It’s been a struggle to mount art events in the last year and a half for many reasons. That includes the 6th edition of GarGar Murals and Rural Art Festival in Penelles, Spain.
Instead of grouping all the artists and events and fans together for one short period of high activity, the organizers this year decided “to progressively invite the artists in smaller numbers so they could paint more confidently and feel protected from the virus.”
Now that all the 2021 murals have been painted, BSA collaborator Lluis Olive-Bulbena traveled an hour and a half from Barcelona to capture fresh paint! We thank him and we invite you to enjoy GarGar!
“This mural contains the shapes of each one overlapped in layers and erasing lines to emphasize color, our great passion,” says Zosen of his new collaboration with artist Mina Hamada. The two have created many color-blocked organic and chaotic visual feasts on walls around the world over the last few years, and this one puts an optimistic face on the new year in Paris.
Zosen & Mina Hamada in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
In fact, the painting pair haven’t been able to do a large scale mural like this since late 2019 in Japan, where Mina hails from. “After more than a year, pandemic and confinement in between, we wanted to do something different and fresh to have fun.”
Zosen & Mina Hamada in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
In coordination with L’association Art Azoï and Les Plateaux Sauvages in the 20th arrondissement, the Barcelona-based pair were bundled up and on cherry pickers in the early January cold weather, tracing out their long-pole lines over the top of one another. “For this mural, we prepared two different designs,” says Mina. “Then we mixed over the lines to make the mural.”
Zosen & Mina Hamada in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)Zosen & Mina Hamada in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)Zosen & Mina Hamada in collaboration with Art Azoï. Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Art Azoï)
Japan’s Mina Hamada has just completed her mural for the 2020 edition of Avant Garde Tudela in Spain. Curated by artist Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada and organized by Tudela-Cultura, the northern Spanish city has been home to a number of murals in the last decade or so from names most street art fans will recognize, and despite being in the middle of Covid-19 lockdown and gradual stages of liberation, this show finds no excuse to stop.
“Betting on culture is always risky, even more nowadays,” say organizers, but the results are solid. Three new medium and large scale murals my Hamada, Miss Van, and Jeff McCreight were added to the twenty-one brought in the previous edition of the festival.
Here we see that Hamada’s universe of shapes and color call out the natural world and environmental elements. Flora and plant life react to the stimuli of wind and water, with Mina interpreting her relationship with them all.
In what is possibly the first mural festival to take place in the world after, or during, Covid-19, BSA once again is proud to support Avant Garde Tudela International Contemporary Muralism Festival next month in Spain.
Miss Van (photo courtesy of the artist)
Commemorating a decade of existence as a quality cultural force with and exceptional lineup, it’s featured the works of artists some may consider part of a gold standard in public/street art interventionists and thinkers: Sixe, Mark Jenkins, Evan Roth, BLU, Ron English, Spy, El Mac, Escif, C215, Faith XVII, Vhils, Franco Fasoli (Jaz).
Mina Hamada (photo courtesy of the artist)
This years’ Avant Garde
Tudela event is curated by Jorge
Rodríguez-Gerada and BSA will be pleased to bring you exclusive behind
the scenes reportage as well as shots of the artists at work courtesy a BSA
frequent collaborator and photographer Fer Alcala.
Jeff McCreight AKA Ru8icon (photo courtesy of the artist)
Taking
place from the 8th to 14th of June, this year features a line up including Miss
Van, Mina Hamada, and Jeff McCreight (Ru8icon).
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Minda Hamada y Zosen Bandido in Veracruz 2. Marina Zumi “Lucid Dreams II” 3. Udatxo – Parees Fest 2019. Video by Titi Muñoz 4. Greta Thunberg “How Dare You” Extended Remix
BSA Special Feature: Minda Hamada y Zosen Bandido in Veracruz
Mina Hamada y Zosen Bandido are graphic and poppy in their organic naïve-style collage compositions. Their engaging style lends itself to public arts projects that also promote business and foot traffic. Here they (mostly he) talk about their love of color, their cultural art influences, and their new project this summer in the Art District Boca Del Rio in Veracruz, Mexico.
