May 2016

Bifido, Don Quixote and Sheep on Cell Phones at GarGar Festival

Bifido, Don Quixote and Sheep on Cell Phones at GarGar Festival

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Cervantes inspired this new wheat-pasted scene by Italy’s Bifido at the Gar Gar Festival in Panelles, Spain. His new interpretation of a metaphor is drawn from the scene in chapter 8 where Don Quixote and his sidekick servant Sancho are riding their horses up the road and see two clouds ahead of them. Quixote’s wild imagination mistakes them for dual great armies on the edge of war with one another and he describes them aloud in detail based on the forms he sees in the dust.

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Bifido for Gar Gar Festival. Panelles, Spain. May 2016. (photo © Bali Green Agency)

Sancho warns him that those shapes that he sees are simply dust clouds from herds of sheep and not to be afraid. But of course the macho testosterone meathead Quixote cannot wait to go to war and gallops in swinging his big sword, later to discover he has slaughtered a number of sheep and that a couple of nearby Shepherds are angry at him. They throw stones at the buffoon and break a lot of his teeth. Rather than admit he was wrong he tells Sancho that they had actually been armies but sorcerers has transformed them into sheep. Right.

So that worked out really well.

Later, there is a very detailed vomiting scene. No kidding.

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Bifido for Gar Gar Festival. Panelles, Spain. May 2016. (photo © Bali Green Agency)

Here the sheep are played by people all around us right now, cradling their electronic devices in hands, sort of oblivious to the world around them. He says the kid with the sword is fighting “against the contemporary man who spend a lot of time with his smartphone like a sheep.”

Truly, by now, it is an army. But who does the kid represent in this case? We’re not sure.

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Bifido for Gar Gar Festival. Panelles, Spain. May 2016. (photo © Bali Green Agency)

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Bifido for Gar Gar Festival. Panelles, Spain. May 2016. (photo © Bali Green Agency)

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Bifido for Gar Gar Festival. Panelles, Spain. May 2016. (photo © Bali Green Agency)

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Bifido for Gar Gar Festival. Panelles, Spain. May 2016. (photo © Bali Green Agency)

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Bifido for Gar Gar Festival. Panelles, Spain. May 2016. (photo © Bali Green Agency)

 

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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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“Street Art / Today” features 50 of the Most Influential Street Artists

“Street Art / Today” features 50 of the Most Influential Street Artists

It’s nearly impossible to arrange the work of Street Artists into lists of “top” or “most popular” or “most influential”, but it happens all the time now particularly as the street art world morphs into a commercial and professional scene for some. But it’s a dodgy business when one tries to rank art and artists – and most people will disagree with your list no matter what.

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Street art / today. Bjørn Van Poucke & Elise Luong. Lannoo Publishers. Belgium. 2016.

At best it is useful to devise a set of metrics to measure, compare, and contrast works amidst the chaos and to imbue a sense of order and perhaps, hierarchy – although anathema to founding roots of punk/ situationist/ culture jamming philosophies that would detest the very word. Academia at the moment is studying and devising those metrics according to their unique values and understanding, as are auction houses, cultural curators, art dealers, historians, collectors, art sellers, and the actual people who make art.

Street art / today: The 50 most influential street artists today by Bjørn Van Poucke & Elise Luong from Lannoo publishers in Belgium devises a narrow criterion for selection of these artists, according to the preface. “The featured artists have been chosen according to their productions in the public space over the past two years. We examined their consistency in terms of style and technical quality, the influence their originality has had on other practising artists, and their popularity across various social media outlets.”

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Street art / today. Bjørn Van Poucke & Elise Luong. Lannoo Publishers. Belgium. 2016.

This of-the-moment selection of popularity may be primarily aimed at collectors who are able to purchase the fine art works through galleries or dealers, more than historical students or fans of the scene. You may even see this as a catalog, a quick primer for the investor and a helpful snapshot of a moment in the evolving mural movement that is bringing these amazing talents to curated festivals globally as commercial vehicles or products or revitalizers of economically challenged cities.

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Street art / today. Bjørn Van Poucke & Elise Luong. Lannoo Publishers. Belgium. 2016.

The selection here also may favor the artists who have access, the freedom to travel, a formal arts education, some financial wherewithal, and the savvy to market one’s work digitally to those surfing the Internet. Many here are excellent marketers and are tirelessly pursuing professional careers in contemporary art with their public works often augmenting their gallery shows and dealers whom they sell through and the direct collectors whom they meet via social media.

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Street art / today. Bjørn Van Poucke & Elise Luong. Lannoo Publishers. Belgium. 2016.

While the more accepted definition of Street Art is illegal and unsanctioned, the majority of images here are of fully realized, usually large, legal or sanctioned murals by illustrators, designers, painters; and they are documented here most often by the artists themselves. Rather than looking at this as Street Art, with few exceptions it may be more accurate to say it is a book of legal commissioned/permissioned murals by artists who have roots as Street Artists or graffiti artists.

