Rose Alba Caruso, the aunt of Anthony from WhiskeyGoneBad, in Boro Park Brooklyn, 1947 (family photo) (links below)
When people get nostalgic for a time period, it’s usually for the era when they were kids or teens. Boomers have the Beatles, Gen X’ers have the Clash, Y’ers have Biggie, Millenials have …….. Guitar Hero? Anyway, who do you know that is nostalgic for Benny Goodman? Me either.
Ready for the big show? (courtesy of Brooklynite Gallery)
In his first solo gallery show, DAIN has fixated on figures and fashions and the formality of a time when Swing was King and he’s installing it throughout Brooklynite Gallery for this Saturday. In fact, there will be a 12-piece orchestra. So it’s Brooklyn Night at Brooklynite, 65 years ago.
A new Liz (DAIN) (courtesy of Brooklynite Gallery)
“The work for the show manages to tell stories from 1940’s. Fun times, glamorous times, working class people, Brooklyn and specifically Coney Island,” says Rae McGrath, owner of Brooklynite Gallery with his wife Hope. Makes me think of Italian Ices, Devildogs, Drakes Cakes, Hot Dogs, Potato Knishes, Pickles.
The street artist DAIN has been spinning these 33 1/3 long-plays for a while on the street now too, with colorized glamour shots of movie queens like Betty Davis and Audry Hepburn. More recently he’s been breathing life into black and white portraits of “everyday” men and women with sensible getups and nifty haircuts and a year like “1943” painted on them in a shakey hand. It’s almost like Dain wants you to be nostalgic for a time very few of us knew.
Dain 1943 (photo Jaime Rojo)
Looking at the signposts of the era that followed a long depression in the country does cause comparisons and some longing. There was a certain feeling of connectedness in a homogenized society that had been engendered by common economic suffering during the Depression, utter distrust of the banks, and an all consuming world war. Post-Depression, Post-War government worked hard to establish stability and growth through investment in a solid middle class; education (the GI Bill), health care (the dawn of Social Security), employment (the Work Projects Administration; WPA), a booming economy, a chicken in every pot…. I’m nostalgic already. But before we clamour for glamour of our nostalgic view, we remember that African Americans were conspicuously annexed from large swaths of the booming new era, as were a host of others who weren’t white, heterosexual, and religious…
An Altarred First Communion? (DAIN) (courtesy of Brooklynite Gallery)
Looking at Dain’s new work, we’re reminded that people used to be modest in their appearance, and it looked kind of cute too. Modesty that is attractive in a reassuring sort of way, and if you let your mind wander, it smolders beneath. Unlike the rockers of the 50’s and hippies of the 60’s, there isn’t shock value for it’s own sake. Walking up Bedford Avenue in Wiliamsburg on a Saturday night you can see a newfound romance for this tamed form of expression, as long as we can still have our “D.I.Y.” take on the subject and equality across the board is in full effect. Dain is feelin’ it, and it’s making a certain sense.
A beautiful day at Coney Island from DAIN (courtesy of Brooklynite Gallery)
The gallery opening and show bring home some of the Brooklyn 1940’s, and the space has never been so fully utilized to evoke a theme. Rae says, “the installation and redesign for this exhibition is the biggest undertaking the gallery has done to date. Working closely alongside DAIN we have managed to really bring out his vision for the look and feel of the 1940’s.”
At BSA we know you’re too busy to keep up on everything so we try to gather trends to help you live a more fulfilled consumer life.
Now that Labor Day is over and you are wondering what to wear to the MBP Urban Art Festival next month, our streetwear insiders present the results of their Brooklyn research in these video presentations of fashions for Fall ’09.
A mural by Chris Stain in Stavanger for Nuart 09 (photo Ian Cox)
There’s been a little rain and some sunny nice days too this week in Stavanger, Norway where the Nuart Festival is celebrating Brooklyn street art. That means the whole town!
Chris Stain has had opportunity to spread the work around this charming place, and people feel lucky to have him. Here are a few beautiful shots from photographers Ian Cox and Logan Hicks of Chris and his work.
