January 2015

Here Is New York… Puddle Jumping and Snowbank Hopping

Here Is New York… Puddle Jumping and Snowbank Hopping

It’s been a rough week on the street, mainly for walking.

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

They lay there waiting for you, these murky masses of muddy mirth, lurking and winking under cover of blinking city lights and hundreds of reflections, still as ice, lying in wait, camouflaged as street. One must be vigilant not to fall for it, or into it. Newly arrived New Yorkers suffer a winter or two before getting the hang of jumping into the street without jumping into the path of a car or bike or a senior with a cane. We pine for the snowstorm and revel in the snow day – but once we have it, we don’t know what to do with it.

Remember that story a few years ago about the opera patron arriving at the Met who mistook slush for sidewalk and plunged her evening heels deep into a puddle of water, ice, snow, and trash? She froze, literally, and figuratively before the cameras. For New York ladies with pristine pedicures and strappy stilettos stepping into a puddle of street sherbert is most definitely not a Marilyn Minter moment.

But puddle jumping is not only a necessity for the sleekly shod.  New York is a pedestrian city and we are an army of millions – with all sartorial styles, statements, and puddle-hopping abilities.  Navigating the sidewalks after a heavy snowstorm requires dexterity, flexibility, caution and a healthy sense of good humor. You WILL do gymnastics. It WILL be dramatic. You WILL not always be glamorous or handsomely dashing. Just try to stay up!

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Manhattan, NYC. January 27, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

 

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BSA Film Friday: 01.30.15

BSA Film Friday: 01.30.15

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

Now screening :

1. Joe Caslin “Our Nation’s Sons”
2. Narcelio Grund: Ground Printer
3. Axel Void ASAP from TostFilms
4. Andaluz The Artist pays tribute to the late Robin Williams
5. Spaik: Video Mapping Toluca, Mexico.

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BSA Special Feature: Joe Caslin “Our Nation’s Sons”

A look at the many drawings Joe Caslin and his team installed throughout 2014 in his native Scotland. If you follow BSA a little, you may have seen a number of these pieces before, a social awareness campaign that addresses stereotyping and prejudice that all societies can relate to – the concept of “the other” is as old as the hills and as new as 2015. Caslin says the spoken word piece was written specifically for the project by Ms. Erin Fornoff.

 

Narcelio Grund: Ground Printer

 The latest invention from Narcelio Grud encircles you with rainbows. His creativity and imagination never is exhausted, even when the paint runs out.

 

Axel Void ASAP from TostFilms

Axel Void visited Puerto Rico a couple of weeks ago and did this painting of a boxer – a local hero, based on an old photograph. TostFilms created this brief and and effective stop action film to record it.

Andaluz The Artist pays tribute to the late Robin Williams

 Andaluz calls it “comically colorful”, his portrait of the comedian and actor Robin Williams, who passed away in the last year.

Spaik: Video Mapping Toluca, Mexico.

 Mexican muralist and Street Artist Spaik also is an animator and he helped to create an enormous animated show for an enthralled audience using video image mapping and historic buildings in Toluca.

 

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Bogotá : A Liberal Approach To Art Creates Exceptional Street Culture

Bogotá : A Liberal Approach To Art Creates Exceptional Street Culture

Thanks to a globalism of culture, many cities around the world have sprouted vibrant Street Art scenes – including today’s focus, Bogotá, Columbia. Far more open to expression than many cities, Bogotá has become a tolerant and welcoming place for artists on public walls, with the mayor actually agreeing and decreeing that graffiti and street art are a form of valued artistic expression, as long as you lay off the statues and City Hall. The government even gives grants for some painting, and political and social protest on walls goes a little further than you might expect. As part of a personal tour of Columbia in the last couple of months, occasional BSA contributor Yoav Litvin travelled to Bogotá and met a couple of artists who told him about the scene there.
 
 
by Yoav Litvin

We arrived at the Bogotá airport in the evening. For convenience sake, we took a cab from the airport to our accommodation in the heart of La Candelaria, an area of town known for its museums, beautiful architecture and street art. I knew Bogotá was going to be as special as far as its street art scene. I just did not know yet how incredible it was going to be.

My introduction to Bogotá street art and graffiti was the highway from the airport into town, aka Calle 26—it was completely BOMBED. When I say bombed I mean there was not a single space free of art on the walls or tunnels of the highway for miles on end. The beautiful graffiti and street art along with countless tags adorning the walls made me feel like a kid in a candy store. Immediately I knew Bogotá was going to be special, a heaven for street art and graffiti.

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Stink Fish. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

During my visit I was fortunate to meet two very active local artists: DJ LU (aka Juegasiempre), otherwise known as the “Bogotá Banksy” and CRISP, an Aussie transplant that has made the city his home. They were courteous and answered some of my questions.