It is a beautiful aggregation, and certainly many of these artists have been interviewed and regularly featured on websites and other free cultural outlets like this one providing depth, context, analysis, information, and exposure. Having a hard copy of this collection of fifty in your hand will help freeze this moment for posterity as the scene/s continue to evolve.

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Street art / today. Bjørn Van Poucke & Elise Luong. Lannoo Publishers. Belgium. 2016.

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Street art / today. Bjørn Van Poucke & Elise Luong. Lannoo Publishers. Belgium. 2016.

Photos of the book plates by © Jaime Rojo

Street art / today: The 50 most influential street artists today by Bjørn Van Poucke & Elise Luong published by Lannoo. Belgium.

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BSA Images Of The Week: 05.29.16

BSA Images Of The Week: 05.29.16

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Woo hoo! Dip your toe in the ocean and the official beginning of summer in NYC. It’s Memorial Day Weekend and it is hot outside and Coney Island is already crowded and has new works this week from John Ahearn, Nina Chanel Abney, Tristan Eaton and more to come. Also you can hear that ice cream truck jingle in some neighborhoods, a welcome sound that will cause batty-ness in the brain after hearing it the 300th time.

Prospect Park and Central Park and hundreds of smaller parks around the city have barbecues and frisbees and refreshments and naps under trees. There is even the smell of marijuana wafting through the streets again. Also there’s a new Strokes album projected on the wall above Futura’s on Houston (soon to be refreshed), there’s a Ramones exhibit at the Queens Museum, and international artists are showing up to paint at the Bushwick Collective street party next weekend. Until then, let’s go up on the roof – you may see Duke Riley’s LED lit birds over Wallabout Channel at dusk. It all kind of feels like the 1980’s, minus the hair spray.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Aiko, Jins, John Ahearn, Lapiz, Nether, Nick Walker, Nina Chanel Abney, Pose, TurtleCaps, Saone, Sipros, Stavro, Stikman, Stu, Such and Turtle Caps.

Our top image: Fine artist and muralist Nina Chanel Abney for Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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John Ahearn for Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Pose for Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Aiko. Side A. For Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Aiko Side B. For Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Nick Walker (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Lapiz for KURA Festival. Wittenburg, Germany. May 2016 (photo © Lapiz)

“Sigmar Gabriel (the German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy) is riding a Leopard 2 tank. The tank is for sale (a little price tag is showing a €) and is painted in the colors of the German Flag (black, red, yellow). Gabriel is holding up a sign that reads ‘Nie wieder Krieg *’ (‘No more war *’). Running away from the tank is a family of refugees.” – Lapiz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Artist Unknown. White people ruined Bushwick. Discuss. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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NETHER from last year. That’s what is all about out here. Survival. Baltimore. (photo © Pat Gavin)

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NETHER. Baltimore. (photo © Nether)

“A woman stands in water, half submerged, holding a withering lotus flower as the sky, lit by a rising sun and a setting moon, pans from darkness to light. The lotus in this setting symbolizes strength and courage when getting through life’s hardest obstacles such as addiction. The character is trying to save the lotus, which reflects her beauty and strength, as it is losing its pedals into the darkness. Her half-hidden face is slightly turned towards the light showing that she is turning towards help to revive her inner beauty and spirit. The obscured face speaks to the recovering addict’s battle with shame, anonymity, and pride for overcoming addiction due to public stigma. The 303 stars painted into the sky pay homage to the 303 people that died from overdoses in the last recorded year in Baltimore including a friend of mine.” – Nether

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Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Stikman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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C3 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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TurtleCaps and Stavro.(photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Untitled. Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. Brooklyn, NY. May 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

 

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David Walker in Aalborg during Karneval, and “Snaps”

David Walker in Aalborg during Karneval, and “Snaps”

Here is a full face is out in the open on the side of a building here in Denmark, where David Walker has just completed this mural for a project described by organizers to get high quality art out to the many and not just the few.

Now through June 25th Galleri KIRK is bringing some of the artists they represent to Aalborg, Absalonsgade and Nørregade. Just in time for the Aalborg Karneval, the largest in Scandinavia, which draws nearly 100,000 people to see a parade of 60,000 costumed revelers each year and culminates this weekend, Walker and BEZT from Etam Cru completed their painted contributions to the celebrations.

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David Walker for Out In The Open – Galleri Kirk. Aalborg, Denmark. May 2016. (photo © Lone Allen)

Formerly a working class industrial city and now working toward becoming known as a “knowledge based” city, Aalborg is ranked number one in Europe for citizens’ satisfaction with the quality of life, according to the 2015 survey by the European Commission.

Murals may have something to do with it Walker tells us. “Aalborg boasts one of the highest concentrations of murals in Europe painted by artists from all over the world.

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David Walker for Out In The Open – Galleri Kirk. Aalborg, Denmark. May 2016. (photo © Lone Allen)

Also, “snaps” may have contribute to the generally positive outlook – including those who have home distilleries. The herbed and spiced liquid of 40% alcohol known as  aquavit that Anthony Dias Blue describes in his book “the Complete Book of Spirits” as something you might drink at a midsummer lunch with “a group of people clustered around a table… including several courses and a clear, fiery drink.” This is something Walker says, “which I found out is very dangerous.”