Chris Stain rocking out while drawing (photo Ian Cox)
Taking a look from a different angle (photo Logan Hicks)
Wet streets in Stavanger - Chris is to the right (photo Ian Cox)
(photo Ian Cox)
Chris works at night while people have dinner on the corner (photo Ian Cox)
(photo Ian Cox)
"Would you stop taking pictures already?" (photo Logan Hicks)
We had the pleasure of working with Chris about 6 weeks ago on a roof in Brooklyn.
People are fascinated and even in love with “Street Art” now, and that fact has certainly not escaped WK Interact. The brutal traffic and the construction noise common in New York in the summer is raging as we sit at a café looking across Houston Street at a huge colorful mural being painted by OS Gemeos, the Brazillian twin brothers. WK gestures to the cluster of fans standing on the sidewalk taking pictures of the guys painting, some asking them for autographs,
“10 years ago, 15 years ago, absolutely nobody would pay attention. You would see people driving by and they would stop and say, ‘Hey can you do the same thing on my garage?’ or something like that. People did not care. They would look and say, ‘Did people pay you for that?’ Now you have like 200 people going to that wall specifically to see it. So it’s a big phenomenon, it’s a really, really big phenomenon.”
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: What do you think of the growth of Street Art over the last few years – born in graffiti but it no longer feels like it’s related to graffiti, and the number of people who are involved…
WK Interact: Maybe 15 years ago most of the people described what we do as “graffiti” because that was it. I never really called myself a graffiti artist. I used to call myself an “urban street artist”. I didn’t even feel like the stuff I was putting on the street was art. It was not art. It was a situation. I always said “If you want to make art, you can go to your place and stretch a canvas and you paint”. To me the street is not about creating art, it is creating a language. That’s why I don’t like to make murals, or put a frame around it. I like it to be incorporated. The point of my work is not what I do but how I conceptualize my work.
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: What do you think of New York people?
WK Interact: It’s the regular type of people that I think are very interesting. It could be a carpenter, it could be an electrician, could be a kid six years old, it could be an old man … I don’t really value people for what they own, I value people for the way they are standing. I don’t expect everybody is going to be rich or intelligent or smart or creative. I think every individual has something. …That is one of the reasons that I live in New York – it is such a mixed population.
(image WK Interact)
Just completed in August: A 100 meter long 7 meter high wall in Italy (image WK Interact)
Detail of wall in Italy (image WK Interact)
Brooklyn Street Art: So you don’t think of your work as art, you think of it as an action. You worked in film, and you do create with storyboarding, so would you think of it as theater?
WK Interact: For me putting something up on the wall is the same as someone planting that tree right there, and letting it grow. It is more like urban vegetation for me. We have to call it art because it’s aesthetic. But for me it is not theater, it is more like a three dimensional urban situation.
Newest work: Motion Pictures are portraits of friends (WK Interact) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Painting at Jonathan Levine Gallery this summer by WK Interact (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Mixed media piece at Jonathan Levine Gallery this summer by WK Interact (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about the feeling of “action” more?
WK Interact: I like also to create, especially on the streets, to create a film, an action. It’s totally not about the party that created the piece, it’s not about the size, it’s not about the color – it’s about the effect and the affect. It’s not about the beauty of how many colors you have, or something you have to stand and pay attention to. It’s a “SNAP” like that (claps his hands together fast). And you basically are sucking up all this energy in half a second, and you don’t even know it… you connect with viewing something and seeing something. And for me the street is like this. I don’t see it like a mural, like an art, like a thing of beauty.
“At that moment, the person passing becomes part of the piece.” (image WK Interact)
Brooklyn Street Art: So the “action” is what is happening to the person…
WK Interact: I like to work on a human scale. I want people to incorporate into it. When someone passes in front of my work, another person on the other side of the street sees them passing in front of it and sees my piece in the background. At that moment, the person passing becomes part of the piece. The one who is across the street actually sees the effect of it.
