September 2015

Mutants Mutate: Dippie Gets a Hand from Pear and Knox in Bushwick

September 30, 2015 Artists

When Kiwi Street Artist Owen Dippie dropped four ninjas in Brooklyn this July he conjectured to us that he might like to see what these Renaissance turtles looked like with a band of graffiti tags across the bottom. While we were happy to help him spread the news of Owen’s trackside work to the world (and our images and posting reached 275K people), we weren’t sure if people would find his fantasy as electrifying as he made it sound.

You know what? We think we were wrong.

This four-Master mural does look perfectly balanced now that it has been “collaborated” with by Pear and Knox. First there were some gestural, seemingly random splashes. Now there are big bubble tags, almost providing a protective hedge behind which the masked painters can crouch behind. You might call it a diss or an organic development that is part of the conversation on the street. We’re pretty sure Owen will dig it.

Owen Dippie. The paint sprayed on top was a later addition by an unknown individual. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. The tags on the bottom are by Pear and Knox and bubble up recently. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA covered the original mural HERE.

Owen Dippie. The original mural painted in July of 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA
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!
<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><>

What Happened with BSA + FAILE at the Brooklyn Museum?

September 29, 2015 Artists

Steven P. Harrington, Patrick Miller of Faile (top), Sharon Matt Atkins, Patrick McNeil, and Jaime Rojo (image © by and courtesy of The Dusty Rebel) (@DustyRebel on Instagram)

Yes, it was a big deal for us so we want to share it with you. A few years after we introduced Faile to the Brooklyn Museum we have been blown away by the success of their exhibition Savage/Sacred Young Minds all summer long, as well as the long lines of people who have flowed through both of their immersive environments (Temple, and Deluxx Fluxx with Bäst). Under the guidance of curator Sharon Matt Atkins, Vice Director, Exhibitions and Collections, the museum has again produced a relevant, modern and dynamic show that brings in the street and resonates strongly with the local Brooklyn community and academics as well.

You must have seen (or been a part of) the ocean of people here one night in July when Swizz Beatz and Faile celebrated art and art-making with many of the youth who gave birth to this current Street Art movement in New York. A central tenet of this encyclopedic museum for the last decade and a half has been to produce exhibits and events that involve the community, that are relevant and impactful and the audience at our event in the auditorium attests to the success of exhibitions like Faile’s in this respect.

Patrick McNeil installing Deluxx Fluxx this spring at the Brooklyn Museum (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Following their work on the street since the late 1990s when Faile began making Street Art, we didn’t actually get to meet them in person until many years later, but we’ve always admired their tenacity and risk-taking and experimentation with their work. The crowning event for us was to interview them on the stage of the museum with the show’s curator Sharon Matt Atkins and to introduce some new people to them live and online; along with a bunch of stalwart longtime fans, collectors, gallerists, art students, and journalists.

The pre-show began with some collaged video of commercials and TV/movie excerpts inspired by Faile’s personal history as youth growing up in the 1980s. Our presentation momentum hit a few speed bumps at the beginning because of microphone outages and we almost lost the rhythm but eventually we got it back and we had a great time with the guests and the audience members, who were so astute and amazing and articulate in their questions and during the conversations we had later with them at the reception.

Our sincere thanks to Ms. Matt Atkins, Patrick McNeil, Patrick Miller, Director Anne Pasternak and The Brooklyn Museum for hosting us, Alicia Boone the Adult Programs Manager for helping put it all together, previous Director Arnold Lehman for his support, as well as Brooke Baldeschwiler, Shelly Bernstein, Emily Annis, Radiah Harper, Patrice Capobianchi, Matthew Branch, Osaro Hemenez, Robert Nardi, Tim, Emily Liebowitz, Paul Bessire, Meryl Cooper, Fatima Kafele, Lauren Zelaya, Margo Cohen Ristorucci, Sally Williams, and all of the staff and folks at the museum with whom we have been working with over these past few years and Chris Jordan, Doc Gregory, and Ray Cross. It is an honor and a privilege to be a Brooklyn neighbor and a part of The Brooklyn Museum family.

Faile’s show closes October 4th! Hurry!

Review of BSA at Brooklyn Museum with Faile on artnet news
Street Art Duo FAILE Urges Fans to Make a Statement at the Brooklyn Museum – Amanda Thomas

Also read our review of the BKM exhibit when it opened:
Holy FAILE! ‘Savage/Sacred Young Minds’ at Brooklyn Museum

See Part II of the interview with Faile on Livestream

Boijeot & Renauld: Crossing Manhattan With Your Living Room on the Sidewalk

September 28, 2015 Artists, Interview

Travelers of all sorts frequently talk about planning their trip so they can really get to experience a new environment that reveals character. You know, get off the beaten path, discover some of the local flavor, really experience a city. Imagine dining and sleeping your way down the length of Manhattan for a month on furniture you built yourself. On Broadway. Every day and night.