Possibly that is why his subject has a blue nose?

When you go to Aalborg look forward to finding more murals from the galleri’s “Out in the Open” project from Faith47, Guido van Helten, Wes21, Michal Mraz, Vesod, Linnea Strid, and TelmoMiel.

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David Walker for Out In The Open – Galleri Kirk. Aalborg, Denmark. May 2016. (photo © Lone Allen)

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David Walker for Out In The Open – Galleri Kirk. Aalborg, Denmark. May 2016. (photo © Lone Allen)

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David Walker for Out In The Open – Galleri Kirk. Aalborg, Denmark. May 2016. (photo © Lone Allen)

 

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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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BSA Film Friday: 05.27.16

BSA Film Friday: 05.27.16

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

Now screening :

1. I Don’t Expect To Be A Mother, But I Don’t Expect To Die Alone: Olek and Michelle P. Dodson:
2. The Tale of Hillbelly
3. Nychos: Vienna Therapy
4. PangeaSeed’s Sea Walls: Murals For Oceans – New Zealand 2016

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BSA Special Feature: Olek and Michelle P. Dodson: I Don’t Expect To Be A Mother, But I Don’t Expect To Die Alone

A walk-through of last years’ installation in the basement of the former Williamsburg Savings Bank by Olek and Michele P. Dodson incorporating crochet and projection mapping. Organized by Santiago Rumney Guggenheim the show was a collection of some of his favorites, including Swoon, Aiko, and light artist Olivia Steele, the immersive room that Olek and Dodson created caught your attention because of its state of flux.

Light projections featured the unraveling of crochet pieces projected on walls, in frames, across of mini Judy Chicago-ish triangle shaped dinner table, and mannequins suspended from the ceiling wrapped in Olek bodysuits. The installation seemed to capture and release the viewer quickly, giving a sense of impermanence. For that matter the whole inaugural show by what was presented as a new gallery appeared to disappear quickly as well. But for that moment,  just when you are sure you were getting it and ready to move on, beauty would take over, patterns overwhelming.

So it’s good to look at this again, albeit without sound, and wonder when that thread will be picked up again.

The Tale of Hillbelly

We leave the city street to a go to the wide open country for this one.

The simplest of stories are our oldest, passed down through folklore and standing as archetypes. Here in a live/animated tale we see a vision of idealized nature and rites of spring with a real orchestra, this yoga performing hillbilly communes with nature and is overcome by it in a foxy manner. Of course it is a metaphor that may be interpreted by myriad philosophers, and we think it looks a lot like this moment.

Created by Darren Rabinovitch with a score by Jeremy Harris.

 

Nychos: Vienna Therapy.

A brief teaser of an upcoming show by Nychos in New York. He’ll be splitting Freud wide open in public at the Flatiron Plaza June 16th.

Also there’s the June 25th Jonathan Levine opening that will dissect more ICONS, and you may even see a new wall or two soon by this Austrian urban illustrator.

 

PangeaSeed’s Sea Walls: Murals For Oceans – New Zealand 2016

 “Within the span of five days, 28 large-scale, thought-provoking public murals were realized throughout the Ahuriri and Napier area. Each piece sheds light on New Zealand’s pressing marine environmental issues such as shark finning, overfishing, coastal development, climate change, and endangered marine life conservation, furthering PangeaSeed Foundation’s ARTivism (Art + Activism) initiative.”

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Rubin: “Scandinavia / New York” Studio Works and Murals

Rubin: “Scandinavia / New York” Studio Works and Murals

An immigrant’s tale, Rubin’s, and a New York story as well. For his first artists monograph the Fin by way of Sweden brazenly tells you his story in a most deliberate and considered way. It’s brazen because it’s a truth that has taken him a long time to be ready to tell, ready to be vulnerable. It’s carefully considered because – that’s his style.

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Rubin. Scandinavia / New York Studio Works and Murals. Dokument Press 2016

“New York is still very much a city of opportunities, but only if you are willing to work hard,” he says in the interview, and as you read his story of growing up in working class Sweden, treated as a second class Fin son of two guest workers living in a housing project, losing his father as an adolescent, running the streets and riding trains to nearby Gothenburg as a teen while the drug trade grew – you clearly get the idea that hard work is a lifestyle.

Along the way through his history to his current art on the streets you are regaled with the black and white geometric simplicity and spare dynamism of photography looking across roofs at brutalist architecture, down a long empty escalator at the tram station, up into the gray sky overtaken by a concrete water tower in his hometown Bergsjön, and across a detail of his own monochromatic mid-century modern abstraction on a canvas, spattered strategically to give gently curving geometric forms a crisp, celestial aura.