Marina Zumi “Lucid Dreams II”
Street Artist, muralist, and interactive artist Marina Zumi doesn’t stop exploring the moon and the night sky and those tremulous flickering messages that blip across our consciousness. Perhaps by way of exploring the modern, her newest electronic tracing of shapes and rhythms in the darkness borrow from Tron and early Kraftwerk, comforting and witty in the low-fi and physical familiarity of it all. Part of her show “Techno Poetry,” Zumi continues to break new ground with here lucid dreams.
Udatxo – Parees Fest 2019. Video by Titi Muñoz
Here’s
artist Udatxo painting a new mural at the Parees Fest.
Greta Thunberg “How Dare You” Extended Remix
Get up and dance to a new hit for 2019! Taking recrimination to the dance floor, is the new hit from Greta Thunberg in a heavy German techno style.
The color palette of the new collection of murals at the 3rd edition of Parees Festival is softened, earthen, stable. Adding five new murals brings the total to 23 here in Oviedo The 3rd edition of Parees Festival in Oviedo in Northern Spain, only minutes from the Bay of Biscay.
Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)
As you review the techniques and schools of influence you can see the careful curation of the selection of muralists – each seemingly contextual, whether figurative or abstract of geometric.
Organizers say the newest artist participants, Mina Hamada, Hedof & Joren Joshua, Udatxo, Catalina Rodríguez Villazón & Matth Velvet, were chosen from a global selection yet are expected to be cognizant of their immediate environment in their conception.
Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)
There are themes based on regional culture, say the organizers, and “You can also add to this spirit the main characteristic of the event which make it something different from other urban art festivals in the country: the participatory processes: neighbors from every area where the walls are located collaborate with their authors in order to participate in the final design.”
Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedfof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Matth Velvet. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Matth Velvet. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Matth Velvet. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Mina Hamada. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Mina Hamada. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Mina Hamada. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)
A public/private mural campaign in the southern suburbs of Paris continues to bring international Street Artists to create works for the public space. While France continues to grapple with an increase of new immigrants, a rise in right wing sentiments and xenophobic attitudes toward populations that differ from the dominant culture, projects like this may help keep the peace and foster community.
The Wall Street Art Festival of Grand Paris Sud continues with their mural program here with a fresco on the “Paul Langevin” school, named after the prominent French physicist who developed Langevin dynamics and the Langevin equation. Art duo Mina Hamada and Zosen Bandido live in Barcelona and braved the rains here during a week of painting 5 walls to create an abstract collection of “Spring Colour” in a rather spontaneous way.
“They were the best ambassadors for painting a wall in a popular neighborhood where people of different origins and religions live together,” says Gautier Jourdain, who curates the ongoing festival. In an atmosphere where tensions between cultures has hit some high points in recent years nationally and locally, the artists themselves hail from Japan and Argentina are quite familiar with some of the issues at hand here.
“That is also why we have chosen light, simplified forms,” say Hamada and Zosen in a joint statement. “We want to paint creations that speak to everyone’s heart, that are accessible to everyone and give joy.”
As the US commemorates Veterans Day this weekend, we lead this weeks BSA Images of the Week with Ms. Ono’s latest public art piece, a white banner flag flapping in New Yorks’ wild winds atop Creative Time’s headquarters. Part of a multi-city installation by ONO and Creative Time’s Pledges of Allegianceprogram, this flag and others like it will fly at museums and other educational/cultural institutions across the country.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Ai WeiWei, Buff Monster, Curb Your Ego, Damien Mitchell, Disordered, Don John, Ghost Beard, KLOPS, Mina Hamada, Sac Six, Patch Whisky, Squid Shop, Turtle Caps, Vinz Feel Free, VY, Yoko Ono, and Zosen.
