invited a group of muralists and contemporary artists with Latin American cultural influences in their work, including artists like El Mac (Arizona), Nunca (Brazil), Saner (Mexico), Andrew Hem (Cambodia), Liqen (Spain), Albert Reyes (Los Angeles), Vyal Reyes (Los Angeles), Sego (Mexico), The Phantom (Los Angeles), Jim Darling (Texas), and more.

According to the organizers, “Despite supplying the region with close to half a million dollars a year in vegetable crops, many of the farm workers in the Eastern Coachella Valley continue to live in unsafe and unhealthy conditions.” With murals, luck and a whole burlap sack of talent like this, Coachella Walls aims to bring awareness to these issues and others related to the life of the worker here.

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The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Medvin Sobio was contacted by the Date Farmers to help produce and curate the public art project, and he shows us some of the images that came out of this very first annual event. Coachella Walls is funded by the city of Coachella’s public arts fund and is curated by Sobio, the director of The Academy of Street Art  in Los Angeles. Our thanks to Medvin and the Date Farmers for sharing these images with us.

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The Date Farmers at work on “Casa de Trabajador”(photo © Medvin Sobio)

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The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Armando and Carlos assessing the progress. The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Albert Reyes (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Albert Reyes (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Andrew Hem with Carlos Ramirez of The Date Farmers (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Andrew Hem (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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El Mac (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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El Mac (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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El Mac chats with Andrew Hem. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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El Mac. Carlos Ramirez of The Date Farmers snaps a shot. (photo © Medvin Sobio)

Says El Mac about this painting on his blog, “It’s not intended to represent any one specific person, but rather many people, especially the “anonymous farm worker”. Farm workers in this country have been marginalized despite producing the very food we all need for survival. The Coachella valley is an important region for farming, and has been the setting for many of the struggles by the UFW to to improve workers’ rights since the 60s..and you can feel this history there.”

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El Mac (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Nunca (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Nunca “The Band” (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Nunca “The Band” (photo © Medvin Sobio)

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Nunca “The Band” (photo © Medvin Sobio)

 

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BSA Film Friday: 04.11.14

BSA Film Friday: 04.11.14

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Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. URBAN ART 2014 on Auction
2. Building Detroit – Revok, Nekst, Pose
3. Sheryo and Yok in Indonesia
4. Coachella Walls: Date Farmers by Medvin Sobio
5. Spaik and Libre. Mexico City 2014

BSA Special Feature: URBAN ART 2014 on Auction with Artcuriel

A film by Jérémy Jaoui

This is what it looks like now; a powerful visual documentation and summary of one plainly commercial aspect of this moment in the evolution of graffiti art/ Street Art/ urban art – and its collectability with a growing global artworld fan base. The video follows Artcuriel and it’s personable auctioneer Arnaud Oliveux as the crowd gathers and clinks glasses, listens to speeches, views live art-making and inspects a collection of fine art created by graffiti and Street Artists which will soon be auctioned.

As one observer notes while thumbing through the show catalog “Urban Art is becoming something real!” Now the vulgar rap lyrics that describe sexual acts to a beat which accompanied the visuals of the artists in the gallery are replaced with rarefied classical strings and no percussion when we enter the auction room where commerce takes place.

Brooklyn-Street-Art-Screenshot-Artcuriel-auction-2014-740Excitement in the packed house is palpable and the auctioneer is the entertaining and electrified ringmaster, with poised assistants tensely perched on the telephone with international bidders.

“With an artist like LUDO, Arnauld is being very avant-garde,” says a knowledgeable admirer while we see the piece reach a record price to applause and pieces are placed on the mantel by men in white gloves. “Urban Art is now happening as we wanted it to,” says Monsieur Oliveux to us from his desk.

Well edited and skillfully presented, the film by Jaoui Jérémy gives you a rare glimpse into a world far removed from the street yet inextricably tied to it – where one time vandals become art stars, collectible artists, performers and celebrity endorsers.  It’s your call whether it is a celebration or an indictment, and perspectives will vary according to where you sit, but here the elements are all on parade before your eyes and presented in a passionate way.

 

Building Detroit – Revok, Nekst, Pose

The graffiti and Street Art scene in abandoned Detroit is “thriving like I don’t think we’ve seen in the US for quite some time,” observes artist Pose, one of the few writers/artists who is straddling the street and commercial gallery world. “When you leave something and don’t care about it, we come here.” It’s a rallying cry for painters, a cautionary statement for authorities that encapsulates one of the primary dynamics of the graffiti/street art/public art scene.

