September 2016

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.18.16

September 18, 2016 Artists

We debated whether or not to open today’s edition of BSA Images Of The Week on a political note with new Donald Trump related art or with an uplifting image of an almost universally recognized sweet little bird: The Sparrow.

The Sparrow won.

Who hasn’t seen them enjoying a good old dust bath or just happily munching on whatever crumbs fall from the public while eating al fresco. They have natural predators in the city and country and have been featured in songs, poems, books for centuries. More recently Chairman Mao Zedong ordered them to be killed The Kill a Sparrow Campaign in 1958 – where millions of them were killed by citizens, unleashing an environmental disaster of locusts destroying food crops, and people starving.

We prefer to think of these little birds in terms of the gospel hymn “His Eye Is On the Sparrow”

“I sing because I’m happy
I sing because I’m free
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches over me.”

This week two street pieces we discovered feature this finely feathered friend by LMNOPI and Elbow-Toe aka Brian Adam Douglas.

So, here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Brian Adam Douglas, Dirty Bandits, Indecline, Joe Caslin, Leon Keer, LMNOPI, MSK, SacSix, Swoon, The Flying Dutchman, Vexta, and WK Interact.

Our top image: LMNOPI. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brian Adams Douglas. Detail. Speaking of sparrows. They make and appearance on this portrait. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brian Adams Douglas (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SWOON. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SWOON (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Indecline. Mana Urban Arts Project (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In New Jersey on a rooftop the passing car traffic is now able to catch a glimpse of a nude statue of Donald Trump. The anonymous artists collective Indecline has done of number of recent installations addressing political topics in the New York area. This one has garnered national coverage in the media. There’s not much that we can say that hasn’t already been addressed elsewhere.

Indecline . Mana Urban Arts Project. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Indecline . Mana Urban Arts Project (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Indecline. MSK . Mana Urban Arts Project (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Indecline . Mana Urban Arts Project (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SacSix (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Leon Keer. Aruba Art Fair. Aruba. (photo © Leon Keer)

Title: ‘Niets aan te geven / Nothing to declare’. The 3D painting depicts the story on the crisis of critical shortages of food and medicine in Venezuela and the effect it has on the nearby island of Aruba. The location were the painting was made is behind the former customs office in San Nicolas. -LK

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VEXTA . Dirty Bandits (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Joe Caslin. Waterford Walls International Street Art Festival (photo © Joe Caslin)

A new mural in Waterford, Ireland by artist Joe Caslin speaks to the topic of mental health and our awareness of it. On the façade of an abandoned hotel that overlooks the city, Caslin created this figure, quiet and troubled, as part of a mural festival there. The wheatpasted drawing by Caslin is entitled ‘Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine’, which translates as ‘we live protected under each other’s shadow’.

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WK Interact (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LMNOPI (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Flying Dutch Man (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Jersey City, New Jersey. September 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nuart 2016: ‘Post Street-Art’ and Our Changing Terminologies

September 17, 2016 Artists

For a considerable time now at BSA we’ve been discussing with authors, artists, academics, writers, historians, political scientists, sociologists, criminologists the topics of Street Art, graffiti, Urban Art, public art, and the milieu. Often considered is whether a piece or action is illegal, legal, activist, aesthetic, mark-making, territory-marking, interventionist. With few exceptions, there are often exceptions when it comes to labeling works and the artists who make them.

SPY. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Ian Cox)

Perhaps with more emphasis than it merits, we regularly note that no point on our individual or societal timeline is static. The state of art and creative expression in the public sphere is one of continuous evolution along the continuum. From Villeglé and his ripping back of layers of street posters that revealed the colorful strata of public communications like a social scientist to Add Fuels’ surreal ripping back of the skin of buildings to reveal a decorative Trompe-l’œil Portuguese tiling, art of the streets has infinite through-lines that defy our ability to label them.

But we try.

Invariably, it pisses someone off. For the record, we’re okay with that.

Henrik Uldalen. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Ian Cox)

“Street Art” the term has had a number of definitions in common usage since at least the 1970s (probably earlier) that include things like handcrafts, jewelry, even the current ballyhoo, the mural. Today, because we’re all so much more enlightened and street-wise, we are convinced that no credible scholar of academia or the street would include a mural in the definition of Street Art, which must be illegal and (most likely) installed on-the-fly.

Recently Raphael Schacter made a claim to renaming a family of practices that moves beyond the confused state of labeling we are in to something with more clarity called “Intermural Art”. He says with his signature humor and cadence that “Street Art is a Period. Period.” – and that very soon, if not already, we are moving beyond that period.