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Laurent Boijeot and Sébastien Renauld began their month-long journey in Harlem on 125th street over the weekend with their handmade wooden furniture and immediately they had guests over to their place. With a coffee pot brewing and comforters, boxy retro luggage, and benches stacked nearby to convert later into beds, the Street Artists/public artists/sociologists from Nancy, France invited passersby to sit for a minute, perhaps a little longer if they had the time. Almost instantly, the artists began meeting New Yorkers of all kinds.

“A chair is a really simple tool and everybody knows how to use it,” explains Mr. Renauld, an architect, referring to their instant home as part props, part instruments of interaction.

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot, the one who actually studied sociology, explains that psychologically and symbolically the table is a great leveling force in their experiment, and all manner of individuals share it with them. “So there are no classifications. There are no rich people or poor people. You can speak freely at the table and we see that people go very quickly into a sort of intimacy. When we sit at the table sometimes we see that within only a few minutes we have such a deep relationship with one another, with private life stories coming out.”

The project, or “action”, has taken many configurations in a handful of European cities, expanding into greater numbers of beds (50 in Nancy) or contracting to just a few beds and tables that are regularly carried by hand a few blocks at a time (Venice, Paris, Basel, Dresden). Here in New York they are intending to move their temporary home about five blocks at a time over the next month, including through many residential and commercial neighborhoods along the Great White Way. Although they have found that what they are doing is legal in New York, they know that not everyone may welcome them.

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Actually sometimes you have more problems with the rich people than the poor people,” says Boijeot, and instantly you recall that much of Manhattan has become an island for the wealthy over the last two decades with working class and poor pushed to the outer boroughs. But as long as the walking path from the Uber/limo/Town Car to the doorman is unblocked, maybe these artists will be allowed to share a cup of coffee and a conversation in front of their building.

This Saturday night on 120th Street it is relatively quiet here in the heart of many hulking Columbia University buildings, a block from the mammoth Riverside Church, with the elevated train occasionally roaring overhead and nicely heeled students in conservative clothing ogling the six guests eating dinner at the plain plank table as they walk by.

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“One of the common things we discover – everybody, every city, every culture is different, of course and every individual is different, but one thing I have noticed in my experience, is that people are up for two things, evil and good,” says Boijeot as he scans the street scene gently. “When we do this action we understand that we are giving people the possibility of being evil or good, and of their free will, they mostly decide to be good. If you present the situation where they decide for themselves, most of the people are very helpful.”

Has the living art project ever taken a turn for the worse? Renauld says that usually people are very friendly, but occasionally they have encountered a person who will try to steal from them or otherwise harm them, and they are always aware of the possibility. The best part of sleeping on a bed is that a passerby doesn’t know if you have a weapon, he says.

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“When we sleep they never know what there is under the blanket,” he says, “We have accumulated perhaps 4 or 5 continuous months sleeping on the street but we have only had two times when there was trouble – we have had two guys who have jumped on the bed while we sleep. But the good thing is that they can expect anything from the guy under the blanket. We could have a knife, they don’t know.”

Both self-professed pessimists, the artists, who refer to themselves and their visitors as “authors”, say that these full-immersion public art projects performed over the last 3 or 4 years are slowly turning their own perceptions about people into positive ones.

“I have to say that we are not optimists as persons but these experiences are giving back so much good to us and showing us humanity that I am like, ‘Wow I am a pessimist but still I know that this is possible,’ ” says Renauld.

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“There are so many stories,” says Boijeot, “We know that when we are old we will have time to tell each other all of these stories from these years. As a sociologist I cannot make any generalities about this, because first, it is wrong. But the other thing is that there are many little stories that make them individual, human.”

As traffic noise and sirens occasionally drown out conversation (as well as the impromptu performances of a boisterous opera singer who has stopped by with stories and excerpts from Wagner), both artists explain how local businesses allow them to use the bathroom and how many people offer to let them shower at their homes or bring them food and other gifts.

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“People are so kind with us – bringing food and things to say “thanks”. Cakes… in Germany we received so many gifts, little hand-made things,” says Boijeot. Can they recount one particular story as an example?

“No, there are so many,” says Renauld.

“Yes, I can tell you one,” offers Boijeot.

