We’re in the thick sticky summer of it now -with Street Artists flooding the walls with many new unpermissioned illegal works. From small scale and new kids on the block to large legal/commercial murals by more established names- the public space in New York is teeming again with new ideas.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street (or boardwalk), this time featuring
Alter egos of the common fiend.
Many Street Artists and graffiti writers create a new character to inhabit – as actor or director. New on NYC streets, illustrator Sara Lynne Leo seeks to capture your attention with little hand rendered characters making cleverly sideways critiques and observations – but only if you are good at noticing the small details of the street. These emotional mites and monsters are suffering the absurdities and insecurities of daily life, providing possibly a mirror to the everyday pedestrian as they wait at the crosswalk or stand in a doorway.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. VHILS “Debris” Sets Macau in Golden Nostalgia
2. OKUDA: The International Church Of Cannabis
3. Mr. Sis. and #SoloUnBeso
4. Parees International Mural Festival. Oviedo, Spain. Edition 2018.
Is anybody listening?
Last year Vhils published this film about communication – personal, intimate, and global. We waited a year to see if it felt equally timeless as the first time we viewed it and indeed it is. Some stories like these have an additional element that secures their status. Surrounding the portraits created by the Portuguese Street Artist in Macau, this collage of images, interactions, flashes of expression and sequences of behavior is accompanied by a linear/circular narration that attempts to reconnect to a personal history while chiding the narrators own behavior.
It’s a winsome recounting of memories that are shared globally; a communal and personal experience at once told with clarity and emotional nostalgia, written and directed by José Pando Lucas.
OKUDA: The International Church Of Cannabis
One would hope that the International Church of Cannibis would look like this! Owing perhaps to psychedelic art of 1960s counterculture, liquid light art, concert posters, murals, underground newspapers, and of course kaleidoscoping the world with new eyes, the Spanish Street Artists Okuda San Miguel transformed this internal architecture into a truly holy space. Denver is one of those American cities that still has a good economy thanks to Colorado’s low taxes, growing marijuana industry and soaring real estate market. It seems like the whole city has invited many Street Artists to transform street space over the last decade and with a good collector’s base, the art galleries are busy and special projects are popping up everywhere to show off the skillz.
With a new church that uses pot as a sacrament, this project is spearheaded by Steve Berke, who’s Wikipedia posting lists him as “two-time candidate for mayor of Miami Beach, cannabis activist, rapper, YouTuber, entrepreneur, and former All-American tennis player.” Dude, just gaze at the ceilings here and you realize that the possibilities are awesome.
Mr. Sis. and #SoloUnBeso
“Artist Mr. Sis is in Barcelona painting this pair of full figured females going in for the kiss on this billboard for Contorno Urbano,” we wrote a few weeks ago in a posting about this wall. Today we have the finished video.
See more here: “Mr. Sis Paints #SoloUnBeso in Barcelona”
Parees International Mural Festival. Oviedo, Spain. Edition 2018.
A new mini-doc from the Parees Festival in Oviedo, Spain has just been released about the 2018 edition. It features on-screen interviews with many of the artists who were involved, including Colectivo Licuado, Roc BlackBlock, Taquen, Xav, Andrea Ravo Mattoni, Kruella d’Enfer, Alfalfa y Twee Muizen.
Spidertag started in the early 2010s as a string artist an we used to bring you his installations in abandoned places in Spain. He then moved to experimentations with neon electric wire in unusual public activations in city margins, a sudden maze of intertwined light strings transforming in three dimensions. Today we see the latest experiments of Spidertag at the commercial/community Mural Festival in downtown Montreal.
Joy Gilleard and Hayley Garner are up on the lift, their buddy Samo the Artist cheering them on. They’ve committed themselves to a huge mural during Pride Week and they really could be having more fun socializing right now.
However, the UK based mural duo known on the street as Cbloxx and Aylo back in Manchester, are taking on a heavier job here – paying tribute to the million or more people buried on New York’s potter’s field, called Hart Island.
“Dedicated
To the lost, to the forgotten
To the beaten and trodden
To the oppressed, the brave
To the anonymous who lay in mass graves
We see you!
To the numbers and the names
To the battles and the gains
To the quiet, the unseen
The kings and queens
We see you!!!”
~ Nomad Clan’s dedication to Hart Island
New York artist Ori Carino does a roll down
“My artwork owes a lot to these downtown Heroes, Warrior Saints, visionary activists, and artists, and I hope to serve them in my work,” he tells us of this new piece he’s doing to celebrate the LGBTQI+ people who have been all around him since he was a kid.
“I was born on Houston Street and Sullivan Street in 1982, relatively close to Stonewall, moving two blocks from the Pyramid club when I was 8,” he says of the classic downtown bar known for pushing artistic and social boundaries in wild ways through the 1980s.
“It’s fair to say that my life has been significantly impacted by the sheer artistry and style, bravery, tragedy, and ecstatic triumphs of the gay rights movement. I’m proud that my home has always been a place where we celebrate diversity and fight for each other’s rights.”
There have been many murals in the past month that pay tribute to the history of this NYC scene that started a worldwide movement. For some reason, this one full of archetypal characters in the city strikes a deeper chord.
Ori tells us that it is meant as “an allegorical reminder of the sacrifices and nobility of the myriad heroes who engaged in the fight for equality. Each one embodies an element of the movement, as the shadows of the violent police actions and the forces of ignorance and hate, woven throughout the Stonewall movement histories, are valiantly overcome.
From the peace-sign-waving, protest-sign-wielding archetype, to the flying hero who emerges from the waving flag, each character participates in an unrelenting fight for peace. By incorporating esthetic influences from both Classical Eastern and Western art, this new work reflects that this noble cause encompasses people from all traditions and backgrounds, and the fight goes on!”
Cancer and fashion. Cancer and rugged virile outdoorsmen. Lifestyles of the rich and cancer.
Judith Supine is swaggering back to the street in rawhide
Funnily, these new pieces that mark the return of divine Supine appear as camouflage on the streetscape; so fragmented and unsuspecting is the urban psyche now, pummeled and plowed by Polo, Puma, Prada
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