I don’t think people really see this in my work. They just see a simple black and white image. I really don’t talk that deep or detailed about my work, and if you do not explain this to people they just don’t know.
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: You are very methodical in planning and execution
WK Interact: Yes, and then I criticize my stuff. And the next year go back over my stuff. It’s kind of crazy too when you took so much work and so much effort to do it. I am interested in challenging myself to do better.
WK Interactive art for Suzuki
Brooklyn Street Art: How do you balance that desire to make more money and be better known and still not feel like you have “sold out” to, say, the corporate world. How do you find that balance?
WK Interact: I have been lucky to have not sold myself to some really big companies, because some people have come to see me and offer me things. It’s very difficult. I fight it a lot of the time. Even the few projects I did with brands, people were like “Oh, you sold yourself.” And they really put me down.
WK for fashion label Marithe
A lot of people like you to struggle. A lot of people want you to be in a place where you have absolutely no way to create something… They want you to be in pain. They want you to be successful but they don’t want you to be more successful than they are. The minute you go to making way too much money, having a car, they have problems. You always have to balance a bit. I’m lucky because I don’t really need a Porsche, and I don’t need to wear a brand name. I can just sit somewhere and say, “That’s me”.
In an example of the conversations that happen with street art, someone placed a blue cross over this piece because they may have though WK was glorifying war. In fact, this soldier was part of a series he created to give a message to bring all the soldiers home from Iraq. (WK Interact) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: Did you receive reassurance or encouragement from your parents?
WK Interact: My parents, who are both artists, did not believe in my work. It took them 10 years to believe in what I was doing. They were totally rejecting what I was trying to do, and they basically told me ‘you’re never going to make it’.
It’s funny you said that because I kept all of the press from 10 years I had collected about my work and I wrapped it in newspaper and one Christmas I took it home and put this huge pile on the table. I said to my parents, “This is your present, for both of you”. They thought at first they were just some magazines in English, until I showed them the articles. They were shocked. I didn’t really want them to tell me “It’s great,” I just wanted to prove to them that they were wrong. On that day, in that minute when I did this I changed the way they used to view me. They were shocked and they said, “How come you never told us?”
I was proving something to myself, and proving also that they were wrong. And I was trying to believe in myself. It’s this motivation that is what is inside me, what has made me. It is probably one of the best qualities that I have, instead of wanting to be rich or famous or anything like that. This is probably what makes me keep wanting to put things on the street now.
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: Can you now assume the parent role and offer a young street artist who is not feeling confident in themselves or their work? Can you give encouragement to that person?
WK Interact: I’ve been giving encouragement for almost my entire life. I used to help other students in school. I had an “Open-Door” policy at my gallery on the Lower East Side for five years. So many people used to come to my place with their book, or they left messages on my machine, and every time, it didn’t matter if it was a good day or a bad day I had to pay attention, and I had to be there, and be open to people. Meaning, what I did for all these years, instead of doing what they did to me, I did the exact opposite. I felt like “you cannot stop talent”. If you see somebody coming in your door, he has taken the time to come and ask you questions and is very open-minded and presenting his work – and you push him away, you create an angry young artist who will never forget that. So you have to be careful.
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: So you are saying that you took this opportunity to heal yourself of the pain of rejection by doing just the opposite.
WK Interact: Yes, I mean, if I had realized that I was doing that, I would not have chosen to do it at the street level. I mean it is good, but at the same time, I should have maybe worked out with it at a school as a teacher. When it comes to working with people and taking photos, or you put me with animals or kids; I do very well. I feel connected. As a teacher, I probably would be a good teacher. And it would have been less stress.
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: Is it your responsibility to help young artists?
WK Interact: This is also one of the reasons why when I see somebody who’s got talent, it doesn’t really matter what it is, the person doesn’t really need to be painting, just talent, and he can believe in himself, I almost want to lift this person up.
When someone who is in a position to help says, “It’s not my fault, it’s somebody else’s”, I don’t believe it. I say this is your decision. If someone has come to you and told you something then you have a choice to help or not. It’s important because sometimes you just have to do one thing to destroy all the dreams of these people. It is very fast.