“One night we were with a couple at the table in Germany. It was almost seven o’clock at night and we asked them where we could go to get wienerschnitzel, a good proper version of the traditional meal. So I asked the guy if he knew where we could go to have it and he said, ‘Yes, we have the best restaurant in town.’ But then he tried to give me the directions – ‘turn right, turn left, go two blocks, turn right…’ . I said to him, ‘I’m lost, I will not go.’ So the guy said, ‘Okay, just wait for one hour.’ And this guy and this woman went to the supermarket, then back to their home and they cooked the wienerschnitzel and other dishes themselves. Everything. Within one and a half hour they arrived – it was like a full meal – potato salad, a green salad, wienerschnitzel, and soda. The guy said that because he could not explain where to go he decided that he would make the meal for us himself.”

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Soda? No German beer with dinner? They both assure us that neither of them drink on the street when they are doing these mobile installations in cities because they need all of their senses to be alert. Renauld says that in their practice they find that after a week of living outside on the sidewalks of a city they gradually develop a certain higher sensitivity and awareness about all of their surroundings, a heightened sense of the complex interactions that taking place around them.

“After about one week we feel almost like we are in a trance,” he says, “like we are totally open to everything. So if you are to smoke or drink you are going to miss things.” Smoking, in this case, does not apply to cigarettes, as the two are continuously hand rolling a fresh one and using it for added stylistic emphasis and punctuation during conversation.

“What we are getting right here right now is the best shot of reality – no drugs can be compared to what we are experiencing,” says Boijeot. “We never know what is “the show”. Are we the spectators of the city and seeing the show or is it the inverse?”

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Actually, alcohol presents the artists with the biggest challenge on the street when the hour is late and revelers are stupid.

“One of our fears is about drunken people, because they have no limits,” he says as he scans the street on this Saturday night with a full moon almost reflexively. “We know that this part of Broadway is not the biggest party district. We have had some really big trouble in the past with drunken people.”

New Yorkers have the opportunity to meet the artists during this month and the guys are hopeful that they will be able to traverse the entire length of Broadway, but have contingency plans to visit Brooklynites if conditions get too difficult.

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hopefully there will not be too much rain.

Renauld says, “During the day it is not a big problem because we have clothes.”

“It’s not fun. And we can’t use the tools, so it’s not fun,” chimes in Boijeot.

“During the night we have a technique – we put the bed and a table over it, and we have a plastic sheet so we can create a kind of tent,” explains Renauld.

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Possibility of inclement weather notwithstanding, the two know that they are in for quite a show on these streets and their determination to complete the project is more than apparent. As is their love for the experience.

“It is as if you are at the ballet,” says Boijeot. “When you take the time to sit on the chair and you see the city from a different point of view you just realize that all of this is a fucking ballet.”

“… and it is well-played because there is no make-up,” says Renauld, “it is just true ballet”.

Just wait till they get to Lincoln Center.

Boijeot . Renauld. Martin Clement on the left with Laurent Boijeot on the right. Mr. Clement will be with Boijeot & Renauld 24/7 for the entire duration of the project documenting the action as well as taking instant photos of the “guests” and other happenings to send back home as a gift to the backers of the project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot & Renauld with their first dinner guest, Martha Cooper. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

All furniture made by Boijeot and Renauld in Brooklyn with machinery and facilities provided by local businessman Joe Franquinha and his store Crest Hardware.

Our most sincere and deepest thank you goes to Joe Franquinha “The Mayor Of Williamsburg” and proprietor of his family owned business Crest Hardware for his enthusiastic support of this project. Joe has always been an ardent supporter of the arts and the artists who make it and he came through again this time. Thank you Joe.

This article is also published on The Huffington Post

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.27.15

September 27, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Thanks to everyone who came out to talk to us and listen to a conversation we had with FAILE on the stage of the Brooklyn Museum – where everybody learned facts that are fundamental to understanding this dynamic duo; Where the name came from, why they write “1986” on everything, and what role religion plays in their work, among other things. More on this Tuesday.

In other news, Pope Francis brought the city to a standstill – especially in Manhattan where he hit the United Nations, Central Park, and held a mass at Madison Square garden with his messages about immigration, greed, climate change, and the burgeoning wars that heads of state (there were 170 in town) appear powerless to prevent and woefully inadequate at protecting the people from. Throngs of faithful and long security lines greeted him all over the city. There was some Street Art here and there to mark the occasion, and we will continue to keep our eyes open for it now that he has gone to Philadelphia to hold an enormous mass on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum.

Also, tonight is the Blood Moon! Not sure what that means but the name is sort of scary. If we all die in an apocalypse remember we love you. If not, same.

