All posts tagged: Yasha Young

Delusionalists Announced! Jonathan LeVine Projects

Delusionalists Announced! Jonathan LeVine Projects

BSA is proud to present the “Delusional” Finalists !

Competing in a field of more than 1700 submissions, finalists were chosen by a team of  jurors including: artist Tara McPherson, UN museum Director Yasha Young, artist Jeff Soto, Juxtapoz Editor Evan Pricco, gallery visionaire Jonathan LeVine and curators and founders of BSA, Jaime Rojo & Steven P. Harrington.

THE SEARCH IS OVER!  Jonathan LeVine Projects 2nd Annual Delusional Art Competition opens on August 1st and will feature work by the following 40 artists:

Alayna Coverly, Amy Guidry, Anthony Solano, Anton HoegerRisa Tochigi (boogieREZ), Carly Slade, Caroline Pool, Cesar Piette, Cielle Graham, Daniel Coves, Eelco van den Berg, Floria Gonzalez, Harumi Ori, Hilary Hubanks, Hiroshi Sato, Jonathan Aller, Jorge Catoni, Joshua Flint, Kathryn Polk, Katie Shima, Kyle Stewart, Matthew Huntley, Michael Camarra, Mikael Takacs, Mose Biz DadaNicola Caredda, Paul Reid, Renan Santos, Rick Newton, Robert Nelson, Samuel WilsonSamuelle Green, Steven Chmilar, Steven Labadessa, Susannah Martin, Tina Lugo, Vicki Khuzami, Victor Fota, William KangWin Wallace

1st, 2nd and 3rd place winner from the list above will be announced on the opening night on August 1st.

In addition to the artists listed above, the following were selected for People’s Choice, which is an opportunity for the public to vote for their favorites and award cash prizes and products from Denik and Trekell.

Adam Laerkesen, Alexis Kandra, Alon Bonder, Audun Grimstad, Billy Stewart, Buket Savci, Carly Mazur, Catarina Rosa, David Habben, Eric Rodriguez, Hyun Jung Ji, Jacob Hicks, James Petrucci, Konstantinos Kyrtis, Jody Christian, Juan Sanabria, Mikey Winsor, Qiurui Du, Russell Prather Violeta Hernandez

Here is some insight into the grueling harrowing sweaty process that Jonathan and jurors had to go through these past months..

Click on each name to learn more about these Delusional artists.  Please join us at the opening reception of Delusional on August 1st from 6 to 9 pm where winners will be announced!  The exhibition will remain on view through August 25.  Stay tuned for details regarding People’s Choice – voting begins on August 6th!

Below is a small selection of works culled from the finalists’ list and their Instagram accounts.

Katie Shima. “Delusional” finalist.

Anthony Solano. “Delusional” finalist.

Alayna Coverly. “Delusional” finalist.

Hiroshi Sato. “Delusional” finalist.

Win Wallace. “Delusional” finalist.

Carly Slade. “Delusional” finalist.

Joshua Flint. “Delusional” finalist.

Click HERE to learn more about “Delusional”

 

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BSA Film Friday: 03.23.18

BSA Film Friday: 03.23.18

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

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

Now screening :
1.The Subconcious Art of Graffiti Removal
2. Bushwick Collective Block Party 2017
3. Street Art Berlin 2018 – Yasha’s Friends
4. Adnate: Indigenous Recognition in Sheep Hills – Silo Art Documentary
5. Alva Moca 12 + 1 Contorno Urbano

bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: The Subconcious Art of Graffiti Removal

“The artists creating it are unconscious of their artistic achievements”

Today an excerpt from an intellectually stimulating cogitation on the buff as art by Matt McCormick at the turn of the century. Looking glass perspective, scholarly rigorous investigation, humorous satire, art-speak laden skewering of pomposity – they all seem possible

“With roots in minimalism, abstract expressionism, and Russian constructivism graffiti removal is both a continuation of these movements and an important step in the future of modern art.”


“Hats off to Matt McCormick’s “Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal,” an award-winning 16-minute film that wryly documents the antigraffiti campaigns in several northwest cities. Painting over graffiti yields public abstract painting that looks peculiarly modernist and brings to mind Rothko, Motherwell and even Malevich.”
Roberta Smith, The New York Times

Bushwick Collective Block Party 2017

Because we have just endured 4 snowstorms in March, let’s think about the Bushwick Collective Block Party and Film Festival last summer. Yaaaaaaaaaas.

 

Street Art Berlin 2018 – Yasha’s Friends

 

Adnate: Indigenous Recognition in Sheep Hills – Silo Art Documentary

“It’s not about feeling guilty, it’s about recognition.”

“In the remote country town of Sheep Hills, Australia, world renowned street artist Adnate brings the indigenous history of the region, and the country as a whole, back into the forefront of peoples minds. This short form documentary follows Adnate as he paints a huge disused grain silo, celebrating the lands first inhabitants and discussing the importance of recognition.”

 

Alva Moca 12 + 1 Contorno Urbano

“Organic patterning that verges on Op Art tumbled with flatly folk outsider aesthetics, commercial diagrammatics and Picasso cut-outs, Spanish artist Alva Moca has a lot going on in his head,” sayest we a few weeks ago when writing about this new mural. Today we see a video about it.

 

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URVANITY 2018: 3 Days in Madrid

URVANITY 2018: 3 Days in Madrid

Today we go to the Urvanity New Contemporary Art Fair in Madrid to see some art inside and outside the fair and to hear about some of the programming happening there, courtesy of Fernando Alcalá Losa.


URVANITY New Contemporary Art Fair 2018

Or, “How we spent the whole weekend in Madrid enjoying art, friends and talks while censorship from the central Spanish government is choking the liberty of expression.”

The 2nd edition of Urvanity New Contemporary International Art Fair was our main focus of interest. With an exciting program including some of the most interesting galleries and artists from all over the world, 4 walls being produced in different areas of the Spanish capital and a more than attractive set of talks and lectures, we knew that we were going to make our weekend. But, of course, there was going to be more, much more…

Cranio. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DAY ONE: Galleries

After sleeping a few hours, I started my little marathon outside the new Urvanity headquarters in the beautiful ME Madrid María Victoria Hotel for attending a round table about ‘Women in the cultural industry beyond feminist clichés’. With Alberto Aguilar from Urvanity moderating, I was excited to see what journalist Belén Palanco, gallerist Consuelo Durán and artist and friend Anna Taratiel had to say about all this arty world ‘dominated’ by men in these times when initiatives like La Caja de Pandora are rebelling against sexual abuse and the heteropatriarchy hegemony in the art world and fighting for visibility, justice and equality in working conditions and salaries.

Jan Kaláb. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Artists like Nuria Mora and Animalitoland, Sergio Bang, from Swinton & Grant Gallery, and Diana Prieto from MadridStreetArtProject were in the audience. Issues like education, quotes, discrimination, the toughness of being a female street artist, being out or inside the system, some critics to the female clichés and personal experiences were brought into the table. Being a heterosexual cis male, I don’t know if I’m the right person to say this, but I missed a more radical speech about the whole scenario and the role of women about making the necessary changes for reaching the place and conditions that they deserve.

Apart from this, Juncal Roig, Urvanity’s communication manager, had prepared a little gift with fellow artist Antonyo Marest. Last year, Marest had painted 4 walls in a nice courtyard inside the Hotel, so we did a small private shooting with the artist. It was fun, because we had to access the place through a window in one of the rooms. As Antonio said, imagine how ‘easy’ it was to move 6-floor wall scaffolding through that small ‘hole’. Watch out for Marest USA tour coming soon in the next months.

 

Jana & JS. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

‘The Impact of Urban Creativity in Cities’, a talk, as I said before, by Contorno Urbano founders, was next. Ninoska’s and Esteban’s explanations about some of their most important projects and about how to work with students, neighbors, the local authorities and the artists themselves really got my attention, although I was already aware about the details of their work. The never ending growing 12+1 project and, of course, the soon to come ‘Mural Salut Wall’ by Escif were some of the top hits of the lecture, including the announce of the International Tortilla Competition held this last weekend at Sant Feliu de Llobregat’s La Salut square as a part of Escif art residence in the city. Hyper fun 3rd grade by the artist that caused lots of laughs between the audience. Looking forward to see what Escif will create in the next months here.