A quarter of a century since falling in love with New York, WK looks at his route.
WK Interact was 8 years old, spending hours drawing on old floor plans. On the job with his father, even then he buried himself in his work while Dad rushed around giving orders at his interior design worksites in the south of France. A few years later, his drawings came alive with movement as he hung out all day in dance schools watching young bodies fly across the floor. Once more his style catapulted forward the day he discovered how to stretch and animate a figure just by dragging it across the glass of a photocopier. Action. Captured.
Without question, his love of the street, of art, and wild motion fully materialized and went on steroids when WK first laid eyes on monstrous, convulsing New York City. He was 16. He was blown away, frightened, and excited. Two years later, he gave into the magnetic pull of New York’s raw power.
“I remember I went downstairs and I said to my parents, ‘You know what, I am going to New York’, and my parents said ‘But why, what for? Are you going to be able to get a good job? Why do you have to go to a place where you don’t even speak English?’,” he remembers. A great struggle took place but he left for the United States anyway, alone for the first time. That’s when WK’s war began, almost a quarter of a century ago, on these streets. And he won.
(image WK Interact)
If his work on the street is an indication, it has been a constant state of war. Look at these images and themes that reappear in WK’s work since he first came to New York; Ever-present fear, violence, anxiety, overheated sex-play, fishnets & firearms, contorted figures racing, martial arts kicks to the head, hand-to-hand combat, boxers swinging, prisoners tied and bound, hooded figures snapping heads of bound businessmen, terrifying escapes in progress, maniacal twined and twisted forms and faces, propaganda, undercover spies, official seals, gun assembly diagrams, digitized labels, ID fingerprints, cameras, surveillance, camouflage, radioactive symbols, streaming codes and bureaucratic text passages, black military choppers hovering overhead, contorted soldiers screaming “bring me back”, a permanent state of survivalism… All of these hellacious visions collide and collapse and expand in continuous motion and interaction almost exclusively in black and white in wheat pastes, paintings, screen prints, photographs, sculpture, and performance installations on the street.
(image WK Interact)
You may think that some of this work is vaguely autobiographical, but for WK, all of this work is simply a reflection of the city he chose and the atmosphere here. “New York is extremely demanding and challenging”, he says, “If you do something sexy in the street in New York you are in trouble. If you do something violent, people will give you the thumbs up!”
In other words, he’s playing to the audience in this particular city and unfortunately it may give an inaccurate impression of WK, the person, “I’ll just say this; My work, the people always see one thing – fear, attack, violence. They have absolutely no clue of the other side. I don’t think they are ignorant. My work is very black, it’s very bold, it’s very graphic, it’s very strong. There is nothing really friendly like a little bird flying around or a pink piglet… it’s totally not that. But I live in New York City and I am responding to that kind of contrast. The weather is very strong, very hot and very cold. All the traffic is heavy, the structure of this city is almost like a double bladed knife. I wanted to adapt myself as a New Yorker and adapt my mind as an artist. I’m always fascinated by this fear, and the people who want to ignore it.”
It was the mid-1980’s and there was not such a thing as “Street Art” yet, but “Low-brow” was in full effect, with graffiti as a new darling in the booming art market. The City had just pulled out of a deep recession, Wall Street wall was flush, newly minted “Yuppies” were ordering sushi and flashing their Swatches, Run DMC was rocking a tricky rhyme, and graffiti had been nearly scrubbed from all the subway cars. Kenny Scharf took his cartoons into the Tunnel, Richard Hambleton was doing shadows on the street walls in the Village, Keith Haring was doing his thing in the subways, and Warhol was fixating on Basquiat.
Image of Richard Hambleton shadow work by photographer Allan Molho
WK Interact knew very little about all of this activity, but he gradually learned. 18 year old WK looked for work as a graphic artist but because he spoke little English and had few connections, doors slammed in his face quickly one after another. Eventually he got work as a carpenter and painter, living in a tiny room on Houston in Alphabet City.
