“Williamsburg is so layered and changing so quickly… I am so lucky to be able to document some of these fleeting visual gems”
Shooting Fossils with Your Phone
5 years ago, it was unimaginable. 5 years from now, assumed. Photography with your phone is ushering a new era in art, journalism, and information.
Kate Meersschaert has been capturing the beauty of the urban landscape in the midst of the Williamsburg transition to vertical suburbia, where shallow glass towers rise over blighted lots, Superfund sites, and Street Art. Since this spring she snaps the layers of posters and detritus, steel beams, gummy sidewalks… posts them on her site, and is making a book with them this fall.
Some of Kate’s images are charged with activity, some overlayed with weathered echo, others may prove to have a timeless quality.Because they are a “snapshot” using this technology in this location, they are so 2010.
We are delighted to commence our fall season with a beautiful new title.
Wir freuen uns sehr mit diesem außergewöhnlich schönen Buch in den Herbst zu starten.
Muralismo Morte – The Rebirth of Muralism in Contemporary Urban Art reveals the vibrancy of a new type of muralism as it rises from the shadows of urban spaces in metropolises worldwide. From much celebrated pieces in prominent places to those hidden in anonymous, decayed ruins, it features the large-scale murals and small interventions of some of the most exciting international artists associated with this movement. Muralist and art activist Jens Besser uncovers these treasures and offers special insights into the emerging scene that is coloring our urban experience.
Artists/Künstler: Roa, Remed, Klub 7, Aec & Waone (Interesni Kazik), Blu, Os Gemeos, Escif, Jens Besser, BerlinBeamBoys, Sonice Development, 3ttman, Kain Logos and many more.
Muralismo Morte – The Rebirth of Muralism in Contemporary Urban Art, zeigt die Dynamik einer neuen Form der Wandmalerei, die seit einigen Jahren weltweit aus den Schatten der urbanen Räume der Metropolen hervor tritt. Von den gefeierten Arbeiten an prominenten Plätzen zu den anonymen Werken, versteckt in verfallenen Ruinen, bietet dieses Buch die großen Murals und kleinen Interventionen einiger der spannendsten internationalen Künstler dieser Bewegung. Muralist und Kunst-Aktivist Jens Besser deckt diese Kostbarkeiten auf und bietet einen tiefen Einblick in eine aufstrebende Szene, die unsere urbane Landschaft in neuen Farben zeichnet.
Take a look inside the book here!
Title: Muralismo Morte – The Rebirth of Muralism in Contemporary Urban Art
Author: Jens Besser
Pages: 200, color, ca. 300 Illustrations & photographs
Format: 28.5 x 21 cm (11.22 x 8.27 inches)
Language: English edition
Price Hardcover: 24.95 | £ 24.99 | US $ 34.95
ISBN Hardcover: 978-3-937946-29-0
Book Release / 1. October 2010!
Exhibition & Book release party / Common Ground Gallery / Berlin:
1.October 2010 / 7 pm-open end
Lecture / Buchvorstellung (Jens Besser): 8:30 pm
Live video performance BerlinBeamBoys
DJ Dejoe
Common Ground Gallery / Hip Hop Stützpunkt
Marienburger Str. 16 A (Hinterhof)
10405 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg
www.commongroundgallery.de
Muralismo Morte Events Schedule:
for detailed information please check www.fromheretofame.com
1. October 2010 Berlin
Common Ground Gallery
Exhibition & Book release party / lecture by Jens Besser
7 10. October 2010 Berlin
Stroke.03 Urban Art Fair
Muralismo Morte lecture by Jens Besser & live painting by Roa, Sepe and Aryz (TBC)
27. October 2010 Dresden
Motorenhalle
Muralismo Morte lecture by Jens Besser
3. November 2010 Leipzig
Mzin Book Store
Muralismo Morte lecture by Jens Besser & exhibition
“SUMMER TRAINS” BY BUTCH & PEA
EXPOSITION DU 23 SEPTEMBRE AU 16 OCTOBRE 2010
Vernissage le 23 septembre à 18H
WILD STYLERZ GALLERY, 161 rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré 75008 PARIS
From 23rd October to 21st December, Wunderkammern exhibition space will host the first Italian solo show of Invader: “Roma 2010 and other curiosities”.