Jeff Gillette and Jaune collaboration. Pictured here is Jaune at work. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Ian Cox)

Aside from the association that “intermural” has with both murals and with boys and girls playing dodge-ball in the school gymnasium (sorry that’s intramural), it somehow doesn’t capture a post Street Art period that is expanding to include so many practices and practitioners that it is altering things its path. But we get the point. Wait, did we just say “post Street Art”?

That’s what Martyn Reed at Nuart would like us to consider as a term that describes what he is illustrating with the curated installations this year for the festival in Norway. With a number of leaders of thought and letters doing some heavy lifting of street art antecedence and corollaries (and beer steins) at this annual festival over the last few years, it is with some careful consideration that he chooses his artists, and his terminology.

Jeff Gillette . Jaune NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

According to the show description ‘Post-Street Art’, an inside exhibition that opened last Saturday and continues through October 16, is an expression that “has been adopted to describe artworks, artists and events that are “informed by” and “aware of” the strategies, forms and themes explored by Street Art but which couldn’t rightly be regarded as ‘Street Art’ or ‘Street Artists’ per se. The term could also be used to describe a new breed of studio practice-based street artist, whose interest in and knowledge of the contemporary art world often far supplants that of an engagement with the street.”

Yes and yes. Additionally, we have heard this studio-originated practice that is informed by street practice described as Urban Contemporary or more simply Urban Art. You may also wonder how the label intersects with Post Modern and Post-Graffiti, if at all. We will not turn over these little monsters to look at their stomachs just now. Instead, let’s see these new exclusive photos from Ian Cox and Tor Ståle Moen of some of the new installations at ‘Post-Street Art’ at Nuart 2016.

Participating artists include: Add Fuel (PT), Axel Void (ES), Eron (IT), Evol (DE), Fintan Magee (AU), Henrik Uldalen (NO), Hyuro (AR), Jaune (BE), Jeff Gillette (US), KennardPhillipps (UK), MTO (FR), Nipper (NO), Robert Montgomery (UK) and SpY (ES)

Robert Montgomery. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

Robert Montgomery. Process shot. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Ian Cox)

Evol and Add Fuel collaboration. Process shot. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Ian Cox)

Evol . Add Fuel. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

Fintan Magee. Process shot. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Ian Cox)

Fintan Magee. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

Nipper. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © James Finucane)

EXHIBITION – ‘POST STREET-ART’
11 September – 16 October 2016
Opening hours: Wed – Fri 12:00 – 17:00 / Sat – Sun 11:00 – 16:00
Tou Scene Beer Halls, Kvitsøygata 25, 4014 Stavanger

BSA Film Friday: 09.16.16

September 16, 2016 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. M-City at WL4
2. Faith47 – Who Will Guard The Guards Themselves
3. Henk and Louise Schiffmacher by Rust and Mako Deuza
4. Narcelio Grud: Mattress
5. Nether in Baltimore Philadelphia, Chicago and New York

BSA Special Feature: M-City at WL4

Polish Street Art stencillist, professor, and man-machine, M-City shows us with great dispatch the mechanics of production, with the occasional break for a snort of paint aroma to keep him going.

Also, are those pirates going by on a pirate ship?

Arrrrrr

Faith47 – Who Will Guard The Guards Themselves Film by Zane Meyer. Los Angeles 2016

Zane Meyer is killing it with his videos of artists in situ on the the street fighting and dancing with the wall. Faith47 is in her full stride with this herd of galloping wild horses, symbols perhaps of the runaway power we have allowed to take over our banks, military, companies – freed from regulation or governmental (citizen) interference. It is perhaps thrilling to watch, and then the herd turns toward you.

“This quotation is the embodiment of the philosophical question of how power can be held to account. It refers to the impossibility of enforcing moral behaviour when the enforcers are corruptible, as seen in timeless cases of tyrannical governments, uncontrollably oppressive dictatorships, and police or judicial corruption and overreach. How can we trust authoritative guardians of power when only they are left to guard themselves against themselves? It’s an age-old challenge; the phrase, as it is normally quoted in Latin, comes from the Satires of Juvenal, the 1st/2nd century Roman satirist,” says the text accompanying the video.

Only problem is the video is too short, too brief, not enough. But maybe that’s how Faith wants it.

Henk and Louise Schiffmacher by Rust and Mako Deuza

You don’t see stop action videos too much today in the Street Art realm but its nice to have this minute by minute account of the building of the image, complete with artists, friends, passerby, photographers, kids, butchers, bakers, shoemakers. The subjects here are the famed dutch tattoo artist Henk Schiffmacher and his wife Louise, or as the grandiose 90s rock star Anthony Kiedis is reported to have called him, “an absolute rapscallion of Dutch proportions.”