Yoav Litvin: What makes the street art and graffiti scene so unique in Bogotá? Please discuss the political background in Bogotá in particular and Colombia in general and some policies (legality etc.) that influence the great diversity of work on the streets. What’s special here?
DJ LU: Bogotá’s treasure is its diversity, in every sense. It has very eclectic architecture, interesting places, and is extremely multiracial. Urban expressions are not the exception; here you can find murals, tagging, hip hop graffiti, paste ups, stickers, characters, lettering and stencil work among others. Bogotá is an ideal playground for public expression. First of all, its urban structure is patchy making it ideally suited as far as context; there are many residual spaces, remnants of highway constructions, parking lots and abandoned structures.

Second, the legislation is tolerant, so unless you are engaged in a very clear act of vandalism you won’t have a problem with the law. Residents are also becoming familiar with the practice so there is tolerance from the local population.

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Toxicomano . Unknown .  DJ LU .  Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

CRISP: Bogotá is one of the most exciting, underrated and prolific urban art scenes on the planet. This is due to a combination of several factors, which have created a melting pot of creativity and expression. Firstly, there is a long history of civil unrest, inequality and injustices in Colombia that make street art and graffiti a potent form of expression and protest for the people.

It actually has the longest running civil war in the world, over half a century of bloodshed!

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Toxicomano . DJ LU . Lesivo . Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

Secondly, it has a very tolerant legal approach to urban art compared to most other cities in the world. It’s not technically illegal but “prohibited”, which provides a unique situation where grafiteros can take their time and paint in broad daylight. That said, an artist still needs to be cautious of police depending on the type of street art you are doing and due to police history of brutality.

Thirdly, Colombia has a rich resource of inspiration: its people, music, food, indigenous cultures, animals and plants from the Pacific, Andes, Amazon and Caribbean! This complex mix of factors makes Bogotá’s urban art scene truly unique.

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DJ LU Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

Yoav Litvin: What motivates you in your work? Please discuss how your work is an expression of your development within the scene in Bogota.
DJ LU: My work is motivated by reality. I’m interested in making people aware–through art–of lots of situations that affect us as a society. The first project I started with on the street is the Pictogram project. It is based on semiotics and sign language. As it proposes very simple designs it is intended to relay a message immediately. In this project I have designed more than 60 pictograms that I have put up all over Bogotá and many other cities around the world in stencil form, stickers and paste ups.

Afterwards came the Street Pride project in which I took photographs of anonymous people whose appearance I found aesthetically interesting and who were interacting with the public space and I used them as models for my work. I believe that advertisements and the media in general are fabricating idols for the people to follow and to speed up consumerism. I want to make the invisible visible, to bring attention to anonymous people who construct our street culture.

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 Crisp. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

CRISP: I’ve always expressed myself through art from a very young age. In terms of street art I was a late bloomer. Despite an interest and curiosity in urban art, It was only when I came to Bogota that I truly became a street artist! I met grafitero friends here who encouraged me to put my artwork up in the street. Street art has shown me that it’s important that our public spaces aren’t controlled and dictated solely by councils, corporations, marketing companies, and formal art institutes.

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Toxicomano. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

Yoav Litvin:  How do you see the future of street art and graffiti in Bogota?
DJ LU: I believe that the progress of street art and graffiti is determined by a lot of factors: legal issues, trends, politics and economics. Graffiti and street art are trendy now in Bogotá, and this will most likely decrease. At that point only the ones that are doing it for real will keep working outside.

CRISP: The huge changes I’ve witnessed since 2001 through 2008 until the present are phenomenal. Bogota’s urban art has exploded in terms of quality and quantity. Everywhere you look, walk and drive, you see some form of creativity and expression on nearly every block in the city!

Mostly it is grass roots, passion-driven and totally devoid of the more corporate, council and gallery-organized and funded “street art” you see in many other cities in the world. In the near future I see many talented Colombian artists finally getting the recognition, support and ability to share their work with a wider international audience they deserve. Ironically this point isn’t important to many grafiteros here.

It’s the way of life, the friends, the culture, pure expression, fun, connecting with the public and the happiness this connection with the street brings that’s most important! In the future Bogota will be known as an urban art mecca but for all the right reasons!

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Lesivo. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

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Guache. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

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Stinkfish. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

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APC . Stinkfish . FCO . Temor. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

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Praxis. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

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Frank Salvador . Sur Beat. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

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Bastardilla wheatpaste afloat beneath a handful of dripping tags. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

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Bastardilla. Detail. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

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El Pez. Bogota, Colombia. (photo © Yoav Litvin)

 

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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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Skiing Cities of Serenissima : Swoon Vessels in the Snowy Woods

Skiing Cities of Serenissima : Swoon Vessels in the Snowy Woods

Swoon has sent her vessels out to the countryside to reunite with the soil and trees.

Most art conservators and archivists make it their business to preserve a piece for posterity. Once art is created and collected it can be a vexing task for estates and institutions to make provisions enabling art to outlive the artist and it’s caretakers for decades, generations, even centuries.