And all the while these two French guys were dragging their furniture down Broadway from 125th Street on a city-wide tour…. Full story tomorrow on BSA.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 2501, City Kitty, Fanakapan, Jose Parla, JR, Mark Samsonovich, Mosher Show, Punk Me Tender, Renauld & Boijeot, Rubin415, Sandra Chevrier, Shin Shin, Stikman, and Wing.

Top image above >>> Fanakapan. Detail. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fanakapan. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

2501. #NotACrime (photo © Jaime Rojo)

2501. #NotACrime Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin415 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld. The furniture-making public space traipsers are in New York! Here in Brooklyn they are doing a test for their “Crossing” project in Manhattan. Would you like a cup of coffee? Stay tuned as BSA will bring you the “crossing of Manhattan” as it unfolds. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wing is rather rain-bow themed (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown with AppleOnPictures on the left. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mark Samsonovich ad takeover campaign. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mosher Show (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shin Shin (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jose Parla collaboration with JR. This is almost three years old but construction on the site has altered the placement of the art and we wanted to share this with you again. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Punk Me Tender (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stikman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevrier (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“The world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us” Pope Francis. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey: A Steady Drumbeat Inside and Out

September 26, 2015 Artists

A steady drumbeat characterizes the work of Shepard Fairey on the street and in the gallery, using art and design and his insight into the corrosive power of propaganda to pound out damning critiques and ironic appeals that address political, social, environmental issues of our day. If the new mural and the paintings, layered collages, and metal sculptures comprising On Our Hands are an indication of our current state, it is a time of neglect and peril like no other – yet exactly like every other.

Natural Springs Mural in Jersey City, NJ. Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

With an ever-sharpened sense of design that is ever-so-slightly more minimal and strident, strikingly represented with richly complex densities of hue and plays on depth, Fairey is quietly becoming a master before our eyes, but we may have missed that fact because he’s yelling so loudly.

With On Our Hands, Fairey is yelling about blood and oil and money, as anyone who is paying attention should be. He addresses an insidious corruption of banks, oil companies, the war industry, and the disinformation industry, and he points to the winnings and to the costs.

Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

As the title suggests, Fairey is a little less likely to exempt you from the equation this time, and in general he is being a trifle less sanguine or ironic than he was a decade ago. Once you have fielded the open-handed smack that some of these front loaded and frank diatribes deliver, you may realize that these are tougher slogans for nearly incorrigible times with more at stake, more to lose.

Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

As ever the question remains, who will heed it? Fairey’s attractive style derived from his study of and affinity for the Russian Constructivists, Chinese Communist propaganda and Western advertising/propaganda may sometimes shield you from the harsh. His own sophisticated re-working of these tropes has placed Fairey in a pantheon of style that is also mimicked and paid tribute to.

While his is a voice that can and does reach many, it is also a challenge to find new ways to manipulate rhetorical devices, motifs, and visual clichés in a way that can actually disrupt psychological and behavioral patterns today — i.e. to snap folks out of their stupor.

Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fairey declines to enter into the fray of the current political race for American president, yet people continue to seek his impressions and opinions due to the global exposure of his 2008 iconic image of the man who is now completing his second term.

Obama has not been the activist that many on the political Left may have wished for yet his wisdom and appreciation for the long-term effects of his work gives those critics pause. Likely also will the work of Fairey, who has created (and widened) the focus and altered the discussions that are happening on the street, influencing other artists and observers along the way.

Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Obama likes to refer to a quote from Martin Luther King Jr when speaking of this long-term view — a view that King likely took from a 1853 sermon by Theodore Parker, the abolitionist minister.

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.”

As with the work of Obama, in which Fairey found much hope, and the work of Fairey, where the artist continues to focus his clarion calls on the street and in the gallery, both may have already caused a bending of that arc in their respective realms of influence. On Our Hands is one more indicator that Fairey is in it for the long haul.

On Our Hands at Jacob Lewis Gallery

Shepard Fairey. Natural Springs (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Water Is The New Black (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Oil And Gas Handbook (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. From left to right: Smoke ‘Em While You Got ‘Em, A Message From Our Sponsor, Black Gold (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Decoding Disinformation (Red Inverse) (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. From left to right: Universal Personhood 1, Universal Personhood 2, Universal Personhood 3 (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

“On Our Hands” is now open to the public at the Jacob Lewis Gallery, 521 West 26th Street. 4th Floor. NYC

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

This article was also published on The Huffington Post.