Made in Corsica in the City of Ajaccio, the artists say that the mural “is about a life dedicated to tattoo, art, lovers, inspiration and many things word can’t describe.” Rust made the portrait of Henk schiffmacher and Mako Deuza the portrait of Louise – all with cans.

Narcelio Grud: Mattress

Mr. Grud recycles foam mattresses and creates new public artworks from dreams. His inventiveness never ceases to amaze, his resourcefulness without end.

Nether in Baltimore Philadelphia, Chicago and New York

A lot has happened in our lives over the last couple of years and muralist Nether from Baltimore captures his street work from ’15 and ’16 here in his reel. A messenger to the streets as much as a reflection of it, Nether calls out the strife and the violence that people are marching in the streets about in cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York.

FAME GAME – 20 Years of Skewville, Escape from New York

September 15, 2016 Artists

Pivotal figures on New York’s homegrown Street Art scene tell BSA that they are getting out while there is still a chance.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rough edged humorists and twin brothers Droo and Ad Deville are closing down the bong factory in Queens and the former Factory Fresh gallery space in Bushwick, Brooklyn and heading out of town.

No one is saying it is for good.

Beginning on the streets as art hoodlums named Skewville in 1996, the brothers embraced a netherworld of art-making that adroitly courted fame among peers, echoing the graffiti credo of claiming territory, commanding space, and earning respect from a fan base of informed New York urban art watchers.

Skewville. These dogs were put up on this wall on the LES in 2003. They remained hidden under a billboard. The billboard came down in 2012. Shortly after I took this photo the wall was painted black, including the dogs. The dogs are still visible all in black. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“It was just a New York term. Don’t step on my dogs,” Ad Deville explains of his and Droo’s flat wooden sneakers; screen printed, drilled, cut and wired together to sling over street lamp wires.

A New York signature on New York streets, these archetypes of modern city life could be seen silhouetted at a distance and read in detail when you got closer. A genius tag that incorporated street and school stories of their youth in Queens – stories of gangs and drug dealers and tributes to the dead and the marking of territories.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Through the repetition of tossing their tag across the city their “flying dogs” became their unique signature on the skyline. An unheard of way to “get up” that combined the outlaw ethos of graffiti, the repetitive logo-spreading of advertising, and the D.I.Y. craft-making of what was beginning to be commonly called Street Art.

Through the 2000s they took the wooden sneakers around the world and Ad shows us a diary he made that records much of it. “This book is everywhere we tossed. I made a record of it. This is everywhere we went, the first thousand pairs. Everywhere we went – we brought this and documented it.”

Skewville with BAST, TIKI, El Celso and EKG. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

He reads aloud what he is seeing as he flips pages. “Droo missed a bunch of times, everyone was looking… Right in front of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame….” They favored hitting wires near museums and high visibility spots not known for a graffiti or Street Art scene. There are even photos of Skewville sneakers hanging off wires on Utah Park City ski slopes.

5,000 plus pairs, more than they can count now, ended up in London, Seattle, New York, Mexico, Norway, Amsterdam, South Africa, – enough places for Droo to say they were global.

Now the Factory Fresh building is sold – the site of the early Bushwick gallery Ad founded with Ali Ha. They had leap-frogged Williamsburg into Bushwick from running the Orchard Street Art Gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Back when they arrived the ‘Wick had two other galleries that most people knew of – Ad Hoc and English Kills.

Skewville and FAILE. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Meanwhile they’re leaving Queens too. Droo is putting away all the unshipped bongs that emulate Coke and Heineken bottles and school lunch boxes and they’re going through the flatfiles of artworks the guys say they stole from the streets and inherited or bought from friends.

In between the epic era of flying dogs and today they say both had a lot of adventures and laughter and fights and even a period of silence between the two of them over the direction their fine art and commercial careers were headed. Recalling stories there is a lot of joking and they talk over each others sentences, sometimes quibbling over points, or clarifying details and storylines.

Never short of creative ideas, these guys have brought a hilarious blend of street humor that has consistently mocked the over-serious bravado of graffiti/street codes and the pissing matches over territory and style. They have also lampooned consumer culture and played with the obviously manipulative sloganeering of advertising that sells us stuff we don’t need.