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Rubin. Scandinavia / New York Studio Works and Murals. Dokument Press 2016

In fact it is when he takes a summer college class in photography as a young man that Rubin sights a shift in his worldview. His sharpened observation skills previously had been honed as a hell-raising graff writer and student of style, but now he was framing and containing and seeing the planes and the forms differently.

Seeing the book and speaking with him in person, you’ll quickly know that graffiti is at the root of his work today. Björn Almqvist, author, publisher, and editor of “Graffiti Burners”, also published by Dokument, offers a clear assessment of the graffiti writer who eventually stripped his style down and parlayed it into what we know today.

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Rubin. Scandinavia / New York Studio Works and Murals. Dokument Press 2016

“Rubin spent the summer months with his grandmother in Finnish Lapland, but during the rest of the year his who existence revolved around the corner from Rymtorget, with the school and the tram stop only a couple of minutes away,” writes Almqvist. “Nearby was also the garage that Rubin and his friend discovered and transformed into Gothenburg’s most popular Hall of Fame. Rubin soon distinguished himself as a dedicated and skilled graffiti artist. He tried unusual styles and soon found his own forms of expression that inspred graffiti far beyond Bergsjön and Gothenburg. Art became his way of life, his identity and a way for him to relate to society.”

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Rubin. Scandinavia / New York Studio Works and Murals. Dokument Press 2016

Years later Rubin still says that “everything originates from graffiti letters,” even though he tired of the restrictions and repetitiveness of simply writing his five letter tag- or five letters and three numbers: Rubin415. “I’ve been told that my style resembles traditional graffiti but with Scandinavian-style clean lines and shapes,” he says. Certainly he has attacked and regaled Brooklyn, Bronx and Manhattan and points around New York with this developing style over the last handful of years; murals indoors and outside, and a growing number of finished fine art works coming from his Brooklyn studio.

With an un-erring sense of color, the contained compositions offer an antidote to the chaotic quality of city living, but he carefully steps aside of any suburban pleasantry for the sake of safety. These are soaring city lights, swerving streetscapes, jutting smokestacks, rusted hulks, plump water towers, throbbing beams of light, hidden peeping entrances, refracted urban revelation.

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Rubin. Scandinavia / New York Studio Works and Murals. Dokument Press 2016

Not only has Rubin quietly made a name for himself with an industrious string of projects that doesn’t seem to end, he has knocked out brick walls, construction fences, rooftops and even a church backyard with sensitivity to context, an awareness of modern design history, and a strength of conviction big enough to alter whatever environment he’s in.

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Rubin. Scandinavia / New York Studio Works and Murals. Dokument Press 2016

 

Rubin. Scandinavia / New York. Studio Works and Murals. Published by Dokument Press 2016. Sweden.

 

Rubin exhibition Scandinavia / New York is currently on view at the WallsWorks Gallery in The Bronx. Click HERE for further information.

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Icy & Sot: International “Last Supper” & Almighty Dollar in Coney Island

Icy & Sot: International “Last Supper” & Almighty Dollar in Coney Island

“In this piece they are all figures from different currencies – like from Iran, Korea, China, England, the US, Pakistan…,” says Sot of the new one layer stencil they are preparing for Jeffrey Deitch’s Coney Art Walls, opening this Memorial Day weekend in Brooklyn to 80 degree temperatures.

We’re inside their Bushwick studio, which is about the size of a one-car garage and its walls are covered with newly stenciled book covers for their upcoming monograph launch. Icy sits at the bench with a sharply bladed knife casually pressing shapes out of the roll of white paper and flicking them aside.

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Icy & Sot. At the studio cutting, cutting, cutting… Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We have been two days from 11 to 11 cutting,” says Sot as he looks over the rolls of paper accumulating against the wall and begins to roll a cigarette. “And we’re still not finished,” says Icy as he crouches over his work. “I mean we have like 19 parts and we still have some more to cut.”

Fast forward a few days and the light wind is whipping the seagulls overhead in 55 degree oceanside late spring, and the brothers are carefully unrolling and taping their new stencils across a large freestanding wall that adds to a colorful Coney labyrinth and will soon be painted on the other sided by another Brooklyn Street Artist from this generation. It is the second year of this public art show that features graffiti and Street Artists and some new contemporary artists as well who haven’t been known for this scale or venue.

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The huge Icy & Sot dollar sign first came about when they were preparing their show “Cutitalism” in Stavanger, Norway last year for Reed Projects Gallery, for which we wrote the exhibition text, part of which reads “a slicing condemnation of many true costs of free-range rampant capitalism using world currency, razor sharp blades and aerosol.”

By combining the heads from multiple currencies around the last supper of Christian storytelling, you may wonder which one is Judas – but typically the brother’s aren’t saying.

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mainly, they are just happy to have been invited to the second iteration of this outdoor exhibition that highlights many players over the culture of the last 50 years of graffiti and Street Art while acknowledging the older histories of community murals and sign painting in this iconic Coney Island setting. “We always wanted to bring this piece out but we never had an opportunity,” says Icy of the new huge format for a piece that originally used an actual dollar bill as its canvas.

“This is the right, perfect wall for it and this is the time to do it,” says Sot.