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon’s iconic rafts, or boats, or ships, or vessels of fantasy, however you may call them – these floating statues created for communal waterfaring made of discarded materials, cut paper, hand paint, gossamer sails and dreams are now completing their mission here in the snowy foothills, their recycled lives continuing their voyage back into the earth, not preserved for the ages.

Only last summer you could see these vessels in Submerged Motherlands, a record-setting exhibition at Brooklyn Museum that featured these rafts made of salvaged materials that once sailed on the direction of a rotating crew of captains and dreamers down the Missippi from Minneapolis to New Orleans, down the Hudson River and East River in New York, across the Adriatic from Slovenia to Italy to arrive shimmering and victorious at the Venice Biennial at night.

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Maybe it is because most people don’t have space enough to store a once-sea-worth D.I.Y. raft, maybe it’s because Street Artists are accustomed to their work being worn down and destroyed by the elements, or perhaps it is a philosophical outlook that recognizes that life and death are part of one cycle.

Swoon decided the final docking place for these vessels would be this wooded area away from the city and nested in by birds, trod upon by deer, eventually covered by moss. On the day we hiked here the smallest field mouse, no bigger than the palm of your hand, darted out from under a rudder onto the snow for a few feet, looked at us and quickly ran back into a hole so small as to be nearly imperceptible, submerged.

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

When they were in use, these were near mythical conglomerations of sculpture, performance, shelter, community, fantasy, inner-fighting, lovemaking, maritime exploring, … untethered and in a sort of extended state of disbelief apart from the codified rhythms of a time-obsessed age on land.

When they stood still in the museum, stately and under-lit by a wallowing blinkering light meant to emulate water and moonlight, they began to take on a certain sense of lore and fantasy, a rallying point for the eclectic alumni who gathered there for music and word performances, reunion, reflecting and revisiting their common history.

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Here in these snow-quieted woods these rafts are at peace, still showing the signs of human activity but instead of exploring they are ready to be explored, open fantasies discovered in children’s play, inviting sparrows and chicadees and finches to fly through, an inhabitant of the terrestrial, each year more a part of it.

If there is a cycle that Swoon is honoring by allowing these vessels to float back to the land, she will tell us in due time, or not. Like many artists she is not going to ruin some stories that you’ll make but allow individual interpretation of her art in context, and here is a new one.

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

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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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Don Rimx and BSA at Brooklyn Museum : You With Markers in Hand (VIDEO)

Don Rimx and BSA at Brooklyn Museum : You With Markers in Hand (VIDEO)

BSA continues to bring artists to the street wall, to the gallery, and to the museum whenever we can. The video here today captures one of the recent opportunities we had to help bring together Brooklyn Museum goers with one of Brooklyn’s hometown graffiti & street artists Don Rimx.

Just for one night in the grand ballroom of the museum, Rimx invited anyone with a marker to help fill in the color on his new kneeling figure on the temporary wall. Comprised of a complex series of trussing, supports, and various architectural abutments Rimx explained that the materials depicted represented both those he has seen in Brooklyn and Puerto Rico, places close to his heart and personal history.

(Check out the new video by Alex Seel at the end of these photos.)

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Don Rimx. Still from the video. (Video © Alex Seel)

We helped with the markers, initially to color in some of the paper mural ourselves, then to hand them out to guests of all sorts – moms, dads, grandparents, teens, students, graff writers, professionals, workers, – basically everyone who makes up the community here, even New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito and the Brooklyn Museum’s Managing Curator of Exhibitions, Sharon Matt Atkins.

It was excellent to see people accessing their inner artist and participating in the interactive piece while just behind it hung more classical examples of oil paintings and before us were couples taking live salsa lessons across the ballrooms’ glass and marble floor (it was Latino Heritage and Culture night after all).  We always say that Street Art is just one part of a conversation on the street. Seeing our neighbors taking an active role in creating art with one of New York’s talented street artists is just a confirmation that the creative spirit is alive and well to anyone who wants to access it.

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Don Rimx. Still from the video. (Video © Alex Seel)

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Don Rimx. Still from the video. (Video © Alex Seel)

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Don Rimx. Still from the video. (Video © Alex Seel)

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Don Rimx. Still from the video. (Video © Alex Seel)

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Don Rimx. Still from the video. (Video © Alex Seel)

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Don Rimx. Still from the video. (Video © Alex Seel)

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Don Rimx. Still from the video. (Video © Alex Seel)

Don Rimx at The Brooklyn Museum. Video by Alex Seel

 

We wish to extend our heartfelt gratitude to the Brooklyn Museum, Alex Seel and of course to Don Rimx.

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Sneak Peek “Concrete to Data” at Steinberg Museum

Sneak Peek “Concrete to Data” at Steinberg Museum

Curator and artist Ryan Seslow has pulled off an overview of art on the streets and the practices employed, minus the drama. So much discussion of graffiti, Street Art, and public art practice can concentrate on lore and turf war, intersections with illegality, the nature of the “scene”, shades of xenophobia and class structures; all crucial for one’s understanding from a sociological/anthropological perspective.