BSA Film Friday: 09.25.15

September 25, 2015 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. OLEK in India Covers a ‘Rain Baseras’ with Community Help.
2. Coney Art Walls 2015 by Ken Yamamura
3. KWEST: Graffiti Sculpture at Roskilde Festival
4. Björn Holzweg Mural for Knotenpunkt 15

BSA Special Feature: OLEK in India Covers a ‘Rain Baseras’ with Community Help.

St+art Delhi 2015: Olek

Today a brand new video on OLEK’s collaborative public project in India, giving you a much more comprehensive understanding of the involvement of folks from the community who all worked together with the Street Artist’s guidance and vision to create a piece of public work. The word “inspiring” can sometimes be applied to the work that artists do. Here OLEK and the many participants show us the level of dedication, collaboration, participation, effort and appreciation that contribute to this project can give the word “inspiring” a truly expansive meaning.

“Several thousand homeless people live in New Delhi for whom the government has set up ‘Rain Baseras’ (night shelters) in various parts of the city. However, these go mostly unnoticed by others living in the city, much like the homeless people themselves. Olek is one of the worlds leading crochet artists, and with the St+art India foundation, she made a massive artpiece adorned a nigh shelter in Sarai Kale Khan, to bring attention to the homeless and the ‘Rain Basera’ Project.”

For more on this read BSA’s piece from March, 2015 : Gender, Caste, and Crochet : OLEK Transforms a Shelter in Delhi

Coney Art Walls 2015 by Ken Yamamura

A quick look at a few of the artists installing this spring at Coney Art Walls by Ken Yamamura, with some audio from Ethel Seno.

KWEST: Graffiti Sculpture at Roskilde Festival

“I started this as a way of taking these letter forms that I had been creating and produce them out of a tangible material,” says Kwest of this 16 year quest. If only it was as easy as he makes it sound.

The Canadian graffiti artist visited the Roskilde Festival 2015 to build the World’s biggest graffiti letter sculpture. See the process of creating this monumental piece.

Björn Holzweg Mural for Knotenpunkt 15

“Nature is not your friend,” so goes the adversarial stance of bounty hunters and survivalists. It’s true, it is a dog-eat-dog world and sometimes feels like survival of the fittest. You may think that Björn Holzweg is rather driving the point home here with this foreboding and dark video of his latest mural for Knotenpunkt 15, the contemporary and urban art festival in Hamburg.

“Björn Holzweg, born 1979 in Leipzig, lives and works in Hamburg since 2004. His paintings, sculptures, drawings and aquarelles are mainly shaped very graphically. He deals a lot with simple geometrical figures. For him, they are symbolic for our society: calculating, repeating and everlasting. With repetitive arrangements of those, he creates new spaces and dimensions.”

BSA LIVE with FAILE at Brooklyn Museum Today – Live Streaming 7pm EST

September 24, 2015 Artists

Join Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo, co-founders of BrooklynStreetArt.com In Conversation with Patrick Miller and Patrick McNeil of FAILE today at the Brooklyn Museum.

The event will be moderated by Sharon Matt Atkins, who is the organizer of FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds and Vice Director, Exhibitions and Collections at Brooklyn Museum.

This is a great opportunity for you to take on their expansive exhibition before it closes. The museum will stay open until 10:00 pm. In addition to learning more about their art and their history if you are one of the lucky ones you might bring home a FAILE silk screened tote bag home. There will be a makeshift silk screen shop by Bushwick Print Lab with a DJ duo Chances With Wolves playing music and a cash bar.

Click HERE for further information

LIVE STREAMING LINK BELOW:

https://livestream.com/BrooklynMuseum/failebsa

Vermibus Dissolves Narratives of Beauty, Illuminating His Critique

September 23, 2015 Artists, Interview

Media literacy could be a required course for an entire semester at college today, yet most people would still feel unprepared to sift through the cleverly crafted messages of our media landscape and to discern truth. The complexity and sophistication that marketers, media and advertisers are employing today to sell products, lifestyles, ideas, and wars far outstrips our average abilities of critical thinking or meaningful evaluation of messages.

One important chapter of the Street Art textbook reaching back decades is the one that recounts the earliest billboard jammers who coopted the language of marketing and advertising and turned it upon itself to reveal its conceits. Even today there are those who have made it their sphere of operations to undercut or ameliorate the power of advertising manipulation.

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

New York City has something like 3,500 bus shelters, each containing two spaces for advertising posters. Periodically commandeered for art by individual artists, the new contents in these displays may run for weeks without being replaced by paid ads, or may be replaced the following day.