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Icy & Sot. Documenting their own work. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island, Brooklyn. (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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Jetsonorama’s New Piece in Telluride and “Wastewater Snow”

Jetsonorama’s New Piece in Telluride and “Wastewater Snow”

“What we do to the mountains we do to ourselves,” says the blocky hand written text across the Native American activists Klee and Princess Benally, and on the face of it you’re bound to agree with this gently oblique environmental sentiment. However, at the base of this black, white and crimson red portrait is a far stronger critique of the commercial practice of using wastewater to make snow for ski bunnies.

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Jetsonorama (photo © Jim Hurst)

Street Artist Jetsonorama (real name Chip Thomas) is on a ladder in Telluride just in time for the famed and prestigious Mountain Film Festival and he says he only has a two week permit for this mural during the Memorial Day-centered event that kicks off Wednesday downtown at Sheridan Bar. He seems like he has doubts about locals’ ability to stomach a broadside like this piece of art in public space, but he’s got a long history of bringing people’s history to the people.

It’s sort of an irony that a film festival named after mountains in a picturesque Colorado town that is lauded for its views of said mountains may not be addressing this issue more directly.

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Jetsonorama (photo © Chip Thomas)

The website for the festival says that it “showcases nonfiction stories about environmental, cultural, climbing, political and social justice issues that matter” and yet it may takes a couple of tenderly posed Native Americans wheat-pasted on a prominent wall in a 96% white town to really get the conversation going. The festival is giving the new mural full support however and program director Kate Klingsporn even assisted in the installation and wrote about it on the festival blog.

“Chip’s work has made a huge impression in our small town this week and it’s been amazing to talk to people about it,” says David Holbrooke, the Festival Director. “One woman told me she was spending a lot of time with it and a friend told me that it sets the tone for Telluride,” he says and remarks about a spirit in the town that he thinks can countenance difficult issues where others might ignore them.

“Despite it’s size,” Holbrooke say, “Telluride has an unusual history of bold innovation and I think the mural reflects that very much.”

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Jetsonorama (photo © Chip Thomas)

And the issue, as explained by native activist Klee Benally in the short video “Waste Water” below, directed by Mari Cleven, is that 13 indigenous nations consider a local mountain range to be sacred and that putting treated sewage effluent upon it is tantamount to desecration. Religious liberty aside, it also appears during public hearings in the video that standards of testing the water used to make this snow may be overlooking some pretty gross ingredients that will later turn local people and animals into science experiments.

“I wanted to help opponents of waste water snow so I interviewed several friends about the issue,” says Jetsonorama, “Whatever they said was written onto their faces and then photographed.” In addition to this large piece he also pasted a handful of other faces in Flagstaff with related opinions written across their faces.

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Jetsonorama (photo © Chip Thomas)

This old mining town may like to talk about being home to the first bank robbed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but will it want to talk about yellow snow or pharmaceutical residues seeping into soil, washing into rivers, eaten by toddlers in snowsuits?

Interestingly, Jetsonorama tells us that the town of Telluride has a ban on public art but an exception was made for the film festival.  The temporary permit is expiring right after Memorial Day and the future of this mural is uncertain. He says that the town council will meet May 31st to determine the mural’s fate.  “My fingers are crossed,” says the artist.

 

 

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Jetsonorama’s The Painted Desert Project at The Navajo Nation will resume this year with in situ works by Icy & Sot, Sten & Lex among others. We’ll bring you their new works as they appear across the desert.

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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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A version of this article was also published on The Huffington Post

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Olek Crochets The New York Times: “Good News” At Virginia MOCA

Olek Crochets The New York Times: “Good News” At Virginia MOCA

It’s a “good news” day! A perfect sunny spring day to flip through the newspaper while sitting at the windowsill and enjoy the gentle breezes that will lead us to summer.

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Olek. Virginia MOCA. April 2016. (photo © Olek)

It’s good news especially for Street/crochet/fine artist Olek at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art and her brand new recreation of a shockingly large crocheted front page of The New York Times that she draped on an exterior facade of the museum last week.

“Can you imagine a day that only had good news? I dream that someday there will be at least one day a year with only good news to share,” she told us during an interview and as idealistic as that sounds, you can imagine the effect of that on readers when you experience the scale of this work. In effect, Olek is speaking to the power of the media to shape our perception of the world as much as she is dreaming that there would be enough good news to fill it. Perhaps there is already, she posits, but we’re not focusing on it.

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Olek’s new work ready to be unbundled and completed in situ. Virginia MOCA. April 2016. (photo © Olek)

With a lead story about the rise in “underwater parks’ and headlines trumpeting a steep rise in vegetarianism and a global ban on plastic bags, you would be hard-pressed to imagine an above-the-fold selection like this to be featured in the Times ever – especially only four years from now, as indicated by the 2020 date in the masthead. For a variety of reasons, this amount of this sort of news wouldn’t be “fit to print”, as the times likes to refer to its content.