But then Pose offers an additional sentiment that gets missed in these often simplified arguments. “We care about it, we’ll paint it all day.”

From MOCA in LA to MOCAD here, where both Revok and Pose have created large scale works, the institutional recognition of the contribution of the art form is remarkable. Simultaneously the freewill act of it a few blocks away from the museum has greater implications from a legal aspect.

Oh no! Complexity to contemplate.

 

Sheryo and Yok in Indonesia

“Sheryo and The Yok go to Indonesia to learn batik and sculpture” says their description but we think they may already know a thing or two about both. Here they are line illustrating with hot wax, adding a third dimension in clay to characters with phallus noses, and hitting up random walls throughout the city and on the beach with aerosol. Like any good guests, they make sure to credit their hosts here, which is real nice.  Oh yes, and there’s a gallery show at Turner Gallery in Purth March 21 – mentioned at the very end.

 

Coachella Walls: Date Farmers by Medvin Sobio

Hey man, ¿Qué haces? For this Coachella street-art-related event the dude Medvin Sobio is setting the scene again with  unscripted social outtakes and interactions are positioned as the main story – and he is framing it with this jukebox music. Yes, this is where The Eagles are national treasures, Marvin Gaye is a nice reminder of a time when singing about the environment could still get airplay, and MJ is always a party starter. Errrbuddy get up!

Spaik and Libre. Mexico City 2014

Part of a commercial gig for a traveling corporate electronic dance music festival, Spaik and Libre knock out a colorful wall while participants pile onto the big lot in DF for the multi-screen festivities.

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BSA Film Friday: 04.04.14

BSA Film Friday: 04.04.14

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Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. SWOON – The Run Up
2. Medvin Sobio announces Coachella Walls
3. Ben Eine and “Amusement”
4. “Salgado” From Sparky Stories

BSA Special Feature: SWOON – The Run Up

“The things that drew me to the city are both the intensity and the harshness,” says Street Artist Swoon in this new video from documentary filmmaker Joey Garfield. After more than a decade and half, she’s thriving on both and still in Brooklyn. The footage is of an earlier Swoon and during her initial forays out into the street to wheatpaste her hand cut creations on tattered walls and rusted doorways.  It is a glimpse of a young artist in New York, and it will ring familiar to the new arrivals to this harsh intense city to see her balancing a bag of clothes on her handle bars and crossing 4th Avenue on her way to the laundromat.

In his description of the piece on Vimeo Garfield says that it was filmed “before the term Street Art” which may indicate the 1960s since books were published with the term in the 70s and Richard Goldstein wrote a big piece about it for the Village Voice in the early 80s. This video looks looks like it was shot in the mid 00s, but we take his point to mean that the current explosion was occurring around the very time Swoon was beginning as well.

In fact, that is what makes this rough collection of very personal moments with Swoon on the cusp of her first big solo show so refreshing. As we watch her prep for the Dietch Projects installation and she observes that it is much larger than she had guessed it would get, we are all anticipating her new installation opening at the Brooklyn Museum next week. Similarly the scale of “Submerged Motherlands” has expanded amazingly and it is only beginning to match that of Swoon’s imagination, and her will.

Medvin Sobio announces Coachella Walls

Medvin Sobio knows how to present a story before it even happens. A co-curator of Wynwood Walls one year and the Boneyard Project, Sobio debuts this video to announce the first annual COACHELLA WALLS, hosted by The Date Farmers – an event which is described as “an arts driven community revitalization project”. The video is shot like a film and sets the stage for very good things to come.

Participating artists schedule to participate are The Date Farmers (Coachella), El Mac (Arizona), Nunca (Brazil), Saner (Mexico), Andrew Hem (Cambodia), Liqen (Spain), Albert Reyes (Los Angeles), Vyal Reyes (Los Angeles), Sego (Mexico), The Phantom (Los Angeles), Jim Darling (Texas), and more.

 

Ben Eine and “Amusement”

A brief record of Ben Eine describing his love of typography and appetite for risk taking and some crisp shots of him doing this commercial piece for a San Francisco development project named 8 Octavia.