 

Long but full of experiences day. Beer time and back to our place where a bunch of young adults were waiting for us celebrating Miriam’s (our host) birthday, singing songs with ukuleles at 2am and drinking bourbon. Fuck me: I’m getting old…

Jana & JS. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DAY TWO: The day of Walls.

Good morning Vietnam! Slept 4 hours, dizzy head (if you can’t fight the enemy, join him) and García in groundhog mode on. I was starting to feel kind of nervous, as I hadn’t seen a wall yet, so I had a mission going on. Being lucky enough to know one of the best hosts that you can find in Madrid, I met Guillermo, from Madridstreetartproject ‘MSAP’, had some quick breakfast and began walking by. Guille was one of the people taking care of the production duties of the Urvanity walls. A veteran actor in the local scene, his way of seeing and understanding the urban landscape is outstanding.

Cranio. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Guillermo de la Madrid)

I had to leave Cranio’s wall for Sunday due to ‘logistic’ reasons. But, I was so glad to have the chance to shoot with Alexey Luka, as I had seen some photos about the WIP of his mural and I was loving it. After a small talk with the artist and the ‘formal’ presentations, I began shooting from the ground while Guille was struggling with drivers trying to not have them parking besides the crane.

Alexey Luka. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Then a little magical episode took place when Javier, a neighbor living in the building opposite to Luka’s wall, offered himself to give us access to the rooftop. Nicest human being ever, Javier told me that he was a military pilot and a great photography aficionado. It’s always surprising to me how people that don’t know you at all trust in you and open their houses to strangers like us, offering all the possible help because they are liking the project and/or the artists’ work.

Alexey’s wall was being a tough one to deal with. Guille, Rocío and the rest of the production team had to treat the wall twice with some special products because dust and sand were getting out from it. They lost 2 days because of this, but when I arrived there, everything had been solved and the artist was working hard. After dealing with a couple of issues, we head to the next wall… Before, I would love to say some words about Rocío here. We have just met maybe twice during all these years.

Alexey Luka. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Working and collaborating with MSAP, Mula Fest and Asalto among others, it’s always interesting to listen to her clever thoughts and knowledge about the whole scene, how she approaches the tours that she guides in Madrid and get to know a little bit more about the kind of person that everyone would love to have in their teams. You can check Rocio’s blog here.

Maybe Jan Kaláb’s wall was the most popular one during the whole weekend. Pedestrians were loving the mix of nice colors and soft shapes – so selfies, stories and boomerangs were spreading as flu. I just tried to include some human traffic in the photo. Maybe I have a thing with old ladies… Just maybe…

Alexey Luka. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Guillermo de la Madrid)

Xavier Eltono’s talk was one of my top moments of the whole trip. Although I follow his career since years ago, I hadn’t got any deep thoughts about his work. After I heard what he had to say about his art and about how he connect his studio work with the skin of the cities where he had intervened, I understood a lot of things regarding his philosophy and the way he interacts with the city.

Another thing that got my attention during his lecture was the fact of how many respected artists were attending the talk. Names like Zosen, Mina Hamada, Aryz, Rocblackblock, Daniel Muñoz SAN, Kenor, Anna Taratiel, Suso33, Aleix Gordo, Vermibus…were there showing respect for Eltono’s art and explanations. The academic world was also represented nicely with awesome Fernando Figueroa and Elena Gayo.

Xavier Eltono. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Xavier told me by email that this talk had been very important for him, so I asked him why: ‘I’m used to give talks, I do a couple every year and I actually really enjoy it. Doing it in Madrid though was a very different exercise. Even if I’m not Spanish, I became an artist in Madrid, this is the city where everything started for me. Talking about my work in this city was very challenging to me because I knew a lot of friends and a lot of artists I admire would be listening to me. It’s very easy to talk about your work in front of an anonymous crowd but in front of people you know and you care about is totally different! I was very nervous, but, according to the feedback I received after the talk, it looks like no one noticed it!!!

Tina Ziegler of Moniker Art. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Then, the main dish of the menu took place. ‘The Art Conference, by Urvanity’, hosted by Doug Gillen, from Fifth Wall TV and featuring some of the most important managers/curators/creative directors/promoters in the biz was meant to be the grand finale of Urvanity’s Saturday program. Tina Ziegler, Director of Moniker Art fair, Yasha Young, Creative Director of Urban Nation Museum, and Anna Dimitrova, Director of Montana Gallery, were adding some more girl power to the place.

Yasha Young of Urban Nation Berlin. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

FER: One of the most interesting things about the fair this year was the Talks Program. I couldn’t go to all of them because I would need to clone myself for attending everything, but was it intentional for you to enhance this side of the event? Do you think that these talks and lectures are useful for attracting a potential audience or are they more focused on an indoor point of view for people inside the art world? Why the 2 talks were the role and presence of women was more significant were moderated by a guy with a penis?

Sergio Sancho: For us the talk program it is a fundamental base within the fair. It is something that we want to keep on and give more importance and visibility. We think that the best way to understand this movement it’s from inside, giving voice and visibility to the main characters. About the moderator you are talking we think the gender its irrelevant. This year we wanted to give more visibility to women in a world where there is such an inequality and it has been casual that in the case of The Art Conference the moderator that Tina used it’s always a man and in the case of the talks opening program it has been Alberto the leader and we think it was the suitable person to do so.

 

Esteban Marin and Ninoska of Contorno Urbano Foundation. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

An impressive example of power, clear minds, commitment and, above all, tough work during several years in a penis based industry, these 3 forces of nature explained to us the main points of their careers, their way of working, their ethics, spoke about good practices and loyalty, some episodes about dealing with male chauvinism attitudes and how to get through all this without stepping forward.

Antonyo Marest. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

After personally meeting Ampparito and chatting a little bit with Octavi Serra and some other guys from Cúmul we ended the day talking and drinking beer in a relaxed atmosphere at some ‘Manolo’ bar in Madrid. Time to breathe, smile and relax.

DAY THREE: The art fair day.

And Sunday arrived. Keeping the military discipline of the whole weekend, woke up early, had some bad coffee while planning the morning and started my 3kms walk to check Cranio´s wall out. Sunday is ‘rastro’ day in Madrid, so some streets and squares of the area were flood with people that you had to avoid while trying not to kill yourself watching the screen of your mobile phone as it was compulsory for me to check the map and my old time friend Kini González was helping me out getting some invitations for colleagues.

Once of the few times that I was moving my head up, I almost crashed with some familiar guy. Rafa appeared suddenly in front of me with his eternal smile in the face. A friend from Barcelona, it had been years since we had seen each other, so it was a funny and nice coincidence to meet by chance 624kms away from our hometown. We continue our walk together speaking about life, anarchy, music and veganism and, at the same time, Guille was telling me the last news about Cranio´s work as we were all pendant of the keys of the crane for the final shot.

Jan Kaláb. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

As I was seeing that this wasn’t happening in the next few hours, I changed my plans and went to Luka’s wall as I wanted to take some photos from the crane. There it goes… Say bye to Rafa, put my stuff together and we went up for capturing some details.

As we were saying in Madrid, there’s a poker of photos that you should take while capturing, if possible, the whole process of painting a big mural: shots from the ground, shots from other buildings and rooftops, shots from the crane and the final shot. If you get decent photos from all these angles, you will come back home with a smile on your face… I missed Luka’s final photo, by the way, as he finished his work on Monday.

Alexey Luka. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Once we had arrived to Urvanity’s headquarters I started to check all the artwork that galleries like Montana, SC, Ink and Movement, Stolen Space, Fousion, Plastic Murs, Swinton & Grant, Station 16, Ruarts or Pretty Portal were exhibiting. I liked to see some personal faves like Enric Sant, Isaac Cordal, Sixe, SAN, Herakut, Deih, Hyuro, She One, Dilka Bear, Kofie, Jaune, L’Atlas, Stikki Peaches, Anna Taratiel or Guy Denning, having in mind that you don’t always have the chance to admire all these people’s work in one place at the same time. I also enjoyed to discover other great artists that were kind of new for me like Gregory Watin, Marc C. Woehr, Solomostry, Spazuk, Jaime Molina or Morik Marat.