But Olek says that she is dreaming and she was inspired by the “Turn the Page” theme of this show, which encouraged her to look forward as she created this crocheted piece in Poland and New York of 576,000 loops. The exhibition just opened over the weekend celebrates the 10th Anniversary of the San Francisco based Hi-Fructose, a glossy quarterly art magazine that has set a high-quality standard for Low Brow and its various cousins that are bending conceptions and challenging categories of pop, surrealism, hyper-reality and fantasy.

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Olek. Virginia MOCA. April 2016. (photo © Rebecca Davidson)

At the opening Saturday, the visitors were treated to a wide variety of contemporary artworks that satisfied and challenged with unusual imagery which plays as much on the last fifty years of pop culture as it does with modern perceptions of traditional art-making. Running through the end of the year before traveling to the Akron Art Museum in Ohio and the Sacramento Art Museum, the show features 51 artists that span a number of the newer genres of surrealism, dark pop, design and influences from street culture of course with names that have grown appreciably in the last decade including  Camille Rose, James Jean, Tara McPherson, Shepard Fairey, Kehinde Wiley and Mark Riley, whose surreal fantasy works here have somehow irked the irony-challenged protectors of goodness some folk in the community.

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Olek. Virginia MOCA. April 2016. (photo © Rebecca Davidson)

Hopefully they won’t be outraged by Olek’s new tapestry inspired work which implies that humans are somehow responsible for global warming and pollution, instead of islands of plastic consumer packaging growing organically in our oceans because God wants it that way. In fact, Olek is suggesting that each of us holds a responsibility to sway the headlines with our own actions.

We spoke with Olek about the philosophy behind this new work and how it arrived here for “Turn the Page.”

Brooklyn Street Art: How did you decide to create a work like this featuring what you call only good news?
Olek:
Every paper, TV and radio station will publish only positive news. Negativity creates negativity so I hope positivity will create positivity. I travel a lot and I always stop by the bookstore in the airport and take a look at the front pages of different magazines and newspapers. And there are always all bad news… once I even saw a front page with headlines conjecturing about which celebrities were going to die next. How horrible is that?

So, yes, I dream about good news.

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Olek. Virginia MOCA. April 2016. (photo © Rebecca Davidson)

This grand desire served as inspiration for this piece. When I came to Virginia Beach over two years ago I searched different locations for my public projects. I felt strongly that my public piece should be about the environment since Virginia Beach is so connected to the ocean. Later, I came up with the idea to create a wall for the museum as well and wanted to connect the pieces together.

I would like this work to inspire change. All the messages that I crocheted could be actually real. We can start simply with using own bags instead of plastic bags that should be banned globally. We blame big corporations but we should really blame ourselves. Everything starts and ends with a customer.

Sometimes some choices might not be the most convenient but most of us have that choice. Start with replacing the bottled water – especially the one that travels across the globe to your fridge – with your own water bottle that you can refill – especially when you live in a place where you can drink tap water.

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Olek. Virginia MOCA. April 2016. (photo © Rebecca Davidson)

Brooklyn Street Art: The style is a departure from most work you’ve done in the past – recreating a fictional newspaper seems like it could be a rather repetitive experience.
Olek:
Crochet is always a repetitive experience. That is why I am trying to challenge myself. I actually did some crocheted portraits a while ago and this piece is the same technique. You might have seen it in the installation I created in collaboration with Michelle Dodson (video link). It requires me for sure to have a total focus and patience.

I started crocheting phone “text” into some of my studio works in 2006 and my very first pieces in 2003 were installed in the forest in upstate New York. I think there is continuity with my previous work but my technique is better now, although I still have plenty to learn and that is what keeps me so in love with crochet.

The process for creating this piece was really long. Every time I go back to Poland and you see me on social media posting images of trees, flowers and sunsets it simply means I am working on something new and do not want to share it yet.

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Olek. Virginia MOCA. April 2016. (photo © OLEK)

I have a place in a forest by a river where no one could ever find me. In that house my grandmother was born, my mother was born and I took my first steps. In the same house I’ve learned how to sew and crochet. It inspires me the most and gives me the most energy.

I remember when I went there in May 2005, the first time I returned after immigrating to New York in 2000, and I exploded with ideas. I crocheted trees around the house, a car, a footbridge… this was long before anyone could think about it. Years later I crocheted a whole stable there that only my grandmother and my parents have seen in person.

I grew up in a city but spent a lot of time in the countryside. This is probably why nature is so close to my heart. And I am devastated as I see our mother nature dying in front of us.

For my recent birthday I spent the day with my family and I celebrated it by hugging 38 trees. This ephemeral performance was shown publicly only on Snapchat and I think the only person who saw it was Faith 47 because I did not know that my account was set to “private”.

Brooklyn Street Art: What were some of the challenges making this?
Olek:
Time! As usual the final and best idea arrives when the deadline approaches. As you know, my work is very time consuming and this piece especially was challenging.

I worked on it with my New York assistant Whitney Spivey and my Polish crochet master Ewa Szylewska. Whitney was working with me on graphics and making sure that the design was good for crocheting.

