A sophisticated layering of pieces and decorative patterns create a very effective feat of perspective on this new wall in the Chelyabinsk region, Russia, by artist Daniil Danet at the “Our Mural” festival organized by Graffiti Russia.
The apexed crescents frame a picturesque fishing scene and his added textures borrow from traditional decorative iron arts and street graffiti techniques – an act of equating vastly different histories that is common for those born into the Internet, as Daniil surely was.
Daniil Danet. “Our Mural”, Graffiti Russia Festival. Kasli, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
He says that the city of Kasli (pop. 16,000) in southwestern Russian Federation is a reflection of the lakes and the Ural mountains that surround it – as well as the culture and industry that grew up around the iron plant and the iron castings it is famous for. Not to mention its proud heritage of sculptures.
Daniil Danet. “Our Mural”, Graffiti Russia Festival. Kasli, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“In the drawing, I combined these two elements into one through abstract fragments and thematic composition,” he says. “The main plot is a fisherman who fishes in the vicinity of the lake, enjoying the recreational areas of the city. And in the texture of the lake, patterns of Kasli casting from forged metal, rich in decorativeness, can be traced.”
Daniil Danet. “Our Mural”, Graffiti Russia Festival. Kasli, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)Daniil Danet. “Our Mural”, Graffiti Russia Festival. Kasli, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)Daniil Danet. “Our Mural”, Graffiti Russia Festival. Kasli, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)Daniil Danet. “Our Mural”, Graffiti Russia Festival. Kasli, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)Daniil Danet. “Our Mural”, Graffiti Russia Festival. Kasli, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Area: 216 sq m, 24x9m Location: Palace of Culture. Zakharova, st. Lenina 16, Kasli city, Chelyabinsk region, Russia Organizers: festival “Our Mural”, Graffiti Russia
Artist couple Twee Muizen (Two Mice) complete a new mural for a scientific environmental organization.
20 meters of the mural has just been completed that organizers say celebrates science, art, and the International Day of Women and Girls in Science in Barcelona, which is next Friday, February 11.
The center itself has a long name, so let’s get that out of the way first: Instituto de Diagnóstico Ambiental y Estudios del Agua (Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research), or IDAEA-CSIC for short.
Artist couple Twee Muizen integrated all of the ideas collected from an extended work session through a participatory process between IDAEA staff to decide what themes and symbols needed to be included in the multi-paneled work that welcomes visitors to the center.
“We had scientific, technical, administrative and maintenance staff,” involved in the process, says Alicia Arroyo, project coordinator. In collaboration with the urban art project called B-Murals and funded by the Barcelona City Council.
Barcelona-based duo Twee Muizen (Cristina Barrientos and Denis Galocha) are now working professionally in their ninth year and are originally from Galicia. The two both grew up in towns near Santiago de Compostela surrounded by mountains, animals, and natural beauty. Full-time illustrators and doll makers with a workshop and gallery in Sant Pere, the two interpolated into this mural the IDAEA goals of integrating themes of natural resources, air, water, their molecular and chemical aspects, and the impact of human interactions with all these systems.
“This project arose from the need to raise awareness on the importance of the work and research we carry out at our center in a visual, approachable way and with an innovative format”, says Diana Blanco, coordinator of the project.
A hybrid of your childhood coloring books that you poured your creative energy into and the superhero comic books that helped you escape from home, street artist/fine artist Anthony Lister’s new one-off drawings that keep you forever 13.
Anthony Lister. Thor. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Marketing himself directly to fans through his website, the brashly bright brutalist with a certain foppish elegance offers blistering tributes to all of your childhood protectors like Thor, Aquaman, The Avengers, and Captain America. It’s a dizzying punk collection made with oil stick on 225gsm Museum quality paper – screamed out with the style of an early colorist and the rage of a misunderstood truant teen.
It’s a blast from the past.
Anthony Lister. Captain America. (photo courtesy of the artist)Anthony Lister. The Flash. (photo courtesy of the artist)Anthony Lister. Green Lantern. (photo courtesy of the artist)Anthony Lister. Aquaman. (photo courtesy of the artist)Anthony Lister. X-Force. (photo courtesy of the artist)Anthony Lister. The Avengers. (photo courtesy of the artist)Anthony Lister. Silver Surfer. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Happy New Year of the Tiger! We found some on the street this week in New York, no surprise perhaps.