Skewville, GoreB, Tiki. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With rollers and wheatpastes and sculptural installations on the street, on roofs, on walls, in empty lots, and in galleries; they have blended signage and sarcasm with the vernacular of daily life and blocky 2D figure studies that mash Picasso and dime store greeting cards from the 1970s. They’ve recycled garbage cans, milk crates, soda bottles, transister radios, air conditioner panels, suitcases, car tires, and electrical conduit. They’ve screen printed t-shirts, posters, and artworks, and jigsaw cut and constructed enormous boomboxes and merry-go-rounds and illuminated signs that say stuff like “Yo-Yo” and “Sucks Either Way”.

In their hands graffiti throwies and bubble tags suddenly got sharp corners and comically warped perspectives, blocky letters seem obvious but their smart-aleck slogans cryptically allude to conmen and street vernacular. “Brooklyn Beef”, “This Ain’t Kansas”, “Keep On Grass”, “Next Level”, “Today’s Special”, “Act Now”, “Check Yo Self”, “Step Off”, “Brooklyn Flavor”, “Fame Game.”

Skewville, Dan Witz, EKG, ELC, BAST, El Celso and Michael DeFeo. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“For us there are a lot of layers that go over all of the realm,” Ad says and talks about how the game has changed and how the commercial and marketing aspect that new artists bring to the streets has been discouraging to him and the people he came up with.

He shows us the walls he says he actually stole from the street to create a canvas lining a basement show in 2006 with a few artists whose names became familiar to larger audiences and says that this was when the walls actually looked like a Street Art scene was in effect.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“In 2006 there was this show in a basement in Brooklyn – this guy Lou (Auguste) did a documentary called ‘Open Air.’ It was Faile, Bast, Aiko, Dan Witz, ESPO, Tiki Jay One, Michale De Feo, us. I curated the show. We lined the entire gallery with walls we stole off the streets. Nothing was for sale.” That really wasn’t the point, he says, even though already there were already people giving street art tours in Manhattan by then.

But when were the golden years exactly? In the documentary Adam was already lamenting the state of Street Art and its soul-crushing insincerity. “It’s going to die out soon. It’s going to implode,” he says. Elsewhere he says “I think the Internet is what made it so big but that is also what is killing it.”

“You kill the mystique. That’s what sucks about the Internet.”

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ten years later he has invited the Internet to see and paw through boxes of what he has packed for storage just before escaping from Brooklyn. Truthfully, it looks like the brothers are going to need a small warehouse.

Lest you think it’s been easy, the guys can tell you about being overlooked in their early days by galleries and feeling neatly dissed repeatedly by early bloggers who considered themselves Street Art gatekeepers.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

On top of it, in 2003 the US Attorney General John Ashcroft launched “Operation Pipe Dreams” and cracked down on companies selling drug paraphernalia – and their bong business was nearly decimated because it seemed that their products did not appear to be for smoking tobacco.

These days their art is only occasionally on the street however they’ve found serious collectors in certain parts of Europe who snap up their canvasses and embrace their new ideas, so even though Droo’s got kids and a regular job and is moving to Long Island and Adam is talking about Berlin, you can wager that Skewville will simply continue to shapeshift and re-configure.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“When we did that Orchard Street show of sneakers in 2003 nobody was interested in them. I remember I was selling a pair for $20 and some guy was trying to talk me down to $15,” Adam says with a half smile. “I have that entire show boxed up and you can all just suck it now.” Recent prices of one pair have topped $600 so apparently $20 would have been a good deal.

In an interview with BSA a few years ago Ad told us a similar tale of grit and regeneration. “Instead of feeling bad that made us work harder to come out with different ideas and make new stuff”.

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Just before they both get out of New York we want to know if this seriously means they are quitting the streets and they both say they are ready to keep pursuing other art projects, but not to worry, they’ll still be in the game.

Twenty years of Skewville and of course the scene has changed. Chasing a street rep, a fine art name, and amassing an archive of enough art to mount a mid-career retrospective never would have happened if they hadn’t done the work and made the hustle. But the brothers want to make one thing clear about their seemingly zigzagging path.

“We didn’t do things to make money, we did it for fame,” Ad says.

Check.

Skewville. Originally on 11 Spring building. (photo © Jaime Rojo).

With the galleries and shows, Ad and Ali also helped out a lot of other artists to get opportunities and exposure.

One by one New York artists neighborhoods are rapidly gentrified, ever higher rents are chasing people out, and the art in the streets often means legal murals. They love to make fun of the new kids from the Midwest and the beards and the Street Art tours. When it comes to art and artists in NYC, leaving the city is a refrain we’ve been hearing for five years.