“Concrete to Data”, opening this week at the Steinberg Museum of Art on Long Island, gives more of the spotlight to the historical methods and media that are used to disseminate a message, attempting to forecast about future ways of communicating that may effectively bridge the gap between the physical and the virtual.

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Joe Iurato. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Seslow has assembled an impressive cross section of artists, practitioners, photographers, academics, theorists, and street culture observers over a five-decade span. Rather than overreaching to exhaustion, it can give a representative overview of how each are adding to this conversation, quickly presenting this genre’s complexity by primarily discussing its methods alone.

Here is a sneak peek of the the concrete (now transmitted digitally); a few of the pieces for the group exhibition that have gone up in the last week in the museum as the show is being installed.

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Chris Stain. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Cake. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Lady Pink at work on her mural. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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John Fekner. Detail of his stencils in place and ready to be sprayed on. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Henry Chalfant. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Billy Mode. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Oyama Enrico. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Col Wallnuts. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

CONCRETE to DATA will be exhibited at the Steinberg Museum of Art, Brookville, NY January 26th 2015 – March 21st 2015.

Opening Reception – Friday, February 6th  2015 6PM -9 PM 

Follow the news and events via – http://concretetodata.com

Follow @concretetodata on Instagram – #concretetodata

Curated by Ryan Seslow@ryanseslow

Museum Director – Barbara Appelgate

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BSA Images Of The Week: 01.25.15

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.25.15

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Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring $howta, 2tude, Art is Trash, Chilly Pete, City Kitty, Damon, Dough the Thug, LMNOPI, Mr. One Teas, Sean9Lugo, and Sweet Toof.

Top Image >> Sweet Toof (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Mr. OneTeas….speaking of sweet toof… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Doug Tha Thug and Chilly Pete…a post card from Brooklyn… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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2tude (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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$howta (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Artists Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Art Is Trash (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Artist Unknown. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Damon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Sean9Lugo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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LMNOPI (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Untitled. From The Gate Keepers series. Chelsea, NYC. January 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

 

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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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“Slaves ‘R’ Us” : Advertising, Propaganda, and SEBS in Lisbon

“Slaves ‘R’ Us” : Advertising, Propaganda, and SEBS in Lisbon

The power of advertising and propaganda is undisputed, whether it is for toothpaste or war. We are being acted upon daily by people who would like us to do (or not do) something.  Usually it is to give money for a product or service, but more than ever it is to stand by and allow bombs to fall or laws to be eroded.

Artists have been parodying the methods of advertisement and our willingness to be swayed by it almost since it began, perhaps as a way of alerting us of the deleterious effects of unthinking consumerism in general, or to give us the tools to comprehend and analyze the methods that are effectively driving our behavior.  Invariably, our actions as individuals, citizens, and consumers are all folded into the critique.

 
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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

But whether it is the illustrated stickers of Wacky Packages  or the cereal killers and billboard takeovers of Ron English, many artists have found that humor and irony are effective ways to sweeten the lampoon of advertisers and our complicity – a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, as Mary Poppins sang.

Street Artist Mauro Carmelino, who writes SEBS as his moniker, recently completed an entire campaign of his own that questions many things we do and wonders if we are even aware of the lines between citizenry and consumerism we traverse these days.

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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

Entitled “Slaves ‘R’ Us”, this series of handmade works are on the walls of Ajuda, a civil parish in the municipality of Lisbon, Portugal. Bright and simple designs that are cheerful enough, even if they belie a less pleasant series of questions for pondering.

“Democracy, the environment, freedom, security, employment and corporatism are all portrayed as products of a ‘Progress’ that seems to reach the expiration date,” he says as he describes the various elements in the campaign. In Carmelino’s view, our free will is seriously in question today.  “We look back to past societies and feel we came a long way. Did we? Are we free when all our lives can be crunched into zeros and ones, somewhere on a server in California?”

The work looks welcoming and cartoonish on these aged walls and buildings, and if the artists intentions are realized, his greater messages will have an affect on the mind of the viewer. It helps that some of the locations of the walls provides a bit of context, like the silo-shaped building that has a warning about cow milk, “Some of these are inspired by the personal stories of people or are somehow related to the intervened walls,” says the artist.

Special thanks to the artist for providing these exclusive photos for BSA readers.

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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

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SEBS, or Mauro Carmelino in Lisbon, Portugal. (photo © Mauro Carmelino)

 

 

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BSA Film Friday: 01.23.15

BSA Film Friday: 01.23.15

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

Now screening :

1. Narcelio Grud Mixes Cement and Sprays It
2. BIKISMO Chrome Dog in Wynwood
3. Horfée on a Roof Top in Paris:
4. Graff ADOR – DOOM – DOOM
5. HEGO: Magnetic Street Art in Sydney

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BSA Special Feature: Narcelio Grud Mixes Cement and Sprays It

Narcelio Grud and “Chaupixo” brings us back into the inventive mind of this experimenter – now hand pumping a slurry of colored concrete over a stencil pattern. The results are solid!

