April 2015

The New Whitney Opens May 1 – “America Is Hard To See”

April 30, 2015 Artists

The stunning new Whitney Museum opens tomorrow, May 1st, in the Meat Packing District of lower Manhattan and you will be overwhelmed to see the last 115 years or so of artistic expression in America on display for the exhibit “America Is Hard To See”. 400 artists of every discipline and many art movements during your life and your great grandparents are here – from film and video to painting and sculpture and new media and photography, from abstract, figurative, text based, landscapes, and our own visual jazz – abstract expressionism – you’ll be exhausted when you are through with this show.

You’ll also be energized by the sense of sheer possibility presented – and the amount of space and the many outdoor plaza views. This is a new jewel in New York, and you have discovered it.

Donal Moffett. He Kills Me, 1987. The artist printed this poster and wheat pasted it on walls across New York City as a critique of President Reagan’s silence towards the AIDS epidemic. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We don’t get a new museum every day, but tomorrow you do, and it is rather spectacular to be privileged this way in this city of constant change. No matter your perspective, you will find the inaugural show to be vast. You are certain to like or disagree or applaud or dish with someone here, and it is all strangely American – Here is just a partial sampling of names showing about 600 works that should whet your appetite; Vito Acconci, Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Rory Arcangel, John Baldessari, Mathew Barney, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Paul Cadmus, Alexander Calder, Chuck Close, Imogen Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Mark di Suvero, Elsie Driggs, William Eggleston, Anna Gaskell, Milton Glaser, Nan Goldin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, George Grosz, Keith Haring, Eva Hesse, Edward Hopper, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Rober Mapplethorpe, Gordon Matta-Clark, Paul McCarthy, Joan Mitchell, Donal Moffett, Louise Nevelson, Georgia O’Keefe, Jose Clemente Orozco, Nam June Paik, Jackon Pollock, Richard Prince, Christina Ramberg, Robert Raushenberg, Hans Richter, Mark Rothko, Edward Ruscha, David Salle, Dread Scott, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Kiki Smith, Frank Stella, Hedda Sterne, Alfred Stieglitz, Rirkrit Tiravanjia, Anne Truit, Cy Twombly, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Weegee, William Wegman, Gertude Vanderbuilt Whitney, David Wojnarowicz, Francesca Woodman, Andrew Wyeth.

Barbara Kruger. Untitled. (We Don’t Need Another Hero), 1987. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

You’ll look through that list and want to add some of your own of course, everyone does. Despite the revered Biennial which periodically bowls you over with new talent, some still find that there are not enough of certain social groups represented, and that is probably fair.

We find it somewhat alarming that 50+ years of graffiti and street art is only minimally represented here – especially when it has become one of the hugely praised cultural exports to cities around the world and it is highly collected and ever-more auctioned. Talk about American! New York is considered a birthplace for the urban art scene and we can recommend a short list of these artists who are daily defining a new contemporary art for serious consideration. Yes this show has Haring, Basquiat, Kruger – acknowledged. But a great deal has happened in the last two decades. Maybe now that formally trained artists are frequently killing it on the streets in the 2000s and 2010s we will see more of these names included as part of the American story in the future. In fact, there is no doubt.

Glenn Ligon. Ruckenfigure, 2009 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The striking new modern home by Renzo Piano is twice the size of the old one and some of the views from the museum of this city that you love may rob your attention briefly from the art displayed inside. The inaugural show up until September is called America is Hard to See, and at $22 a ticket, so is the new Whitney Museum of American Art. That price may not seem like much when you consider it would get you four hours rent in a market rate one-bedroom in this neighborhood. But in a city where workers are fighting for a $15 minimum wage we’d like to see it accessible to more New Yorkers as it is the preeminent institution devoted to the art of the United States. Just had to say it. Hopefully they will find a way to institute frequent “pay what you want” nights, and to be fair, students get in FREE every day.

But this is your museum, and we hope you add your voice to the discussion.

Meanwhile, join us as we say “Welcome to the New Whitney!”