“Skewville is officially leaving New York, at least temporarily,” says Ad. He announces it in that dramatic way that tells you he is looking for a slogan, and examining his our existence.

“The true question is, ‘Is it even worth staying?’ ”

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Up In Smoke. Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

OS GEMEOS Dreams Paintings, Sculpture, Music at Lehmann Maupin

September 14, 2016 Artists

Os Gemeos has taken one step closer toward bringing you into their dreams with them.

Is that music you hear?

Os Gemeos. Silence of the Music. Lehmann Maupin gallery. New York City. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

An ongoing lucid travelogue of sorts, the Brazilian twins Otavio and Gustavo have been recording their dual citizenship of this world and a surreal one for their fans for at least a couple of decades. In these site-specific rooms you find multiple characters intersecting with graffiti culture, hip-hop culture, pattern, illustration, fantasy, the sky.

With imaginations captured as boys by the tales and adventures of 1970s and 80s streetwise graffiti kids the brothers’ Brazilian folk homages are stirred in sweetly with escapist fantasies of evading the law, creating your own community, making a famous name for yourself.

Os Gemeos. Silence of the Music. Lehmann Maupin gallery. New York City. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Silence of the Music”, just opened at Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York last Thursday and attended by a thousand or fans, gives you five rooms of eye candy colored in autumn hues and sea foam washes, and periodic carnival-steampunk mechanical movement that surprises and triggers memory.

Everywhere are humorously attenuated yellow figures caught mid-mischief or mid-thought, posing with a stylish guile, completely aware of their surroundings. There are some painted collaborations with Doze Green and atop Martha Cooper photos and shout outs to Ken Swift and whole train writers like LEE and Futura. Beatboxes and bboys and spraycans are here, as are lighthouses and ocean storms and rowboats and animals and a sliver of moon for you to sit upon.

Also a sharper depiction of geometric forms.

For Os Gemeos in life and in art, there is little separation between external and internal worlds. For a few weeks this fall you can traverse both with them in New York.

Os Gemeos. Silence of the Music. Lehmann Maupin gallery. New York City. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Os Gemeos. Detail. Silence of the Music. Lehmann Maupin gallery. New York City. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Os Gemeos in collaboration with Martha Cooper (the artists used Ms. Cooper’s photo of the train lot printed on canvas). Silence of the Music. Lehmann Maupin gallery. New York City. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Os Gemeos. Silence of the Music. Lehmann Maupin gallery. New York City. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Silence Of Music” is on view through October 22nd at Lehmann Maupin gallery on 536 West 22nd Street, New York.

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Feel Free at Urban Spree: Berlin

September 13, 2016 Artists

Long live Urban Spree!

This hippie/punk/skater/poets/artists haven of graffiti, street, urban and postmodern all splayed across a complex of buildings that are seemingly abandoned but teaming with life, food, music, and free thought. Also, a sense of community.

Bordalo II, Two One and 1UP Crew at Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

There are opportunities for rock climbing, biergartening, dancing, tattoo shops, outdoor mix sessions, a furniture restoration shop, a mini- beach, the famed outstanding art gallery with a solid array of graffiti and urban art books, and if you know where the switch is, you can blow 6 foot torches of fire into the night sky from atop a tiki bar.

Icy & Sot. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

On the day we were there recently there was even a wedding party in one of the secreted outdoor spaces with two spinning turntables, a basement bar, a bonfire, and, naturally, cake.

Also, naturally, you can go and paint, wheatpaste, slap stickers, spray a stencil, or in the case of Bordalo II, collect together enough local garbage to create a sculptural installation of a long-billed aviary friend.

Scenes like these are always transitory so visit Berlin-Friedrichshain and Urban Spree before the moment passes.

Two One. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Low Bros. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Low Bros . Mr. Penfold. Iggy . Billy . Berlin Bandits. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

1UP Crew. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

1UP Crew . Viva La Resolucion. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zero Cents. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ZOLA. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rallitox. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist. Bader . Blate, Maoro, Komt. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

OBEY. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cranio. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Iron Chola. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Christiaan Nagel. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

E. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KA feeling a certain kind of blue. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

E. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aloha. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JAUNE’s Miniature Worker “Dudes”: Nuart 2016

September 12, 2016 Artists

Brussels based stencillist Jaune says he “proudly created with his hands, his heart and sometimes his head,” on his website and it looks like he has been using all three to place his little “dudes” in small hidden spots around Stavanger during the Nuart festival.

Lifting or pulling or digging or just standing around having conversations and checking texts, there is a camaraderie among the workers that is somehow reassuring. It’s a knowing brotherhood, a community of man. It is notable that there we haven’t seen any women in the mix – perhaps there is a women’s brigade somewhere else.