I also spoke with some of the gallerists who were quite happy about the sales and the whole experience in general. Okuda almost did a sold out, Taratiel sold her bigger piece for Durán gallery, veteran Henry Chalfant and Enric Sant were also selling for Adda & Taxie. Vicente, from Plastic Murs, was much happier with the sales this year than he was in 2017 after seeing how Deih and, above all, Vinz had been successful during the fair. Dilka Bear for Fousion gallery also saw how some of her works were going to some collector’s homes.

Jana & JS. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

It was also interesting for me to know that Kofie ‘papers’ in Swinton & Grant had been sold even before than the fair officially started. Classic names of the scene like Gripface, Stikki Peaches, GR170 or Belin also sold in this year edition. On the opposite hand, Olivier, from Vroom & Varossieau, which exhibited one of the most powerful group of artists in the fair, told me that his sales had been better last year, maybe because of his high prices. As we say in Spain: ‘nunca llueve a gusto de todos’ (something like: not everyone likes when it rains).

I spent my last minutes at COAM trying to find Sergio, Juncal and Victoria from Urvanity’s team without success, as I wanted to say bye and thank them for the treat that they gave to us during the whole weekend. I really like when you get the chance of meeting personally people that you have spoken with by email and that you have interacted with on the social media, as it happened this time with Sergio and Victoria.

Okuda. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

So, this was it. We couldn’t leave Madrid without having a couple (a couple…yeah, right…) of vermouths with some old time friends and colleagues, feeling sad because of the ones that we missed and thinking about all the great moments and experiences that we had lived during the weekend.

Thanks A LOT to all of you who we spent some time with during those 3 crazy days, specially to Sergio, Juncal and Victoria, Miriam for sharing her home with us, Guille, Diana & Rocío for being there as always, Lara, Soledad and Rebekah, at Espacio SOLO, for being such great hosts and, of course, Audrey García for breathing and existing. ‘til next time Madrid…

Laurence Valliéres. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Laurence Valliéres. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Jaune. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Daniel Muñoz AKA SAN. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Guy Denning. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Augustin Kofie. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Herakut. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Hyuro. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Spok. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Henry Chalfant. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Isaac Cordal. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

JAZ. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Stikki Peaches. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Deih. Urvanity Art 2018. Madrid, Spain. February 2018. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

URVANITY ART MADRID 2018

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Delusional Again, Jonathan LeVine Is Looking For You

Delusional Again, Jonathan LeVine Is Looking For You

Uh-oh, looks like Jonathan’s stumbled onto something.

A wild mushroom on a tree in the Enchanted Forest perhaps? A half-full dime bag on the deli floor? The contemporary art worlds Next Great Artist?

Okay its true he may not be the very stable genius you were hoping for, but Jonathan LeVine does have a serious and respected record for championing cutting edge art, high/low art, and everything along that slick and slippery slope of contemporary-street-graffiti-urban-tattoo-punk-dark-pop-surreal-calligraffiti-painterly-oftenly-culture-jamming-détournement-cramming-neo-outsider-crimefighter-biclighter-sidewinder genres which constitute our art requirements today.

He also has smashingly good taste at picking jurors for the 2nd “Delusional Art Competition”, which is kicking off on this frigid January day in New York where the temperature is 6 degrees and the wind is blowing harder than a Bushwick drag ball. What a perfect way to prepare for a summer group show this August at Jonathan LeVine Projects!

Read below for details on this opportunity for artists to get their stuff seen and, based on the successful group show from the first Delusional, the quality of ideas and execution is going to be high! So will many of the attendees, no doubt.


DELUSIONAL ART COMPETITION

Jonathan LeVine Projects is holding their second “Delusional Art Competition”. Submissions from around the world are welcomed in all 2D and 3D mediums (excluding photography, video, and performance art). We encourage artists from all backgrounds and styles to submit work. Up to 40 finalists will be selected for inclusion in a summer group show from August 1 – 25. Winners will be announced at the opening. Enter for your chance to win a solo exhibition, a group exhibition, promotional opportunities, cash prizes, inclusion in an art fair, and more!

JURORS

The second “Delusional Art Competition” will be reviewed by high profile jurors including:

Evan Pricco (Editor of Juxtapoz)
Yasha Young (Director of Urban Nation)
Steven P. Harrington & Jaime Rojo (Brooklyn Street Art founders)
Tara McPherson (Artist)
Jeff Soto (Artist)
Jonathan LeVine (Gallerist)

PRIZES 

1st Place – Solo Exhibition at Jonathan LeVine Projects
2nd Place – Participation in a group show at Jonathan LeVine Projects
3rd Place – A week of promotion via Jonathan LeVine Projects social media platforms

All finalists will feature on the Delusional website and be listed on the gallery’s highly trafficked Artsy page. Select entries will be promoted on the gallery’s extensive social media networks. Artists will also receive extensive worldwide promotion in the form of email marketing, press release announcements, and widespread social media marketing. Winning images will be seen by an International audience including, art collectors, curators, and other galleries.

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS

• 1 image for each 2D work submitted, 2 images for each 3D work submitted
• Work details (title, year, medium, dimensions, price)
• Pricing: $45 for 3 submissions ($10 for each additional submission)
**Size limit: Paintings – 5 x 5 feet; Sculptures – 5 x 4 feet

All submitted artworks must be for sale (priced at a reasonable market rate) and available to be exhibited from August 1 – 25, 2018. When an art work is sold, Jonathan LeVine Projects will earn a commission of fifty percent (50%) of the net proceeds from the sale.

The deadline to apply to the Jonathan Levine Projects Delusional Art Competition is May 20, 2018.

CLICK HERE TO ENTER YOUR SUBMISSION

ABOUT THE GALLERY

Jonathan Levine Projects is committed to new and cutting edge art, exploring the terrain of the high/low and everything in between. As a youth growing up in Trenton, New Jersey during the 1980s, Jonathan LeVine recognized the appeal of countercultural aesthetics including punk flyers, comics, graffiti and tattoos.  In 2001, after years of independently curating at alternative venues, he decided to open a gallery specializing in this nascent art movement.  Many people called him and this risky endeavor “delusional”, however, seventeen years later, he’s now the owner of one of the most well know gallery’s in the world and has cultivated the careers of many renowned artists.  Jonathan LeVine is now looking for new artists to join the family. Are you Delusional enough?

 

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Vandalizing Mario Testino in Berlin, at Helmut Newton Foundation

Vandalizing Mario Testino in Berlin, at Helmut Newton Foundation

Now that we are closing the exhibition, how would you like to vandalize it?

Mimi Scholz . Mario Testino “Undressed” Helmut Newton Foundation. Berlin. One Day Only Street Art Intervention curated by @strychninberlin. (photo courtesy @strychninberlin)

That’s basically what Yasha Young said to three artists this week in Berlin.

Of course Hera from Herakut said yes, having caught a few tags in her career. So did Mimi Scholz and Sandra Chevrier, studio artists who have done some work on the street and jumped at the idea Chevrier actually flew from Montreal just to fool around with these sexy portraits. Together, the three have made a beautifully tattooed and magic mess of all of your favorite iconic photographs by Mario Testino in this exhibition called “Undressed”.

Mimi Scholz . Mario Testino “Undressed” Helmut Newton Foundation. Berlin. One Day Only Street Art Intervention curated by @strychninberlin. (photo courtesy @strychninberlin)

“Because of the huge scale of my work in this show,” says Testino, “and the way it’s applied directly to the walls like wallpaper – I felt like we had no choice but to experiment with vandalizing before taking it down.” As anyone in the Street Art world can tell you, some of the best results come from unconventional experimentation.

The Helmut Newton Foundation probably wasn’t open to the idea of big fire-extinguisher tags sprayed across its walls and various sundry surfaces, but like the fluid aesthetics of the Street Art world, the 5 meter tall photos now have plenty interventions or “collaborations” that effectively transform the meanings of the original Testino images.