“Salgado” From Sparky Stories

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BSA Film Friday: 11.15.13 – Exclusive Premiere David Choe / Aryz

BSA Film Friday: 11.15.13 – Exclusive Premiere David Choe / Aryz

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Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening:

1. David Choe/Aryz PREMIERE on BSA: Medvin Sobio’s “L. A. Nights”
2. Niels “Shoe” Meulman Calligraffit
3. Tom Herck aka Atek84 2012-2013
4. The End Of The Line Pt 2; NYC Train Lines by Janosch Delcker.
5. NUART 2013: Showtime
6. M-City in Norway. Time lapse.
7. Alex Yanes: Woven Into Me

BSA Special Feature:

BSA EXCLUSIVE DAVID CHOE/ARYZ PREMIERE:
Medvin Sobio’s “L. A. Nights”

Director-film maker Medvin Sobio takes another unconventional spin on the now somewhat conventional mural-painting subgenre by playing with time signatures, hitting straight up wrong angles, and stirring in a thick sinuous sucrose veneer that makes us begin asking existential questions by the time the droll closing credits roll by.

It’s all here directly from the perfectly banal and brutal life on the street, with little clusters of gadflies and homies swimming around sort of drunkly – aided by a soundtrack heavy with Spanish-language 45s that were left sitting on the radiator. Just as you get the groove, prepare for Sobio to switch it, and for David Choe to glide by the screen like a ninja/Vader/suburban lawncare specialist from San Antonio with leaf blower in hand. The new film captures just a little bit of the LA street insanity of summer where almost everyone is baked — and its debut is here for BSA readers today exclusively.

YOU MUST ENTER THE PASSWORD TO WATCH THE VIDEO: Here it is>>>>> bang

 

Niels “Shoe” Meulman: Arts In The Streets

Shot and edited by Colin M. Day

“I guess it all started with me as a little kid being into looking at signs and letters,” says Niels in an understated way as he traces his evolution into an amalgam of graffiti and calligraphy that he has fashioned. Follow him as he narrates through the studio environment into a number of venues, all the while rhythmically marking walls, floors, cars with his signature U and N characters.

Tom Herck aka Atek84 Video Compilation 2012-2013

A sizzle reel of sorts by artist Tom Herck that hits upon his tangling with the meaning of selling ideas and beliefs and the paranoiac behaviors bred by surveillance. At least, that’s what we think. Guy has some good ideas and a knack for dramatic symbols, but some may be jarring – like the burning cross at the beginning, for example.

 

The End Of The Line Pt 2; NYC Train Lines by Janosch Delcker.

Journalist and documentary filmmaker Jonosch Delker offers the companion piece to his “End of the Line” film that explored the final stops on the train lines in Berlin two years ago; Today he brings us the final stations of the NYC subway system.  He likes to say they are “non-places” because tourists rarely see them but just the glimpses of human interaction that he captures tell you that these are full of life and possess an urban poetry of their own. It’s true, a rare tourist will ever see these termination stations, as the major hubs of visitor activity are smack in the middle of many train lines. An adventurous or dozing visitor can find these places, though most probably won’t.  With his choice of Moby to accompany you on your trip to the ends of the lines, you won’t need to do it either – but you may be encouraged to.

 

NUART 2013: Showtime

Time for a victory lap on the 2013 installment of Nuart.

 

M-City in Norway. Time lapse.

Quietly he works. M-City in Norway.

 

Alex Yanes: Woven Into Me

 “Every artist that I ever met that is successful has paid dues,” says visual artist Alex Yanes in this tight video shot and edited by Duffy Higgins that traces the process Yanes followed to create and mount his first New York show – a show we caught at Low Brow Artique for its opening.  It captures the energy and enthusiasm of the artist who had some trepidation about bringing his Miami style to Bushwick and the ready to rumble every day life of New York.

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BSA Film Friday: 05.10.13

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening: Narcélio Grud Food Painting, Beerens Snail Work, El Mac’s promo for “Sangre Nueva”, and Doug Aldrich and Sam Octigan create a canvas.

BSA Special Feature:
“Tropical Hungry” food painting with Narcélio Grud

You are what you eat, son, so stay away from cow tongue!  “Tropical Hungry” follows Street Artist Narcélio Grud into the market in the city of Fortaleza, Brazil and watches him pick up the discarded fruits and vegetables. What he does with them is delicious and takes art as “Food for Thought”.   Also, it opens the conversation about what we do with the food that is not eaten, and reminds us not to waste.

A Snail Goes To Work: Michael Beerens

Set to a soundtrack of slow-jam reverie, the pacing of this video from the French Street Artist tells you that someone is in love with painting and is willing to take his time to get it right. Chill, Mr. Snail.

