June 2016

BSA Film Friday: 06.17.16

June 17, 2016 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. Portrait of an Artist Guido Van Helten
2. Who’s Your Daddy?
3. Shida Bombing – Hong Kong . Seoul . Tokyo
4. Moses & Taps™ EUROPA™ From The Grifters

BSA Special Feature: Portrait of an Artist Guido Van Helten

“First when you say ‘Can I do a Street Art piece?’, the answer is no,” says Guido van Helten, known, among other things, as an Australian Street Artist.

“I see it as some sort of a finale for me,” he says as he describes the years of experience as a preparation to paint this ship in only two days – a restriction placed on him by nature of the ship being an active courier during the week and he is only granted access to it during the weekend.

“I’m trying to create a sense of identity that relates to all of the people who live in a place,” he says while the camera shows him painting on a dock in near darkness. People always gravitate to capturing well known people but I’m not trying to capture that. It’s got to be a painting where people are relating in their own way. They make their own story up.”

Director Selina Miles does the capturing here in a town named Akureyri on the north coast of Iceland, and as usual she captures something more than what the eye sees.

Kolly Gallery / Who’s Your Daddy?

“In September 2015 the Kolly Gallery initiated a series of exhibitions, held in temporary locations, that are intended to bring attention to urban art movement. Temptingly entitled “Who’s Your Daddy?” each of these shows presents new works from a selection of cutting-edge international artists coming from a graffiti background. For its first edition in New York City, the gallery is pleased to exhibit the new paintings and sculptures of Crash, SupaKitch, Grotesk and Flying Förtress.”

Shida Bombing – Hong Kong . Seoul . Tokyo

Berlin-based Mik Shida is not your typical bomber, especially when using a very wide brush in a calligraphic manner to create figurative and patterned abstract works. Here you travel with him to dingy spots in a guerilla fashion with a sharply skipping glitch soundtrack and murky lighting, which rather adds to the atmospheric primitivism effect of his work as he skips through Hong Kong, Seoul, and Tokyo.

Moses & Taps™ EUROPA™ From The Grifters

Opening tonight Kolly Gallery in Zurich, graffiti writers turning conceptual artists MOSES & TAPS™ re-work the typical nomenclature of illegal/legal while asserting their right to command the elements. If successful, they will have caused you to ask “who owns public space” and to question how many inroads into your consciousness you have allowed advertising, media and branding to go. Also, art.

Summertime Swoon in New York

June 16, 2016 Artists

Come on, you know the weather has been gorgeous, New York. So many memories to make right now, rolling in the grass, rocking in a swing, chasing after a skirt, slathering up a wall with goopy wheat paste and pressing your freshly colored lino type print on a dilapidated wall or doorway. At the apex of our Brooklyn reverie what, to our smog clouded disbelieving eyes do we see, but the sight of new Swoon pieces up around the BK.

The figures are not all familiar as she has been adding folks to the street party and the color palette is somehow more saturated and pungent, but yes these are the real thing, often imitated, never matched.

A portrait of Sonia from her program last summer with Philadelphia Mural Arts. Swoon. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A relatively new figure from Swoon – a man she met during a program with Philadelphia Mural Arts who is an inmate at Graterford state prison. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo) “

“A historical portrait of the American steel industry based off a very inspiring man named Henderson, who fought for equality in the mills, taught himself to become a crane operator, and, I just learned, was also a jazz guitarist,” says Swoon in her Instagram feed.

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Artists Bring 22 New Murals to “Coney Art Walls 2016”

June 15, 2016 Artists

Just in time for this weekend’s Mermaid Parade, London’s D*Face is finishing up “Live Fast Die Young,” his beauty-and-the-zombie comic couple sipping an ice cream float at the soda counter. Austrian surrealist slicer Nychos has completed his dissection of a Ronald McDonald-ish character without a sketch; running, jumping, nearly flying through the air with aerosol in hand, flinging the spent cans over his shoulder blindly to skitter across the pavement. Baltimore-based freeform anthropologist Gaia is cavorting with passersby who want to take cellphone selfies in front of his painted wall that depicts exactly that; selfies taken in Coney Island.