George Segal. Walk, Don’t Walk, 1976 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Christopher Wool. Untitled, 1990 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Edward Ruscha. Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights, 1962 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

John Baldessari. An Artist Is Not Merely the Slavish Announcer, 1966-68 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mike Kelly. More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin, 1987 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lee Krasner. The Seasons, 1957 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

From left to right: Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

General view of one of the galleries. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mary Heilmann. Sunset, detail. Site specific installation. 2015 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The back yard. The view from the back of the building. (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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Ron English and the “American Temper Tot” Pop Out In New York City

April 29, 2015 Artists

All American Temper Tot is the name of the new installation by Street Artist Ron English on the Houston Bowery Wall in Manhattan, and the US flag-based design may be comforting to the average patriotic New Yorker until you realize he is offering a not-so-subtle critique of mindless consumerism that indicts probably everyone who passes it. Part of his Popaganda series, a sort of retrospective of it actually, the famous subverter of billboards has just delivered a one-two punch to the culture of comfortable consumerism that reduces all life experiences to a commodity.

Ron English (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The enormous nose-tweak is more ironic perhaps on this island that has raised its rents so high that most artists have had to abandon it and little genuine Street Art actually is on its walls anymore. This particular high-profile spot has become revered not only because of its lineage of Street Artists (Haring, Scharf, Faile, Fairey, HowNosm, Swoon among others) but because greed and gentrification has effectively wiped out the sort of organic scene that gave it birth.

Ron English (photo © Jaime Rojo)

While some passersby will see references to Jasper Johns here we are reminded of another more grassroots politically satirical flag. As early as the 1990s we began to see anti-corporate protesters carrying flags with the stars replaced by corporate logos and those may be a closer analogue to the stripes on display here.

In the last decade and a half as media was consolidated into a fewer hands and tabloid TV began serving up absurdity as normality, everything from pesticides to wars to gas fracking became slickly commercialized products to brand and sell and artists like Ron English has been drawing attention and alerting the public to the mindless consumers that we are becoming via his postering and illegal billboard “takeovers”. With playful parody on fast food purveyors, sugary cereal sellers, and right wing news channels, these were more comedic satire like those you may find in MAD magazine than the pointed approach of early 1970s takeover artists like “The Billboard Liberation Front” or the full frontal lobe subvertising of folks like the Adbusters.

Ron English (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In one more twist to this new wall story, a few will undoubtedly argue that this installation is also a billboard advertisement itself since a print of the piece went on sale this week on the artists website, and it’s central figure, the Temper Tot, is also a 3-dimensional vinyl toy that is highly collectible. But not everyone is scandalized by this — the print already sold out. This is the soup we are all swimming in – even while the little green hulking monster baby flexes his muscles and trembles with fury at what has been happening to that flag behind him.

Like his site says in the sales copy for the toy “The only thing worse than a toddler with a tantrum is a very STRONG one!” Terrifyingly strong and terrifically immature, don’t get in the way of this well armed boy nearly popping off the wall and running across Houston Street to punch someone’s lights out. English has poked his finger in the chest of popaganda and we all will see how it responds.

Ron English (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post.

Borondo and His Collection of “Memento Mori” (Book)

April 28, 2015 Artists

Memento Mori, the collection of images and essays about the youthful Borondo is as much a reflection of the artist as it is his art and his process. Canvas bound with partial hardcover, it is unpretentious and easy enough to see into the inner workings of an artists process without feeling like a voyeur, allowing you to feel that you are catching a work in progress.

Borondo: Memento Mori (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With contemporary and possibly random images of dogs, municipally dull architecture, skulls, stuffed foxes, bathing nudes, figure studies, charcoal sketches, vintage photos that may be peasants, workers, and prisoners, the assembled collection of fragmentary influences that the artist may draw upon read as the incidental and imperfect. Inspired by reflecting on these collected and created remnants of the life timeline, his patches of paint in his finished artworks gather together to evoke a motion and a gesture, a sense of being.

Borondo: Memento Mori (photo © Jaime Rojo)

By turning the pages you are a part of the research he is undergoing, and you see how he brings to the walls and windows his latest findings. Sometimes the process is additive, other times through subtraction, but Borondo appears to discover along with his audience what lies here.

A Street Artist yes, but one of the many former graffiti writers who are chafing against that term today, perhaps not realizing that their own practice is redefining it. Not only does the work speak to the average passerby in ways we haven’t been thinking of, he is using the context of the decaying wall as further evidence of a life cycle that everyone is a part of.