El Mac “Sangre Nueva”

For his new show that opened Wednesday in Denmark, this promo for El Mac presents evocative vignettes of motels, windshield wipers and pulp fiction. The mini movie rolls like the credits for a story that glides slowly through the desperation of the street in search of romance, escapism, and a little soul.

Four stars to Medvin Sobio.

Doug Aldrich and Sam Octigan: “Crossing Lines”

Here’s a recap of the recently exhibited show “Crossing Lines” featuring the collaboration of an Aussie and a New Yorky. Not specific to Street Art, although it’s possible there is some familiarity with the scene here, this video is a snapshot of how Bushwick continues to change and evolve into an arts district with the huge influx of new people over the last 5 years.

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Greg Craola Simkins Video by Medvin Sobio “Stop Haunting Me”

Los Angeles based Street and Fine Artist Greg Craola Simkins is prepping for a solo show entitled “Stop Haunting Me”. He was “raised on cartoons, well written stories, animal planet, graffiti, tattoos and mind numbing trips to grandma’s house,” says he on his Facebook page, and you can verify his penchant for escapism in his astonishingly well-rendered work over the last decade.

To help get the word out his buddy Medvin Sobio has created an underwater slo-mo haunting promo. Truth is, the luscious and operatic mediation is so far from the field that it’s in the ocean. ” It’s not your typical “street art” video I know, but I always feel that change is good,” says Medvin. Here are some screenshot gems from the piece, followed by the video.

Greg Craola “Stop Haungting Me” (Still from the video © Medvin Sobio)

Greg Craola “Stop Haungting Me” (Still from the video © Medvin Sobio)

Greg Craola “Stop Haungting Me” (Still from the video © Medvin Sobio)

Greg Craola “Stop Haungting Me” (Still from the video © Medvin Sobio)

Film by Medvin Sobio

Click here for further information about “Stop Haunting Me”.  A solo exhibition by Greg Craola Simkins at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery. Los Angeles, CA.

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Fun Friday 10.26.12

1. Perfect Storm “Big Freedia” Coming
2. Kid Acne, “Damn Straight” (Vienna)
3. Blue Dog at Michael Mutt (NYC)
4. “Las Calles Hablan” Group Show (Barcelona)
5. SANER Has “Catharsis” at New Image (LA)
6. Saner “Catharsis” Teaser # 2 (VIDEO)
7. Jeff Frost “Modern Ruin” Preview (VIDEO)
8. See No Evil 2012 (VIDEO)

Happy Friday NYC. Halloween is in full effect on the streets and there are people in costume at bars, at art parties, galleries, and in the corner deli throughout this weekend as we get ready for the Frankenstorm that is on it’s way from the South, West, and North. And from New Orleans another storm system called Big Freedia is set to hit on Halloween at Brooklyn Bowl. Watch the skies for this perfect storm – Ya’ll get back now!

 

Kid Acne, “Damn Straight” (Vienna)

This week Kid Acne has been led by his small army of sword-wielding women to Vienna, Austria for his solo show at Inoperable gallery with mono prints, graphite, screenprints, qatercolor, and more. The Kid says that the show will also feature a limited print “honoring the worlds first Graffiti Artist, Kyselak“, an Austrian who painted during the early 1800s. “Damn Straight” is now open.

Kid Acne on the streets of Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this show click here.

Blue Dog at Michael Mutt (NYC)

With canine pragmatism, the Street Artist Blue Dog 10003 describes the rules of the street: “You put up and if people like it they take pics or poach it. If it sucks they slap over it.” Not sure how it applies to the rules inside the gallery ; “Re Tail Blue’s” is now open to the general public at the Michael Mutt Gallery in Manhattan.

Blue Dog 10003 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this show click here.

“Las Calles Hablan” Group Show (Barcelona)

In support of a forthcoming documentary of the same name, Las Calles Hablan is the first exhibit by Mapping Barcelona Public Art and it is tracing the evolution of street art in Barcelona since the death of Franco. While this collection is not exhaustive, it gives an overview. Presented by MBPA at the Mutuo Centro de Arte, the show includes: Debens, Tom14, Kenor, Pez, Kafre, Alice, SM172, Ogoch, BToy and Gola. Now open.

Pez in Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this show click here.