Mimi Scholz . Mario Testino “Undressed” Helmut Newton Foundation. Berlin. One Day Only Street Art Intervention curated by @strychninberlin. (photo courtesy @strychninberlin)

“We tested with pens, aerosol spray, paints, scratches, markers, paste-ups and chalk,” says curator Young, who scored the final day of this stunning photography exhibition to effectively flip the script. “The three artists managed to change the original intention and subject into entirely new stories and perspectives. With texts and poetry, some sharp wit, and incredible talent – this show is mind blowing.”

Somehow it makes perfect sense for this boundary-pushing photographer to let his work be pushed further by three artists who have been pushing the imposed/accepted limits of street culture for the last decade or more, each willing to provoke when necessary.

Hera . Mario Testino “Undressed” Helmut Newton Foundation. Berlin. One Day Only Street Art Intervention curated by @strychninberlin. (photo courtesy @strychninberlin)

Scholz routinely pokes fun at all the cliches of female psyche, while Chevrier points at the superficiality of image forced upon girls and women, and Hera’s critiques of all manner of hypocrisy softly lacerates with the phrasing of a poet. All three are ready to play with sexuality and emotion, a perfect combination with the world summoned by this starkly sensual show, which Helmut Newton Foundation curator Matthias Harder describes as “filling the rooms with bodies and emotions in a sensational way.”

In case you’re wondering, all art work will be destroyed after the close of the exhibition, say the organizers; a perfect parallel to the ephemeral nature of art on the street.

Our thanks to Ms. Young for these exclusive photos of Sunday’s show just for BSA readers.

Sandra Chevrier . Mario Testino “Undressed” Helmut Newton Foundation. Berlin. One Day Only Street Art Intervention curated by @strychninberlin. (photo courtesy @strychninberlin)

Sandra Chevrier . Mario Testino “Undressed” Helmut Newton Foundation. Berlin. One Day Only Street Art Intervention curated by @strychninberlin. (photo courtesy @strychninberlin)


HELMUT NEWTON FOUNDATION
Museum of Photography
Jebensstrasse 2 / 10623 Berlin
info@helmut-newton-foundation.org
www.helmut-newton.com
phone +49 30 3186 4856

For more information about the ONE DAY ONLY event click HERE

For more information about the Helmut Newton Foundation click HERE

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BSA Film Friday: 09.22.17

BSA Film Friday: 09.22.17

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. This week we feature videos of installations and a tour of the “UNSTOPPABLE” exhibition by Jaime Rojo at the Urban Nation (UN) museum opening.

Now screening :
1. A BSA Tour Through the Show: “Unstoppable”
2. Pixel Pancho’s Installation for Urban Nation Museum
3. Hot Tea: “Bad Dreams pt.2” Installation for Urban Nation Museum
4. Borondo’ Installation with glass plates and moving images for Urban Nation Museum
5. Various & Gould. Mobile installation for Urban Nation Museum

A BSA Tour Through the Show: “Unstoppable” at Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary in Berlin

Pixel Pancho’s Installation for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Via BSA

Pixel’s original installation was nixed by the city at the last moment but that didn’t prevent the Italian Street Artist from rallying to find another solution!

This new installation in the back courtyard was conceived of, designed, and constructed over a period of 4 days last week and became the secret surprise behind the museum for those who wandered there. Using landscaping techniques and botany knowledge that come naturally from his farm in Italy, the artist create a mise en scène of epic impact with his robotic folk-futurist sculptures. Night time lighting took it to another world, but you can see the details better here in this short video Jaime Rojo shot on site.

Hot Tea: “Bad Dreams pt.2” Installation for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Via BSA

Hot Tea had been feeling like his new work “Bad Dreams Pt. 2” for the UN Art Mile was missing something and as the plan and installation came together over a few months he realized it was missing him. A direct partner piece to the one that hangs in the museum across the street for the “UNSTOPPABLE” show, this uses the connective thread of materials and wounds to tie them together. While one piece commemorates a physical wound, the other commemorates an emotional one. Here we see Hot Tea baring everything inside his art and inside this space for the outside world to get a glimpse, and to be free.

 

Borondo. Installation with glass plates and moving images for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Via BSA

An astounding installation by Street Artist Borondo, this sculpture on the Urban Nation Art Mile under the train tracks this weekend blew the minds of many viewers for it’s scale, character, and ingenuity. Anathema to the ease of digital image-making, these three frames are composed of layers of glass, each scratched with a portion of the image and illuminated singularly in sequence to produce an animated sequence. Mesmerizing and imbued with an ethereal mysticism that often surrounds his work, Borondo is communicating something larger than simply what we see.

Various & Gould. Mobile installation for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Via BSA

Berlin based duo Various & Gould often see people as the sum of there parts, perhaps as a way to better examine our individual characteristics and question our assigned meanings to them. By playing with the physical aspects that add to identity, they reveal the happenstance of genetic assignment and demote the relative value we assign to them. The overall effect can be a gained appreciation of our universal similarities and the realization that this outside stuff is basically interchangeable.

 

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“Inundated!” Scenes from the Opening: UN – Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin

“Inundated!” Scenes from the Opening: UN – Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin

“This week is Art Week in Berlin, and you just stole Art Week,” said a handsome and intensely opinionated German to us as we leaned on the arm rail of the M.C. Escher-inspired walkway before a Carlos Mare139 sculpture and above the capacity crowd on Saturday night at the Urban Nation Museum of Urban Contemporary Art (UN).

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Not sure if that was the exact goal, but we get his larger point; the UN has just made a massive entry into a number of societally and culturally influential minds when it comes to the relevancy of Street Art and graffiti to visual culture and art history. This movement into so-called Contemporary began as early as the 1970s and has overcome and weathered cultural and market ebbs and flows – persisted, if you will – yet somehow institutions have been wary of this work and these artists and unable to fully embrace their importance, you decide why.

Artistic Director Yasha Young delivering her opening speech. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

While stakeholders in street culture, the art world, the gallery system, auction houses, and a burgeoning body of academia will continue to litigate the right of a Street Art/graffiti/Contemporary Art museum to exist or the correct form it should take, it is no longer a distant theoretical event. For those who have averred in the negative over the past few years about the potentiality of Urban Nation, the museum is now fact.

As were the crowds.

Long lines to get in on Saturday. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The crowds were there, the Mayor was there, a few hundred graffiti /street /contemporary artists inside and outside the house were there, the directors and curators were there (except Andrew Hosner, who was taken ill), the Flying Steps and three rappellers scaling down the façade to unveil a new Invader plate were there, the architects were there, Martha Cooper and her new library were there, 1UP was there, the overwhelming enthusiasm to be a part of this milestone where fifty years of Street culture adds a museum in its name by its own insistence – they were there too.

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

With alchemists at the fore who are bold and determined to invite non-Art World people into the discussion about how a museum should be formed, the route here has been a challenge – as it frequently is for those who make the road by walking. We’re waxing a little poetically in the haze of a cloud of jet lag and too little sleep so allow us to say what John Ahearn told us in an email and a number of folks said to our faces all during this previous week, “This is a first.”  What follows is up to all of us.

With such a diverse number of tributaries flowing into this river of creativity and global street culture one must accede the point that this is not an encyclopedic collection representing all of graffiti, Street Art, Urban Art history. Short of staging the exhibition in the former Tempelhof Airport any all inclusive narrative would simply not fit. Instead we opted for a group show of some of the strongest players and influential talents and minds across the last few decades. This inaugural show is meant to bust the doors open and show off the new space, hopefully inspiring more minds to come in and help steer the ship forward.

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Group photo of the Flying Steps right after their performance. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, September 16, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

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“Brighter Days Are Coming” at St. Petersburg Street Art Museum

“Brighter Days Are Coming” at St. Petersburg Street Art Museum

A New Exhibition Marks the 1917 Revolution in St. Petersburg at the Street Art Museum


This spring, a hundred years since the Russian Revolution, a new Street Art inspired exhibition in St. Petersburg may reflect the ambivalence that competing storylines produce in the re-telling of history. A hundred years since the workers movement displaced the Czar and his family following three hundred years of power, the streets don’t look like they will return to the Bloody Sunday of hundreds of workers lying on the pavement, but a certain unruly violence can be sensed in the performances and artworks nonetheless.

Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

“Brighter Days Are Coming”, co-curated by Andrey Zaitsev, the director of Street Art Museum and Yasha Young, director of the Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin, brings the voices of 60 current artists with roots in the Street Art/ graffiti practice to discuss that specific revolution or the theme of revolution itself. Largely from Russia and using everything from aerosol to concrete to bricks to bones to smoke, it would appear that the effects of 1917 are even now difficult to resolve.

The Street Art scene is familiar with the schizophrenia of identity and the loosely tossed labels that never exactly fit. Multiple participants and categories of art-in-the-street now apply – perhaps reflective of the multiple individual stations one can occupy in society: citizen/ loyalist/ worker/ owner/ globalist/ revolutionary/ consumer. Awash in the borderless Internet of everything and nothing, it is often the youngest adults for whom Street Art appeals and has currency, an imperfect authenticity you can engage with. Ironically, there may be a way to accommodate these ubiquitous monuments of Lenin and other static heroes in your periphery as you walk by them playing with Pokémon on your digital device. One way is to make them your own.

Clicking “Like” Won’t Do It

There is a struggle today to discern the cultural weight and meaning of visual culture because hierarchies have been flattened and distance is seemingly elastic in our digital experience. Iconic Lenin may mistakenly be reduced to icon Lenin, a simplified button on one’s phone. The digital space can create a sense of intimacy with strangers and yet an odd distance when considering actual lives of peasants, or the fight of the workers, or the struggle of artists for that matter.

One sure way to appreciate art is to see it in person, to contemplate while gazing on the expanse of an enormous mural or trudging across the grounds of this plastics factory/ Street Art Museum on the outskirts the former Petrograd – one that was begun by twenty-somethings in love with global Street Art and is heavily populated with them.

Indeed a low-budget looking satirical promotional video for the exhibition posted on the Street Art Museum Instagram page appears as a mocking half-hearted celebration by costumed Russian Millenials and Gen Z’s dancing around a smiley icon cake whose dynamite candle suddenly explodes in a bit of stock video of a fiery Armageddon.

What is the future or past we’re celebrating? Does anyone know? Thanks to the explosion the video feels humorously heavy in the foreboding sarcasm department. Maybe it is just an insider reference to a favorite movie scene or video game. There ARE, after all, three  curious Pokémon characters at the kitchen table. The official poster features the cheerful sunshine-yellow Pokémon with lipstick and a full-mouthed smile. Somehow it has more credibility than any human figure, smiling and terrifically positive that the future is bright.

Poster for Brighter Days Are Coming. Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Walking Inside and Out

The fourth such large exhibition in this suburban factory campus and its open outside space since the museum received official accreditation in 2012, this season at The Street Art Museum features 60 or so artists from 12 countries who look to the events 1917 for inspiration. As organizers note on the museum website, the topic is being addressed with retrospective shows this year by great museums worldwide including The MOMA in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, and the Tretyakov Gallery in Russia.

“The main object is the heritage of the Russian avant-garde, whose world-spanning and messianic spirit had a serious effect on the development of contemporary art,” explains the site. For practitioners and fans of the graffiti and Street Art scenes that have evolved in cities globally during the last 50 years, one revolution or another is never far from their mind at all. At the epicenter of history here in Shosse Revolutsii, the Street Art Museum is an appropriate place to at least contemplate the subject.

Large scale installations on walls throughout the compound are complemented by sculptures in open spaces; some of them interactive, others static, still others are reproductions of historic and recognizable figures. Most commanding would be the Lenin. Most remarkable would be the reproduction of The Hermitage.

The exterior walls of the compound were painted to mimic the Hermitage Museum. Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

The recreating of The Winter Palace façade is a guilty delight, one of the 6 buildings of The actual Hermitage that holds the world’s largest collection of paintings only kilometers from here. A world icon of the revolution since being stormed in the fall of 1917, the massive aquatic (or French) blue facsimile of the façade in this museum courtyard provides a haunted, riveting, and admittedly comedic context for everything that passes by it, behind it, before it.

Hermitage. The real one. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Individual Interpretations of “Revolution”

Elsewhere Lisbon based Street Artist Bordalo II has brought his practice of creating an endangered animal with local garbage for his installation of the famous Russian Snow Leopard – an animal now critically endangered, with its numbers estimated by some as 100 or less. One may wonder, certainly these artists do, what animal species will still be here in 2117.

Bordalo II (Portugal). Snow Leopard. Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Russian artist Dima Rebus watercolor painted one of his character’s faces on the bottoms of 340 oil barrels by hand as a nod to the mobs of people who gathered together to form the the uprisings of the revolution. He says he has plans to disperse the mob wall, to vanish it at the end of the exhibition, painting each person out one by one with spray paint. Entitled “Life Goes On” the artist says, “Revolutions happen and pass, but life goes on.”

Dima Rebus. (Russia) “Life Goes On” Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

The Italian illustration-style Street Artist name Millo painted one of his imaginary highrise milieus where a giant child is at play in the center of an urban setting. The revolution here is the represented by the ripples of waves passing literally through the character, he says. On social media he describes it this way, “Each planet follows its orbit and all of them are the personification of the revolutions lived by the main figure. The message I want give is to find your personal revolution. When something is getting over is the exact moment to find the strength to revolution”.

Millo. (Italy) “Revolution”.  Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Kazy Usclef. (France) “Makazyhnovchtchina”.  Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

French Street Artist Kazy Usclef (above and below) normally draws influences from Futurism and Suprematism so his connection to the Russian avant-garde is a short distance. He also isn’t afraid to touch upon current political sore spots.

In “Rebel Sex Love Resistance,” the two entwined figures are female and one is wearing a balaclava, features that together are perhaps subtle references to the activist art music group named Pussy Riot, famously contentious and Anti-Putin.

Kazy Usclef. (France) “Rebel Sex Love Resistance”.  Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

 

Performance, Panels, Debates

During its opening days the exhibition featured ongoing performances by contemporary artists and independent theater troupes, turning the courtyard into a stage and the “Hermitage” into a set.

Maksim Svitshyov. Media-art and sound-art project. Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Lead by curator and theater director Danil Vache, costumed performers appear to take inspiration from specific historical events and themes of radical change, societal rupture, militarism, and the uprising of poor and working class to claim power. Inside and onstage, live performances of poetry, speeches, and music were featured throughout the week.

Artist Pasha Kas and the UN’s Denis Leo Hegic discussing My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love sometimes referred to as the Fraternal Kiss (German: Bruderkuss), a graffiti painting on the Berlin Wall by Dmitri Vrubel, 1990. The painting depicts Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker. Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Additionally there were a few panel discussions and forums like “Simulacrums of Revolution,” where moderating curator/ theatrical producer Mihail Oger spoke in conversation before an audience with guests like American graffiti/Street Art photographer Martha Cooper, Ukrainian artist Pasha Kas; Russian graffiti writer and contemporary artist Maxim Ima, graffiti/public artist Anton Polsky (known as Make), and Urban Nation (UN) Cultural Manager Denis Leo Hegic. Hegic, who spoke before images of the Berlin Wall during his presentation, tells us about his and the UN’s involvement with the exhibition.

Maksim Svitshyov. Media-art and sound-art project. Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

BSA: The title of the exhibition is sort of a satiric, sunny reference to a happy future – “Brighter Days Are Coming”, yet it is cast directly under the shadow of the hardship and conflicted relationship Russian’s and all of us have with the past. How did you see the exhibition responding to this dichotomy?

Denis Leo Hegic: The title of the forum “Simulacrums of Revolution” is actually a good supplement to the title of the exhibition itself, since the idea was not to define revolution or to claim revolutionary DNA, but to reflect on what is the “Representation” of revolution on various levels and in our own understanding, in historical, scientific definitions and in the artistic representation.