Borondo: Memento Mori (photo © Jaime Rojo)

There are other Street Artists in the 2000s and 2010s who are working directly with these eroded, flaking and chipped facades of course – Vhils and ROA and Swoon come to mind – yet Borondo is rather reveling in them, integrating the imperfect.

“It is really important for a street artist to be part of the context, to be able to adapt,” he tells James Buxton, whose essay appears in English and Italian here along with new essays by Edoardo Sassi, Simone Pallotta, and Carmen Main – each helping to place the work and the artist, interpreting from their perspectives.

Borondo: Memento Mori (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Inspired by the street and the opportunities it presents for expression and communication, Borondo is experimenting and reflecting art history and western cultural norms while adding his voice to the public sphere and affecting the discourse. Peering at these remnants of contemporary times through deconstruction and reassembly, he is gently creating, all the while observing the human condition. Memento Mori will show you a bit of what he has found so far.

Borondo: Memento Mori (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Memento Mori is produced and coedited by Chiara Caprasecca and Chiara Pietropaoli and published by Yard Press.

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INTI Strikes a “Balance” For St + ART Delhi

April 27, 2015 Artists

With a new multi-storey mural in Khirki, INTI again brings the mystery and metaphor to a neighborhood. Part of the 2015 edition of St+Art India, this piece is entitled “Balance”. Yet another astounding piece by the prolific painter from Chile, this one defies gravity regarding a solemn topic of the heart.

Inti at work on his monumental mural for St + ART Delhi 2015. (photo © Akshat Nauriyal)

Inti. St + ART Delhi 2015. (photo © Akshat Nauriyal)

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BSA Images Of The Week: 04.26.15

April 26, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bisser, Brolga, C3, D7606, JR, Kafka the Cat, Myth, Nineta, Right of Way NYC, and Urma.

Top Image: Bisser. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bisser (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bisser at work in Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bisser (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR. Portrait of Mariela Goicochea in Brooklyn as part of Walking New York series. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Detail of a memorial by @rightofwaynyc of the 264 New Yorkers killed by traffic in 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kafka the Cat (photo © Jaime Rojo)

C3 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D7606 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nineta (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Squirrel the poet. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brolga (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gracelang Grooseling (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urma. Paris installation. (photo © Urma)

Urma. Lisbon installation. (photo © Urma)

Untitled. The Williamsburg bridge under fog. Brooklyn, NYC. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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JAZ and a Founding Myth Realized in “Mito Fundacional”

April 25, 2015 Artists

Our founding myths, our myths of origin, contain the DNA of a cultures’ existence and from that story all developments that occur are measured. When we cloak our present day with the origin myth we imbue our actions with some sense of the sacred, since that revered story is an old one that has been repeated over generations, even centuries.

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Franco Fasoli AKA Jaz. Campana, Argentina. April 2015. (photo © Jaz)

Here is a new mural commissioned by the town of Campana, where Argentinian Street Artist JAZ lived as a teenager, referencing one of this culture’s Mito Fundacional (myth of origin). In a circular composition that is an earmark of his symbolic softly surreal style, JAZ commemorates the 130^th anniversary of the first foundation of Buenos Aires between Campana and Escobar, which was near the river.

Franco Fasoli AKA Jaz. Campana, Argentina. April 2015. (photo © Jaz)

The menacing movement of unbridled animals surrounds a federalist symbol in flames in this often repeated story about the friction that historically exists between the City of Buenos Aires and the rest of the country. Like many simplistic depictions, this one belies deeper complex implications that can only be appreciated by the people who have lived there and repeated this story to one another, so we won’t try.

In a ceremony two weeks ago this newly painted founding myth near the “Arco de Campana” was inaugurated by the Mayor Stella Maris Giroldi and JAZ and some assembled guests, so this Mito Fundancional will continue to be told for a while.

Franco Fasoli AKA Jaz. Campana, Argentina. April 2015. (photo © Jaz)

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BSA Film Friday: 04.24.15

April 24, 2015 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. C215 and Caravaggio
2. East London Quick Tour of Street Art of : BUSH
3. Vinz: Feel Free Project (NSFW)
4. Woozy in Athens: Moving Shadows

BSA Special Feature: C215 In the Footsteps of His Favorite Painter: Caravaggio.