Invader is an artist working in anonymity. Born in 1969 in Paris, he is one of the most important and original international street artists and has exhibited in many prestigious galleries and museums across the world.
Invader is known above all for his public interventions inspired to the Arcade Game Space Invaders, created in 1978 in Japan. His operations are tied up to creative practices of “interference” through which he traces unique trails in the collective space, shaping new signs in the urban landscape. The naturally public formality of his interventions – suspended between visibility and anonymity and between real and virtual spaces – as well as the choice of icons present in the collective memory and practices of the youngest generations, offers a meaningful and original reading of our cultural patrimony.
With the invasion of Rome occurred over the summer, the artist has finally added the Italian capital in the list of the more than forty cities he has invaded so far: from Katmandu to Bangkok, from small urban centres to great city metropolises such as New York, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and above all Paris.
The exhibition at Wunderkammern will present various aspect of his work: from the alias replicating the space invaders of Roma to works made with his original RubikCubism technique, by means of the coloured modules of the famous puzzle, re-presenting images extrapolated from the realm of art history or popular culture, along with specific installations and curiosities. The invasion guide of Roma and the brand new 19th printed invasion map will also be presented in exclusivity at the opening.
On the occasion of the artist’s presence in the city, Wunderkammern’s exhibition space opens once again to the dialectic comparison between ordinary and extraordinary, by drawing its own poetry closer to Invader’s narrative language. The artist revisits the urban space generating wonder and transforming daily routes into unique journeys.
The vastness of the world can become limited by the familiar as we march or stumble or crawl mindlessly through the habitual behaviors of day-to-day existence, creatures of habit as we are. With the simple act of miniaturization and thoughtful placement, London based Spanish street artist Issac Cordal magically expands the imagination of pedestrians finding his sculptures on the street. With the master touch of a stage director, his figures are placed in locations that quickly open doors to other worlds that you don’t know of, but evidently exist.
Issac Cordal "Home" Brussels, Belgium. 2010
“Cement Eclipses”, is a project of small cement sculptures that began while Cordal studied fine arts in Pontevedra, Spain in the early 2000s. Meant as a critique of the rapid overdevelopment (and subsequent public debt hangover) of the Spanish coast over the last decade, “The figurines represent a kind of metamorphosis through which an urban human leaves his role of citizen and begins merging with the city and slowly becomes part of urban furniture,” explains the artist. More broadly the installations can be interpreted as post-modern alienation, complete with feelings of dislocation in the built environment.
Isaac Cordal, “Climate Change Survivor”. Hackney, London. 2010
Some figures march lock step with slumped shoulders single file, overwhelmed and pummeled into conformity. Single figures freeze bewildered in an artificial environment of concrete, molded plastic, and urban residue. Singular men and women are suspended and isolated in a motion or pose that can take on multiple meanings. The sympathetic figures are easy to relate to and to laugh with; meticulously placed in scenes that provide a looking glass into a world strangely akin to your own. Describing the characters and the world they live in, the artist talks about urban man’s “voluntary isolation and alienation from nature, hiding himself among sidewalks, streets, walls,” and you can almost feel sorry for the figurines. And you might knowingly chuckle.
Isaac Cordal "Businessman" Brussels, Belgium. 2010
Isaac Cordal “Border” Hackney, London. 2010
Isaac Cordal “Lost” Hackney, London 2010
Isaac Cordal "Follow The Leader" Brussels, Belgium. 2010
Isaac Cordal “Public Swimming Pool” London, UK. 2010
Isaac Cordal “Parasite” Shoreditch, London. 2010
Isaac Cordal “Empty Fridge” Brussels, Belgium. 2010
A visit with Street Art collective Faile in their Brooklyn studio finds the industrious duo at the center of a small cluster of assistants working on many projects simultaneously.
