An unusual worldwide quarantine requires unusual solutions. Because the virus is preventing us all from going to a gallery show at the moment, it’s been fun to see artists, museums, galleries, gallerists and organizers devise new ways for us to interact with each other and art. One you can participate in Sunday is called “What’s In the Box?”.
You might also call it “Who’s On the Box.” Seriously, Duster? Al Diaz? Terrible TKID170? Zimad? That would make you sit up and pay attention.
Duster ua (photo courtesy of 3Alx)
Organized by Adam Levine (@3Alxnyc) this is a project whose central conceit is a secret – and you have to get inside a virtual space to find it out. In addition the works are all completed on a box which may contain an object of “precious metals and jewels”. We’re curious!
“I’ve assembled close to 30 artists – some old school legends, some NYC staples, West coast players and some fresh faces,” he tells us. “They have all come together and each artist created one unique and original design on a custom wooden box sent to them to decorate that will house something very special.”
Really?
Sacsix (photo courtesy of 3Alx)
“When I say ‘special’ I’m not kidding. This is something that you guys or anybody else on the planet for that matter has never ever seen before.” Those are big promises. Hell, you’re just stuck on this couch for the next forever, so text PIPEBOX to 31996 to get on the VIP list.
Show starts Sunday at 4:20pm in New York, so that’s 21:20 in London and 22:20 in Paris Sunday night. Have fun and support many artists whose work you know from serious well regarded old school writers to Street Art new kids on the scene.
Sf Grajales (photo courtesy of 3Alx)
Participants include Al Diaz, A Lucky Rabbit, AJ Lavilla, AngelOnce, Baston, Belowkey, Captain Eyeliner, City Kitty, Dirt Cobain, Duster ua, EASY, Free Humanity, GoopMassta, Stephanie Grajales, Jeff Henriquez, Nite Owl, Sara O’Connor, The Postman, Raddington Falls, Reggie Warlock, Renda Writer, Sacsix, Vincent Scala, Savior Elmundo, Terrible TKID170, TRAP.if, Turtlecaps, Uncutt, Zero Productivity, Zimad.
Goop Massta (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Raddington Falls (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Zimad Art (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Joz and Easy (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Free Humanity (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Vincent Scala (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Savior El Mundo (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Aj Lavilla (photo courtesy of 3Alx)A Lucky Rabbit (photo courtesy of 3Alx)The Postman Art (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Terrible Kid (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Captain Eyeliner (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Angel Once (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Naito Oru (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Baston714 (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Below Key (photo courtesy of 3Alx)Sara Connor (photo courtesy of 3Alx)
What’s in the Box? Tune in to the live stream Sunday, 4.19.20 at 4:20 P.M. EST. The only way in, is to text the word:“PIPEBOX” to 31996 to get on the V.I.P. launch list and receive the live link. Video production by Silvertuna Studios
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Vegan Flava – Signs on the Surface
BSA Special Feature: Vegan Flava – “Signs on the Surface”
Yes, we just passed the Easter/Passover holidays, and many parts of the Northern Hemisphere have already burst into Spring.
In Sweden, it takes a little longer to get to seeing flowers and new grass.
Street Artist Vegan Flava shares with us the product of a full winter of communing with a frozen lake – and finding a way to bring his street art skillz to the ice. Today in one video we present a sizeable compilation of various installations he did when the water was frozen, piled with snow.
He calls them “direct actions”.
“In these pieces I’ve mostly used biodegradeable chalk spray,” he says, “a shovel and ash on the ice and snow.” It’s good to know that he is caring for the earth while making his mark upon it.
In an eerily familiar way, the experience of being out there feels like many people feel right now in quarantine – free with their expansive thoughts and ideas on a never-ending canvas, but not quite comforted. With each text message and skull rendering in the snow, these actually begin to look like graffiti tags, enormous hidden clues to a larger story.
HEAL – Human Earth Animal Liberation. It’s a big aspiration, writ large across this lake. This is just one of his texts, his poems, his urgent slogans.
“With
the winters’ first snowfall, billions of unique crystals fall in slow motion
and cover the landscape,” he says. “It looks like a gigantic sheet of paper. It
is beyond belief to be able to walk across the lake during the winter – the
same that we swim in during summer. If these phenomena weren’t real, I would
dream of things such as this and wish they existed.”
Rosie the Riveter has been working hard to raise awareness of political and social causes ever since the character was a propaganda tool for the “war effort” in WWII. The image of strength and defiance in the face of formidable foe, a symbol of women’s empowerment, this is an image that tells everyone to pull together.
With a face mask and gloves, we admire her gusto and recognize that the burden of calamity often lands hardest on the working class and poor. Our sincere thanks to all the medical personnel who work so hard. Here re-interpreted by Maki from Boston, keep your eyes out on the street for this one. But really we should just STAY HOME.