Here is a new short documentary that follows the unique pathway of Caravaggio, as told by one of his biggest fans, the street artist and master stencillist C215 visiting Palermo. He says he is sure Caravaggio would be a street artist if he were alive today. Who would argue?

Quick Tour of Street Art of East London: BUSH

We get many video submissions every week and this one really caught our eye because it features two fellows whom you are convinced are going to be singing the lyrics to the soundtrack at any moment — but in fact they never do anything of the sort.

Perhaps they are just telecommunicating the lyrics to us. Possibly they are here to adorn the street art and graffiti, or provide a measuring guage for us to more accurately estimate the various sizes of aerosol pieces. Expressionless and unfazed, they could be modeling their handsome fashions. Perhaps they are protecting the cameraman from thugs who could sneak up on him unannounced. You just don’t know.

“My work is low-fi and I work on no budget and work with unsigned musicians and reaching out to the wider creative community only for this video as I feel there hasn’t been one like this created out there about London,” says Eric, who made the piece. That last bit is probably true. Eric, thank you for sharing. Regards to the actors, and thanks for the tour.

Vinz: Feel Free Project (NSFW)

“The naked people with birds heads represent freedom. They are naked because they have nothing to hide.” explains the street artist Vinz, who was adopted by the gallery system nearly seconds after these bare breasted birds first began appearing on public walls. This is a good opportunity to hear the artist speak for himself and to understand the various visual codes present in his work and their corresponding meanings.

Woozy in Athens: Moving Shadows

This car burning during protests against the Greek government takes on a second meaning as street artist Woozy walks up to the burned metal and plastic carcass and begins painting upon it. The shock of the reality leaves you stunned, even as he begins to transform the charred car with art.

SPECTER and Glowing Abstractions On Your Way Down into the Subway

April 23, 2015 Artists

Yes, you were expecting an ad. Maybe one from News Channel 3 and charming Chuck and beautiful Belinda and that wacky weather guy and the whole 6 O’clock News Team. Instead, you got a glowing abstraction, a few seconds of calm on your way down the stairs into the subway. Artists continue to take over the ad space that continues to take over our public space, and these new backlit missives are from Specter.

Specter (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“They use color, form and light to draw you in but offer little to the viewer who is expecting a product,” he told BSA when contacted to find out what he’s up to. He says these abstractions are not meant to feel like ads and “even though the imagery is relative to each neighborhood it is placed in its more an homage than a direct meaning.”

Specter (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Really, these are related to each neighborhood? Yes, he says. “They are all collage/paintings and the references are from my travels. The one with the squares, for example, references the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, and that’s why it’s placed in Greenpoint.”

Specter (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toilet Seats and Mirrors : Gilf! and BAMN Create “TIXE” (VIDEO)

April 22, 2015 Artists, Interview

Urban exploring and sustainable art-making are not such strange relations in this new project by Gilf! and BAMN, two of the new socially conscious breed of Street Artists we continue to see. Known for her various installations of “Gentrification in Progress” tape across homes, businesses and cultural touchstones that are slated for destruction in favor of luxury condos, Gilf! shares this purely sustainable art project she and BAMN did in an abandoned hotel in suburbia recently. They call it “TIXE”.

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A play on the ubiquitous signs for egress throughout public buildings as well as the abandonment of the building. Gilf! and BAMN ‘TIXE” (photo © gilf!)

“We wanted to show how something that has been left for dead actually has so much potential still left in it,” says Gilf!, and indeed many of these shots reveal spaces that look perfectly usable – but she says they have been left to rot. As an artist, she assesses and sees a lot of promise, “There is such an opportunity to share beauty, to see beauty differently, to see consumption and waste differently.”

Gilf! and BAMN ‘TIXE” (photo © gilf!)

Using only materials that were found on site, both artists created installations that you could easily imagine in a gallery setting, fêted with white wine, hors d’oeuvres and sparkling conversations. Suspended under a skylight above a glistening pool, Gilf!’s gently turning abstract sculpture becomes a beacon of postmodern with nods to both Duchamp’s urinal “Fountain” and El Anatsui’s art inspired and drawn from “huge piles of detritus from consumption“.

Or, it is simply a cluster of used toilet seats hanging from the ceiling.

Gilf! and BAMN ‘TIXE” (photo © gilf!)