Jaune. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

You’ll see here that Jaune is a humorist and encourages you to think of public space as a place for adventure in a way that you may not have considered since you were a kid. He talks about his installations in Stavanger on his Facebook page.

“This is an easy way to explain my creative process : I just have coloured pipes in my head that constantly throw out some mini dudes. Then it’s the duty of the technical operation manager (that you see at the bottom) to try to catch one.”

Jaune. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

Sitting by the dock of the bay with Jaune. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

Jaune. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

We wish to extend our most heartfelt thanks to Tor Ståle Moen for sharing his photos with BSA readers for this year’s coverage of NUART 2016.

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.11.16

September 11, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

It’s the 15th Anniversary of 9/11 in New York. It will be a quiet day for us.

We hope.

So, here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bast, Elian, EQC, Hama Woods, MCA, Mundano, Robert Montgomery, SacSix, Sayer, Shok1, TomBob, Zachem, and Зачем.

Our top image: Elian in Moscow for the first edition of Artmossphere 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Plastic Jesus does his bit to stop this mean, selfish, racist, dishonest, greedy little man to become king. If he succeeds we’ll all lose – Even those who think they support him. The stench will reach us all. World War II didn’t just happen from one day to the other. It built up. It simmered. It took shape while people were distracted. Yo, this is surreeeus. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

EQC fashions a Loteria Card with an image of you-know-who. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

TomBob take on the proverbial See No Evil. Hear No Evil. Speak No Evil. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Robert Montgomery’s installation for NUART 2016 Tou Scene indoor exhibition. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

Unidentified artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And now a little of the old soft-shoe shuffle. Hama Woods in conjunction with NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

Shok1 for Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art (UN) at Lollapalooza. Berlin 2016. (photo © Nika Kramer)

BAST (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A filthy piggy by an unidentified artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“ALIVE” at Nuart 2016: Spy, Robert Montgomery, Hyuro, Add Fuel and EVOL

September 10, 2016 Artists

For the ninth straight year, BSA brings Nuart to our readers – artists, academics, collectors, instructors, curators, fanboys /girls, photographers, organizers, all. Not sure who else has been covering this international Street-Art themed indoor/outdoor festival and forum as early and continuously as we have, but we’re happy to say that this Norwegian pocket of public art continues to hold its own among a suddenly bloated field of new festivals and events globally.

Many of the new murals and installations are complete or nearing completion, the panels and presentations at NUART PLUS are just ending, the new Nuart Gallery has opened with sales of Jeff Gillette’s new print and other fine art works, and the barbs and laughs of Fight Night has already begun to recede in the blurry haze.

Tonight the opening of Tou Scene unveils the new works by invited artists and participants of Nuart 2016 to celebrate their work and contributions to the conversations on the street and chart many of their routes into the fields of contemporary art and academia – or at least getting them more hits on social media.

Here are a few of the artists at work whom we haven’t gotten to in previous posts this week.

The Spanish artist SPY returns for a second facade this year at Nuart, this one playing off of its particular physical proximity to a reflective surface. Without saying so, it says that the ongoing examination and experimentation of public dialog with art and artists is very much in play today.

London based conceptual wordsmith Robert Montgomery brings a poetic tenor to the Street Art conversation at Nuart with a couple of bus stop takeovers and the façade of new construction. Cryptically chosen passages resonate gently according to your interpretation: “The purpose of art is to touch the hearts of strangers without the trouble of having to meet them,” he has been quoted as saying. Wish we could have been there to hear Carlo McCormick speaking about Montgomery’s work and its relationship to the Situationists.

Add Fuel sorting out his stencil for his mural at NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

Add Fuel rips off the dull beige exterior of this building to reveal a stunningly decorative tiled pattern beneath. Actually, here he is at work on his mural for NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

EVOL returns to Nuart a second time to inspect buildings he left around town previously and to do some new construction. Very exciting to see what he has in store for the Tou Scene exhibition opening this evening after the final NUART Plus panels are completed. NUART 2016. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

We wish to extend our most heartfelt thank you to our friend Tor for sharing his photos with us in exclusive for this year’s coverage of NUART 2016.