Depending on the individual, or sometimes a campaign of individuals, the rationale for replacing ads with art ranges from being a direct rebuttal to visual pollution and insulting narratives to reclaiming public space for public messages or perhaps just something beautiful to meditate upon. Owned by global conglomerates, these “street furniture” kiosks display posters in sizes that are nearly entirely standardized, making it easier for Street Artists like Vermibus to take ads from a city on one continent and replace ads in another, with some aesthetic alterations.

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus says that his work of dissolving the ink with a solvent on posters and using it to paint is his critique of the corrosiveness of a commercial beauty culture that tears down and divides, glorifies consumerism for its own sake, belittles and relentlessly attacks self esteem, and plays on negative emotions to enforce normative values about appearance. He takes the posters back to a studio and selectively eliminates words, logos, facial features, even entire faces – and then carries them to another city to repost on new streets. Sometimes he also takes them to an art framer. Not surprisingly, his posters are collected and sold in galleries as well.

Since beginning this work across Europe with hundreds of posters a handful of years ago, Vermibus has developed a style and uniquely ghoulish aesthetic that recalls horror films and works by British figurative painter Francis Bacon. Recently in New York, we witnessed new Vermibus creations as they dissolved the facades of models, which when they were illuminated from behind appeared as something resembling the diagrams of musculature in a medical manual, except with nice shoes and a designer bag.

With a moniker that is derived from the Latin translation of cadaver, Vermibus cuts deep and looks at high-fashion models as little more than bones and skin transformed by makeup and lighting; perhaps a dark view for such well-lighted work. Somewhat ironically, he calls the entire process “Unveiling Beauty”.

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We spoke with the artist about his work on the streets, public space, advertising and how his efforts as acts of civil disobedience.

Brooklyn Street Art: Would you say your bus shelter works are about culture jamming, ad busting, or creating art for the streets? Or all of the above.
Vermibus: I think there’s a little bit of each of these in my work. On the one hand you’ll find the activist angle with a focus on the topic of public space. Then there’s the social angle that questions the culturally imposed social canons of what beauty should be. Finally there is what I consider to be the most interesting aspect of my work, which is the artistic and personal part of it.

BSA: Sometimes your dissolved images highlight or accentuate features and bone structure of the model. Other times they completely eradicate detail and transform them into blunt shapes – a brutal plastic surgery. How do you decide the treatment you will use?
Vermibus: My decision while in the moment of creating is not a conscious one. I try to become fluid and let the image and how I’m feeling in that particular moment guide me. In a way, the act of painting for me becomes a personal cleansing.

BSA: Can you comment on this idea of creation via destruction? You have opened so many display cases in cities across the world – is this vandalism masked as something more noble?
Vermibus: There’s a big difference between creating through destruction, vandalism and civil disobedience.

I don’t consider my work to be vandalism under any concept — but rather civil disobedience. I don’t destroy urban furniture to install my work.

Creating through destruction, without a doubt, is intrinsically a key part of making art. Like making an error, both are underappreciated and at the same time both are integrated into the way in which I work.

BSA: The magician Rene Lavand said, “Someone creates a trick, many people perfect it, but its final success in front of an audience depends on the person who presents it.” What do you bring to the art of billboard takeovers that differentiates the work from others?
Vermibus: René Lavand is a great source of inspiration for me and I agree with what he said.

I haven’t invented any thing. There have been people before me who have taken over advertising, people who have questioned the pre-ordained standards of beauty. Similarly, solvents have always been in painters’ ateliers in one way or another.

I suppose that with my work I have applied everything done before me but I have developed my own personal way of doing things. In the same vein there are others who will play the same tricks as René Lavand, but nobody will achieve exactly what he did. They could possibly improve on those tricks.

BSA: In a way it appears that you are setting these models free from the rigid commercial restrictions they are trapped inside – many times you obliterate all branding and text that could identify the image as an ad. How do you see it?
Vermibus: In order to reduce the impact of the advertising and to avoid any association with my work and the intention or look of the ad I try to erase both the brand and the message. That’s also why I change the locations of the advertising from one city to another. Often times the brands run different campaigns in each city.

The conceptual aspect of my work is diametrically opposed to the message that the advertising campaigns are offering so therefore neither their message nor their logo have any place in my work.

BSA: Can you comment on the ease (or difficulty) of moving this street practice into the gallery environment?
Vermibus: In both cases, the message and the technique are the same. I didn’t have to develop different work for the gallery. In my case the process to go from the street to the gallery was organic.

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><>
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!

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><>

This article is also published on The Huffington Post

FUTURA At The Houston Wall, Heart of the Concrete Jungle

September 22, 2015 Artists

The Houston Street Wall took a turn for the abstract, atmospheric, and the futurist imaginings of New York artist Futura these last few days. Pushing his own borders and in a reductionist state of mind, the graffiti writer abandons the splashy colors and recalls the monochrome pallet of the NYC train yards he ventured into as a teen; black of night, steel grey, the glint of light on the tracks that lead out through the city.