“I’ve never been more filthy in my life,” says Gilf!, “but it was definitely one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever completed. I find I am most creative in abandoned, alternative spaces without constraints, expectations, or deadlines- I guess that’s not shocking- freedom is the ultimate facilitator of creativity.”

Gilf! and BAMN ‘TIXE” (photo © gilf!)

Less easy to see in these images are the installations by BAMN that consist of full length mirrors and medicine cabinets that, when arranged in hallways and courtyards in parallel or constellation formation, serve to draw the light and magnetize it, shooting shards of light across and through a moribund commercially artificial man-made environment.

Reflected sunlight shot across mirrors into the deadened pool. Gilf! and BAMN ‘TIXE” (photo © gilf!)

We spoke with both artists and asked them to describe TIXE and what they discovered in the process of exploring, arranging, and installing it. Not surprisingly, both describe their work in the context of larger political and social themes, casting the work as part of a greater activism as much as aesthetics.

Brooklyn Street Art: What connections did you draw between the waste normally associated with toilet seats and the waste of western society that allows entire buildings to fall into disrepair like this?
Gilf!: When we first came across this shuttered hotel we were amazed at how many useable items were just left there to rot with two brand new chain hotels just down the street. As I’ve discussed with my previous gentrification work this opportunity really exemplifies the wealth disparity in our country. Two big chain hotels moved in and priced out this small business, unable to compete with such low rates they were forced to shut their doors. The rich get richer- the small businesses struggle and succumb to our American Ponzi scheme of an economy.

Ultimately the homogenization of our cities and the monopolization of our consumer choices can really be likened to shit. We started out with all this diversity and now through the bowels of our top down economic system everything is pretty nauseating and all looks the same. This system only works for a select few- I hope this project can highlight to my fellow plebeians that we need to start looking at things differently. The opportunity to find value in what we’re told is valueless is where our power lies.

Gilf! and BAMN ‘TIXE” (photo © gilf!)

Brooklyn Street Art: This project is as much about sustainability as it is aesthetics. Can you tell us about the philosophy of using existing waste as material for new art?
Gilf!: The idea of using existing waste as materials for my work is something I’ve spent the last couple of years really reflecting on. I’m curious about how we can transform items deemed “worthless” by the general population and create inspiration through their newfound meanings. This project is a direct reflection on the involuntary, almost robotic, rhythms of our society’s absurd extravagance.

We chose to use the materials we found in the space to shine a light on the ideas around perceived value and wastefulness. What happens when an artist uses items that are deemed worthless and turns them into a gigantic work of art? Are they still worthless if their collective meaning changes? Do the toilet seats now have value because they are “art”? I wanted to show that even the most foul of objects and spaces can be appreciated when reconsidered.

Gilf! . BAMN ‘TIXE” (photo © gilf!)

Brooklyn Street Art: What does a re-capture/re-use art installation tell us about the stuff we throw away?
BAMN: It tells us we got our priority’s mixed up. It’s all good to be a fun-employed artist running around making stuff, but most of the world is pushing an idea of progress that looks more like suicide. I get it, we’re all consumers/zombies, but do we have to be so g-damned wasteful about it? There’s gotta be a better way.

Brooklyn Street Art: Urban exploring can have some pitfalls – including safety. Do those considerations enter your mind when exploring an abandoned space?
Gilf!: Absolutely- entering all those hotel rooms by myself one by one was incredibly unnerving. I never knew what I was going to come across. As a woman I have that added layer of vulnerability – which always infuriates me. But getting over those fears is just part of urban exploration. The freedom I had to create in that space trumped my fear of the bogie man who was only living inside my mind.

Gilf! . BAMN ‘TIXE” (photo © gilf!)

Brooklyn Street Art: The rows of mirrors echo the colonades in the way you arranged them. Were you thinking of Greek gods when you were creating light ant reflection?
BAMN: I was mostly thinking of Prometheus (because there just aren’t enough references to Western culture in art). Anyways, the dude was persecuted by Zeus for restoring fire to humanity. This fire can be a metaphor for truth or light, and there are plenty of people today being persecuted for doing what’s best for humanity.

Brooklyn Street Art: What or who was your inspiration as an artist to do these pieces?
BAMN: I just wanted to be spontaneous going into to this post-modern carcass. So I kept to what was available in the hotel. The first thing I noticed walking in was the darkness. Even during the day this place was totally devoid of life.