The Lower East Side was his first real school; “I was like a student. I was not that good in school, and all of that work, work, work to get a diploma! That diploma was absolutely no help to me. My own diploma was my own dream, it was my own need. It was not proving anything to anybody, just me.” What followed was the “School of Hard Knocks”; occasional opportunities, a lot of drawing and time alone observing city life and street life, experimenting with his work on the street, and missteps that included a period actually living on the street in a box. Socially, he wasn’t able to connect with other artists and couldn’t really understand how to navigate the city and street culture world he had thrust himself into. He spent a lot of time feeling a deep sense of alienation.
A younger WK on the Williamsburg Bridge (image WK Interact)
“When I started to do my stuff I was so ‘not there’. I was so different and without an understanding of the art, the graffiti, the branding. Nobody really understood me; I was a bit early to be put in this category so I created myself just to be “this guy”. There were groups there, but I was on my own. And it was very, very difficult to believe in myself. It was so difficult not to be a part of a group. It was so difficult not to be able to speak English. I used go seek artists because I liked their work, and they never replied, or never wrote back.”
While WK still values those hard years because his inner strength and knowledge of humanity and inhumanity was greatly broadened, not to mention his development as an artist, he wouldn’t recommend them to you as a friend, as those years haunt him today. Coupled with feelings of rejection from his parents, this sense of alienation made him a lone wolf in a hostile town.
Prince and Lafette (image WK Interact)
A turning point for WK may have been the literal turning point of the corner of Prince and Lafayette streets in Soho, a garage and mechanics business. WK liked the multiple surfaces and angles of the lot, as well as their industrial rawness and he inquired about who owned it. After cajoling the owner of the garage to allow him do a piece on the wall, he eventually went on to “run” that whole corner that was a mechanic’s garage for a number of years. He likes to say no one noticed the racing, leaping, landing, crashing, chasing, panicked people in black and white on that block for many years, but in fact many New Yorkers around at that time still remember the sudden surprise of those images on the buildings and began to look forward to checking them out in when they passed through Soho.
Alek and WK (image WK Interact)
A piece on it’s larger overhead walls one time featured model Alek Well – a bicephalous blur portrait of gut-busting joy and ebullience as one head is tossed back to the left and one slightly forward to the right, anchored by solid shoulders. The scenes and players changed but usually the entire space was a spooked by hair-raising scenarios which you may or may not want to understand more clearly.
Similarly many people remember as “classic” the view of WK’s iconic 2-story speeding rollerblader racing along a building on the southwest side of Houston street to jump across Broadway. To hit one of his spots in it’s context is to experience a sudden pick-up in pulse, or skip in the beat, and a little bit of confusion that sharply torques the wild energy of the urban environment. No one else endeavors to shake you like this. It’s safe to say that you admire the mind of the artist who brought you this jolt.
(image WK Interact)
He lived frugally in a tiny studio and brought home left-over paint from his day jobs. It was pretty early in his career that he decided black and white paint was the best way to portray New York and it’s brutal contrasts. “If I go back to my country I will begin to paint blue and pink,” he explains.
Suffice to say, it’s been a long, arduous climb and not one he likes to speak about for a long time, understandably, but eventually WK Interact found his way in New York, and London, and Paris, and Italy, and Sydney, and Japan…. With labor, persistence and luck one opportunity turned another. He doesn’t appear unduly proud that his work today is in demand. He is thankful that he shows in respected galleries, is featured in articles, videos, and he is continuously on the move.
(image WK Interact)
When looking at the rough times, he says, “Those limitations created what I did. That made me want to reverse it, to upgrade it – so I made myself do more. You can see the force in my work, that constant motion, the face. It is on the move, you can see the actual thing vibrating, and this has been my position, and it has been like this for the last 23 years. As far as what happened to me coming to the States, I don’t wish this for anybody. I think this was painful, and it will always be painful.”