The air of collaboration is evident in this maze of activity – as well as an appreciation for process. The multi-level ex-industrial building has been reconfigured internally over the last decade to contain and accommodate the adventurous appetites of the childhood buddies who took their Street Art from Brooklyn to the Tate, with many stops along the way.
This doesn’t happen for everybody, so in this first visit of two before their upcoming debut solo show at Perry Rubenstein Gallery on November 4, we looked for clues about the creative and working DNA of Faile. In the ten quick long rotten beautiful years of this century they’ve plowed through many experiments methodically from simple one color small stencils on light posts to now museum quality raft-sized wooden block collages that take months to screenprint, saw, sand, and assemble.
In a pretty remarkable run through the neighborhood and the globe the two Patricks have used aerosoled stencils, screen prints, wheat pastes, roller tags, animated video games, carved wood, vinyl sculptures, spinning prayer poles, even alabaster and tile reliefs in their ever growing collection of work. Cumulatively, the forays have given depth and resilience to their nearly iconic pop imagery.
Since returning from their Lisbon temple installation mid summer, where their piece (two years in the making) became a focal point for that city’s first biennial, the Faile dudes are now making a multitude of these “wood paintings” here in their Brooklyn studio. Among the many silkscreens stacked against walls, rolled canvasses in tubes, and pieces by Banksy and Shepard Fairey adorning the walls, there are open wooden boxes, maybe 20 or 30, full of small wooden printed blocks laying open on tables and shelves.
Brooklyn Street Art: When the blocks get that small they are almost just a texture.
Patrick McNeil: Exactly, or just color palette. It’s so modular you don’t get stuck with anything, you get to explore a lot and if it doesn’t work you just put it back the way that it was or pull it apart.
Brooklyn Street Art:That’s right, you can reverse yourself pretty easily
Patrick McNeil: Yeah you just kind of build a piece and then realize it works better in something bigger – so they are very loose in a sense. It seems very precision-y and thought out but it’s much more looser than it looks.
The selective sampling of images that create the Lingua Faile has steadily grown into a library of totems, symbols, pulp art snippets, typefaces and signifiers set free from their context and recombined with a lucid dexterity, a splash of irony, and an inner voice that says, ‘go for it’. It’s an old-skool visual sampling that doesn’t need autotune for anything, just a hyped sense for combining clips and dropping it on the beat. Talking to them, one sees that it’s a loose intuitive sense that is guiding the process.
Patrick McNeil: And I like what is happening in this one, it’s still coming along. That one, the bottom needs to be worked out. It’s really top heavy. And we’ll kind of pull some colors down. That one is just kind of getting started. This one’s kind of in the middle right now; Just slowly working on blacks and switching things up.
Brooklyn Street Art:So you’ve used a lot of powdered pastels…
Patrick McNeil: Yeah…
Brooklyn Street Art: let’s see, blasting fluorescents…
Patrick McNeil: Well a little bit, yeah. There are not too many fluorescents, well, that pink is probably the only fluorescent. Well, there’s yellow on that one. But none of these have any fluorescent.
Brooklyn Street Art:I’m thinking of the DeLuxx Flux thing you did with Bast.
Patrick McNeil: Yeah Perry made the rule, “no fluorescents”.
Brooklyn Street Art:Oh okay. Well it’s good to have that guidance.
Patrick McNeil: Yeah, we might sneak one in there.
Patrick McNeil: Then we were looking more at abstractions, breaking color groups up, pushing it really far.
Brooklyn Street Art:Yes that’s an unusual combination of the violet and the grey. It looks fresh.
Patrick McNeil: Yeah, it’s kinda switchin’ it up. We kind of like tweak things and leave them up for a while and then switch it out. It’s kind of interesting.
Even though the new book, their first, is coming out to mark the first 10 years that took them from Brooklyn streets to group shows, street art exhibitions, galleries, and museums around the globe, the creative partners are focusing right now on the work at hand. A decade of work, play, and planning together has created a shorthand of cues and patterns and symbols that makes their work move quickly without much strife or discussion. In the studio it’s equal parts industry and creativity – where real world dedication to process and structure adds a loose tension to the spirit of play.