These portholes that pop up on walls in New York are often more spooky than you might expect; their framing so realistic, their contents so perplexing.
At first these inner views appear as a subtle shift from the windows, vents and grates that Street Artist Dan Witz has populated with his darkly realistic figurative paintings for many years, and these by CRKSHNK have a fictional character, a forlorn or puzzled demeanor.
Others veer off into science surreality, macabre, with mounds of flesh pocked with tufts of hair. Melted together and unhuman, they can be disturbingly sensual, sexual.
Here CRKSHNK implies that this married fellow doesn’t know that he’s already dead. Blowing his nose. Hoping this virus doesn’t get ’em.
Stay positive, stay strong, say a prayer for the families who have lost someone and the medical personnel who are working so hard. Happy Easter! Happy Passover!
When times are suddenly hard, you have to be creative.
Many artists have gone without work in the last month across the US and Europe and elsewhere – their freelance jobs have dried up, their side hustle stopped hustling.
Artist Matthew Burrows from Sussex in England has come up with a way for a growing number of artists to band together and help one another, to alleviate a little of the financial insecurity, to gain greater exposure to potential buyers, and strengthen their personal networks with one another. What was initially a local effort appears to be successfully spreading internationally.
The ARTIST SUPPORT PLEDGE is not complicated and depends on the honor system. Post one of your works on Instagram for sale at 200 dollars (or Euros) and use the hashtag #artistsupportpledge. Every time your sales reach $1000, you pledge to spend $200 on another artists work.
This sounds like an excellent way to leverage support and circulate at least some wealth in the greater artist community. Also, there is nothing like have the great satisfaction of supporting one another, and feeling supported.
If you have $200 to buy art, we heartily encourage you to check out #artistsupportpledge today!
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. 2020 RPM / UNO
BSA Special Feature: 2020 RPM / UNO
An expert interconnector of textures and patterns of urban living and pop art sensibilities, the Italian Street Artist UNO captures the essence of his inside life during quarantine in a new brief video today.
A clicking time meter of life passing and the daily
benchmarks that give shape to one continuous life in captivity, it’s the
repetition that reveals the patterns, the subtle variations encoded in the DNA
of living.
Here’s UNO in Rome, spinning at 2,020 revolutions per
minute.
Always wanted to make suggestions to Okuda about his color choices? Interested in being an assistant painter in his Madrid studio? Wishing you had an opportunity to adult-color but are missing the actual coloring book?
Have no fear Quarantennial! We have just the thing for you to download and print out and while away the hours. These are new polygonal spirit animals from Okuda San Miguel for you or the children in your home to create a mask with. Once you have finished coloring it and cutting it out, imagine the theatrical photos you can take around your bunker – not to mention the opportunity for role playing!
Ignited as a project with the Red Cross (please donate) the artist hope to bring color and positive vibes into your home. The learn more about his Colouring the World initiative, check out @inkandmovement on Instagram.
Thinking outside the box is a prerequisite for most graffiti writers and Street Artists. You may say that they are so unaccustomed to the prescribed routes of reaching an audience with art and ideas that they simply barge into new ones, and bringing the art to you.
The same can be said of the Berlin creative laboratory YES, AND … productions (YAP), and their forward-thinking cultural partners at the newly mobile Museum of Now (MON). Together they are presenting new ways of bringing art to the people.
MONmobile. Multiscalar . Museum Of Now and YES, AND…productions. (video screenshot courtesy of MON)
Now thinking outside the museum, the team brought the museum outside to Berlin streets this week thanks to their new nighttime programming that mixes classical western standard-bearers like Michaelangelo with modern masters of new forms like the light artist Multiscalar. The end result is a newly energized city block that projects both artists on facades just outside your living room, viewable from inside it.
MONmobile. Multiscalar . Museum Of Now and YES, AND…productions. (video screenshot courtesy of MON)
Allowing museum-goers to stay home and stay safely physically distanced from strangers, MON director Denis Leo Hegic tells us that the neighborhoods where MON has been this week have become suddenly alive. People are attracted to their windows by the blasting music and continue hanging out of them to watch the show, looking out at the few stragglers on the sidewalk who are likewise smitten by the unannounced exhibition suddenly stealing their minds for a moment, away from the mundane worries and credible fears of COVID-19.
MONmobile at work preparing their outing to the street. (video screenshot courtesy of MON)
Because of the heaviness of our time right now, Multiscaler chose a message that was optimistic – which you can see here. The artists’ messenger is Michelangelo’s David – writing a letter to us as he would perhaps send today.
Hegic tells us that the whole project was set up, planned and produced within just a few days as a joint venture between the Museum of Now and YAP. “Without the YAP crew, this project would never have seen the light of night,” he says.
With a projector and speakers in the back of a van, many an
anarchist and artivist is familiar with using their voice to protest. For the
museum, it is about making art accessible to everyone, and Hegic says that many
institutions are committed to this, yet very few of them actually put this into
practice.
