August 2014

Here are all the details directly from the NUART PR team:

The ARTISTS

ANDRECO

Andreco. Belluno, Italy. (photo © Andreco)

Andreco is a multi-talented artist/scientist blend who splits his time between Bologna and New York City. His work brings an authenticity due to his Post. Doc research on green technologies for urban sustainability, where he collaborated with the School of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Bologna and the Columbia University of New York City. Andreco is an environmental engineer with a PHD specializing in sustainability which he uses in his murals describing the relationship between humans and nature as well as between the built environment and the natural landscape. Andreco varies his research between anatomy, urbanism, environmental sustainability, ecology and symbolism; At the base of this research he has begun exploring and creating new symbols in his work. Andeco’s art/science juxtapositions appear as many techniques from public installations to videos, to wallpaintings or drawings and he has been exhibited in numerous international museums, galleries, and festivals.

BORONDO

Borondo (photo Courtesy NUART)

Borondos’ stunning realistic paintings stems from his academic training from the Beaux-Artes. The young Italian artist is a master of a multitude of techniques to let the audience interact with his pieces, one favorite being where he scratches paint off of glass to let the light shine through. This gives his pieces an integrating effect that gives viewers a glimpse of what’s hidden on the inside of the work by looking at (and through) any given piece from the outside. He has a special fondness for utilizing empty   store windows in this way as they are inherintly interesting ‘canvases’ for this technique.

FRA.BIANCOSHOCK

Fra.Biancoshock. Milan, Italy. (photo © Fra.Biancoshock)

Fra.Biancoshock, the father and creator of ’emphemeralism’, lives and works in Milan, Italy. For years he worked, never questioning his motives or purpose in his creations or describing himself as an artist. As he began to dig deeper into the nature of his work it became clear that there was no perfect genre for his pieces to fit into – he uses both urban inclination, which is typical street art and a expressive process, which draws inspiration from the classical conceptual and perfomative arts. This is why he invented ephemeralism – for the purpose of producing works of art that must exist briefly in space but endlessly through photography, video, and media. Since the beginning of his journey Fra.Biancoshock has realized more than 450 works in the streets of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Malaysia and Singapore.

MARTIN WHATSON

Martin Whatson. Nuart 2013. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Norwegian born and based stencil artist Martin Whatson studied Art and Graphic Design at Westerdals School of Communication in Oslo. It was here he discovered stencils and the sprawling urban art scene. Being previously interested in graffiti and the development of street art he started his own production in 2004. In his work Martin Whatson searches for beauty in the easily dismissed, things that are commonly thought of as ugly, out of style or left behind. He has an interest for decay that manifests itself as inspiration from landscapes, older buildings, or soon to be demolished compounds. In this combination of contemporary versus decrepit he develops a unique style in creating either unity or conflict between materials and motives – like a wrinkled old lady on a shiny plate of aluminum. In the beginning he found inspiration from political backdrops, inspired by DOLK and Banksy, but since has found a more aesthetic and subtle taste.

MATHIEU TREMBLIN

Mathieu Tremblin (photo Courtesy NUART)

Mathieu Tremblin has a conceptual yet playful expression to his works. The French artist works under his concept of “Tag Clouds” where Tremblin re-makes tagged walls and areas by redesigning the names into fonts that are easily lebigle for the average viewer. His work mimics watermarks, that is, graphics to prevent image counterfeiting, by painting his fonts onto walls that are already tagged. By doing this he balances preserving the artist’s original intent, which is getting your mark out there, and cultivating it by forming a new aesthetic and quick to understand graphic representation.

STRØK

Strøk (photo Courtesy NUART)

Strøk is a Norwegian stencil artist that works dualistically under his own name, Anders Gjennestad, for studio work and Strøk for street work. He was born in Arendal in 1980 and currently splits his time between Oslo and Berlin. His stencils have incredible detail and through the multiple layers achieve a photorealistic representation that questions both our perception and perspective concurrently; His figures float across the walls  in a world where time is standing still. Strøk’s characters are often at play with the environment in which they are placed, carefully hung along rusted metal and decimated plaster or the decaying ruins of factory walls – He obviously has a love of tactile material. There is a sensation that his figures are in mid-movement, caught in a timeless moment between actions, and the tension this creates to the viewer creates an intimate experience not often found in the vast world of street art today.

JOHN FEKNER

John Fekner (photo Courtesy NUART)

John Fekner was ‘anonymously known’ in the 1970s for several hundred environmentally conceptual works consisting of words, symbols, and dates spray painted throughout the five boroughs of New York. These “Warning Signs” pointed out hazards and dangerous conditions that overtook New York City and its environment in the 70s. The project expanded into 1977 where Fekner created “Word-Signs”. Through hand cut cardboard stencils and spray paint he began a crusade that was tirelessly concerned with environmental and social issues. In the industrial streets of Queens and the East River bridges he began and continued to the South Bronx as late as 1980. His “messages” brought awareness to areas that were in desperate need of attention, whether through demolition or repairs. His labelization of these structures brought emphasis to the problems, where the objective was a shout to the authorities, agencies, and local communities to, above all, take action.