In other news, OG train writer Chris “Daze” Ellis captured the attention of The New York Times this Friday with his new contemporary art show “Give it All You Got” at P·P·O·W Gallery, and in a related story, according to the New York Daily News, there were 120 graffiti-related incidents on subway trains in January 2021, a 21% increase compared to the same period last year.
In his curatorial incarnation, Carlo has been organizing an enormous new exhibition about New York’s ‘downtown’ scene that he’s curating with Peter Eleey to open this July at UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing featuring “several defining works of this generation, such as paintings and drawings by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.” McCormick, you will remember, originated the concept and title for his book Trespass : a History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, which made the direct connection between fine art, the avant-garde, and the various street/public art practices of serious radical art movements like those popularized in the 1960’s by Guy Debord and the Situationistes Intérnationales. With these movements and arguments informing our view, it’s simplistic to be so polarized when assessing the value given/damage done by illegal graffiti writers and street artists.
Today our public/private debates about whether someone’s aerosol creation is vandalism or art are far more complex, more palpable than before. Thanks to the validation of graffiti and street art as a cultural force by fashion designers, toy manufacturers, home goods stores, clothing chains, commercial brands, film directors, art collectors, auction houses, artists, writers, professors, and respected education and art institutions, these practices of art-making on the street are enmeshed in the culture, fully a part of it.
One of these days a train car covered with graffiti will head to the yards for buffing… and reappear at an art fair, a Sotheby’s auction, or in the back yard of an avid collector. Our thoughts turn to the “Fun Gallery” refrigerator covered with graffiti tags in that is currently on display at the Phillips “Graffiti” show on Park Avenue right now.
And so we turn to our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Billye Merrill, BK Foxx, Crash, DrewOne, Elle, Eraquario, Eskae, Jenkins2D, Lamour Supreme, MAD, Manuel Alejandro, Osiris Rain, Praxis, REDS, Sipros, The Creator, The DRIF, and Twice.
More than a hundred thousand or so visitors have come to our exhibition at Urban Nation in Berlin which takes over the entire museum. 350 photos, a few thousand more digitally, black books, drawings, ephemera, cameras, film slides, toys, miniatures, a mural, a complete timeline from 1943 to today, 70 original artworks, a 16 screen film collage by director Selina Miles… this is an endless collection of Martha’s personal and professional work and collections for all visitors to see.
The traffic is beginning to increase now that the end of this unprecedented life-spanning exhibition is nearing its end in May of this year, and we want to show you a few of the hidden gems just in case you have a free afternoon to visit the museum. It has been our honor and privilege to share this exhibition, to work so closely with the photographer herself, and to mount the first exhibition at Urban Nation that features the career of one artist – and thousands of artists.
Cey Adams, AFRO, Andres Art, Blanco, Mark Bodé, Bordalo II, Buster, C215, Carja, Victor Castillo, Cosbe, Daze, Jane Dickson, Owen Dippie, Ben Eine, Shepard Fairey, Freedom, Fumakaka, Futura, Grotesk, Logan Hicks, HuskMitNavn, Japao, James Jessop & Dscreet, Nicolas Lacombe, Justen Ladda, Lady Aiko, Lady Pink, The London Police, Mantra, John „Crash“ Matos, Nazza, Nunca, Okuda, Os Gêmeos, Alice Pasquini, Phlegm, Pixel Pancho, Dr. Revolt, Seth Globepainter, Skeme, Skewville, Skolas, Chris Stain, Tats Cru (Bio, BG183 and Nicer), Vhils, Ernest Zacharevic.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Gregory Orekhov Rolls Out the Red Carpet in Moscow 2. A Brief Look Inside Icy & Sot’s Studio 3. Snowy Athens with INO is Paradise
BSA Special Feature: Gregory Orekhov Rolls Out the Red Carpet in Moscow
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Always watching celebs walking the red carpet? Now it’s your turn as the Russian artist Gregory Orekhov distills the magic of expectation and elegance and historical notions of royalty here in a Moscow forest.
The work titled “Nowhere” is the artist’s most recent and consists of 250 meters of polypropylene.
A Brief Look Inside Icy & Sot’s Studio
In preparation for their solo exhibition at Danysz Gallery in Paris, opening on Saturday, February 12 the gallery visited the artists at their studio in Brooklyn. We wrote about the exhibition HERE.