Bridge and Tunnel Doyenne Judith Supine has arrived, Logan has pretty much finished his new piece, GRL’s Evan Roth is analyzing Chris Stain’s graffiti skills electronically, the Skewville brothers haven’t cut off any fingers nor bonked heads while working.
Judith tries to make new friends with the other artists but they just turn their back (photo Logan Hicks)
Look at this too long and your head starts to hurt – Judith Supine (photo Logan Hicks)
Guess I put lip sunscreen on a little heavy – Judith Supine (photo Logan Hicks)
Logan is looking into Logan’s eyes. Does this make the piece introspective?
Have you seen my comb? (Skewville) (photo Logan Hicks)
No jokes should be made around power saws (Ad Deville) (photo Logan Hicks)
Watch your thumbs! (photo Logan Hicks)
AND NOW FOR SOME LOCAL COLOR
STAVANGER, a seaport of Norway, capital of Stavanger amt (county), on the west coast in 59° N. (that of the Orkney Islands and northern Labrador). Pop. (1900), 30,541. It lies on the south side of the Bukken Fjord, and has a picturesque harbour well sheltered by islands.
THERE, THAT WAS REFRESHING WASN’T IT?
Seriously though, 30,541 people? That was my graduating class!!
And Now, Back to the Artists and their good work…
It’s not unusual to catch Swoon whistling as she works, bless her (photo Logan Hicks)
Here she gives Chris his daily Geography lecture (photo Logan Hicks)
Group consultation (photo Logan Hicks)
James Powderly uses the scheduled “downtime” for play and idea-ating. (photo Logan Hicks)
Shards of streaming light bid us fint bye for this visit. (photos Logan Hicks)
Evan and Chris are fooling around with the tablet and pen. Patience, people, it’s the experimentation phase.
The London Police
Brothers in Arms
September 10 – October 1
Opening reception: Thursday, September 10, 2009
Carmichael Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of all new Hollywood-themed paintings, video and photography by British artist collective The London Police. Internationally recognized for their artwork, toy design and street interventions, this is their first solo show with Carmichael Gallery.
“Brothers in Arms” is a celebration of The London Police’s ten year anniversary. The show features works on canvases, a photographic montage, a site-specific installation and a short film documenting the artists’ creative process. The show’s title reflects both the film (a social experiment about personal space and the artistic and private challenges presented while handcuffed to another person) and the brotherly friendship of partners Chaz and Bob, who have withstood a decade of adventures around the world to present their most focused and exciting body of work yet. This new series of boldly monochromatic pieces pay homage to the city of angels and the classic films of their childhood, such as “Back to the Future” and “Star Wars”. Recognizable imagery is integrated into the symbolic London Police world of smiling characters and futuristic cityscapes. Building upon successful shows in London and Amsterdam during the spring, the collective’s synthesis of high and low culture in “Brothers in Arms” allows for a greater conversation of aesthetics, psychology and globalization.
The London Police (courtesy Carmichael Gallery)
Dan Baldwin
Disillusion
September 10 – October 1
Opening reception: Thursday, September 10, 2009
Carmichael Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings and ceramics by English artist Dan Baldwin. This is Baldwin’s debut US solo exhibition and his first with Carmichael Gallery.
Fifteen paintings, four ceramic vases and an exclusive, limited edition print compose Disillusion, Baldwin’s most mature and provocative body of work to date. His portrayal of a fantastic cosmos in which pop cultural icons, myths and symbolic imagery collide presents a heightened yet informed criticism of contemporary life. Baldwin began this work immediately following Dead Innocent, his successful solo exhibition at Forster Gallery, London, in September, 2008. Whilst the artistic through-line is evident, it is equally apparent that Baldwin has grown and developed significantly over the past twelve months, both technically and emotionally. The impact of personal and global events has effected a distinct shift from last year’s delicate, cheering palette and themes of love and beauty to reveal a different side to the artist – combining harsh fragmentation, coarse realism and devastated innocence, the new work is an intense fusion of visceral eye candy which shocks, entices and delights.