DOTDOTDOT

Dot Dot Dot (photo Courtesy NUART)

Dot Dot Dot is a pseudonym for an anonymous stencil artist from Norway. Following in the footsteps of Banksy and those before him, Dot Dot Dot prefers to remain anonymous. This is possibly due to both his long career in graffiti as well as the allure of mystery. What we do understand is that his prolific career started in 1997 in Oslo, where he was born. He has since operated under many pseudonyms but settled on Dot Dot Dot after succesfully shifting to a more conceptual and figurative style. He began focusing primarily on stencil work in 2007 and has gained notoriety in Norway for being one of the country’s leading street artists.

ETAM CRU

Etam Cru (photo Courtesy NUART)

Etam Cru is the polish artistic duo of Sainer and Bezt working together, equally, on everything from street art murals to more classical fine art oil paintings on canvas. They both graduated from the Fine Arts in Lodz and have since worked succesfully both separately and as a crew. Their phenomenal, illustrative large-scale murals can be seen all around the world.

ICY & SOT

Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy and Sot are two brother stencil artists from Tabriz Iran who currently reside in Brooklyn, NY. Since 2006 they have continued on their mission to break down pre-conceived notions of a fleeting Iranian tradition through their striking stencil artwork.  They have made awe-inspiring headway creating international buzz by any means necessary, both as skaters and artists, highlighting peace, war, society issues and human rights. The duo has done outdoor pieces in the streets of Iran, Turkey, Paris, San Francisco, New York and more as well as several exhibitions.

LEVALET

Levalet (photo Courtesy NUART)

French artist Levalet is best known for his life-sized ink drawings of human figures displayed around urban spaces which often utilize real objects such as books, umbrellas, cloth and, of course, natural objects from the chosen site for that particular piece. The French artist drafts and completes them first in his studio before heading to paste them onto walls strewn across the urban landscape.

SPY

Spy (photo Courtesy NUART)

Spy is a modern day surrealist who intervenes in urban environments. The Spanish artist transforms our perspetive of the everyday by replacing objects found in the public space. He does this by, for example, rearranging the existing layout of a site and swapping objects that do and don’t belong, and therefore challenges us to rearrange our own definition of normality and make us aware of how our perception defines our world. Through context, or lack of, he suggests new perspectives.

TILT

Tilt (photo Courtesy NUART)

Tilt, originally from Toulouse in South France, is an internationally recognized traditional graffiti artist. From a young age he learned his trade on the streets and on the trains. It was during this time he did his first tags on skateboards ramps in 1988 and has since come to define himself as a ‘graffiti fetishist’. The career that followed has been nourished by extensive travel. His inspirational journeys have seen Tilt leave his mark, whether through exhibitions or street pieces, as far and wide as the U.S.A,  Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Australia, India, New Zealand, Laos, Taiwan, China, Canada, Phillipines, Indonesia, and more than 12 countries in Europe alone.

M-CITY

M-City (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City, otherwise known as Mariusz Waras, is a Polish artist revered for his industrial, large-scale murals. M-City has worked on walls all around the world, including several trips to Nuart’s previous events and projects. One of Poland’s best known artists, his work involves hundreds of preciously cut stencils being pieced together to create an imagined cityscape filled to the brim with mechanical and industrial objects. His work is motivated by industrial areas and their surroundings where he takes inspiration from the factories, chimneys, cranes, hydroelectric plants, and other mechanized beasts that dominated his native town and childhood. His work is known to scale up to 85 meters long.

MAISMENOS

Maismenos (photo Courtesy NUART)

Viral, direct, incisive. ± (2005) is a unique project that intervenes in current social structures by reflecting on models of politics as well as social and economical organizations that dictate life. It begs us to question, above anything else, the social implications and consequences resulting from these structures, displaying programmatic expression streamlined to an equation of simplicity and opposites: black/white, positive/negative, more/less.

NUART FESTIVAL 2014

Opening date:
06.09 at 19:00

Exhibition period, Tou Scene:
07.09 – 10.12

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Friday 12.00 to 17.00
Saturdays and Sundays from 11.00 to 16.00
Closed Monday and Tuesday

NUART PLUS 2014 – PROGRAM

This year’s Nuart Plus program will tackle the two ends of the street art-continuum, namely “safe murals” on the one hand and street art and activism on the other. While activism was an essential part of the early street art scene, we have over the last decade or so seen a gradual gravitation towards council- and sponsor approved safe murals as the dominant form of street art.  Is this a development we should embrace as a natural development of the scene, or should it be vigorously contested? Do artists approach street art differently if they are doing legal, versus illegal work? Do artworks that are perceived as unsanctioned engage the viewer in a different way than art that are perceived as sanctioned? Are safe-murals and activist street art complements where the development of one reinforce the other, or are they substitutes that repress one another?