BSA Film Friday 09.09.16

September 9, 2016 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. Kerava Art Museum: Our Pink House by OLEK
2. Vegan Flava: “A Walk On Weak Ice”
3. Narcelio Grud. MASK
4. T̶̶O̶̶Y̶ CREW – Wir häng im Bahnhof ab
5. Avalanches: Walk On the Subway

BSA Special Feature: Kerava Art Museum: Our Pink House by OLEK

Olek has covered a house in pink crochet with the help of volunteers for the Kerava Art Museum in Finland. A meditation on the life of a refugee, Olek says we all could stand to be more aware of it, and take more positive actions to help those in need. With projects like this she hopes to build a sense of community through art. Psychologically this pink skin is a protector against danger, a healer of wounds.

“Originally, this building, built in the early 1900s, was the home of Karl Jacob Svensk (1883-1968). During the Winter War 1939-1940, the family fled to evade bombs falling into the yard, but they didn’t have to move out permanently. In 2015, more than 21 million people were forced to leave their homes in order to flee from conflicts. The pink house, our pink house is a symbol of a bright future filled with hope; is a symbol us coming together as a community.”

Vegan Flava: “A Walk On Weak Ice”

This kind of public art-making is a first for us.

If you have ever been on thin ice before or heard the stories of those who didn’t survive it, this new piece by Vegan Flava filmed on Lake Mälaren during a cold Swedish winter day earlier this year – is chilling.

Narcelio Grud. MASK

Street Artist and Do-It-Yourself art maker, sociologist, interactive designer – all of these titles apply to Narcelio Grud.

In his latest video Mr. Grud creates masks with unused fabrics collected from textile factories and he customizes traffic lights in the city of Fortaleza, Brazil.

T̶̶O̶̶Y̶ CREW – Wir häng im Bahnhof ab

The U-Bahn train system’s Rosenthaler Platz station in Berlin has some new art thanks to graffiti crew called T̶̶O̶̶Y̶.

It’s not what your thinking.

Breaking rules, creating new aesthetics, redefining artistic codes. It’s all there.

T̶̶O̶̶Y̶ will be exhibiting for the first time in Berlin at Zwei Drei Raum this weekend and the opening is Saturday night, September 10th in Kreuzberg. Bringing the aesthetics of graffiti inside to canvases, videos, and installations will be Berlin based writers ROZER, IGIT, SPIRIT, LOFK, Viktor Treshkow and Max Grambow.

Avalanches: Walk On the Subway

For those of you who have not been on the New York City subway, this is exactly what it is like.

Jeff Gillette and “Dismayland” Emerge from Nuart Debris

September 8, 2016 Artists, Interview

Today we have some process shots of artist Jeff Gillette in preparation for his exhibition at Nuart’s big opening this Saturday at Tou Scene. Tonight his solo show “Dismayland” opens at the inauguration of Nuart Galllery and Project Space with a very special presentation.

“Dismayland” sounds very similar to a magical kingdom that generations of kids grew up dreaming to visit in Orange County, California, where artist Jeff Gillette lives. For Street Art fans it also sounds very similar to the smaller version of that theme park lampooning it called “Dismaland” by the artist Banksy and 50 of his friends last September in Somerset, England. What many don’t realize is that “Dismayland” is the name a show that predates Banksy’s by five years.

Born partially of his own disappointment at not being able to go to meet Mickey and Minnie as a kid, Gillette created canvasses, sculptures, installations of slums with the pristine blue sky and cavorting characters in animations most closely associated with his childhood memories. Drawing attention to the disparity of wealth and quality of life that exists in the world with millions living in desperate conditions, Gillette also acknowledges that the $99 dollar one-day ticket to Disneyland is an insulting reminder to many that their chances to experience that magic are very slim.

Jeff Gillette at work on his installation for NUART 2016 Tou Scene indoors exhibition. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

BSA: You have been subverting Disney for years and roiling Mickey fans with dystopian and humorous scenes of human settlement that lay bare the rotten state of our folly. Is this installation a redux or continuation of your “Dismayland” – a furtherance of the themes you originally touched on in 2010?

Jeff Gillette: I started my theme of messing with Disney as soon as I moved to Southern California in the early 1990s culminating wth my “Dismayland” show at Copro Gallery in LA. After my involvement with Banksy’s Dismaland, Copro invited me to create the archway of the alternative art aisle at the Los Angeles Art Show. A construction contractor and I created a huge facade of the Disneyland Castle Logo from distressed wood I gathered out in the Mojave Desert.

My invitation to NUART gave me another opportunity to create a Disney Castle, this time from diagrams I found on the Internet. My sculptor wife, Laurie Hassold, and two volunteers built the facade and picked up trash all over the town of Stavenger to create a landfill that it sits on. My future aspiration is to build a life-like Disneyland Castle in a slum. In Indian slums during festivals, it is common for the residents to construct colorful, fantastical, temporary temples that look like castles in their neighborhoods. I’m working with a few artists in India to hopefully realize this project. I’d like to also flood a slum with toy Mickey Mouse dolls, for all the kids to have and play with. It would make for some quite surreal images.