Inspired by the seedy side of New York, which has swiftly slipped inside dark clubs
since being scraped off the sticky street and out of Times Square by the Mickeypolice, street artist and curator El Celso is bringing a group show and installation on September 12th called PEEP-O-RAMA. Echoing slightly the Butt Magazine show at the Asia Song Society in Chinatown this summer, which featured “conceptual” video and booths with strange holes drilled in the walls, PEEP-O-RAMA brings adult themes to 12th Avenue, where freelance sex-workers once roamed free…
Looking for your lost hairpin in Henry’s pocket, Ethel? (artist Ryan Frank)
Featuring new work by Brent Birnbaum, Celso, Jillian Corbett, Ian Farrell, Ryan Frank, Suzanne Goldenberg, LA2, Jose Landoni, Pamela Lawton, Danny Licul, Linda Lee Nicholas, Dean Radinovsky, Maggie Simonelli, Miryana Todorova, James A. Willis, and special guests, PEEP-O-RAMA will gladly show you their paintings, sculpture, and a full-scale site-specific installation.
PEEP-O-RAMA GROUP SHOW
Saturday, September 12, 12-4 PM
Reception from 6PM-10PM
AK-57 Gallery
830 12th Avenue.
Nuart Main Gallery: It’s peaceful setting and appearance belie the great struggles of humanity inside (photo Logan Hicks)
What is it with that Norwegian air that makes some people so fresh? Or maybe that’s the beer…
One off-handed reference to Empires and before you know it, some closet soldiers start falling into character and spouting military metaphors and going off about seiges and skullduggery.
We aren’t completely positive what our in-the-field reporter is talking about but until they have a live blogging tent at Nuart this is what we can pass along your way, dear reader…. (The apparent rift between Baltimore and Non-Baltimore contingents has been independently verified however)
In the field, Chris Stain breathlessly relates the events as they unfolded;
“Yesterday BK converged in Stavanger at 1200 hours and planned a city-wide assault under the guise of NUART. During the meeting Skewville and Chris Stain were informed by Swoon that Stockholm and Copenhagen were not in Germany. ”
Lessons in geography.
“Swoon and accomplice Ben Wolf formed a plan to conquer the eastern wing of SKUR 2 by setting up an ambush in an adjacent alley.” (photo Chris Stain)
“Infantryman Logan Hicks wasted no time breaking into a full war cry with a new tactical approach on stenciling” (photo Chris Stain)
“…while the diabolical Leon Reid got busy drafting his piece for installation to take out a bank in the city center.” (photo Chris Stain)
“David Choe was meet with resistance when attempting a mission in allied territory.” (Photo Logan Hicks)
Finally, it was brought to the attention of NUART commander-in-chief Martyn Reed that two of the BK artists were originally from Baltimore and subsequently were made to ride in the back of the bus and eat at separate lunch counters to keep from contaminating the rest of the troops.
End apartheid in Stavanger! I’m putting this on my Facebook profile and if you really cared you would too. (Now, Baltimore is in Sweden right?)
“But seriously folks this sh*t is gonna be a classic!” – Private Stain
Okay, not to get carried away – and anyway there are a fair number of anti-empire peeps out there….The next phase of Nuart begins tonight and street artists from New York have started in earnest deep into the Norwegian night to bring the best of Brooklyn to the walls. While Brooklynites are back home celebrating the long Labor Day weekend with backyard, rooftop and sidewalk barbecues, Brooklyn street artists have begun the hard labor of installing brand new works in the main exhibition space for the Nuart Opening Weekend coming next.
Skewville is unpacking the suitcases and rolling out the orange caution fence and milk crates.
Chris Stain lightly sketches the outlines of a working fella.
Unveiling a new piece and style that he’s been working on, first to appear is a stairway by Logan Hicks
Brooklyn favorite Swoon anchors her piece with a figure.
David Choe is already pulling out the stops at 3 a.m.
Thanks to on-the-spot Workhorse Logan Hicks for letting us all take a look behind the scenes.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