This is a modern version of the multi-mirror funhouse in mural form, and Coney Art Walls is bringing it again.

Nychos. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

22 new murals on standing slabs of concrete join a dozen or so that were retained from last summer to present an eclectic and savory selection from the old-school and the new. When it comes to art in the streets, a salty luncheonette of city-style treats is on a large public platter these days, with names like graffiti, street art, urban art, installation art, public art, fine art, even contemporary art. For some of those hapless gatekeepers of any of these respective categories, this show in this location presents degrees of discomfort and anger as many subcultural roots are now brought into the light in tandem with one another in a public display – funded by a real estate firm. For the artists and majority of fans, however, the trend is more toward delight and gratitude.

Nychos. The London Police photo bomb. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

While you are unpacking that, consider that lead curator Jeffrey Deitch has often proved very adept at plumbing the aesthetic margins of our culture while rearranging and intermingling the parties, helping the viewer to appreciate their differences. This outdoor exhibit co-curated with Joseph Sitt provides a venue for a wide audience to contemplate the range of expression that New York streets have had over the last few decades, including a few artists who are trying this manner of expression for the first time.

As the Thunderbolt, Steeplechase, Cyclone and Wonder Wheel spin and swerve nearby and overhead, sending screams and personal projectiles into the ocean breeze, you have this paved lot full of paintings to peruse, lemonade in one hand and the cotton-candy-sticky hand of a sunscreen-slathered child in the other. Here you’ll see a large two-walled corner smashed with Coney Island themes by Bronx graffiti masters Tats Cru (Bio, BG183, and Nicer), a selection of hand-drawn wheat pasted portraits of Coney Island youth by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, and 4 full-form sculptures by John Ahearn creating a modernist view of divers on the beach .

Nychos. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tooling elsewhere through the loose labyrinth you come upon a monochromatic cryptically patterned tribute to Brooklyn-born Beastie Boys vocalist Adam “MCA” Yauch by Brooklyn tagger/train writer/artist Haze and a seemingly lighthearted abstractly collaged wall of mermaids by fine artist Nina Chanel Abney, whose work is currently on the cover of Juxtapoz. There is also a spectacular underwater-themed symmetrical fantasy topped by pylons bearing the likenesses of characters from “The Warriors” film by artist duo The London Police, and a stenciled “Last Supper” featuring heads of world currency playing the disciples and George Washington as Jesus sprayed across the face of a huge dollar bill by Iranian brothers Icy & Sot.

Pose. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We often travel streets and neglected spaces in cities looking for signs of freewill artistic expression and often the creative spirit surprises us as it can be expressed in so many ways with emotion, agenda, and idiosyncratic point of view. It may be the plurality of voices one experiences surfing the Internet or the multi-cultural nature of living in New York with a continuous river of fresh arrivals mixing in with established and old-timers every day, but one comes to expect this variety of viewpoints and rather naturally creates accommodation for inclusion that celebrates without negating – and in many ways Coney Art Walls does that as well.

Oppositional viewpoints are present if you look: There are coded messages and obvious ones, critiques of corporate hegemony, issues of race, commentary on police relations, sexuality, religion, capitalism, community, the languages of advertising, movies, music, entertainment, local history, and examination of roles and power structures.

John Ahearn. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

When tooling around this collection, you may wonder what, then, are the commonalities of this survey. Certainly there are the recurring references to Coney Island lore and aspects of performance and flimflam, oddity, fantasy, even the erotic. Naturally, there are elements of natural wonder as well, perhaps expected with the proximity to the beach and the ocean and the history of this place as a vacation getaway.

Aside from this, the connective tissue is what we frequently identify as what is distinctly New York – the plurality of voices. Arguing, making fun, praising, preening, bragging, lambasting, mocking, singing. Despite the continuous attempts by others to divide us, we’re strangely (very strangely), beautifully united.