 

BIKISMO Chrome Dog in Wynwood via TOSTFILMS

Yo Dog! Did you catch this big silvery one by Bikismo this year at the Jose De Diego middle school? So fresh, so real!

Check out MTO and “The Wynwood Family” from earlier this week on BSA.

 

Horfée’s Roof Top in Paris:

Graff writer as illustrator using a plain black aerosol spray the way another artist uses brush and ink or marker. It’s a purposeful unveiling of the image on this Parisian rooftop that reveals a slumping pileup of forms and misshapen exasperation that ranks Horfée as one of the best. Check out the nimble can control and ease of line. Oof!

 

Graff ADOR – DOOM – DOOM

Graffitist and prolific illustrator Ador uses the side of this building for a short animation which we cannot understand but may remind you of your childhood if your father was an angry drunk.

 

HEGO: Magnetic Street Art

Some people just have that touch, that magnetism about them. Same goes with art in the streets. Sydney based HEGO shows and tells about his personal street art project that encourages people to pick it up and re-display it somewhere else in the city.

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Fra. Biancoshock Tags “Toy” in Milan

Fra. Biancoshock Tags “Toy” in Milan

Maybe it’s just us, but Milan-based Fra. Biancoshock appears to deliberately flummox and beguile with his public interventions and performances: messing with security cameras, staging public funerals for countries with actors and a coffin, installing “flying garbage” bags near sidewalk cafes, providing sheets of bubble wrap for you to pop while waiting for the bus, installing a closed loop red carpet in a public square, and of course painting a large swastika made of Facebook logos.

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Fra Biancoshock. “Pulpits” Italy. January 2015. (photo © courtesy of Fra Biancoshock)

Today we find him openly dissing a graffiti writer’s work with a stencil, violating at least a few street “rules” that would seem to cross most national boundaries as they pertain to the Street Art and graffiti continuum.

  1. he goes directly on top of someone else’s work

  2. he calls them a name that means they have no style and do subpar work, among many additional interpretations

  3. he exacerbates the much discussed beef on the street in many cities between some graffiti writers and Street Artists – by putting a stencil directly on top of an aerosol piece.

Does Fra. Biancoshock have an explanation aside from wanting to get himself into a fight? He presents his action as a sociology experiment whereby he puts a spotlight on subcultural conventions that are being caught in a seachange of definitions, roles, and meaning thanks to a flooding of new participants onto the street – and that dang Internet that continues to rock and re-form so many scenes.

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Fra Biancoshock. “Pulpits” Italy. January 2015. (photo © courtesy of Fra Biancoshock)

“I know that this work can be misunderstood and that many people/artists may get angry about this work and its direct message,” he says. “For me this is just a provocative action which emphasizes that we are currently in a period of confusion between graffiti, stencil, muralism, street art and more. People entering the conversation are making false equations between these disciplines, and there are a lot of uniformed and competitive attitudes coming into play. In my opinion graffiti is graffiti, stencils are stencils and there is not war between methods because they are two different worlds, and graffiti does not belong to the same world as street art so there is no need to equate the two.”

“And now people are loving murals because they are pretty, because they decorate buildings. But most of these people don’t realize that much of today’s mural scene is a consequence of a previous period of graffiti – in fact every stencil or muralist is born thanks to the graffiti world. Ironically, graffiti is not a vogue right now; it’s vandalism, it’s for toys.”

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Fra Biancoshock. “Pulpits” Italy. January 2015. (photo © courtesy of Fra Biancoshock)

While you may agree with many of his points, it is hard to explain how this direct cross-out of another guys work is acceptable. We think he means to capture an attitude that he sees and to critique it – namely he wants to illustrate a false battle that denigrates graffiti writing and elevates Street Art.

And for the record, he says that doesn’t know Falt, the writer he has just gone over.

“So, I want to emphasize my personal apology to Falt for creating this piece without permission…I don’t know Falt. I simply found his piece in an abandoned area and I decided to make my intervention on it. I don’t consider Falt a toy and I don’t consider anyone a toy actually because I think that is not important what the style of letters or the location of the graffiti. I appreciate them all because I think that every graffiti piece is a moment of communication. Excuse me Falt!”

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Fra Biancoshock. “Pulpits” Italy. January 2015. (photo © courtesy of Fra Biancoshock)

 

We hope that clears things up, but it probably doesn’t. Stay tuned to see if Fra. Biancoshock gets his head smacked by a writer who does not care for his conceptual ideation.

 

 

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50 Ways to Map The City, Per Street and Graffiti Artists

D.I.Y. Cartography in the Rawest Section of Somerset

Street Art is intrinsically bound with its neighborhood and location in a city. Context and placement are key, establishing its relation to a place. So when a Street Artist is asked to create art about mapping a place, it is fascinating to see how they perceive it and with what manner and medium they present it.

In a new exhibition opening in London this month, the time honored study and practice of cartography ventures into the conceptual as well as the physical, and we find that for many artists the street is as much about poetry and perception as it is about aerosol and wheat-pasted paper.