Maksim Svitshyov. Media-art and sound-art project. Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Hegic points to the age old practice by humans of the falsification of historical events to form a narrative. He also points to “fake winter palace or the fake museum” and compares it to the famous painting “The Storm on the Winter Palais” by Pawel Petrowitsch Sokolow-Skalja as examples of re-writing history. You can almost anticipate that Hegic will transition readily into the topic of “fake news” or “propaganda,” but he takes another damning route instead.

“We can draw parallels to the fakeness of our own representation today – with our own “curated” Instagram accounts, or the millions of selfies we make from flattering angles – this seems to be a considerable part of our daily thought and activities. This is where I see the direct link to the representational powers of every revolution in our own present time.”

Maksim Svitshyov. Media-art and sound-art project. Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

He also disagrees with how we characterized the title of the exhibition, “Brighter Days Are Coming.”

“The title should not necessarily be understood as a satiric one,” he explains. “Brighter days are always about to come. The light will inevitably win over the darkness and human optimism will remain a motor that keeps our evolution process in motion. Ironically, our evolution itself might bring our extinction too – but under the assertion ‘Brighter Days Are Coming’ we do continue to live and to hope.”

Alexander Berzing. (Russia) “Contact”.  Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Pulling Back the Curtain

The museum itself, stationed on the campus of an operating plastics factory and under the directorship of the son of the owner, highlights some of the conundrums of featuring autonomous global public art movements in a time and place where official state messages speak more to loyalty than revolution. For many critics, Street Art belongs in the street, so the very existence of this institution is a non-starter.

Finally it is notable that St. Petersburg itself has very little of what you may call an “organic” Street Art scene – and one does not see Fascist or AntiFa post-Soviet graffiti furiously scrawled here. This appears to be comfortable protected space for debate about theory and history not easily identified by a graffitied or muralled exterior.

Aleksandr Gushing. (Russia) “Lenin – Grad”.  Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Aleksandr Gushing. (Russia) “Lenin – Grad”.  Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

But these are only a few of the multiple ironies at play in the organized chaos of today, where the German Goethe Institute and Berlin’s Urban Nation Museum of Urban Contemporary Art are partnering with the St Petersburg Street Art Museum to launch a show commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. For those who do not know at that time Russia and Germany were engaged together with Austria in a brutal and bloody war that killed three million people.

For the sixty or so artists and performers participating inside these factory walls you may also wonder how or if their work has been affected by the work of this Revolutionary era’s giants in literature, ballet, painting, music and movies — people like Serge Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Eisenstein, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Kazimir Malevich. Each of these names became as closely identified with their disciplines as the politically, socially, anthropologically tumultuous eras they worked within.

Icy & Sot. (Iran/USA). “Lack Of Privacy” Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

As in every era, today technological revolutions are affecting all people regardless of nationality or national politics.

The Iranian Street Art duo who currently live in Brooklyn, Icy & Sot, steer clear of the politics of nations in their installation by building a wall – itself overlaid with political overtones – but here it is intended as a metaphor for protecting privacy. By bricking up the periphery of a bathtub, the brothers contemplate “No Privacy”, an occurrence enabled by our complicity (and obliviousness) to being tracked and followed by strangers via our smart phones.

NO PRIVACY from ICY And SOT on Vimeo.

“The bathtub and shower are everyone’s private place,” they tell us. “In this installation, even though we built a wall around the tub there is still no privacy because there is a smart phone playing music nearby, enabling some entity to always watch or listen to you.”


A Final Word

By focusing this large exhibition at its original epicenter organizers are bound to strike nerves and inflame passions and, although Russians don’t appear to be exactly celebrating the centennial, the opinions about who deserves blame and credit for the events that unfolded are all over the map. Which is why, perhaps, curators looked far for new takes on the topic.

“First and foremost this exhibition was meant as a representation of a broad international scene,” says Denis Leo Hegic as he talks again about the perspectives artists here bring to the topic of revolution. “The artists curated by the UN were all coming from different countries, bringing different ideas of portrayal and embodiment of revolutionary experience. The starting point of this revolution in 1917 did not stop at national boarders and claimed to be an international or even global movement.”

“Similar this is probably the most direct, democratic and largest global art movement today so the choice to bring international guests, with their own historic and different national backgrounds and their individual talents and approaches to creation – these were the most valuable contributions to the exhibition and the audience.”


Our sincerest thanks to Martha Cooper for sharing these photographs with BSA readers! We really appreciate all that she does and who she is to so many.


Alexander Blot. (Russia) “Upheaval”.  Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Konstantin Novikov. (Russia) “Where are my Seventeen”.  The artist contrasts the time intensive and  walls built for The Hermitage versus modern mass production creation of walls. 17 marks the year of the revolution as well as the number of years Vladimer Putin has been at the top. Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

An exhibit of photographs by Martha Cooper. (USA). Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Max Navigator. (Russia). Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

From left to right: Vadim Krys (Lithuania), Basket (Russia) and Max Navigator (Russia). First Wave of Graffiti in USSR at the Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Krys has been doing graffiti since 1985 and is one of the pioneers of graffiti in the Soviet Union. He was inspired when he first saw the American documentary “Hip Hop and Its History” when he was 14 years old. Basket and Max are also pioneers of graffiti in the USSR.

Maksim Svitshyov. Media- art and sound-art project. Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)


The final attack of the Red Guard to the Winter Palace from the movie October by Sergey Ezeinstein


PDA at the Street Art Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia. May 2017. (photo © Martha Cooper)

 


Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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A “Secret Dinner” at the Nascent UN in Berlin

A “Secret Dinner” at the Nascent UN in Berlin

Since its explosion of pigment and hue on subway cars and in the streets of New York and Philadelphia a half century ago to its spread to the hundreds of cities worldwide, the truly grassroots movement of Urban Art refuses to be owned by any one city or one people, insisting upon making its own rules and traveling wherever the creative spirit leads.

As if to underscore that global nature of the Graffiti/Street Art/ Urban Art movements, Urban Nation (UN) Director Yasha Young named the origins of the guests who were attending last weeks “Secret Dinner” at the under-construction site of the museum that opens this fall.

Yasha Young, Director of Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art (UN) delivers her welcoming remarks to the invited guests. A painting by Word To Mother hangs in the background. The painting was originally created for Project M/8 and curated by Stolen Space Gallery in 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“You came from Spain, England, Los Angeles, New York City, China, France, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, every neighborhood in Berlin, from Leipzig, Munich, all across Germany, France, Switzerland, the UK, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and last but not least, Russia,” she said as she stood before a large canvas by the London-based artist Word To Mother and next to Hendrik Jellema, the Chairman of Berliner Leben.

After recounting the three years of accomplishments and aspirations of the new museum to date, Young showed an animated video tour, a somewhat flying birds-eye view of the new museum projected on the wall.

Yasha Young, Director of Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art being introduced by Mr. Hendrik Jellema Chairman at Berliner Leben. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

In two dimly lit street-level raw and cavernous rooms were mounted a number of selected canvasses from the 10 Project M shows that have been curated in the last 3 years announcing the coming museum, each directed and refined by gallerists and cultural experts of various stripes and featuring the work of over 200 artists.

Across the street and Bülowstraße here in the Schöneberg district at the temporary UN headquarters was the grand opening of PM/11. Featuring 16 German artists curated by 3 experts in their respective scenes from Berlin, Munich, and Hamburg, “Radius” points to the vast and diverse urban art community here in a this famous street scene and artists and fans overflowed onto the sidewalk swelling even further when post-dinner guests arrived.

Celebrated photographer and ethnographer Martha Cooper attended the dinner. The library at Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art will bear Ms. Cooper’s name and will house items and books from Ms. Cooper’s personal collection. In this photo Ms. Cooper is wearing a skirt created by the American Street Artist Buff Monster. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

With graffiti artists and street artists spread among the 4 long dinner tables a colorful mix of politicians, cultural ministers, academics, collectors, press, curators, ambassadors, philosophers, photographers, and friends shared dinner, drinks, opinions, and their respective knowledge about the scene and the aspirations of the nascent institution.