Jeffery Deitch with John Ahearn. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

John Ahearn. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gaia. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“11 Instagram Posts”, by Gaia. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gaia. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Haze. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Marie Roberts has multi-generational roots here and her work makes you stop and study it. She has painted many visions and views around the neighborhood, and is considered the artist-in-residence. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Marie Roberts. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The London Police. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

AIKO. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

AIKO. Side A. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Originally from Japan, Brooklyn’s AIKO has a double sided stencil sonnet to the romance of the sea. With “Tale of the Dragon King and Mermaids in Water Castle” Aiko tells a new version of Urashima Tarō, an old Japanese legend about a fisherman who rescues a turtle and is rewarded for this with a visit to Ryūgū-jō, the palace of Ryūjin. Says Aiko, “This piece speaks to my and all women’s fantasies; chilling hard super sexy in the beautiful ocean with friendly dragon who is super powerful and a smart guy – they are about going to water castle having good time.”

AIKO. Side B. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Daze. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nina Chanel Abney. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mister Cartoon. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Steve ESPO Powers. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jessica Diamond. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tristan Eaton. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tatiana Fazlalizadeh. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tatiana Fazlalizadeh photographing her subjects. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tatiana Fazlalizadeh. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crash. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BIO – Tats Crew. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NICER – Tats Crew. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BG183 – Tats Crew. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tats Crew. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sam Vernon. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Timothy Curtis. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Coney Art Walls
2016 New Artists: Nina Chanel Abney, John Ahearn, Timothy Curtis, D*Face, Jessica Diamond, Tristan Eaton, Gaia, Eric Haze, Icy & Sot, London Police, Nychos, Pose, Stephen Powers, Tats Cru, and Sam Vernon. Returning artists who created new works: Lady Aiko, Mister Cartoon, Crash, Daze, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, and Marie Roberts. 2015 Murals on display: by Buff Monster, Eine, Ron English, How & Nosm, IRAK, Kashink, Lady Pink, Miss Van, RETNA, eL Seed and Sheryo & Yok. There are also three community walls.

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Borondo in Kiev Paints Saint Sophia’s Cathedral on a Wall

June 14, 2016 Artists

You could call it a mural, this new piece celebrating Saint Sophia’s Cathedral in Kiev. You may also simply refer to it as an outdoor painting of a majestic and Byzantine indoor view.

Borondo for Sky Art Foundation – Mural Social Club. Kiev, Ukraine. June 2016. (photo © Makism Belousov)

Spanish Street Artist/artist/muralist/painter Borondo completed this interpretation of the 11^th century Ukrainian Baroque cathedral this month during the Mural Social Club festival in Kiev and named it “Portals”. Epic, haunting, grandly meta, the arches and openness may feel as if you are seeing an outside view and the bottom third reflective surface could place you in the seat of a Venetian gondola.

Borondo executed this mural with the support of Sky Art Foundation and Mural Social Club and shortly after this one, he was again on an enormous wall with Urban Nation Project M/9 in Berlin. Go Borondo!

Borondo for Sky Art Foundation – Mural Social Club. Kiev, Ukraine. June 2016. (photo © Makism Belousov)

Borondo for Sky Art Foundation – Mural Social Club. Kiev, Ukraine. June 2016. (photo © Maksim Belousov)

Our thanks to founder Dmytro Palienko and curators Oleg Sosnov and Yulia Ostrovska.

Never Crew: “Inhuman Barriers” and Cities Of Hope

June 13, 2016 Artists

Manchester in UK hosted a street art convention in May called “Cities of Hope” and 10 international artists worked on pieces that often addressed issues of social justice. Swiss duo Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni, who comprise Nevercrew, addressed the theme of immigration and there piece gives a sense of the seemingly impossible odds that many people face when attempting to escape war and persecution in search of a refuge.

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Never Crew. Inhuman Barriers. Manchester Cities Of Hope. Manchester, UK. June 2016. (photo © courtesy of Never Crew)

“We are extremely glad to have been part of this project based on social justice issues and so strongly connected to the city and to its people,” the guys say in reference to the experience painting “Inhuman Barriers.” The two worked in support of the local solidarity group WASP (Women Asylum Seekers Together).