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Petro’s sculpture on the left with Gasisus sculpture on the right.  Aryz, Ron English, Malarko, Augustine Kofie, on the background wall. Filippo Minelli on the right wall. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

“Mapping the City”, now going up at the Somerset House presents the work of 50 artists whose roots lie in creating work for the urban space, one defined by paved streets configured by planners and traversed by citizenry. More than this the artists here broaden the job description of cartographer to one who captures energy, movement, emotion, imagined storylines and life paths.

With ubiquitous smart phones at the ready we increasingly find that mapping the world has become a given, removing some of its mystery. The tracking of GPS is joined by the physically surveying Google machine and countless public/private war/profit apparatus that have been loosed across and above the skin of the globe to trace all roads and streets, quantify topography, measure depths – even gauge the volume of rivers and density of forests.

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Installation process shot. Gasius sculpture on the foreground. Installers working on Petros’ sculpture. Aryz, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Malarko, Augustine Kofie, Shantell Martin, Husk MitNavn on the background wall. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

And then there are the people. “The city is a living entity,” says Rafael Schacter, curator of the show from the arts organization A(by)P, who sees the city as something far more than a clever configuration of lines. “The city changes every day, every hour of the day. It is constantly modifying itself. And it is fully alive in the way it reacts and responds to our actions. It is endlessly fascinating in the same way humans are. They can be exhausting, they can be destructive. But they contain endless possibilities too.”

It’s this same immersion into street life that draws artists to create in public, and knowing how to accept and embrace its evolution is what brings the veterans back. MOMO literally painted many streets in one continuous line that formed the letters of his nom de la rue in a 2006 tag that spread across the bottom of New York’s central island and it is presented as a map in this show.

Brooklyn Street Art: One of the artists in your show, MOMO, created an enormous tag in Manhattan – although it was only legible when the route was retraced upon a map. Is he crazy?
Rafael Schacter: He is crazy. A crazy genius. Although you still can see the marks he made on the streets of Manhattan years after he painted it! He recently re-walked the route and re-mapped the existing line. As I said; Crazy. Genius.

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MOMO “Tag Manhattan” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

“Retracing the tag line was cool,” MOMO tells us. “What I noticed is how much new sidewalk cement has gone in a lot of the line was eaten up by that,” he says, observing that a city is anything but static and often regenerative. “It is interesting how quickly a city replaces all of its cells,” he remarks about the ongoing repaving that characterizes the city. Were there more changes MOMO noticed in the 7 years between tagging? Yes. “Other stuff, like all the shiny new developments that are making Manhattan look like a mall.”

While there are some commonalities among the selected artists who are participating in this project, there is quite a variety of approaches to the street, as Schacter invited Street Artists, graffiti artists, public artists, designers, painters, illustrators, and billboard jammers. He says the multiplicity of interpretation was an intentional decision.

“For us, the most important thing was to have the whole range of artists we love and who are producing work in the public sphere included in the exhibition. As such, and as you say, it really is a very wide variety of artists, from graffiti bombers to conceptual artists, from muralists to urban explorers. With all of them, however, the crucial element within their practice is the public sphere, the richness of the city and urban space. This is the line that goes through all of their work, even if they may at first seem widely different.”

 

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 Chu. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Chu, an Argentine Street Artist and muralist whose colorfully painted four paneled abstraction remixes and jumbles the lines and shapes and removes all text, his map is meant to communicate the kinetic nature of street life. “I tried to create a map of Buenos Aires marking my usual movements around the city. I am used to moving around it a lot, from one side to other, and sometimes it is really chaotic and stressful. However it is also really where I get a lot of inspiration.”

A viewer of Chu’s graphic representation may be reminded of map making software and apps – possibly because of his graphic design training and his work as an animation director and illustrator in the digital sphere. He says that his digital art experience has grafted onto his vision of the physical street, “especially because I am working with layers and some of my choices of shapes come from that experience.”

Even as a painter, you can see the influence of the digital design world in Chu’s map. He says that when he thinks of city streets, he does see in his mind an aerial view of them from up above, but there is much more.

“My artwork for the exhibition is a kind of aerial abstract view of the city,” says Chu, “When trying to understand the city street more mentally, I believe today, it is something more complex than it was before. It is like some kind of constellation or hypertext thing that grows up in all directions, with axis and tons of layers.”

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CHU “Buenos Aires” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Housed in a section of Somerset House that has been closed off from the public for 150 years, the new exhibit is also its first and most visitors will never have hiked through the still unpolished space. It seems like the perfectly shabby cream-colored raw environment that graff writers and Street Artists might feel comfortable making art for. “It’s in the process of happening,” says Schacter as the team moves around him and up ladders to place the maps and straddle patches of exposed wall. According to Rafael, even the ceilings of the 18th century rooms are being restored to their original splendor, “with Yak Hair in the plaster!”