About 30 mirrors later I had an installation that bounced sunlight into the hotel, down a bunch of dark hallways, into a rec room where the beam of light ends on a live bush that was planted in the middle of a swimming pool that had a few feet of this stuff that can only be described as toe-jam flavored oatmeal.

The paint was found in a supply closet and all the mirrors were propped up by fire extinguishers…I’m just glad I decided not to do anything with those 200 urine-stained mattresses.

Gilf! . BAMN ‘TIXE” (photo © gilf!)

Brooklyn Street Art: How was the air conditioning?
Gilf!: Let’s just say that working 25 feet in the air in a massive room that was more or less a greenhouse was brutal. The scaffolding was built in a cesspool so there was a certain precariousness up there that I’m sure it added to the feeling of sweat-soaked madness. Coupled with handling used, anonymous toilet seats – it took more than one shower to feel completely clean again. I’ve never been filthier, or more inspired.

Gilf! will present SHATTERING, the second of a three-part series of participatory actions centering on destruction and transformation, May 7, 2015 in New York.

See more BAMN Here

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post.

OverUnder in Seattle: Peculiar Portraits & Mural for “Urban Artworks”

April 21, 2015 Artists, Interview

Reno averages 114 cloudy days per year. Seattle is about twice that number. Can you blame Overunder for moving to Reno? Despite the endless days of gray, Seattle’s pretty nice to live in, according to many. The economy is fueled by the high tech industry and is also one of the most progressive cities socially, recently enacting a $15 minimum wage, new taxes on the wealthiest 1%, and there are well funded social services for the homeless and those seriously in need.

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Overunder AKA Erik Burke. “Kurt Kobangs” Seattle. March 2015. (photo © Erik Burke)

And truthfully, painting under gray skies is actually preferable to burning under hours of blasting sun, so Overunder recently returned to Seattle to create a new mural for Urban Artworks, a youth oriented public art program that is celebrating its 20th year. In addition to the “monster mural”, Overunder also had the opportunity to complete some characteristically “free-range” installations, the kind we were more familiar with when Brooklyn was his stomping ground a few years ago.

Overunder AKA Erik Burke. Seattle. March 2015. (photo © Erik Burke)

A very distinctive style on the street that recalls work of pals Labrona, Troy Lovegates, even Barry McGee and more West Coast folk surrealists, OU continues his visual anagrams on the street that toss around the elements now familiar to his vocabulary – rolldown gates, distorted monochromatic figures, brownstone facades, somewhat brooding expressions, wit. You’ll see the linework is cleaner and more confident than ever, the palette pleasingly saturated, the waving curvilinear forms now more expressive even as they beguile.

Overunder AKA Erik Burke. Seattle. March 2015. (photo © Erik Burke)

We wanted to see what he had to say about his work now, and how his pieces on the street came about, and how he conjured the new mural for Urban Artworks;

Brooklyn Street Art: We notice that you are doing a number of portraits recently, and that they are fairly compact. Are these people in your life or your imagination?

Overunder: The wheat paste pieces are mostly imagined although a little reality sneaks in time and again for trips. When I travel I like to make pieces about place so naturally the people that live there become game for sampling. For example one piece is of a good Seattle friend who spends each year fishing in Alaska to make money for travel. That piece shows a man engrossed in a tornado emerging from a boat atop a coin.

Overunder AKA Erik Burke. Seattle. March 2015. (photo © Erik Burke)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you describe a typical process for creating one of these – do you sketch, paint, cut-out, and wheat-paste?
Overunder: The process is very pure, just spray paint on paper. A typical process involves tacking a roll of paper up, cracking a beer, and just seeing what happens with a can of spray. Oh and maybe a little Freddie Gibbs or Isaiah Rashad as soundtrack.

I try to keep each piece to an hour or less so they don’t get over-worked and then I cut them straight off the wall. For every 2 or 3 pieces I put up in the streets probably 1 piece gets tossed in the trash and another archived so I can look back at my progression (sometimes regression). These pieces are very liberating and give me the freedom that I can’t achieve in my murals. It’s just my subconscious and the medium. Especially now that most of my murals involve more research, time, supplies, and stamps of approval from various parties.