Brooklyn Street Art:Are you both the leader? Or do you take turns being the leader? Is there one who just says “THIS is where we have to go!”
Patrick McNeil: It goes back and forth really.
Patrick Miller: It’s pretty rare when it is “This is the way it has to be and there is no room for discussion”
Brooklyn Street Art:So you don’t come to loggerheads?
Patrick McNeil: No, we’ve known each other since we were 14 so we’ve got a pretty good friendship.
The new block collages, or “wood paintings” started about a year ago and the artists introduced them at Cour Carrée du Louvre for the FIAC in Paris. With a loyal fanbase that hangs on their every print release and microsite revelation, the new pieces were an instant hit and complete success. The scale of pieces at that time seemed manageable and something you might carry as part of your luggage; however some of these new wood paintings for the Rubenstein show might well be snagged by Swoon for walls in one of her Konbit shelters.
Brooklyn Street Art:How do you achieve a sense of balance? You have the professional, personal,… family is growing.. How do you guys achieve a sense of balance regularly?
Patrick Miller: For one, we treat this like a pretty regular thing in the sense of working Monday through Friday, pretty much 9:30 to 6:00.
Brooklyn Street Art:So you have a schedule and a structure.
Patrick Miller: Yeah, so we have structure in that sense. It’s a business after all on some level, and it has to be thought of in that way too. I mean it’s tough some times when we have big shows going on and we’re traveling and trying to not be away from the kids for too long. But you know, I guess I never stopped to think about it. It was nice last year because Patrick and his wife had their second child and we had our first within a few weeks of each other, and so that worked out really well, in the sense of timing-wise. We were able to slow down a bit.
Brooklyn Street Art:You know I was just thinking about the blocks and interactivity. I wonder if you could make a piece where some of the blocks were free and the person who buys it could play with the blocks.
Patrick Miller: Hey, you’re really onto something!
Patrick McNeil: Let’s go upstairs.
Brooklyn Street Art:You’ve already thought of this!
We shuffle eagerly behind our hosts like hypnotized penguins out to the darkened hallway and up some stairs to a high security print room that is pristine and plum full of stuff that might make you cry – things they’ve collected, been gifted, or just like to entertain visitors with. They could drop names but the brothers Faile are more interested to show one of their newest inventions, a wooden tray of blocks that form a puzzle – well, six actually. The lo-tech games perfectly marry our current digital longing for interactivity and the latent one to become a Luddite.
Patrick Miller: (The puzzle boxes) kind of came up in Paris, so we just developed these pieces on the side totally on their own. Then we started thinking there are some situations and combinations that we really liked. Each one is printed on all six sides and you can manipulate it and play with it.
Brooklyn Street Art:Hours of endless pleasure! How do you prevent them from getting damaged?
Patrick McNeil: That’s just part of it.
Patrick Miller: I don’t think they’re going to get too damaged. They are already sanded and their meant to be touched. We’re actually making a site, because it’s really hard to show them.
Brooklyn Street Art:Have you thought of customization on the site so people can select options and order it?
Patrick: Yes we’ve thought of that but effectively you’d have tons of combinations.
Faile wood blocks at the studio (Photo @ Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art:Have you thought of doing an app for these so people can play with them?
Patrick: Yeah and that is something that may come out of it. The people that we work with… That would be a fun thing, as a little game. And it’s actually pretty simple because the navigation is just like ‘click’ and it turns it. It should be a fun little site. It’s been fun to do these little micro sites.
Brooklyn Street Art: Right, with a phone’s motion sensor you could roll the blocks around. Wow, you guys are on top of it.
This visit draws to an end with a promise to rejoin shortly before the show to see the progression. But before we go, the new book is placed with slight aplomb on the counter. The one and only copy they’ve received from the printer, we stare at it like cats at an aquarium. The splashy pink raging dog cover says the thing about Faile you might not notice on a casual tour; these guys are ferocious in their desire to succeed and have built a body of work to prove it.
Tentatively peeling back the pages of the book, we see that the first image is the simple stencil of a figure carrying a canvas with his back to you and the words “A Life”, their first name, across the top. Anyone stumbling home drunk through industrial Williamsburg in the late 90’s would remember what curiosity was sparked with this humblest of images scattered everywhere. Later they anagrammed it to form their current name.