We don’t know what everybody said to each other, but we did talk about cooking for a family of five with one guest and the trade routes between South Africa and Cairo during the last century and the importance of fish in the Icelandic diet with another.

Case Maclaim dinner plate. Each invited guest went back home with a gift of a special edition of one plate created exclusively for the occasion by an impressive roster of international artists. One hundred plates were created by almost one hundred artists. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Young burst in the room mid-dinner, as she’s wont to do, with a microphone to show a video series of 4 street art projects showcasing artists engaged with community projects, rather dispersing the often-indulged perception that all graffiti and Street Art is transgressive and illegal. Of course a lot of the good stuff is, but most artists possess additional dimensions outside these stereotypical descriptors, including an interest in helping others.

Artists featured included Norwegian Martin Watson, the German duo Herakut, the Polish crochet artist OLEK, and the German born Brooklyn-based twins HowNosm. The projects highlighted were not necessarily UN sponsored but instead drew attention to overall goals of the museum to be engaged with communities outside the typical art-going crowd.

A Daleast dinner plate. Each invited guest went back home with a gift of a special edition of one plate created exclusively for the occasion by an impressive rooster of international artists. One hundred plates were created by almost one hundred artists. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And so now the UN buzz has begun in earnest, with a steady run toward the opening doors of the Museum and significant involvement of international and local contingents of participants in the new institution. If anyone pretends to know how it will all look inside and outside on opening day or the months that follow, they are brave and fantastic in their willingness to prophesy. We say that because despite the much-heralded organizational skills of this land, and they are amazing, you can be sure that a vibrant and alive contemporary scene like this will continue to surprise us.

During the dinner a few films were presented to introduce a new series still under development. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

A general view of one of the two rooms where guests sat for dinner. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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VNA Magazine #34 with BSA, Martha Cooper, Yasha Young, Selina Miles and More

VNA Magazine #34 with BSA, Martha Cooper, Yasha Young, Selina Miles and More

A constant and influential voice on the contemporary urban art scene for one decade VNA (Very Nearly Almost) has been charting the magnificently murky waters of graffiti and Street Art and many of its most notable discontents. London based with global reach, their story-driven editing and writing has an evergreen quality with a keen eye toward touchstone detail.

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VNA Magazine. Issue 34. Cover: Martha Cooper’s photo of Keith Haring painting on the Houston Wall.

Together with carefully selected photography, probing interviews and pithy witticism, VNA imparts an insight about this fluid global phenomenon that few know how to adequately represent. Freights, train writers, tattoo, skater culture, photography, tagging, even the muralists – the wingspan is there. Knowing what kind of work, imagination and expertise goes into producing a serialized print publication, especially in this age of digital, we have always appreciated the magazine and the folks who care enough to create it.

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VNA Magazine. Issue 34. Martha Cooper profile.

That’s why we’re especially proud that the BSA Instagram account is spread across two pages of the current issue #34 of VNA. A daily-curated collection, all our photos on BKStreetArt are from Jaime Rojo, not appropriated from other sources and all our followers are organically grown, so the roots are deep and strong. An artist behind the camera, Rojo doesn’t just document the artwork of others, but has his eye on the environment that engenders, cavorts with, frames the so-called “scene”. With 100K photos now under his belt, we think Rojo is starting to get the hang of this thing.

And really, if there was ever a VNA issue to be included in, this is the one! With three of the defining people who have shaped and will shape your experience of graffiti and Street Art – Martha Cooper, Yasha Young, and Selina Miles – all featured, these combined self-made talents pack a punch that spans the last 50 and the next 50 years with no problem at all.

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VNA Magazine. Issue 34. Martha Cooper’s shot of Dondi painting trains on the yards.

Cooper’s early photographic documentation of a nascent graffiti scene in NYC is unquestioned (check the cover photo of Keith Haring) and her globe-trotting capturing of Street Art and artistic process is in effect to this very minute when she is in Tahiti for the O’nou Festival.

Once private gallery owner and art dealer and now the founding director of Urban Nation, Yasha Young is an expansive visionary who is daring to jumpstart an audacious project that creates a Berlin museum housing a definitive collection of Urban Contemporary Art intended to exist long after doors open in 2017.

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VNA Magazine. Issue 34. BSA Instagram Spotlight with all photos taken by Jaime Rojo around the world.

The 20-something Australian film maker Selina Miles has already re-defined visual storytelling of the graffiti and Street Art scene in only five short years of work in a way that has made her a rising star. We have every confidence that her core strengths and vision are yet to be fully explored and that she will blast open new pathways ahead, so be prepared!

To be included in the mix with these folks and Invader, Seen, Fafi, James Jean, Kai & Sunny, Ghostpatrol, Dave White, Todd Francis, Usugrow, and a series of London photographers in VNA is totally an honor and we sincerely thank Roland Henry for inviting us.

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VNA Magazine. Issue 34. Selina Miles shines.

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VNA Magazine. Issue 34. Yasha Young talks.

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VNA Magazine. Issue 34. Fafi installation.

 

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Yasha Young and Herakut : 15 for 2015

Yasha Young and Herakut : 15 for 2015

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What are you celebrating this season? We’re celebrating BSA readers and fans with a holiday assorted chocolate box of 15 of the smartest and tastiest people we know. Each day until the new year we ask a guest to take a moment to reflect on 2015 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for him or her. It’s our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and saying ‘thank you’ for inspiring us throughout the year.

Yasha Young is the director and curator of Berlin’s Urban Nation, the first museum worldwide that will exclusively collect and exhibit contemporary graffiti and street art. She also is the director of UN’s sub-project named Project M, bringing 100 or so artists to the UN and Berlin streets in just the last couple of years. A former gallery director for 15 years focusing on LowBrow and Urban Contemporary Art, Young has curated, produced and been an enthusiastic catalyst and visionary for countless collaborative art initiatives in the public sphere; this year included projects in Berlin, Iceland, Rochester (NY), Hawaii, and Miami.


Berlin, Germany
May 2015
Herakut
Urban Nation One Wall Project
Photograph by Aurelio Schrey

“Wenn ich wüsste das die Welt morgen untergeht würde ich heute einen Apfelbaum pflanzen”

(translated) “If I knew that the world would end tomorrow I would plant an apple tree today” ~ Martin Luther 1483 – 1546

I would like to dedicate my image choice to Herakut and this particular piece. To me this is about hope and the belief that there is always more good left on this planet than the incredible evil and hardship we see around us every day no matter where in the world.

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Hope is the foundation of change. It is universal and knows no restriction, no prejudice. Hope is what we need across the world at the moment and what we can give and spread at no cost and abundance – just like love.

This mural, with the Martin Luther quote written in several different languages, unites the thought of hope and the possibility of change via generations to come across the globe even in the face of a world on fire and displaced cultures  hope remains always.

 

 

 

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“Wall Poetry” in Iceland : Stunning Views and Music-Inspired Murals

“Wall Poetry” in Iceland : Stunning Views and Music-Inspired Murals

Urban Nation (UN) and Iceland Airwaves Festival Create Mural Program

Sound and vision are inextricably bound in the modern music canon, with inspired visuals leading our auditory imaginations at least since Toulouse-Lautrec’s depictions of Moulin Rouge orchestral and singing talents. Later illustrators were important for ushering us into the jazz era with snappy collage and geometrics for album covers and the birth of rock and roll expanded and shaped popular album-oriented daydreams. With every subsequent genre and subgenre of music from pop to rap to metal to disco and EDM, static and video artists continue to visually augment, interpret, define, and expand upon the music that we listen to.

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Telmo & Miel. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

This autumn in Iceland an equally inspired program pairing of 10 Street Artists with 10 musicians for the Airwaves music festival brought Reykjavik new murals from a mix of local and international artists. Since Iceland is the new Brooklyn, you’ll like to see how Berlin’s Urban Nation (UN) is precisely on top of something hot and icy with these eye-popping murals inspired by pace-setting modern sounds.