Brooklyn Street Art: How do you chose the text that sometimes goes directly over the face, and what is it about?

Overunder: I don’t want my wheat pastes to be precious or special and the best way to de-virginize that smooth and perfect paper is to christen it with whatever’s on my mind. In a way the text chooses me. A lot of times I have no idea what I’m writing but it becomes brutally honest. There is a reason why diary and diarrhea are found next to each other in the dictionary.

Since I put shading and line work over the top the text gets pushed back and becomes more of a technique to build background texture. i.e. a kneeling red figure I put up in the ID (International District) reads, ‘There is comfort and then there is convenience and then there is undeniable devotion and then there is unquestionable kinship and then there is regrettable choices and then there is all the other stuff.’

That could be interpreted many ways but to me it was a joke about my inability to distinguish between then and than.

Brooklyn Street Art: How did you connect with Urban Artworks and can you describe the organization?
Overunder: They reached out to me after hearing about me through mutual friends. It was inspiring to learn about them as they are a very unique organization that works specifically with adjudicated youth to create public art. The youth are paid by the county to work on projects and they gain work readiness skills, art experience, and self confidence through the creation of their murals.

Urban ArtWorks also takes pride in giving aspiring muralists opportunities to build their own portfolios and skill sets through the whole process. The program is in its 20th year and looking to build their roster by working more with artists beyond the Seattle area – so, I hope to be back to create with them again and maybe even lead a youth mural next time.

Brooklyn Street Art: The mural features airborne creatures … and a cassette tape that looks like a mix of home jams. How do these fit together?
Overunder: Under the supportive assistance of Urban Artworks I created this mural titled “Contribute” for a new apartment development on Capitol Hill. While the theme involves showing birds flying to a nest with gifts to contribute I was also fortunate enough to involve several of my all-time favorite Seattle artists as they helped contribute to the overall mural.

Collaboration has always been important to me as a humbling bi-product of process and as a tool for apprenticeship. Aside from Derek Yost (who assisted on most of the mural), I involved No Touching Ground, Kyler Martz, Yale Wolf, Paulina Cholewinski, and Kathleen Warren who is the Director for Urban Artworks. The mural itself combines Gulls, Swallows, Killdeers, and other two-winged friends reported to be seen most by the Seattle Audubon Society.

I tried to create some movement amongst the large space by weaving birds, birch trees, and unspooled cassette tape as it gets tangled in the birds nest. The background blue gradient utilizes the natural shadows cast by the architecture to create an abstract sundial from sunrise to just past high noon.

Brooklyn Street Art: Why does it always seem to be raining in Seattle?
Overunder: I don’t know but I do know that that is the reason why I moved out of Seattle in 2004.

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Tuco Wallach: Manimals in the Back Alley and Back Yard

April 20, 2015 Artists, Interview

Who’s that Raccoon Strumming a Guitar in the Woods?

Let’s be clear, these are staged photos in an outdoor setting – similar in technique to miniature outside artists such as Joe Iurato and Isaac Cordal. In a way, one recalls the games of childhood where you projected yourself onto a toy in a fictional setting — at the wheel of a racing Matchbox car or marching around a sand castle or drowning Ken in the pool at Malibu Barbie’s Dream house.

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By positioning cast members into new circumstances and using your imagination, the directer (you) uses the natural and man-made environment as a movie or theater “set” to infer a storyline, a narrative. In this case the French street artist Tuco Wallach is also conceiving of, photographing, manipulating, painting and sculpting the characters – the result are the famed man/animal hybrids that George Bush warned us of. Their everyday non-chalance casts doubt on unreality and placing them in environments helps you to broaden your imagination and begin your story…

Brooklyn Street Art: Let’s start with your name. Is it inspired by the character, Tuco Ramirez, masterfully played by Eli Wallach as the “Ugly” dude in Sergio Leone’s “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”?
Tuco: Exactly. I’m a complete fan of spaghetti westerns and especially “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” – the music, the atmosphere, and the characters… Sometimes people believe that my name comes from Tuco Salamanca of Breaking Bad. Even though I like that show also, I really prefer the “loser Tuco” created by Sergio Leone.