Barcelona was known as a city at the epicenter of a bustling lively organic Street Art scene in the mid 2000s. Today that has greatly been cracked down upon by authorities but the Spanish city now boasts a mural festival called Open Walls, which celebrated its third edition last month with public works spanning a great number of influences and styles. Of course there is still plenty of autonomous unpermissioned Street Art to be seen as well.
This years’ interventions included new large format walls from Roc Blackblock, Ethos, Borondo, Zosen and Mina Hamada, and Mohamed Lghacham. Site specific walls included works by BYG, Enric Font, Sav45, Rubicon, Tayone, and Reskate Studio with Marina Capdevila and Amaia Arrazola. Boldly, the festival featured an open call to the first 20 respondents to paint a huge project together, effectively disarming any accusations of hierarchical favoritism or gate keeping.
Open Walls 2015 also featured a conference with speakers, debates, tours and workshops that expand the discussion of art in the urban environment beyond typical Street Art and graffiti fare. The academic and institutional world is gradually grappling with bigger questions around urban planning and public space as it pertains to art in the streets and formal art teaching is still broadening its consideration of an artist movement that started quite outside its purview.
Invited speakers included photographer Martha Cooper, graffiti artist and historian Jay Edlin, RJ Rushmore of Vandalog, Sergi Díaz (ICUB), representatives of the Madrid Street Art Project, philosopher Gabriela Berti, art historian Will Shank, and conservator Rosa Senserrich. The international and multidisciplinary program of professionals addressed issues regarding documentation, conservation, restoration, the history of Street Art, and its evolving role in the urban experience.
Here are some images courtesy of the festival photographer Fernando Alcalá Losa and of BSA contributor Lluis Olive Bulbena.
The month long 4th Edition of Bien Urbain just wrapped in Besançon, France and the results are predictably rather awesome due to the quality of the work, the site selections, and the integrated nature of the entire presentation. “It is not about designing an open-air art gallery or about decorating the town,” say the organizers, and maybe that is why each artist seems to consider the whole before devising his or her addition to it.
BSA has been tracking Bien Urbain since its introduction and each time the collection of artists is thoughtfully selected, with each helping to define and refine the measure of public art without the trite pleasantries of commercially sponsored festivals nor stultifyingly bland results of design by municipal committee.
Whether purely modernist (MOMO), cerebral (Brad Downey) or poetic (Pastel), the contributions to Bien Urbain are more edifying than edifice and enable one to experience “artistic routes through and with public spaces,” as the festivals’ motto intones.
BSA Special Feature: Las Calles Hablan : Street Art in Barcelona
“Las Calles Hablan is a story about discovering a hidden world, an extraordinary subculture and the struggle between an artistic community painting for freedom of expression and an increasingly restrictive dogmatic government,” says Justin Donlon as he speaks about this hour long documentary he made with Silvia Vidal Muratori and Katrine Knauer.
An educational and unpretentious study of the spectrum of Street Artists and techniques currently at play in Barcelona, the team traces the scene through personal observations and their network of local and international artists, local gallerists, and their connections globally via the Internet.
The film traces the trajectory from the Street Art/graffiti’s emergence at the end of the 70s following the Franco dictatorship and the rise of international hip-hop culture through the 90s into a sort of freewheeling golden era in the early 2000s. It also explains the current unease with the city, the professionalizing of the artists through a growing gallery practice, and the collaborative initiatives of some community leaders with artists.
Taking a straightforward documentary approach, the motivations and inspirations of current artists on the scene are presented without much of the exaggerated myth-making that more commercial hype vehicles often contain. Included in the examination are how community and local citizens and authorities have taken a constructive role in facilitating space and opportunities for some artists here and elsewhere, while the definition and appetite for illegal work ebbs and flows.
Featured artists:Zosen, Mina Hamada, Kenor, Kram, El Xupet Negre, Debens, Fert, Dase, SM172, Ogoch, Kafre, Aleix Gordo, Meibol, Eledu, C215, H101, Miss Van, Btoy, El Arte Es Basura, Konair, Gola, Vinz.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