Additional participants in Cities of Hope include Axel Void, C215, Case Maclaim, Faith47, Phlegm, Martin Whatson, Pichi&Avo, Hyuro, and Dale Grimshaw.

Never Crew. Inhuman Barriers. Manchester Cities Of Hope. Manchester, UK. June 2016. (photo © courtesy of Never Crew)

BSA Images Of The Week: 06.12.16

June 12, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

The annual Welling Court Community Festival in L.I.C. in Queens took place yesterday. BSA was there on Friday to photograph the completed walls while a bevy of enthusiastic artists were busy at work on their walls and getting ready for yesterday’s block party. We wanted to bring you Part I of our coverage of this year’s festival on this Sunday’s edition of BSA Images Of The Week. Sit tight, Part II will come later next week as we wait for a few artists to complete their walls.

The 7th year for this eclectic homegrown collecting of graffiti and Street Artists for communal mural-making has not diverged much from its original character. You are still entirely welcomed. There are no corporate sponsors or sales of T-Shirts or silly app-designer types striking poses or stroking beards or like, privileged like, verbally challenged, like, young professionals looking for like brunch? nearby? Er whatever.

Wellington Court still feels like real people, and hard working families, with plenty of kids and community and homemade foods. At least for now. Thanks to organizers Garrison and Alison Buxton for pulling this off once again.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Billy Mode, Cern, Chris Stain, Depoe, Drsc0, FKDL, Icy & Sot, John Fekner, LMNOPI, London Kaye, Myth, OX, REPO, Skewville, Stikman, Vlady, and Voxx.

Our top image: Icy & Sot draws a direct connection between industrial pollution and the globe. Welling Court 2016. L.I.C. Queens. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. Welling Court 2016. L.I.C. Queens. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

CERN. Welling Court 2016. L.I.C. Queens. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DEPOE. Welling Court 2016. L.I.C. Queens. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

John Fekner. Welling Court 2016. L.I.C. Queens. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain . Billy Mode. Welling Court 2016. L.I.C. Queens. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

REPO. Welling Court 2016. L.I.C. Queens. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LMNOPI. Welling Court 2016. L.I.C. Queens. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist LMNOPI lends her voice to the growing calls for stores to boycott the world’s largest supplier of berries until they treat their employees fairly after being accused of abuses, among them child labor. Learn more about the worldwide boycott of Driscoll’s here.

Coloquix (photo © Jaime Rojo)

OX and Vlady do some clever circuit-jamming of public space here with advertising signage that features images of advertising signage. Also an impossible to read larger message. Biancavilla, Italy. (photo © Vlady)

Stikman was framed. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

While gazing at the gams on this one earlier in the week, we found ourselves wondering if London Kaye will get a tan this summer. London Kaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

drscØ left a few new pieces around town this month, each appearing to be shocked in disbelief at something, maybe passersby. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

drscØ (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Heaven knows I’m miserable now. (S)Myth takes maudlin self pity to heroic lengths. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist’s take on The Donald. The HRC, referencing Hillary Clinton was added later for an additional bit of levity. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FKDL (photo © Jaime Rojo)

VOXX (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Los Angeles, CA. April 2011. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Bushwick Collective Turns 5

June 11, 2016 Artists

BSA has been promoting and supporting The Bushwick Collective and the artists who paint there from the very beginning.

Before The New York Times. Before Time Out. Before The Daily News and many other news or culture outlets. Before there were any videos of Joe Ficalora telling his story. Before Social Media turned every private act into an object for mass consumption. Before the street art tours. Before Street Art was a cottage industry in our borough.

Case MaClaim (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As we celebrate five years of Bushwick Collective we have a question for you: Do you remember it’s original name before he changed it to Bushwick Collective? Joe contacted us out of the blue one day to ask us to curate some walls with him and to help him contact some artists and we immediately sensed a determination in Mr. Ficalora that was stellar. However, we never could have envisioned the huge daily festival it has become or how many people would celebrate or malign it.