Brooklyn Street Art: Judging from the photos of your outdoor installations they appear to be fastidiously staged and professionally lit as if they were shot on a set. Do you leave the artwork at the exact location where the photo was taken?
Tuco: I try each time to find a special spot for my cutouts, a place where the character seems to be comfortable. I like to play with the weather too: snow, sun, rain, shadows.. For the moment, I don’t leave the artwork where the picture has been taken. I really wanted at the beginning to do it, but to be honest, most times the wood shape falls to the ground after shooting it so I’ll need to improve my technique before I can do that.

Brooklyn Street Art: You are doing hybrid stencils with men and animals. What sparks your imagination, attracts you to hybrids?
Tuco: Since childhood, I always appreciated illustrations with humans and animals! And I grew up in a little village, in the countryside. I can’t really explain it. Maybe it sounds a little cliché but I think humans are animals. I particularly like mixing humans and animals.

I believe these creatures, which I call “manimals” may cause people to pose questions about them; What are manimals doing within these urban structures? What do they think about our modern cities? Maybe they represent a wild side in that is opposition to the “concrete world” around them? Have they got a different look because of their origins? What do they imagine when watching us and what do we think when seeing them?

I suppose manimals have a universal mythological side: they represent both the good and evil, they are for everyone, children and adults, they could be seductive and disturbing … The most important thing for me is: they must surprise.

Brooklyn Street Art: What are the pros and the cons of working with small stencils wheat pasted on wood cut boards?
Tuco: I used to paint on various stuff: walls, papers, stickers. At home primarily I paint on wood, but also on maps, books… Honestly, I really like to make big drawings on walls when I have the opportunity. Each time I make large pieces, it is such a good feeling and I want to do it more!

However it is also very pleasant to make small stencils, to try to be very precise when cutting. As I said before I like painting on wood, and working with the wood shapes. I also enjoy using my jigsaw to cut the character, breathe the smell of the wood. It’s like a little challenge each time for me – don’t break the piece of wood, don’t scratch the colors, find the right place at the right moment for the picture.

Brooklyn Street Art: Do you think that eventually wild animals and dense cities where humans live will collide and merge with one another and it will be common to see bears, coyotes, alligators, bob cats, deer and other fauna roaming the streets of big metropolis?
Tuco: With this question, I mean when you speak about big cities, this is the dream I have every night!

As I said before, I lived an in rural area when I was a child. Sometimes when you are there you can see a deer, and each time, it is completely magic. I want to believe that one day we can really live with animals in urban areas. And I’m optimistic, for example, I spent a while in London and each day I saw foxes near a church because the priest fed them. But I have to be honest too, how will I react if I meet a bear or an alligator? For a very long time now we have been chasing animals away from cities; maybe now they need revenge!

Brooklyn Street Art: Do you think that wild fauna will be called invasive species as they move into metropolitan dwellings in search of food and water? As you say, humans have been the invaders of their habitats but the tables may turn.
Tuco: Such an interesting question! Who are the invaders in fact? And who will be the future invaders?

When I draw manimals, I try to dream about cohabitation between humans and animals. For an example, when a manimal rides a skateboard, for me, he has the primitive instinct of an animal and the reflexive capacity of a human.

Maybe I have to put small and bigger wood shapes all around the world to support my thought: live together! With my stencils, I always use a picture I’ve taken (not necessarily the animal head, but the rest of it). Each of my drawings has a special story in my mind, a narrative. Here’s a guy wandering at the market on Sunday morning, here is a musician sitting at a street corner, a grandmother walking quietly.. Then I add an animal head to the body and it continues the story for me. It marks the duality, the union between humans and animals.

Brooklyn Street Art: Do you always leave an installation behind in the cities and countries you visit?
Tuco: Yes. In most places I visit I take a homemade sticker or something else to leave a little souvenir in the street.

Most of the times, I travel with small pieces in my bag. If I can make a child smile I believe I that I win something. Just for this reason I want to continue.

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BSA Images Of The Week: 04.19.15

April 19, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring #dysturb, Balu, Banjo, Bifido, bunnyM, D7606, Dan Plasma, Don’t Fret, Ideal, Left Handed Wave, Martian Code Art, Mr. Prvrt, Myth, Nineta, Obey, Stay Busy, UNO, UTA, and Vers.

Image of a kid walking on the street with a tag on the wall, wheat-pasted on a wall on the street. Banjo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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