But before we even started the design process, I asked different people about possible headlines. And to be honest it was more difficult than you might think.

Who helped me? I’ll give you a clue. Who would you guess is hidden behind the name Callie Slonowska? What about the date of the paper? There is much more info here than you might think.

Brooklyn Street Art: A work like this has the potential to spark conversation about topical matters you feel strongly about. Did you have an opportunity to discuss any of them with viewers while you were installing or during the opening?
Olek: I am interested to know how this will inspire and motivate people on many levels.

The most common reaction I’ve heard was: “WOW”. People were admiring both the detailed work and my dedication to it as well as the positive message. Someone suggested that I might have started crocheted photorealism. I hope to start some positive movement. Or maybe someone will publish a new paper with me that would focus on good news only.

Brooklyn Street Art: Hi Fructose has really been on the forefront of an aesthetic that still hasn’t gone mainstream in many ways. How did you feel walking around and seeing the work of these artists at Virginia MOCA?
Olek: I think the show is really good. It is a great selection of artists and the curators chose amazing pieces to represent each artist. The magazine is really great and they are doing an amazing job to keep it up-to-date.

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If you are in the area, please go hear Olek in person June 9th at the museum. Our sincere congratulations to founders Annie Owens and Daniel “Attaboy” Seifert of Hi-Fructose for an astonishingly beautiful 10 years of Hi-Fructose.

 

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

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BSA Images Of The Week: 05.22.16

BSA Images Of The Week: 05.22.16

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No time to talk, you’ve been running to the streets to see new pieces and peaches like a new D*Face in Soho, Rubin’s solo show in the Bronx, the Brooklyn-themed pop up at Doyle’s Auction house in Manhattan, Swoon and Shep and Swizz at Pearly’s in LA, the Social Sticker club collabo melee with Roycer and Buttsup at a bar in Williamsburg, and the growing collection of rocking new Coney Art Walls. Also, Post-It Wars in corporate agency-land Manhattan.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 1Penemy, BG 183 Tats Cru, Bio, Bristol, Daze, D*Face, Eric Haze, Goms, Nicer, Nova, Pegasus, POE, Stikki Peaches, Thiago Gomez, and Word to Mother.

Our top image: D*Face for The L.I.S.A. Project in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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HAZE completed this fresh tribute wall dedicated to MCA of the Beastie Boys for Coney Art Walls 2016 in Coney Island, Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Ain’t seen the light since we started this band
M.C.A. get on the mike, my man!
Born and bred Brooklyn
The U.S.A.
They call me Adam Yauch
But I’m M.C.A.”

No Sleep Till Brooklyn

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1PENEMY stenciled of a mock mug shot of famed supermodel Stephanie Seymour. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Stikki Peaches comes out with a dream posse of rebels; James Dean, Steve McQueen, Elvis Presley, and Marlon Brando on the streets of Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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DAZE completed this wall for Coney Art Walls 2016. Included in the composition of this mural is the Elephant Hotel, a seven story, 31 room fantasy hotel built in old Coney Island in 1885 shaped like an elephant. Besides the guest rooms the structure also boasted an observatory, a gift shop and a concert hall before it burned down in 1896. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A Banksy inspired window piece made entirely of Post-it notes makes an appearance on the Post-it notes war between two buildings that face each other in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

According to New York Magazine the Post-it “artists” took their craftsmanship to new heights after someone installed a simple “hi” message on  the window of one of the two buildings facing each other on Canal Street. After one week the “war” is in full effect with several messages directed at each other offices ranging from “Will you marry me” to songs’ lyrics and other pleasantries and pop references. The two buildings are known for housing several ad agencies, Getty images and New York Magazine.

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A Keith Haring-inspired window piece made entirely of Post-it notes makes an appearance on the Post-it notes war between two buildings that face each other in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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An unidentified “artist” applies his final touches to the Snoopy inspired window piece made entirely of Post-it notes makes an appearance on the Post-it notes war between two buildings that face each other in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A close up of two window pieces made entirely of Post-it notes makes an appearance on the Post-it notes war between two buildings that face each other in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A general view of several windows and pieces made entirely of Post-it notes makes an appearance on the Post-it notes war between two buildings that face each other in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A “Marry Me?” sign made entirely of Post-it notes makes an appearance on the Post-it notes war between two buildings that face each other in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Unidentified artist. The piece is signed but we don’t recognize the signature. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Pegasus’ Trump piece on the streets of Bristol, UK. (photo © Urban Art International)

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POE (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Word To Mother beautified the AthenB Gallery van in Oakland, California on the occasion of his solo show currently on view.  (photo © Brock Brake)

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Bio, Nicer and BG 183 of Tats Cru completed their totally fun and vibrantly hued wall for Coney Art Walls 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Thiago Gomez and Emilio Cerezo collaboration wall in Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

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NOVA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Untitled. Berlin. April 2016. (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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How & Nosm Strike a “Balancing Act” in Detroit

How & Nosm Strike a “Balancing Act” in Detroit

Yin and Yang.
Good and Evil.
Joy and Pain.
Positive and Negative.
Bitterness and Forgiveness.
These are among the laws of polarity that are at play in our daily lives with us somehow moderating, ameliorating, mollifying, strengthening, accentuating one or the other to achieve a sense of balance.