Case MaClaim (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bushwick Open Studios was already in full effect by that time – another artists’ effort we were among the first to support – and Manhattan art fans were beginning to make the trek a little further out on the L train to Bushwick now that Williamsburg had been clobbered by consumers by the late 2000s.

The first Bushwick Collective party had a DJ and 10 muralists. Jim Avignon, KLUB 7, and Gabriel Spector among them. Unofficially included was the huge “return” of COST, who slammed an entire defunct garage shop with posters and paint – a site that he often returned to in the months that followed to revise and expand.

Case MaClaim (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It’s been a rollicking and sometimes rocky ride with the Collective, with mostly the voices of fans and few detractors, including silly art-school gentrifiers who bemoaned the gentrification that these murals brought to the neighborhood. Also local graff writers felt disrespected or overlooked by what they perceived as an invasion, and you can’t blame them for feeling that way.

Mostly, it has been a celebration of the creative spirit in these twenty-teens in Brooklyn and we all know that this too is a temporary era, as New York is continually reinventing itself. Enjoy these murals smacked cheek-by-jowl for block after block by an international train of talents running through Bushwick today, because they are here for you to enjoy in this moment. Like David Bowie wisely told us, “These are the golden years.”

Nychos. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Joe Iurato and Logan Hicks collaboration. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Li-Hill (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Celso (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don Rimx (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sipros. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sipros (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damien Mitchell (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Atomik (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FKDL (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dasic (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BG183 . Tats Crew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NICER . DAZE . BIO . Tats Crew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

CRUSH . Tats Crew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JMR (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KLOPS (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NEPO . CORO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Film Friday: 06.10.16

June 10, 2016 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. The Restoration of Blu / Street Art Banksy & Co
2. Fintan Magee in Puerto Rico for Santurce Es Ley by Tost Films
3. HK Walls 2016
4. ONO’U 2015 by Selina Miles
5. DAN WITZ: “BREATHING ROOM” Kickstarter

BSA Special Feature: The Restoration of Blu for “Street Art Banksy & Co”

Part II of a behind the scenes look by Good Guy Boris at the controversial show in Bologna that features art works by BLU and others that were originally not intended to appear in a museum, like most things in museums.

Here we learn about less sexy topics like copyright law and one lawyers interpretation of the realistic expectations of artists when painting illegally and legally as it applies to copyright in Italy and France. We also receive a quick education about traditional and modern techniques for the restoration of works for archival purposes, which is why people will be looking at these things long after you and we are gone.

Fintan Magee in Puerto Rico for Santurce Es Ley by Tost Films

You may recall our article on this piece in February with Mr. Magee:

Fintan Magee, Puerto Rico, and Rising Sea Levels

HK Walls 2016

A quick wrap of Hong Kong Walls 2016, which included a rather diverse group of artists including Above, Alana Tsui, Caratoes, Clogtwo, Colasa, DILK, Dmojo, Egg Fiasco, Essahqinoirs, Exld, Faust, Gas, Gan, Gr1, Keflione, Kenji Chai, KristopherH, Mooncasket, Mysterious Al, Okudart, Paola Delfin, Parent’s Parents, Peeta, Phron, Roids, Ryck, Satr, Sars, Senk, Stern Rockwell, Suiko, Vhils, Volre, Whyyy, and Zids.

ONO’U 2015 by Selina Miles

A round up of last years’ ONO’U festival that combines murals by Street Artists and graffiti writers – and injects an element of competition judged by people with credible familiarity and knowledge. More importantly, the artists are well cared for, there is a sense of cultural exchange, and the public is left with artworks that are significant or meaningful to them. ONO’U has the stage at the moment when it comes to public/commercial festivals in the Street Art realm.