“I love music,” says UN Director Yasha Young as she describes the process that she and Iceland Airwaves’ Grímur Atlason and Henny Frímannsdottír went through to select music for their 1st edition of Wall Poetry. “We started to play our favorite bands from the lineup to each other, researched their album art, read their lyrics in great depth and watched all the video footage we could find,” she explains. “After that we decided who we thought would be interesting to approach for such a creative adventure. I know the artists I work with very well so it was more about listening to them and defining in more detail what the their individual ideas were for this project. The main goal for me was to pair them with the right collaborative partner musically and visually.”

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Telmo & Miel. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

“With paintings in and around Reykjavik the artists had time to complete their walls in time for the 10 day music festival in November, drawing the attention of fans and locals who were interested in the artwork that is impacting their daily experience of the city. The musicians were asked to provide the street artists with a song, lyrics or poetry especially chosen or written for this project,” says curator Frímannsdottír on the site. “The visual artists were provided a city wall as surface for the large scale work.”

Artist and musician collaborations for Wall Poetry include:

Ernest Zacharevic + Dikta, Caratoes + Ylja, Tankpetrol + GUS GUS, D*FACE + Laxdæla saga, Deih XLF + Vök, Telmo Miel + Mercury Rev, Li Hill + John Grant, ELLE + ÚlfurÚlfur, Evoca1 + Saun & Starr, and The Ugly Brothers + Gísli Pálmi.

 

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Telmo & Miel. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

We spoke to Yasha Young about the first year of Wall Poetry and the challenges of mounting a project like this:

Brooklyn Street Art: How important is the visual aspect of music to you? Many people may not always make that connection.
Yasha Young: To me it is so very important. I am a visual person to begin with but I think that it is vital as an individual who works with and for artists to work across genres and with as many different creative aspects as possible to be able to create one lasting and meaningful overall experience.

I remember buying LP’s for their cover art and the stickers and zines that came with them. I remember Buzzocks’s and The Ramones buttons and the silk printed posters by the Sex Pistols that came with the LP if memory serves me correctly. I think about The Rolling Stones “Some Girls” sliding cover and the art for Pink Floyds ‘The Wall’ and the “Led Zeppelin III” album with its rotating cover art that you could interact with.

And of course music videos became huge productions; actually they are little films that often connect with you on an even deeper level and enhance your experience of the music. Videos were launch pads for creative careers and massive innovations; for example Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’, ‘Cry’ by Godley and Crème, Gorillaz’ ‘Clint Eastwood’, Radiohead’s ‘No Surprises’, and my all-time favorite song and visuals combination was  Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit’. Of course as we speak I’m thinking also about Iceland’s Björk and her video for ‘ Human Behaviour” and John Grant and Tate Shots collaboration… I could go on and on.

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Telmo & Miel. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

“Mothrider” is inspired by the lyrics of Mercury Rev for “Moth Light”:

If, if I was a moth
I’d fly to the light in you
And if, if I was lost
I’d lose myself in you

Planets line up in the sky
Feel the waves go rushing by
Let’s just give it one more try
Ain’t got nothing to lose.”

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Telmo & Miel. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

(Young, continued) In my career I’ve had the great pleasure to be part of making album art happen for bands, such as KORN’s ‘Untitled’ for example. I worked with many bands on that creative level and it only deepened my connection and convictions when it came to art and music. Today we have a one-click behavior for experiencing streaming music that almost reminds me a little of when video killed the radio star. There is an essential part of the experience that is fading and we feed it with the “instant buy”.

I believe that we are losing more than ‘just’ the record store and the poster art or album cover. We are losing an essential and lasting connection that came with the purchase of the record or CD but was established long before; the multi-faceted creation of the entire visual aspect. You became part of a creative baseline and connected to the music through the visual work. Reading the lyrics as audio poetry on the back sleeve or the LP or interacting with the music and the art made it a much more lasting and impressive experience in my view. This is just the surface of what I think and would like to explore even further and on a deeper level next year when we return for the 2nd edition of Wall Poetry.

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Northern Lights. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

Brooklyn Street Art: What inspired you to start the project?
Yasha Young: I am always inspired by new opportunities to bring together different artistic genres and unusual or challenging – but always exciting – new venues. I had been visiting Iceland Airwaves for many years and finally decided last year to find walls and spaces and to connect with the Iceland Airwaves crew.

My idea was to visually prolong the reach of the music and bring it onto the walls through well-conceptualized and executed art pieces. In a way I wanted to re-connect two entities that have always been vital and necessary for each other in a public space, with music and art spilling out of the concert venues onto the streets and into the lives of people.

It was almost like we were going to extend the music, with the core idea being “We paint the music you love to hear”. Once that  was established as the core of the project I very quickly had an idea of which visual artists would be not only be a great fit for the city and the project but also who would be able to work in rather unusual and unknown conditions – namely, the Icelandic weather, and I say this with great fondness for those wild and unpredictable skies.

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Elle. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

Brooklyn Street Art: How did you choose the lyrics? Was it a difficult process?
Yasha Young: Actually I only picked the bands and visual artists. It was more about creating and encouraging the connection between both of these groups to get their beautiful creative minds talking together. Once connected they picked songs and talked about their choices in depth. I was a bystander, a very curious fly on the wall and following the process was simply amazing. To read the exchanges and feel the moment the spark ignited – that moment to me is, and will always be, what marks true curatorial success and is key to all collaborative creative projects.

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Elle. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

Elle was inspired by the song “Tuttugu og Eitthvað” by Úlfur Úlfur

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Elle. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

Brooklyn Street Art: Were there any challenges along the way? Specifically regarding logistics..
Yasha Young: ( laughs ) Yes! Many many many – but less in the actual execution of the vision and more in the daily production. For example the wind picks up and the mechanical lifts start swaying in the wind like a leaf. It was “Safety first” of course so we had to stop working immediately. Often the rain can be surprising and torrential and water runs down the walls like little waterfalls washing all the hard work from the night before off the wall again. But these artists are professionals and in my job the goal is to work as innovatively as possible – always finding or inventing new methods and finding other options.

It’s part of the journey and it can actually be fun. For my stubborn mind the only factor that will always be in way is time – we have not found a way to stop it or make more of it.

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The road where the valley ends and the glaciers begin. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Deih One. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Deih One. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Deih One. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

Deih took inspiration from Icelandic band Vok Music’s song “Waterfall” for this mural.

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Deih One. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Giant ice cubes on the beach. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Li’ Hill. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Li’ Hill. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Li-Hill. Detail. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

Li-Hill worked in collaboration with John Grant and his song “Pale Green Ghosts” for this mural.

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Li-Hill. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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The carcass of an air plane on the beach. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Caratoes. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Caratoes. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Caratoes. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

Caratoes took inspiration to paint this whole house from the lyrics of the song “Ode To a Mother”by Icelandic band Ylja.

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Caratoes. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Waterfall. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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D*Face. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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D*Face. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

D*Face depicts the Icelandic saga of Laxdaela; a tale of love, betrayal and intrigue.

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D*Face. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Northern Lights and Ice Cubes. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Ernest Zacharevic. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Lithuania’s Ernest Zacharevic transformed the shadow of an earlier building into a personal photo book.

“It’s inspired by the song ‘I Miss You’ by Dikta,” says Ernest. “The image has the same sadness and nostalgia in the photographs that I felt in the piano track song. The work is my imagining of all the past scenarios that could have happened in this old heritage house, physically and emotionally being taken down and rebuilt.

It’s more about memory because after I spoke to a lot of locals they were very nostalgic about how Reykjavik used to be, not so keen on how modernized it has become.”

Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Tank Petrol. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Tank Petrol. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

Tank Petrol’s modern take on the myth of Freya, considered to be the mother goddess of Love and Beauty.

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Tank Petrol. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Ice cube. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Evoca One. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

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Evoca One. Process shot. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

Evoca One tells the story of the Sauna and Starr song “Gonna Make Time” about home and returning to those waiting on shore.

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Evoca One. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

 

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The gang. Wall Poetry-Urban Nation in collaboration with Iceland Air Waves. Reykjavik, Iceland. October, 2015. (photo © Nika Kramer)

Our special thanks to photographer Nika Kramer for sharing her amazing shots with BSA readers.

To learn more about Iceland Airwaves please click HERE.

This article is also published on The Huffington Post

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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