Jeff Gillette at work on his installation for NUART 2016 Tou Scene indoors exhibition. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

BSA: Who is Minsky? How did he get that name?
Jeff Gillette: When creating work for Dismaland, at some point Banksy said ‘ no Mickey Mouses.’ I had to obliterate Mickey, my favorite icon, from some of my paintings ( although in most of them I hid a Mickey elsewhere in the details). I thought up Minksy then and played around with sketches combining Banksy’s Rat with the features of Mickey. The name is a contraction of “Mickey” and “Banksy.”

Before leaving for The UK, I printed a bunch of stickers and placed one in each of the dozen or so (clean and new) porta-potties at Dismaland on the opening day. I found out the artist Nick Walker, whom I later met, thought they were Banksy’s and took one for himself! In the Dharavi Slum in Mumbai, India, I taught my guide, Hashim Abdul who lives there, to paint Minksy stencils wherever he could without getting into trouble. Now Westerners who go on the popular ‘Slum Tours’ will see these characters on some of the walls.

Here in Norway, I’ve taken advantage of Stavanger’s open policy of welcoming street art to paint some stencils of Minksy in the town. It is strange to do this activity and not have to look over your shoulder or be prepared to get accosted.

Jeff Gillette at work on his installation for NUART 2016 Tou Scene indoors exhibition. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

BSA: Last year Nuart featured the work of Bordalo II, who gathered local discarded junk to draw attention to our environmental impact on animal life. Your work appears to be more about the cost of meaningless consumerism to our souls. Is that right?

Jeff Gillette: That sounds good, but I like to think that my work specifically targets the commercial aspirations of Disney to be the “Happiest Place on Earth” mired in the reality of a world that screams out the exact opposite, at least on BBC and CNN. Personally, in my experiences interacting with poor people in slums, they appear surprisingly positive in their plight. What they lack in consumer comforts, they make up for in meaningful relationships with extended families and neighbor’s that the condensed living situation affords them. It still is abhorrent seeing people live in slum landfills, and my paintings try to show this.

Jeff Gillette at work on his installation for NUART 2016 Tou Scene indoors exhibition. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

BSA: To make something beautiful from a situation that is quite ugly – does that require a certain optimism?

Jeff Gillette: An optimism comes from the ability to be objective in experiencing the potential aesthetic quality found in ugly scenery. I travel to third world slums, visit landfills, and study visuals of natural and man-made destruction and find a strange beauty in it all. I struggle to distance myself from the actual toll on humanity and individuals by not including people in my work. The images instead become intricate fields of color and form conveying a feeling of beauty in worst-case-scenarios.

Jeff Gillette. Process shot. NUART 2016 Tou Scene indoors exhibition. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

Jeff Gillette solo show at Nuart Gallery “Dismayland Nord” opens tonight. Click HERE for further information.

We wish to extend our most heartfelt thank you to our friend Tor for sharing his photos with us in exclusive for this year’s coverage of NUART 2016.

Jaune and Axel Void on the Streets at Nuart 2016

September 7, 2016 Artists

Jaune and Axel Void are street practitioners of vastly different scale, yet both are on the streets of Stavanger right now putting up new work. Each have a way of engaging children with their work here, and probably the imaginations and memories of adults as well.

Jaune carries a miniature world that he recreates in many cities, and it invariably intersects with the sanitation workers who keep our daily existence so much cleaner. Adept at manipulating 2D and 3D scenarios using stencils, this small grouping of guys at the base of this building are only a small example of the much more expansive worlds he has created. Still you can image what kind of games this plays on the mind of your average 8 year old who discovers it.

JAUNE at work on a wall for NUART 2016 while a “subject” hovers over his shoulder. Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

Likewise your average Stavanger kid may be surprised to see a certain familiar boy on this big wall by Axel Void – a mural which has gone up rapidly over the last couple of days. Based on a portrait of Gabriel, the son of Nuart founder Martyn Reed, this image is an instant emblem of the city and quite appropriate considering its proximity to a nearby playground.

Axel Void at work on his mural for NUART 2016. Check our the little people balancing on the fence to his right. Such Dexterety! Stavanger, Norway. September 2016. (photo © Tor Ståle Moen)

We wish to extend our most heartfelt thank you to our friend Tor for sharing his photos with us in exclusive for this year’s coverage of NUART 2016.

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