Brooklyn Street Art:So “A Life” got converted to Faile, which is just the opposite of what you’ve done!
Patrick Miller: Yeah it was always kind of about growing from it and making the most of all your failures.
Brooklyn Street Art:Did you both design the book?
Patrick Miller: We worked on it with a friend of ours. It was such an undertaking. But it’s good. It’s definitely a pretty personal book in the way that it’s written, very friendly, an enjoyable read. It’s nice just to have the works on print.
Patrick McNeil: It’s nice to see the earlier work, and it’s nice to see how the process goes because it’s chronological as well.
Brooklyn Street Art:Who is going to have seen all of this stuff besides you two? Nobody.
Patrick Miller: It’s a nice way to put it together for yourself too, after 10 years of working on Faile it’s nice to have this.
In New York City, unlike London, Chicago, and San Francisco, the art on the streets has a longer run. Street Artists love to get up in New York and come from all over the world and the rest of the country for the experience of it. The city has plenty of walls and the artists know that if they are lucky to get up their pieces can stay there for weeks or even years without being disturbed. If the piece survives predators or the capricious moods of New York weather, time will add a natural depth to the art. These pieces don’t simply surrender their character, they aggregate it, eventually attaining an aura of invincibility.
Some stencils acquire an ore patina against the rusted metal that is a wonder to behold, a finish that decorative painters strive for years to achieve. Layers of paint begin to peel and give the art a sense of movement and life. Wheat-pastes that survive summer storms and winter Nor’easters are imbued with a new whimsical life as they curl, buckle, shred: starting their transformation and ultimate disappearance.
Street art is ephemeral but it can also be resilient; a metamorphosis that, when underway, is always fascinating and pleasure to see. We present here pieces that have endured many a storm and lived to tell a story.
RE:FORM SCHOOL is a group art exhibition and event series, bringing together hundreds of artists in New York City to send a loud message that the time has come to fix our ailing Public Education System.
Participating artists include: Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Chris Johanson, Jo Jackson, Maya Hayuk, Gary Baseman, Friends With You, HunterGatherer, iO Tillett Wright, Andrew Bannecker and over a hundred more.
The RE:FORM SCHOOL Gallery issues a visual call-to-action, with artists motivating public energy toward true education reform on a local, state and national level. Artists, grass roots activists, performers, celebrity guests, art collectors, musicians, public officials and the general public will display their works or show support at the RE:FORM SCHOOL Gallery in New York City. RE:FORM SCHOOL will be taking over the entirety of the recently closed St. Patrick’s School in SoHo, which is one of the oldest schools in Manhattan.
RE:FORM SCHOOL will be open to the public, Saturday, October 9th, 2010 through Monday, October 11th, 2010 between the hours of 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM and is located at 233 Mott Street, New York City, NY 10012
BRING TO LIGHT
NEW YORK CITY’S FIRST-EVER NUIT BLANCHE
A festival of light and projection art on the industrial waterfront of Greenpoint, Brooklyn
2010 October 2, Saturday
Dusk to Dawn
http://bringtolightnyc.org
DESCRIPTION
On October 2, from sunset to dawn, the streets of Greenpoint, Brooklyn will host Bring to Light, New York City’s first Nuit Blanche, an all-night public art festival begun in 1997 in Paris, Berlin and St. Petersburg that has spread to cities across the world. The New York festival takes place on the postindustrial edges of an area reawakened in recent years by the migration of young culturistas into a mostly Polish neighborhood, and the opening of many new boutiques, bistros, bars and nightclubs. The nearby East River waterfront remains largely industrial, undeveloped, and publicly inaccessible, but for one night, the skywalks, open courtyards, alleys and adjacent streets around the Greenpoint Terminal Market will be lit up with site-specific installations, projections, interactive media, street performances, and a late-night dance party.