Rare snowfall in Athens prompts INO to grab his drone to shoot his murals under the coat of snow
Snowy Athens with INO is Paradise
Street artists and muralist INO tours his various works in his hometown of Athens, Greece on a snowy day flying with a drone. The musical score of piano and cello warms and stirs.
The patrimonial value given to ruins: the unusual, vaguely explained, and hardly registered constellation of architectural behemoths that are sprinkled through Sicily may be hardly prized, yet a new art project seeks to bring them into the fold. “Incompiuto Siciliano”, a rather tongue-in-cheek title in the naming convention of architecture and its pantheon, is the name given to these incomplete buildings, nearly 350 of them.
Financial boondoggles of official and unofficial corruption during the last half-century or so, 160 of them are in Sicily, these incomplete water towers, hospitals, sports centers, and recreational building projects that rewarded those who conceived of them and washed money with them.
Quizzically they dot the countryside, giving communities colorful and incomplete stories to tell, and they may not contribute to history in the same manner as more famous structures that the country is known internationally for.
Now a public art project seeking to adopt these orphaned buildings, the organizers of the “Incompiuto Siciliano” (Incomplete Sicilian) project say they are locating, registering, studying, and preserving them. Now they seek to regale these empty shells, these brutalist towers in the rolling green, and welcome them into communities.
Calling upon the calligraphic prowess and the talent for the written word of the Mexican painter Said Dokins, organizers say he was asked to intervene, conclude, or redefine one of these incomplete buildings. Today we bring you his exhausting works that cover the outward-facing visages of this confrontational arrangement of modern century fragmentation.
“It is made up of four Kubrickian monoliths that form a cross, but that represents a trick, a whirlwind of power, money, and politics,” says the press release. Never functional, they are nonetheless structural. By delving into the area’s history and that of Trapani, a small city on this Italian island of Sicily, Said creates his own complex tribute.
Below the images are descriptions of the project provided by the artist.
The “X”, conformed by gold and silver letters on a deep greenback, is presented as a symbol of cancellation, a way to cross out the logic of Incompiuto, through the re-writing of two ancient texts where the political language expands across time. The first one is the heartfelt call of a trapanese prisoner in Tunisia. It’s the last letter from Alberto Gaetani to his sister, dated in 1776, asking her to intercede for his life so he could go back home. The second text is a Trapanese Facio Communist manifesto, in which they described the rights workers should have access to. Their revolutionary demand, without a doubt, resists all that the Incompiuto stands for.
Dokins takes the words from the Trapanese poet, Giuseppe Marco Calvino, bringing to our time his poem “U seculu decimu nonu“, a sharp critic on power abuse released more than 200 years ago. The artist plays with the contrast between the monumentality of his calligraphy in white and gold, which attributes to the text a sense of dignity and a voice of authority denied to the popular language used to write this poem, originally in Trapanese dialect.
The artist takes a series of writings from the 18th century that contains a list of names, along with their physical characteristics and the work they did. It was a slave inventory. Dokins rewrites those names, making them appear in some sort of binnacle, a huge reticular design that resembles the motherboard of a computer, refer to the new cataloging and control systems, new ways to perpetuate the slavery logic in contemporary social relations.
Through the stylization of the iconic rose window of the church of Sant Agostino in Trapani, where symbolic elements of the three principal monotheist religions – Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam- can be found coexisting in the same sanctuary, Said Dokins turns the profane, an abandoned concrete wall, in a sacred place. The juxtaposition of traditions and cults reflected in the rose window, it’s an example of the cultural diversity that converges in the Sicilian territory, with its tensions and clash. The composition is constructed by the repetition of the sentence: “Everywhere I write is a sacred place”. Writing becomes a ritual act that serves the artist to dislocate the separation between the sacred and the earthly.
Human rights, unjust imprisonment, women’s equality, the plight of migrants and, the threats of climate change. The many pitfalls of unbridled capitalism.
These have been issues that Icy & Sot have been focusing on since we first knew of them, and later when we welcomed them to our city – and ever since. Undeterred by repression of their home country, they moved here to Brooklyn to pursue a new life, only to find that the fundamentals of human rights and the rule of law are globally, constantly in need of defense.