Stepping back and leaning in you can see the exposed vertical trussing of an NYC that always under construction with cranes stirring the sky; once building factories now high-rises and thin ultra luxe finger towers, these steel structures are adorned with ivy, razor wire, plastic bags fluttering in the gritty breeze.

As he sat cross-legged on the pavement before his “Concrete Jungle” for a cluster of photographers while holding open the double page spread of his 1980 train paintings, “Break,” only Martha Cooper could claim to shoot both this scene and the one thirty five years earlier.

This wall can sometimes feel like a backdrop for a family reunion, with all manner of friends, associates, peers, culture critics, photographers, fans, family, writers, photographers, fashion models, and selfie-stick carrying tourists stopping by to check the progress and say hello.

With hometown hero Futura at the brush, this heart of a concrete jungle becomes more of resting place by a tree, a welcoming urban oasis without the rose-colored glasses. Actually, now that you think of it, this guy posing gamely with open arms and happily signing your sketchbook or dollar bill does have red reading frames on, and his New York stories smooth over the rough patches and frequently look for a positive tone to strike.

As you see him painting and creating his massive piece in-the-moment here while people swarm by, cars honk their horns, trucks roar their engines, and sirens scream, it strikes you that this is New York then and this is New York now, thanks to the truly contemporary Futura.

She’s the Bomb: Ella & Pitr Launch “La Femme Canon” on Airstrip South of Paris

September 21, 2015 Artists

Ella & Pitr have sent a human cannonball across a massive runway in the south of Paris and we bring you exclusive new aerial photos today as you shoot into your week. “La Femme Canon” is a bit of wordplay that can mean a gorgeous woman and a person who has been shot from a cannon. Naturally, this beautiful new woman has wings to assist her to fly further once she has been launched into the air.

“It was a very difficult delivery because of the rain, but finally here it is,” say the exhausted couple of this newest giant mural visible from the sky – completed only weeks after completing their record-breaking one in Norway.

Perhaps the rain has contributed to the rich green fields that frame the new image on the airstrip of an old military airport. The lengthy pavement certainly makes an appropriate canvas for a woman in aviation and Ella & Pitr appropriate codes from the strip into the flying cap la femme is wearing. Enjoy these images of the latest high-flying duo’s work, and merci beaucoup to the artists for sharing them with BSA readers.

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA
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!
<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.20.15

September 20, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Great weather for hiking, tossing a football, checking out stoop sales, spray painting, and if you are an orthodox Jew in New York, building a sukkah. On the Street Art tip Shepard Fairey’s new show opened and you can read his interview with RJ at Vandalog here, Lithuanian Ernest Zacharevic began his series of projects to come with Martha Cooper , two frenchmen named Boijeot Renauld have arrived to build furniture and sleep on it across sidewalks of NYC, BSA is hosting FAILE at the Brooklyn Museum this Thursday for a talk (you’re invited), and Pope Francis is scheduled to hit Central Park on Friday. Otherwise, just another ho-hum week in dirty old New York.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring A Pill NYC, Andres Flores, Art is Trash, Dale Grimshaw, Emilio Florentine, Ernest Zacharevic, Martha Cooper, Frump, IAC, Kid Fly, Norman Kirby, Love is Telepathic, Muckrock, Ramen, Solus, WhisBe, and You Go Girl!

Top image above >>> Ernest Zacharevic in collaboration with Martha Cooper. Ernest updates a photo taken by Martha in 1984 of B-Boy Andres Flores aka Kid Fly. The collaboration between the two will continue for a few weeks. We’ll bring the art to you when we find it on the streets of NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gather the Rose of Love : YZ and LE CABARET DE SANCERRE

September 19, 2015 Artists

Summer’s final roses are still ripe for the picking here in Brooklyn, with no threat of autumn’s frost in sight and late September sun to illuminate them as you scuffle by on concrete sidewalks. Street Artist YZ lives and works in Montreuil near Paris and has been bringing rooms of an old cabaret alive with roses this summer and shares with us today images of classical figures she painted with india ink on silk paper for these decaying walls.

brooklyn-street-art-yz-sancerre-france-09-15-web-8

“Each room has it’s own character and the natural light sometimes reveals a different aspect of the original painting,” she says of the nudes originally created by Bouguereau, Lehmann, Gerome, and Merle.