DAN WITZ: “BREATHING ROOM”

“After the terror attacks in Europe this past year, it became necessary to abandon the dark imagery of my past work and take a new approach,” says veteran Street Artist Dan Witz as he describes the dozen or so pieces he plans to install in London this summer. Please consider supporting his Kickstarter!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1335802971/breathing-room-a-street-art-project-by-dan-witz

ROBBBB Displays His Body with “Selfie Forward” in Beijing

June 9, 2016 Artists

Filial piety (Xiao Jing) is one of the virtues of Confucian thought (孝): a love and respect for one’s parents and ancestors. In the West we talk of filial piety in the context of fraternal love, indeed all benevolent actions.

Street Artist ROBBBB in Beijing is contemplating, as most of us do in our 20s, what his connection is to his society and his family and ancestors especially as a representative of the future as well as the past. One aspect that stays more or less the same in every culture is what our bodies look like, even if our clothing and hairstyles are in a continuous evolution. Today our bodies are changing as well thanks to plastic surgery and additive technology.

With this essential self examination ROBBB brings it up to date with his own Street Art campaign called “Selfie foreward”, a series of painted portions of his own body wheat-pasted on the streets. He segments the view of his corpus, giving a closer examination of physical details down to the follicle texture, augmented by an abstractly patterned wrapping across the surface that looks like projected light waves or an ultra-thin metal-alloy plating of decorative skin. Perhaps ROBBBB is seeing himself as a cyborg of organic and biomechatronic body parts.

“This series is about my body,” ROBBBB says, “There is an old saying China that goes “Our bodies-to every hair and bit of skin – are received from our parents.” In any case, he says, with this very original take on the relatively modern selfie, “I’ve been thinking deeply about contradictions and conflicts between youth as a social group and my place in society.”

Street Art and Murals Get a Tahitian Post Office Stamp of Approval

June 8, 2016 Artists

A new postal stamp in French Polynesia highlights a mural at the “ONO’U” festival in Tahiti, a first for the multi-island country as well as the French Street Artist SETH and his local Tahitian collaborator, HTJ.

Introduced in New York last week at the decennial World Stamp Show, an eight-day stamp extravaganza visited by a quarter million people, the new 140 CFP stamp depicts his mural at the 2015 “ONO’U” festival, as shot by photographer Martha Cooper.

French Street Artist SETH mural for ONO’U Street Art and Graffiti Festival in Tahiti, French Polynesia in 2015 was selected by the country’s Postal Service for their new Philatelic Stamp issued in time to represent French Polynesia at the World Stamp Show in New York City this year. SETH was assited on this mural by HTJ. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The 6-story painting depicts a sleeping French Polynesian girl wrapped in a traditional pareo dress that also morphs into the traditional bed covering called a tifaifai. “To design the patterns he collaborated with a local artist, HTJ, “ says ONO’U co-founder Sarah Roopinia,“and Seth conceptualized the girl sleeping, protected under the traditional patterns. It’s like a guardian protecting her with her culture and also she’s also representing dreaming about the future of French Polynesia.”

The white cut-out forms on the intense rouge background have propelled the design to stardom among ONO’U’s social media followers and when the postal service approached organizers to make a commemorative stamp of the 2-year old mural festival in downtown Papeete, Roopinia and her co-founder Jean Ozonder jumped at the chance. “what we liked with this production was having the opportunity to broaden the impact of street art and to have more people be aware of it,” she says. “To us the idea of a postal stamp was an original initiative and a way to bring this art into an area where you would not expect to find it.”

Looking at the patterns in the bedspread you may also see more than the folklore forms of typical plant leaves and the Tiaré flower that many wear tucked behind an ear in archetypical portraits however. You also may recognize a symbol for radiation near the girls back and the form of a an atomic mushroom cloud near her bended knees, both referencing the approximately 175 nuclear tests that France did on the island of Moruroa from roughly 1966 to 1996, tests which The Gaurdian now says ‘showered vast area(s) of Polynesia with radioactivity‘.

By inclusion of these symbols with more traditional symbols in the new piece one is reminded of the inclusion of historical disasters traditionally in folk art ranging from pottery to quilting. Since we began making art we have been storytelling about natural disasters, man-made disasters, wars, political upheavals, societal shifts, milestone events and religious practices.