Over three days, the Nuart Plus-program will dig into these- and other exiting questions related to muralism, activism, and the tension between the two. By doing so, we hope to stimulate both audience and participants to reflect around which end of the continuum we believe street art should gravitate towards in the future, or if the scene really need to gravitate anywhere at all.

Thursday  4^th of September

21.00  FIGHT CLUB A.K.A. THE PUB DEBATE: Muralism vs. Activism: A Tag Team Battle

Team Captains, Evan Pricco (Juxtapoz Magazine) arguing on behalf of the contemporary mural art movement and writer Carlo McCormick, accusing in the name of activist art, will battle to inebriation as to which is the more valid public art form. Team Pricco will argue that the contemporary mural movement will undoubtedly have support from corporate interests because art is at its most popular, and that certain financial support is not a bad thing. Team McCormick will fight on behalf of the activist art, that the true nature of activist muralism is without corporate or institutional interest.

It may not be pretty, and it may not even make much sense, but in the end it will settle, once and for all, who indeed creates the true people’s art- those who make great paintings that edify the masses, or those who prefer to prod and provoke them to awareness.

In the spirit of collaboration, and the bloodlust of competition, Pricco and McCormick will assemble consensus-opinion based teams made up of artists, fellow critics, the citizens of Stavanger, or just people in the bar drunk enough to have already made up their minds. This pub debate promises to be the most uncompromising of all culture wars.

Friday 5^th of September

12.15-15.30  SEMINAR DAY 1: MURALISM

12.15-12.20 Welcome and Introduction

12.20-13.00 Andreco: Artist Presentation

13.15-13.50 Peter Bengtsen: “Street art, murals and public space as a site of exploration”

13.55-14.30 RJ Rushmore: “Art Ignites Change: Infiltrating the System to Promote Social Justice”

14.45-15.30 Panel
Moderator: Evan Pricco
Panelists: Andreco, Peter Bengtsen, RJ Rushmore, Jaime Rojo

16.00   FILM SCREENING:  CIDADE CINZA
The Scandinavian premiere of “Cidade Cinza”.                                                       

Synopsis: A new way of painting graffiti was born in Sao Paulo. Hip hop was replaced by Brazilian regional culture and OsGemeos’ crew works were spread to galleries around the world. However, a new visual pollution combat act made the City Hall cover their paintings in grey in their hometown.

19.00 BSA Film Friday LIVE

Short form video as a medium for storytelling is becoming more prevalent and important across all media and digital platforms today and BSA celebrates it every Friday with Street Art and graffit-inspired videos from many angles and many countries. Join Steve and Jaime from BSA and special guest RJ Rushmore from Vandalog as we explore some of the major themes that are being addressed today, some of most popular videos and our personal picks in this entertaining and educational show.

Saturday 6^th of September

12.15-15.30 SEMINAR DAY 2: STREET ART AND ACTIVISM

12.15-12.20 Welcome and Introduction

12.20-12.55 John Fekner: “Being There There Being”

13.00-13.20 Maismenos: Artist Presentation

13.30-14.05 Carlo McCormick : “The Torn-Off Head Stuck in the Hatch of a Sewer Drain, or the Occupation and Negation of Public Space”

14.10-14.45 Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo : “#activism on the Street Now”

Taking a cue from the techniques of the earlier generations of subverters and culture jammers, many of today’s Street Artists are combining the language and techniques of advertising and media to effectively advocate for a cause.  Others are doing it one small handmade piece at a time. Personal or global, activism and Street Art are alive and well and Harrington and Rojo give a multimedia sampling of the opinions being expressed.

15.00-15.45 Panel
Moderator: RJ Rushmore
Panelists:  Maismenos, Steven P. Harrington, Carlo McCormick, Mathieu Tremblin

12.00-15.00 WORKSHOP WITH ICY AND SOT

The two Iranian brothers Icy and Sot is invited to join Nuart Festival this year to make an artwork, but this Saturday they’re taking some hours off to teach children of all ages how to make a stencil piece from scratch.

15.45-17.00 STREET ART TOUR (meeting spot: Rogaland Kunstsenter)

Our talented Nuart guides talk about the artists, the ideas behind the artworks and other fun facts from the festival and working with street art. Displays artworks so fresh that the paint is hardly dry. Let’s just hope they’re done… Come join us and be the first to see what new artworks Stavanger has received in 2014!

16.oo FILM SCREENING:  CIDADE CINZA
Synopsis: A new way of painting graffiti was born in Sao Paulo. Hip hop was replaced by Brazilian regional culture and OsGemeos’ crew works were spread to galleries around the world. However, a new visual pollution combat act made the City Hall cover their paintings in grey in their hometown.

19.00 NUART-EXHIBITION OPENING (venue: Tou Scene)