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How & Nosm. “Balancing Act” Detroit, USA. May 2016. (photo © How & Nosm)

Graffiti writers/Street Artists and twin brothers How & Nosm draw our attention to this continuous and natural process in an epic new mural that they just completed in Detroit. They tell us that the framework of “family” was on their minds when conceptualizing the piece, with cogitations on the traditional polarity of matriarchy and patriarchy and the often delicate nature of providing a harmonious structure within that framework. It’s an idyllic concept, and in their press release the brothers acknowledge that is not always the case.

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How & Nosm. “Balancing Act” Detroit, USA. May 2016. (photo © How & Nosm)

Completed in conjunction with their “In Between” show at the Library Street Collective, this balancing act is “We are each pulled in different directions and balancing work, personal life, family and friends and health is increasingly difficult.”

The massive work contains symbols of struggle and throughout the composition looks for optical counterweights to answer overages, completed with patterning, character, and calligraphic linework. As with many of their nested storylines, How & Nosm leave much of the interpretation to the viewer here – a vibrant and organic painting that provides a balance to an equally massive one on this prima facade by Shepard Fairey that was also commissioned by a real estate company.

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How & Nosm. “Balancing Act” Detroit, USA. May 2016. (photo © How & Nosm)

Proudly coming from a background of graffiti and vandalism to completing a paid legal mural itself encompasses a polarity that many fans and critics discuss regularly today, not always producing agreement. We don’t know if the brothers considered this debate specifically when approaching the project,but you know it probably crosses their minds. Maybe that’s why the last statement they make in their description of the new work is “This mural stands as a reminder to strive for that balance.”

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How & Nosm. “Balancing Act” Detroit, USA. May 2016. (photo © How & Nosm)

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How & Nosm. “Balancing Act” Detroit, USA. May 2016. (photo © How & Nosm)

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How & Nosm. “Balancing Act” Detroit, USA. May 2016. (photo © How & Nosm)

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How & Nosm. “Balancing Act” Detroit, USA. May 2016. (photo © How & Nosm)

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How & Nosm. “Balancing Act” Detroit, USA. May 2016. (photo © How & Nosm)

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How & Nosm. “Balancing Act” with Shepard’s Fairey on the right. Detroit, USA. May 2016. (photo © How & Nosm)

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Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock – “Joy & Pain” 12″ Extended Version

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BSA Film Friday: 05.20.16

BSA Film Friday: 05.20.16

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

Now screening :

1. Christian Omodeo Talks About “Street Art – Banksy & Co.”
2. Guido Van Helten on Abandoned Silos in Australia
3. CTVà Street Fest 2016 Recap
4. How & Nosm’s Monumental Mural in Detroit by Dennis Porto
5. Shepard Fairey being Quick on his Feet

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BSA Special Feature: Christian Omodeo Talks About “Street Art – Banksy & Co.”

It’s impossible to enter a chatroom or a bar frequented by graffiti/Street Art types today without some mention of this exhibition in Italy. The topic centers around an unresolved, largely heretofore undiscussed question of any removal of illegally placed art from property for any purposes except to destroy it. Here one of the curators of the exhibit, Christian Omodeo takes you on a tour of the complete exhibit discussing tags, photography, collectors habits, the relevance of an object as a conveyor of culture. Finally the interviewer, Good Guy Boris, broaches the subject of works taken from the urban wild. The topic is tackled head-on with Omodeo very clearly laying out a case for …

Guido Van Helten on Abandoned Silos in Australia

A beautifully shot feel-good story of a small town farming community decimated by corporate industrial farming in Brim in the Wimmera region of Victoria, Australia. It is a familiar story about the disappearing family farm and our control of the food supply that has happened across much of the so-called First World but most people still haven’t connected the dots. Here artist Guido Van Helten focuses on the local story, the left-behind individuals affected directly by economic downturn and loss of community – and paints them heroically across an architectural archetype that rises triumphantly above the land, a row of grain silos. Juddy Roller produces, Round 3 Creative directs.

CTVà Street Fest 2016 Recap

Highlights of the CVTA Festival – Street Fest in Civitacampomarano in Campobasso (Italy). A small town of 400 celebrated for 4 days in April with Biancoshock (Italy) , David de la Mano (Uruguay) , Pablo S. Herrero (Spain) , Icks (Italy) , Hitnes (Italy), and ONE (Italy).

 

How & Nosm’s Monumental Mural in Detroit by Dennis Porto

A huge new piece by How & Nosm captured here helps you appreciated the talents and the scope. More on this project soon here.

 

Shepard Fairey being Quick on his Feet

Quick! A word choice game that keeps you apprised of your local Street Artist’s preferences. Video by Konbini

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