Bring to Light features works by over 50 international artists, performers, and musicians spread over four blocks, inhabiting street corners, galleries, shops, rooftops, vacant lots and buildings,
with opening performances on Noble Street, installations and projections inside the American Playground (on Franklin and Noble), and events hosted by neighborhood businesses including furniture company From the Source, Gym Park gymnastics center, Fowler Arts Gallery, Hollywood Stunts, and film production spaces of Seret Studios. These spaces will act as sites for light, sound and unexpected installations, performances, and projections. The event will be broadcast live during a simultaneous Nuit Blanche event in Toronto.
North Brooklyn’s growing food culture will be represented by vendors curated by the Greenpoint Food Market. In conjunction with Bring to Light, all weekend during the day, Greenpoint Open Studios, now in its second year, will offer a chance to visit the converted factories and warehouses, apartments and galleries where local artists produce artwork in all media.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
This event is being organized by DoTank:Brooklyn and produced by Furnace Media in collaboration with community advocates, curators, writers, neighbors and designers. We are thrilled to bring this international tradition of a night-time arts festival to enliven public space around the Greenpoint Waterfront area, just as New Yorkers are rediscovering this historic waterfront and a burgeoning artist community is making its mark,” said the organizers.
DoTank is a public vessel for interdisciplinary exploration, engagement and enhancement of our urban environment through means outside of the formal urban planning process. We make rapid and meaningful change by exploring and testing in our laboratory: Brooklyn, NY.
Furnace Media is a New York City based film and design company founded in 2002 as a laboratory for innovative moving image media. Our work blends live-action filmmaking, re-mixed archival footage, and 3D computer graphics for performance venues outside of traditional movie theaters often in partnership with musicians (www.liveprojections.org) or as site-specific architectural installation.
LOCATION DETAILS
Noble Street between Franklin and West Streets, American Playground, and From the Source, 69 West Street, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Nearest subway stops: G train to Greenpoint Ave. or L train to Bedford Ave.
To learn more about this event and see the complete list of participating artists go to:
Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Daily Void, El Sol 25, Hebru, Homer, JMR, K-Guy, Loaf, OverUnder, Quel Beast, Radical, Tip Toe, Veng RWK, and Wizzard Sleeve
K-Guy Readies a Sign for the Pope
K-GUY has a commentary on the hypocritical practices of the Catholic Church with this piece enitled “See-No-Hear-No-Speak-No”, timed to coincide with The Pope’s visit to London.
To see more work of the above featured artists click on the artist’s links on the menu on the top, scroll down the list of artists to find the artist’s site you wish to visit.
Here is an image of how Specter did his sidebust spot-jock unwanted collaboration with Faile, who told us Thursday night they thought it was funny and well done. See more about Specter’s latest project here on Huffington Post. (image courtesy Stencil History X)
Two of the most popular Italian street artists will meet @MondoPOP gallery from Sept. 25 to present their new exhibition: VELENO (POISON)
Jb Rock & Diamond have worked with their interpretations of “poison”: lethal potion, sweet addiction that slowly destroys, charm and murder at the same time.
Diamond. Image Courtesy of the Gallery
The two street artists are well known in Italy and abroad for being away from the clichés of their genre, with artistic references to a taste that goes back to the wonderful women of Mucha or to the American pin-up, involving the manic precision in their amazing patterns and details that recall Art Nouveau’s artists as Horta. Even their tecnique is versatile: spray, ink, acrylic and even BIC pen.
JB Rock. Image Courtesy Of The Gallery
From 25th Sepetember MondoPOP’s gallery presents their work.
“Drugs are the real poison” for JB Rock, that portraits without criticism or condemnation the essence of modern icons.
“Love Filters” in Diamond: something that enchant and simultaneously destroys.
Canvas and paper painted with brushes and pens and dipped in poison, of course.
VELENO
http://www.mondopop.info/veleno/logo_drago.jpg
A shared solo show by Diamond and JB Rock,
from Sept 25th until Oct 20th 2010.
|||| David Vecchiato | Serena Melandri
|||| MondoPOP International Gallery/Art Shop of Rome
|||| via dei Greci 30
|||| 00187 Roma / Italy
|||| info@mondopop.it
||||
|||| www.mondopop.it
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