SANER Has “Catharsis” at New Image (LA)

“I visited Oaxaca a lot when I was growing up because my mother is from there, and certain traditions which they carried out there really caught my attention.,” says Mexican Street Artist Saner as he talks about his youth and the rich influences that can be traced in his work. Medvin Sobio curates Saner’s new show “Catharsis” at New Image Art Gallery in West Hollywood, CA. A cultural and stylistic fusionaire, Saner is clearly poised to influence many – Saturday night it is the place to be in LA.

Saner in Miami for Wynwood Walls. A collaboration with Sego. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this show click here.

Saner “Catharsis” Teaser # 2 (VIDEO)

Jeff Frost “Modern Ruin” Preview (VIDEO)

See No Evil 2012. Street Art Way of Life (VIDEO)

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New Image Art Gallery Presents: Saner “Catharsis” Curated by Medvin Sobio (West Hollywood, CA)

SANER

“A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action … with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.”
– Aristotle

Opening Saturday October 27, 2012, with a body of new work, New Image Art is pleased to present “Catharsis,” a new solo exhibition by Mexico City artist SANER, Curated by Medvin Sobio of 33third Los Angeles/Mid-City Arts.

Catharsis in the Poetics of Aristotle is defined as an emotional, corporal, mental & spiritual purification.  Through the experience of compassion and fear, the spectators of the tragedy experience a purgation of emotion, a purification of the soul, a reconfiguration of desires and passions; a new revolutionary formation of desire.
Catharsis represents the final act in a cycle of solo exhibitions Saner has been developing, where each one has looked to generate an emotional change over the spectator, guiding the viewer towards a path of rebirth, freedom & purification.
In this, the final act, the viewer is the element that gives life to the exhibition.  Catharsis will be a space that will remain wrapped in a psycho magical act of healing.  With an installation, performance piece, paintings, & works on paper; this collective act of creation, of encounter & confrontation is what will generate the liberation of the spectator.ABOUT SANER

Edgar “Saner” Flores is an urban artist, muralist, professor, illustrator & graphic designer.  Raised by his parents in Mexico City and surrounded by rich color and tradition, Saner developed an interest in drawing and Mexican Muralism early on.  “I visited Oaxaca a lot when I was growing up because my mother is from there, and certain traditions which they carried out there really caught my attention.”  He began expressing himself on paper and through graffiti art, later going on to earn a degree in graphic design from the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico.
His lively & humorous images of masked characters on public walls, found objects and other canvases are influenced by Mexican custom and folklore, color, mysticism, masks, and skulls.  A mix of these lifelong interests and passions has led him to become the artist he is today.  “The masks that I use are traditional masks from Mexico.”  The jaguars, coyotes, skulls, and other recurrent characters appear in my work because that parallel world is the real self, the real face. “
Saner’s work has been featured in galleries in Mexico, the United States, London, Berlin and Barcelona.  Recent projects & exhibitions include “Kidnap Express,” Mid-City Arts Los Angeles, “Nose Job,” Eric Firestone Gallery East Hamptons NY, “The Bone yard Project,” Tucson Arizona, “The Bone yard: Return Trip,” Pima Space & Air Museum, “The Wynwood Walls,” Miami/Art Basel.  He has collaborated with Kidrobot, Vans, G-Shock, HQTR Canada, Pineda Covalin, Persigna Store, Bacardi, Adidas Mexico, Televisa, and many others.

ABOUT NEW IMAGE ART

Marsea Goldberg, founder and director of New Image Art in Los Angeles, started the gallery in 1994 at her 10×10 design studio. Since then, the gallery has grown to attract a global cult following, grabbing the interest of art lovers and collectors worldwide. Renowned for it’s discriminating eye and solid curatorial skills, New Image Art Gallery continues to show the works of established and emerging artists coming out of the street, skate, fine art, and surf scenes. Over the years, the gallery has launched or mobilized the careers of Shepard Fairey, Ed Templeton, Jo Jackson, Chris Johanson, Rebecca Westcott, Retna, Neck Face, Cleon Peterson, Faile, Tauba Auerbach, The Date Farmers, and Bäst just to name a few.