HTJ assists SETH with the mural’s background motif. ONO’U Street Art and Graffiti Festival. Tahiti, French Polynesia. 2015. (photo © Martha Cooper)

As Street Art influenced murals have gained a wider audience across the world and certain works and artists are highly celebrated, there have been other issues of official stamps in recent years including works from Invader, Shepard Fairey, C215, Rero, Vhils, Ludo, and Mis Tic. The presidents of France and Singapore released a dual “Street Art” stamp a year ago and a recent Polish stamp depicts a 4 story wall by Polish painter Natalia Rak in Białystok, Poland of a young girl in traditional Polish dress who is watering a tree.

The “ONO’U” festival is now readying for its third edition and Ms. Roopinia was in New York with Mr. Ozonder to check out the current Street Art scene, the Coney Art Walls, the Governors Ball concerts and to share their new stamp with the thousands of people trekking by at the stamp exhibition. Roopinia tells us that the hugely successful festival draws top names for exhibition and competition from both the Street Art and graffiti world, but initially the mayor of Papeete, landlords, and the local businesses were rather hesitant, as were Street Artists who had not considered going to a place where there was not a large graffiti or Street Art scene to speak of.

“The challenge that we had was convincing the best street artists in the world to come to a ‘lost paradise’ to paint gigantic walls right in the center of the city. For a whole year we were working on finding walls, convincing the owners. Basically for the first six months no one was willing to give us their walls because they thought that it was all going to be horrible – so convincing the population was difficult,” she says.

“I could feel that some of the politicians were not very happy that we were going to do this in the beginning because they didn’t understand exactly that a small team could do such great things with artists,” she says, but the response of locals and businesses was overwhelmingly good, and word of the festival spread among artists, not least because most of their costs are covered and, by the way, they are painting in Tahiti after all.

“The second year the volume was really incredible,” says Jean of the interest that was piqued and the good reviews that went out among artists. “So many guys wanted to be invited to be a guest or to make a wall and we said ‘We can’t invite everybody because there is a budget.’

And quite a substantial budget it is. The partners say they have to raise over €300,000 a year and “80% of the festival is funded by private partners and sponsors,” including brand names like Nissan, Perrier, and Montana paints. The remaining 20% is funded by the city and the Ministry of Tourism.

“The festival is always about two things,” says Roopinia, “There are “the main walls” which are by larger names like Seth or Kobra that are right in the center of the city you can walk from one wall to the other, making a very beautiful art promenade or city walk. At the same time that this is happening there’s a contest that invites mostly graffiti artists – in the rules it’s only aerosol and there are no stencils – we really try to keep it strictly graffiti.”

Considering they already have a stamp and cruises are now dropping off visitors to walk through the streets and discover murals, it looks like ONO’U is putting Tahiti on the map for international street mural fans. “There is a general enthusiasm,” says Roopinia of people not just in Tahiti but across many of the 118 islands of French Polynesia. “So the festival is taking place on Tahiti and in Pepeete (the capital) where most people live but the impact is also through the TV, the Internet, and on the social media. But also in the outer islands they were flying to come in to see the walls and talk to the artists during the festival. Everybody is out walking in the streets talking with the artists, taking pictures.”

HTJ assists SETH with the mural’s background motif. ONO’U Street Art and Graffiti Festival. Tahiti, French Polynesia. 2015. (photo © Martha Cooper)

SETH and HTJ’s mural for ONO’U Street Art and Graffiti Festival in Tahiti, French Polynesia and the Philatelic Stamp on a post marked envelope. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Click HERE to learn more about ONO’U Tahiti Festival. Graffiti and Street Art. Tahiti, French Polynesia.

Our very special thanks to photographer Martha Cooper for sharing her photos with BSA readers.