Icy & Sot. Open Door. 2021. Familiar / Stranger. Magda Danyz Gallery. Paris. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot and Danysz Gallery)
Without exception, their work has remained focused and insistent as it has changed venue from street to gallery. Those same values are unwavering as the materials have shifted from aerosol to barbed wire and iron, from stencil and mural to rigid sculpture. Whether their deliberately unflashy pieces are mounted against a Californian desert landscape, an expanse of Rockaway Beach, or floating a Georgian river, the world plays an integral roll in the success and the message of their artworks – an ultimate hewing to the street art axiom that physical context is paramount to the message of a piece.
Icy & Sot. Harmony. 2021. Familiar / Stranger. Magda Danyz Gallery. Paris. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot and Danysz Gallery)
As Icy and Sot begin their new Familiar / Stranger exhibition at Danysz gallery in Paris, they are unbowed by their discovery as fine artists, unimpressed with the charade, immune to unnecessary artifice, mindful of the world as it has presented itself. The work, some of it brand new, quietly yells. The canvasses are spectacular; a product of hand-made tools and hand-pressed paint in such a streaming plaintive state of consciousness that it will never be purely aesthetic despite its patterned abstraction. The work is, like its authors, authentic.
“I want you to panic. I want you to act as if your house was on fire.” – Greta Thunberg
Icy & Sot. Break Free. 2021. Familiar / Stranger. Magda Danyz Gallery. Paris. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot and Danysz Gallery)Icy & Sot. Shadow. 2021. Familiar / Stranger. Magda Danyz Gallery. Paris. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot and Danysz Gallery)Icy & Sot. Our House Is On Fire. 2020. Familiar / Stranger. Magda Danyz Gallery. Paris. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot and Danysz Gallery)
The exhibition includes a set of video with an installation, as well as their more recent works ranging from sculpture to paintings all centered around the artists’ engagement for a more conscious world.
From the press release; “As writer Sasha Bogojev puts it, ‘In some way turning Greta’s inspiring words into poetic reality, Icy and Sot built a frame of an archetypal home and set it on fire. Allowing for the untouched surrounding nature to be seen between the blazing framework of the house, the artists suggest looking at the wider picture in which the Earth is our only home. The video shows the reversed footage of their installation being swallowed by flames and crumbling to the ground, creating an illusion of burning pieces of wood rising up and forming the familiar structure. With Greta’s voice in the background calling upon civil disobedience and rebellion, the video has a compelling incentive undertone reminding us that the change is possible if we put pressure on those in power.’ ”
Icy & Sot. Stuck in Time. 2020. Familiar / Stranger. Magda Danyz Gallery. Paris. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot and Danysz Gallery)Icy & Sot. Passage. 2021. Familiar / Stranger. Magda Danyz Gallery. Paris. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot and Danysz Gallery)Icy & Sot. Waves. 2021. Familiar / Stranger. Magda Danyz Gallery. Paris. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot and Danysz Gallery)Icy & Sot. Borders II. 2021. Familiar / Stranger. Magda Danyz Gallery. Paris. (photo courtesy of Icy & Sot and Danysz Gallery)
Saturday, February 12, 2022 From 3 to 7PM
On view from February 12, to April 9, 2022
Danysz gallery 78 rue Amelot Paris (Marais) M° Saint-Sébastien-Froissart
Imagine your private thoughts about enduring Covid in a diary. Now imagine them posted in public as part of a glowing block of art for the 1st Edition of the Madrid International Festival of Light.
That is the opportunity that the artist collective LuzInterruptus took when offered the chance to create new work here in the Plaza Mayor that the public could enjoy and interact with. “A great wall covered with countless notebooks with blank pages,” describes one of the organizers. It stood there day and night “imposing its overwhelming simplicity on the Baroque architecture around it.”
A smaller hut-sized version of the project delighted crowds during the holidays in Ghent, but this massive white (30 meters x 10 meters) fluttering book fringe radiated inside the Spanish capital with private musings from thousands of citizens and tourists. Some had just arrived to see it, while many senior citizens filled pages in advance of the installation. Of the total 4,000 notebooks used in the installation, “2,000 notebooks were distributed among Municipal Senior Centers in the city so that senior citizens could express on the pages their hopes, fears, and reflections during the lockdown.”
“They told us their stories with uncanny detail and others drew as well, in some cases showing great talent. With their letters, poems, accounts, words, images, and scribbles, a large panel of lighted memory was erected. Writing sessions were organized which turned into a time of reunion. Therapists, instructors, technicians and directors were also present to help materialize their accounts. People with disabilities and their caregivers participated as well.”