“I believe that the post-Covid world will be different from what we know now, and it is up to us how we want to shape it, “ he says. “For my part, I will fight for a culture that is alive and vivid – and accessible to everyone and always.”
We had an opportunity to talk to Hegic more about the
project:
MONmobile. (video screenshot courtesy of MON)
BSA:This is an ingenious solution to having a museum experience at a time when museums are necessarily closed. How do you choose the location of your exhibitions?
Denis Leo Hegic: At a time when we all have to stay at home to reduce the spread of the virus outbreak, our cultural participation also decreases. Therefore, it is very important that we do everything we possibly can to keep art and culture from coming to a standstill. When choosing the locations, it is very important to have spots with great visibility from a large number of windows and balconies. We want the largest possible audience to be able to see the exhibitions from their homes
MONmobile. Multiscalar . Museum Of Now and YES, AND…productions. (video screenshot courtesy of MON)
BSA:Have you had the opportunity to speak with any audience members?
DH: We have not spoken to anyone in person as we keep physical contact to a minimum. But digitally, via social media and email, we have had a lot of exchange with the audience.
People are surprised and thankful to see a positive message. In times of crisis when doomsday news is omnipresent, it is art and culture that brings people together.
MONmobile. Multiscalar . Museum Of Now and YES, AND…productions. (video screenshot courtesy of MON)
BSA: Projections are often used for commercial pursuits as well today. Is it a challenge to communicate to people that this is intended as public art?
DH: Not at all. Everyone immediately understood what it was about. This is probably partly because we play quite loud music and sounds – which would be rather uncommon for advertising projections in housing areas.
BSA: As a philosopher, academic, and aesthete, what or who was your inspiration for this project?
DH: The word “inspiration” comes from the word “muse”. And the muses reside in “museums” – the temples of inspiration. My inspiration, my muses are always the people, and if they can no longer come to the museum, we will bring the museum to them.
Your opportunity to put your creativity to the test is a daily undertaking these days thanks to unprecedented social and economic change – and a global health threat. London-based Street Artist and fine artist Phlegm says that he has been finding his balance while staying inside with his pregnant partner and two-year-old son – or at least trying to.
Balancing internal worries and turmoil with quotidian home responsibilities and family care, he says that finding a creative way to process his thoughts and feelings has been imperative in this period of self-isolation. The first step he realized is one that many of us have been learning – the value of implementing a routine.
“I
tried to take time out to do an hour of work a day but every time I tried to
engrave or do the very detailed work I realised my hands were shaking too
much,” he says. “So instead I thought maybe I can just paint and draw something
small and loose that’s kind of cathartic. I can use it to process my thoughts
like meditating.”
Luckily for fans of his darkly whimsical illustrations, Phlegm’s agile pace and his knack for spot-on allegory have kept up with the quickly changing news these last few weeks, addressing everything from fears of isolation to the comedy of social distancing and irrational hoarding — and the appreciation we all feel for those in the medical profession who are caring for our neighbors, friends, family, and each other.
“We isolated fairly early because we saw things escalated pretty fast and with knowing little about how this could affect pregnancy we started about a week before the official lock-down in London,” he says in-between his sketching. “I think the first week I was entirely in fight or flight mode. Securing online weekly deliveries, clearing out the garden to make it toddler-friendly and just grafting every waking hour. By the second-week official lockdown was being talked about and people were just queuing for miles to get a year’s supply of toilet roll,” he says with only a little exaggeration.
Using his social media postings as daily communication with the greater world, one by one his monochromatic machinations of whimsy and everyday dilemmas assure you that your strange little thoughts and dramatic fears are, at the very least, normal.
“Maybe because it’s less isolating to feel the same feelings as a group and realise you’re not alone trapped in a personal hell. It now feels like a diary which is a bizarre mixture of banality and terror,” he says.
“I
try to keep the work honest and working every day helps. Emotions and actual
events are so fast-moving its best to just work day-to-day. Sometimes it’s the
very ordinary things that can carry a lot of emotional weight. The only thing
I’m trying to be aware of is that people are upset and vulnerable so I tend to
sketch out two or three a day and then choose one to ink up. This way I
can try and balance the humour with the fear.”
He says that he’ll continue this daily diary for the foreseeable future, giving you a peek into his state of being. His new practice is a genuine “live blogging” with illustrations that describe many powerful and banal aspects of our daily living that is turning long-term – a reflection of the inside life as well as the outside life.
“I
want to be realistic and honest, which at times has to include some very dark
days but I don’t want to fuel fears and negatively influence people. I
think humour is always helpful in times like these, to laugh and cry at the
same time. I think also something that happens in huge emotional events like
this is that our thoughts become so overwhelmed it’s impossible to express or
sort through any of it.”
“I
think art can sometimes just give you a place to put it all.”
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