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

This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Graffiti Murals: Exploring The Impacts Of Street Art

June 7, 2016 Artists

New Book by Patrick Verel Attempts to Untangle the Graffiti Mural Discussion

In Graffiti Murals: Exploring The Impacts Of Street Art, a methodical study of graffiti and murals in Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Staten Island, Jersey City, Philadelphia, and Trenton (New Jersey), author Patrick Verel talks to all of the stakeholders he can find, revealing much in the telling of his findings. The author says he created this book from a paper he was researching for while completing his masters degree in urban studies, and you can tell his intention was to turn over as many stones as possible to study the impact this grassroots art movement is having on the communities that murals appear in.

Within an academic framework Verel makes sure to interview artists, property owners, local neighbors, law enforcement, and even the occasional Marxist scholar who explains the concept of “creative destruction” in capitalist global cities and the “necessary” cycles of gentrification they go through, often abetted unwittingly by artists.

He carefully studies some causative factors for graffiti writing, metrics for measuring in a sphere of criminality, the difficult distinctions we make between tags and throwies versus pieces, productions, and graffiti murals, and the sneakily deliberate practice of using sanctioned graffiti and Street Art as a deterrent for the unsanctioned stuff.

In the context of urban studies and planning, the creativity here is sort of reduced to pawndom, but as a social factor, he provides examination of the intersections of invested parties. It’s a tricky line to walk with possibilities of triangulation everywhere on this tightrope, but ultimately a wide swath of opinions is sampled by the author and given to you to assess.

Oh, yes, there are also murals – captured in situ, without romance. In this way the images are illustrative and informational amidst fields of text that sometimes gets into the weeds.

Couched in the agendas of city planners, business improvement districts, policy makers, landlords, and straight up economic lever-pullers, the aesthetic and cultural growth of the graffiti scene (and its various tributaries) takes a little bit of a backseat in this version of an enormous half-century long story.

Undoubtedly, every reader will come away knowing something new from “Graffiti Murals” and with a greater appreciation for many of the complexities around them in the US. Congratulations to Verel for trying to make sense of the contradictory laws, opinions, and social strategem that currently guide our path.

Graffiti Murals by Patrick Verel. Schiffer Publishing. 2016 (photos of plates by Jaime Rojo)

Graffiti Murals: Exploring the Impact of Street Art. Patrick Verel. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Li-Hill in Motion and “The Impact of Discovery” in Kiev

June 6, 2016 Artists

Street Artist Li-Hill is a professor and student of the science of motion on the street and in the public sphere, with figures captured at increments along a path of movement. Often his large scale murals reveal the nature of the journey that brings the figure forward in space, merging the energy and particles that comprise it. His largest mural to date, completed last week in Kiev, is as much a tribute to the science of particle physics as it is to the study of the human form in kinetic motion.

Painted with the support of Sky Art Foundation and Mural Social Club founder Dmytro Palienko and curated by Oleg Sosnov and Yulia Ostrovska, Li-Hill super-collides science and motion photography in an enormous way not often seen with the naked eye. Painted on the multi-façade of the Kieve Polytechnical Institute, the Ukraine’s largest science and technical school, Li-Hill is capturing many explosions at once.

An interpretation of hydrogen protons flying into one another and creating an explosion, the piece points to the earliest photography that captured motion by laying plates over one another, like those of the 1880s made at the University of Pennsylvania by Eadweard Muybridge.

Considering his work more science than art, his work along with that of Etienne-Jules Marey studied the range of human and animal motion, causing an explosion in the study by artists as well. In fact Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, debuting nearly a quarter century after Muybridge’s own photographic studies of a woman descending stairs sparked an uproar on both sides of the Atlantic to the highest office of the White House.

Here Li-Hill says he was thinking of the impact on cinema as well and considers this an interpretation of the struggles he sensed in his host country. These conflicts he says, have the potential to “breed discoveries that, through struggle, enable culture, identity and community to be forged.”

”Walking and turning around rapidly with a satchel in one hand, a cane in the other” Animal Locomotion Plate 49, 1887, Collotype, Eadweard Muybridge

Two chronophotographic studies of a run taken from overhead, 1887 Etienne-Jules Marey (Graphic reproductions Courtesy of private collection)

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