The results are probably moving, possibly mundane, and at some point, profoundly moist – thanks to a surprise rainstorm of intensity and duration that transformed many of the pages into objects far less geometric than the crisp flurry of quadrilateral finesse they began as. “The pages had acquired a more sculptural compact appearance,” on artist tells us, “so that the wind could not do its job and the sound of the pages could not be heard.”
Starting the year with “Strategies for a Revolution”, Shepard Fairey exhibits in Italy at Wunderkammern.
Contemporary society is so subsumed into the corporate model that street artist/fine artist Shepard Fairey still appears revolutionary in his basic demands for equity, dignity, and justice.
Shepard Fairy. American Rage. “Strategies for a revolution” at Wunderkammern Gallery. Rome, Italy. (photo courtesy of Wunderkammern Gallery)
Thirty plus years have evolved his language of propaganda into a signature amalgam of Russian constructivist, punk rage, the so-called underground, and an evermore refined eye for high-note linework and ornate graphic patterning. Here in Milan, the Wunderhammern similarly have an eye for the finer sensibilities, after curating many primary and secondary street artists in the last 10+ years on community murals and in gallery exhibits; and have been financially successful enough at it to open this new second location in Via Giulia, auspiciously welcoming Fairey into this not-so-brave new Covid-bashed world.
Embracing his visual language and socially political wit, “Strategies” includes a series of unpublished works selected by Shepard, a review of the themes that resonate most now in this context personally and generally. It’s a good time to gaze at the messages, the art of delivery, the tenor of these works – all while assessing this time that feels like a turning. A re-set. A time no doubt that will include revolution.
Shepard Fairy. Justice Woman. “Strategies for a revolution” at Wunderkammern Gallery. Rome, Italy. (photo courtesy of Wunderkammern Gallery)Shepard Fairy. Louder than a bomb. “Strategies for a revolution” at Wunderkammern Gallery. Rome, Italy. (photo courtesy of Wunderkammern Gallery)Shepard Fairy. No future (RED). “Strategies for a revolution” at Wunderkammern Gallery. Rome, Italy. (photo courtesy of Wunderkammern Gallery)Shepard Fairy. Radical Peace (BLUE). “Strategies for a revolution” at Wunderkammern Gallery. Rome, Italy. (photo courtesy of Wunderkammern Gallery)Shepard Fairy. Revolution in our time. “Strategies for a revolution” at Wunderkammern Gallery. Rome, Italy. (photo courtesy of Wunderkammern Gallery)Shepard Fairy. Sonic firestorm. “Strategies for a revolution” at Wunderkammern Gallery. Rome, Italy. (photo courtesy of Wunderkammern Gallery)Shepard Fairy. Eyes Open. “Strategies for a revolution” at Wunderkammern Gallery. Rome, Italy. (photo courtesy of Wunderkammern Gallery)
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Happy Snow Weekend!
We’re digging out from a ‘Nor’easter’ today in New York, a swirling blizzard of snow and strong winds that created such astonishing contrasts of bare ground and high-pointed drifts that kids and adults were playing together on these ledges, falling to the ground laughing.
It brings to mind the masses of Americans whose prospects and futures have been completely blown away, leaving nothing but bare soil – while bankers and corporate criminals have drifted all the wealth upwards to new stylish heights during the economic storm of the last 40 years. Feel like you are walking through two feet of snow and can never get ahead? Some would like you to think that it’s because of uncontrollable forces like the weather.
Meanwhile, it’s the calm after the storm now and we’re heading out to play in the snow this morning before it all gets dirty. It’s nice to see New York like a clean slate, full of possibility and promise. Let’s go for a walk!
And here’s our weekly interview with the streets in NYC, Miami, and Berlin; featuring ATOMS. Billy Barnacles, Boxer, Case Maclaim, Cupid, Dark Clouds, Jamie Hef, Joe Iurato, Kaynor, Klass, Modus. Smells, Ten! Tom Bob, Tony, and Wane.
Many graffiti writers look forward to blizzard in New York because between the winds and the snowplows and slippery streets, nobody is paying attention to the lonely aerosol sprayer hitting up a wall.
On this New York Saturday when the streets are white, no cars in sight, we trudged in heavy boots, yet quietly, up the middle of the drifted path, looking for a good spot for a snowman. On the frosted way we spotted this freshly painted tag, the color of the sky and the ground, arriving suddenly like a blizzard.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