ABOUT MEDVIN SOBIO

 

One half of the visual arts collective, Viejas Del Mercado, Medvin Sobio has Curated, produced, and consulted on various large scale mural & public art projects.  He currently serves as Art Director at Mid-City Arts Gallery & 33third Los Angeles, the largest street art supply retailer in the United States.  In 2011, he was selected as Co-Curator of Wynwood Walls, the outdoor street art museum founded by Tony Goldman & Jeffrey Deitch.  Was Co-Producer & Co-Curator for The Boneyard Project & brought on as a Consulting Producer on the HERE COMES THE NEIGHBORHOOD Docuseries which explores the power of public art.  A significant component of his advocacy is dedicated to multi-dimensional cultural awareness via art exhibitions and events.  He strives to encourage awareness of the culture that the artists have emerged from and their relevance to various stratums of American culture.
7920 Santa Monica Blvd. West Hollywood CA 90046   P 323 654 2192
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RETNA “Time Traveler” on The Mexican Coast (VIDEO)

From Viejas del Mercado, Medvin Sobio and Brian Tsukomoto produced a new video trailer on the occasion of Retna’s new show “Time Traveler” at Art Careyes Mexico in Costa Careyes, Mexico next week.

Video still from Retna’s show “Time Traveler” (© Medvin Sobio and Brian Tsukomoto)

With a blazing soundtrack of Hotel California by French group The Gipsy Kings singing in Spanish with an Andalucían accent, the time traveling continues throughout many cultures and times. As a continuous electric swirling of light masks the scenes behind it, the Los Angelino graffiti and Street Artist can be glimpsed carefully and deliberately applying his personal alphabet with sooty loose ink on a thin brush as well as thick paint on a flat wide brush. In the intervening scenes one sees flashes of still images and video referencing various cultures and continents flashing by in a multilayered collage of influences like a drug induced haze.

Video still from Retna’s show “Time Traveler” (© Medvin Sobio and Brian Tsukomoto)

Video still from Retna’s show “Time Traveler” (© Medvin Sobio and Brian Tsukomoto)

Video still from Retna’s show “Time Traveler” (© Medvin Sobio and Brian Tsukomoto)

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The Pima Air & Space Museum Presents: “Round Trip: Art From The Bone Yard Project” (Tucson, Arizona)

Art From The Bone Yard Project

The Retna Plane (photo courtesy of the curators)

THE BONE YARD PROJECT | PIMA AIR & SPACE MUSEUM | JANUARY 28 – MAY 31

The Pima Air & Space Museum is pleased to announce the opening of Round Trip: Art From The Bone Yard Project on January 28 in Tucson. Conceived in Spring 2010 by Eric Firestone, and organized with curators Medvin Sobio & Carlo McCormick, The Bone Yard Project resurrects disused airplanes from America‟s military history through the creative intervention of contemporary artists, taking entire airplanes and their elements out of aeronautic resting spots in the desert, known as “bone yards,” and putting them into the hands of artists. Re-imagined by Brazilian graffiti artist Nunca, an abandoned DC3 comes to life with a striking picture of an eagle leading men through the skies, and the idealized dreams of flight are able to soar once again in our collective imagination. With a nod to the airplane graffiti and „nose art‟ that became popular during WWII, the project offers a vision of the wonder by which humanity takes to the air through some of the most prominent and acclaimed artists working today.

Round Trip: Selections from The Bone Yard Project, will include selections from the previous exhibition along with more than a dozen cones interpreted by artists new to this project. It will feature five monumental works created on military planes by a dynamic selection of popular graffiti and street artists from around the world. The curatorial team includes Medvin Sobio, an independent curator and consultant, and Lesley Oliver of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, a longstanding figure on the Arizona art scene.

More than 30 artists have participated in Round Trip including DC Super 3 planes painted by graffiti artists How & Nosm, Nunca, and Retna, and a C97 cockpit by Saner, and C45 planes by Faile and Andrew Schoultz. Additionally, Nose Job artists Aiko, Peter Dayton, Shepard Fairey, Futura, How and Nosm, Mare, Tara McPherson, Richard Prince, Lee Quinones, Saner, Kenny Scharf, and JJ Veronis will be on display, along with new nose cones by artists Colin Chillag, Crash, Daze, Daniel Marin Diaz, Tristan Eaton, Jameson Ellis, Ron English, Faile, Eric Foss, Mark Kostabi, Lisa Lebofsky, El Mac, Alex Markwith, Walter Robinson, Hector Ruiz, Randy Slack, Ryan Wallace, and Eric White, among others.

The Pima Air & Space Museum is the largest non-government funded aviation museum in the United States, and one of the largest in the world. It maintains a collection of more than 300 aircraft and spacecraft from around the globe and more than 125,000 artifacts. The museum is located at 6000 E. Valencia Rd. , Tucson, and is open 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM daily. Round Trip is open to the public from January 28 through the end of May 2012. Further details may be found at www.pimaair.org.

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