Brooklyn Street Art: Will people need to follow a map to find this show in the new wing of the Somerset House?
Rafael Schacter: Ha! Kind of. Our space hasn’t currently even got a name as it’s so new – and so old at the same time. We’re going to make big wooden arrows to make it clear but we kind of hope people get lost too, and then eventually find us!

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Detail of Gasius sculpture on the foreground. LA artist Cali Thornhill De Witt displays his flag pieces in the background. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

Brooklyn Street Art: Not all participants strictly adhered to the realm of cartography in the conception or execution of their map. Brad Downey appears to have drawn a face. Imagine what you would have gotten if this was a show about clouds.
Rafael Schacter: You’re right – the responses to our call for work has been super super varied. But that’s exactly what we wanted – that variety of work. We didn’t want just one understanding of the call, which was simply “map your space”.  Brad’s work is about finding visuals within maps, whilst others have tried to find maps within visuals! It is all simply about a different appreciation of space from the one we see in the top down, topographic, scientific standard.

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Brad Downey. Face (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

The Brooklyn Street Artist Swoon contributed one of her iconic images of a woman whose entire form is filled with what appears to be kutis and stilt houses along winding streets from top to bottom. Based on the Thai capital Bangkok, it is an example of the inner world Swoon is known for creating, reflective of a character’s history.

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Installation process shot. Swoon. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Brooklyn Street Art: It is always interesting to see a Swoon portrait that contains the city and the streets within the body of the subject, isn’t it?
Rafael Schacter: There’s a great quote from Swoon about her work being about the desire to more carefully examine the “relationship of people to their built environment”. Her work here is a prime example of this, a work in which the body and the city become inexorably intertwined – the experience, as she says, “of becoming part of the fabric of the city” visually mapped out.

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Installation process shot. Chu, Isaurao Huizar, Swoon and Mike Ballard. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about the film/s you have discovered and will be showing that fall in with the theme of map-making?
Rafael Schacter: The films we’re going to be showing are by a filmmaker named Marc Isaacs. They’re both set in London, both exploring the lives of “ordinary” Londoners. It is a very bottom-up, grass roots understanding of people’s lives.  That is exactly what we’re looking to do in the show – to explore the subjective and the hidden nature of the city.

Brooklyn Street Art: Who will be doing an artist talk about the project?
Rafael Schacter: We’re really excited about this. Our artist talk will be featuring Eltono, Filippo Minelli and Caleb Neelon. Again, a real diversity of artists and a diversity of backgrounds. Each of them have a great understanding of the public sphere and we’re excited to see what they will present.

Brooklyn Street Art: Given worldwide mapping and its ubiquity on devices we must ask this: In the future, will it be possible to get lost?
Rafael Schacter: I hope so! As the artist Itso said, and I paraphrase, true places can never be mapped.

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Installation process shot. El Tono working on his sculpture. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

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El Tono. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

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Installation process shot. Herbert Baglione on the right. El Tono on the left with EGS on the background room. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

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Installation process shot. Remed. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

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Installation process shot. Sixe Paredes on the left. Filippo Minelli on Center. Remed and OX on the right background room. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

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Installation process shot. Detail of Filippo Minelli’s map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

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Sixe Paredes with Detail of Filippo Minelli’s map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

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Detail of Cleo Peterson map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

 

“Mapping The City” Opens tomorrow for the general public at Somerset House in London, UK. Click HERE for schedule of events, hours, directions and other details.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

108 (Italy) Aryz (Spain)
Augustine Kofie (USA) Boris Tellegen (The Netherlands)
Caleb Neelon (USA) Cali Thornhill Dewitt (USA)
Chu (Argentina) Cleon Peterson (USA)
Daniel K. Sparkes (UK) Egs (Finland)
Ekta [Daniel Götesson] (Sweden) Eltono (France)
Erosie (The Netherlands) Filippo Minelli (Italy)
Gold Peg (UK) Graphic Surgery (The Netherlands)
Herbert Baglione (Brazil) Honet (France)
Horfee (France) HuskMitNavn (Denmark)
Ian Strange [Kid Zoom] (Australia) Interesni Kazki (Ukraine)
Isauro Huizar (Mexico) Isaac Tin Wei Lin (USA)
James Jarvis (UK) Jurne (USA)
Ken Sortais [Cony] (France) Les Frères Ripoulain (France)
Lucas Cantu (Mexico) Lush (Australia)
Malarko (UK) Martin Tibabuzo (Argentina)
Mike Ballard (UK) MOMO (USA)
Nano4814 (Spain) Nug (Sweden)
OX (France) Pablo Limon (Spain)
Petro (UK) Remed (France)
Remio (USA) Roids (UK)
Ron English (USA) Russell Maurice (UK
Shantell Martin (UK) Shepard Fairey (USA)
Sixe Paredes (Spain) Susumu Mukai (Japan)
Swoon (USA) Tim Head (UK)
Vova Vorotniov (Ukraine) Will Sweeney (UK)

 

Mapping the City
22 January – 15 February 2015
Somerset House, New Wing
Admission: Free

Contemporary cartographic art by international street and graffiti artists to be the first exhibition in Somerset House’s recently opened New Wing

 

 

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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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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

 
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MTO and “The Wynwood Family”

MTO and “The Wynwood Family”

Street Artist and muralist MTO spent the entire month of December in Miami. Sounds terrible right? The photo realistic painter also brought his family – or maybe you would say he left them.