The historic old building once housed “Le Cabaret de Sancerre” and the owner invited YZ for an artists residency inside this place that once hosted a mystical cabaret, a cinema, a dancing room and many lovelies of all persuasions.

“Pasting those women in a different context where love has been present over several years brings this old building alive again,” she says, and indeed the figures summon you to contemplate them and their natural beauty and the passage of time.

“Edmund Spenser wrote in the 16th century, ‘Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time’”, YZ tells us, “and this is the leitmotiv of the series.” The recurrent theme throughout the rooms may you of the excesses of love and lust and the necessity of giving over to them both, now, before the winter comes.

So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre,
Ne more doth flourish after first decay,
That earst was sought to decke both bed and bowre,
Of many a Ladie, and many a Paramowre:
Gather therefore the Rose, whilest yet is prime,
For soone comes age, that will her pride deflowre:
Gather the Rose of love, whilest yet is time,
Whilest loving thou mayest loved be with equall crime.

Edmund Spenser (I552-I599): The Faerie Queene II.XII.75

Arriving in Belfast, Seeing the Bobby Sands Mural
May 3, 2024
BSA has arrived in Belfast to attend the Hit the North Festival and hopefully gain a greater appreciation for the …Read More »
Paul McCartney Holds Your Gaze: Scenes from ‘Eyes of the Storm’
May 2, 2024
Touring is not unusual for Paul McCartney, who has traversed the globe nearly non-stop for six decades. Yet, this time, …Read More »
Books in the MCL: ROA Codex
April 30, 2024
As founding members of the Martha Cooper Library at the Urban Nation Museum in Berlin, Brooklyn Street Art (BSA) proudly …Read More »
BSA Images Of The Week: 04.28.24
April 28, 2024
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Spring is astoundingly colorful on the street in New York this year, with …Read More »
Johannes Mundinger: “La Bella Confusione”
April 25, 2024
You are inundated with information, disinformation, propaganda, images, videos, entreaties, siren calls, threats, promises, summaries, conjecture, stunning beauty, deliberate obfuscations, …Read More »
BSA Hits The North! – See You Soon in Belfast, Northern Ireland
April 23, 2024
We are excited to announce that BSA will be part of the exhilarating ‘Hit the North’ 2024 festival in Belfast! …Read More »
BSA Images Of The Week: 04.21.24
April 21, 2024
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! “It’s the only time of the year when New York City smells good,” …Read More »

Owen Dippie. The paint sprayed on top was a later addition by an unknown individual. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. The tags on the bottom are by Pear and Knox and bubble up recently. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. The original mural painted in July of 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Steven P. Harrington, Patrick Miller of Faile (top), Sharon Matt Atkins, Patrick McNeil, and Jaime Rojo (image © by and courtesy of The Dusty Rebel) (@DustyRebel on Instagram)

Patrick McNeil installing Deluxx Fluxx this spring at the Brooklyn Museum (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot & Renauld with their first dinner guest, Martha Cooper. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Top image above >>> Fanakapan. Detail. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fanakapan. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

2501. #NotACrime (photo © Jaime Rojo)

2501. #NotACrime Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin415 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boijeot . Renauld. The furniture-making public space traipsers are in New York! Here in Brooklyn they are doing a test for their “Crossing” project in Manhattan. Would you like a cup of coffee? Stay tuned as BSA will bring you the “crossing of Manhattan” as it unfolds. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wing is rather rain-bow themed (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown with AppleOnPictures on the left. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mark Samsonovich ad takeover campaign. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mark Samsonovich ad takeover campaign. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mosher Show (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shin Shin (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jose Parla collaboration with JR. This is almost three years old but construction on the site has altered the placement of the art and we wanted to share this with you again. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Punk Me Tender (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stikman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevrier (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“The world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us” Pope Francis. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Natural Springs Mural in Jersey City, NJ. Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Natural Springs (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Water Is The New Black (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Oil And Gas Handbook (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. From left to right: Smoke ‘Em While You Got ‘Em, A Message From Our Sponsor, Black Gold (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Decoding Disinformation (Red Inverse) (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. From left to right: Universal Personhood 1, Universal Personhood 2, Universal Personhood 3 (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Special Feature: OLEK in India Covers a ‘Rain Baseras’ with Community Help.

St+art Delhi 2015: Olek

Coney Art Walls 2015 by Ken Yamamura

KWEST: Graffiti Sculpture at Roskilde Festival

Björn Holzweg Mural for Knotenpunkt 15

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vermibus. Unveiling Beauty. New York City. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura. Houston Wall. September 2015. Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura. Houston Wall. September 2015. Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura. Houston Wall. September 2015. Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)