“The whole project is called ‘The Wynwood Family (2014)’,” he tells us, and in customary MTO fashion he is using his art to put forth his opinion on socio-political matters.

The mother, father, and son are each rendered in stark black, white, and red – each are visually arresting and effective for different reasons.  MTO tells us a little about the background for each of these, and you’ll have to figure out the rest. Suffice to say he’s not throwing compliments around very freely.

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MTO “The Son: No Art For Poor Kids” Wynwood, Miami. December 2014. (photo © MTO)

The son resides on the side of a school just north in the Wynwood District, the well known arts hub that has been visited by international Street Artists over the last decade, primarily during the first few days of December when the Art Basel events are taking place. As has been recounted here and elsewhere, the ironies multiply quickly whenever there is a sudden influx of art, followed by fans, galleries, real estate interests, trendy culture, and brands (not necessarily in that order) in a neighborhood once neglected by the dominant society.

But frankly, talking about gentrification in Wynwood is like discussing Mitt Romney as a viable candidate for president in ’16. It’s a soulless pursuit and you sort of end up where you started, now feeling slightly nauseous.

But if there is more money being generated in a community, that means there must be a larger tax base. So it didn’t make sense when people learned that the local junior high school had cancelled arts and music programming four years in a row.

Wynwood has 100 walls crammed with art but the local kids don’t have art class? Right.

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MTO “The Son: No Art For Poor Kids” Wynwood, Miami. December 2014. (photo © MTO)

That changed this year when a determined visionary principal and a few big supporters created a program called RAW to raise funds and entice artists like MTO and many others to come paint the campus. The campus has been transformed and hopefully so has the arts programming. In this case at least, a wrong is righted. After all, like J.J. Colagrande in the Huffington Post said, “How can the most burgeoning art neighborhood on the planet have public schools that don’t teach art or music?”

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MTO “The Father: La Muerte Del Barrio” Wynwood, Miami. December 2014. (photo © MTO)

The Father is a little harder to locate on a dead end street on North Miami Avenue but from the first impression you register a biting critique of hipster fashion and the art of Shepard Fairey.  With a name like “La Muerte del Barrio,” this mural is taking a position on the gentrification of “Little San Juan”, as the Wynwood District was once called.

A moustachioed hipster skeleton holds his OBEY coffee and retro film camera in his lumberjack plaid while a corporate branded wall drips down over the graffiti work below. MTO uses the mural to point fingers at who he thinks is responsible for wrecking a culture with the subtlety of a WWF wrestler, but at least you don’t have to wonder what he’s getting at.  Away from the central commercial hub, this mural may last longer than if it was across from “Wynwood Walls” but we’re guessing that the buff clock is ticking on this acidic slam.

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MTO “The Father: La Muerte Del Barrio” Wynwood, Miami. December 2014. (photo © MTO)

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MTO “The Father: La Muerte Del Barrio” Wynwood, Miami. December 2014. (photo © MTO)

And finally, mom.

The mother is a foxy babe and if you are wondering what she is doing, MTO has entitled this bikinied death Barbie “Selfie … Oh Wynwood Selfie …”

“It’s another perspective on the same topic as the other murals,” he says, and you might guess that it is not meant to complement the swarming beauties who teeter on stilletos after dark at art openings with little dogs on their arms. It may be about class, or behavior, or the fact that many in attendance at these hyped up events during Art Basel seem to care more about getting a good shot of themselves than appreciating the art they are celebrating.

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MTO “The Mother: Selfie… Oh Wynwood Selfie”. Wynwood, Miami. December 2014. (photo © MTO)

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MTO “The Mother: Selfie… Oh Wynwood Selfie”. Wynwood, Miami. December 2014. (photo © MTO)

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MTO “The Mother: Selfie… Oh Wynwood Selfie”. Wynwood, Miami. December 2014. (photo © MTO)

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MTO “The Mother: Selfie… Oh Wynwood Selfie”. Wynwood, Miami. December 2014. (photo © MTO)

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MTO “The Mother: Selfie… Oh Wynwood Selfie”. Wynwood, Miami. December 2014. (photo © MTO)

MTO would like to note that the graffiti around “Father” was done by MEKS, INK187 and DEST (the color children) and the graffiti background of “Mother” was improvised by G3, MTO, Abe and his sons.

He would also like to extend his thanks to Robert, Leza, Ron, Taissia, and Guillaume for their help, support, and inspiration.

 

The Wynwood Family (2014)

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MTO: The Wynwood Family”. Wynwood, Miami. December, 2014. (photo © MTO)

 

 

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