New York is resting pleasantly under a nice blanket of our first snow this morning. Your moaning Uncle Norman is lying on the living room rug next to the radiator with an icepack on his back from shoveling the sidewalk. “Just keep the dog away from him for a few minutes please,” says your cousin Hedda as she pulls a roast out of the oven. “At least until the Flexeril kicks in.”
Yo! Check out the new fence piece Icy & Sot did at the top of this weeks BSA Images of the Week! It’s in the same style as the piece they did for the Urban Nation Museum opening with us this September – that one featured a silhouette of an immigrant family running. Instead of participating in the Ambivalence Festival called Miami Basel/Wynwood this week, the brothers decided to throw their own party this weekend to unveil the piece and at The LOT radio station in Williamsburg, BK. Brothers and sisters, check out this station afloat on a little slip of land that generates some killer sets!
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Ai WeiWei, Appleton Pictures, Dede, Icy & Sot, Keyatama, LMNOPI, Nina Chanel Abney, Vladimir Gluten, and Xavi Cerre.
“I’m flat broke but I don’t care
I strut right by with my tail in the air.”
“Stray Cat Strut” by The Stray Cats, 1981
The lyric invokes an image of New Yorkers of all stripes whom you’ve seen working the sidewalk in neighborhoods across this city, including presumably Manhattan’s Washington Heights, where Street Artist and sculptor StrayOnes grew up at the turn of the century.
His wire and steel felines have a certain sassy, scrappy, savoir faire that tells passersby that you can have a sense of class no matter the situation you may find yourself in; like catwalking along the top of fence for instance.
“Stray cats are wild. They live free on the streets,” StrayOnes tells us.
“I remember where I grew up seeing tons of stray cats,” says the mid-20s street sculptor who got his start doing graffiti for a decade or so before his game moved to installing these crafty cats with a high tensile strength high on window ledges, fences, and telephone poles throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan over the last few years.
“Everyone can relate to the struggle of a stray animal,” he says in his well-ordered studio in a railroad space on the top of a Brownstone in Bushwick, “So that’s where the name came from; StrayOnes.”
His is a uniquely practical and poetic point of view that makes a great deal of sense considering the sleekly sensible manner that one often has to navigate through situations, opportunities, threats, obstacles, and relationships in the city, particularly on the street. “I also think that cats are like humans in a way – the way they act and move. Plus when you understand animals you understand people. If you understand a stray cat you understand a person.”
The cats he was digging on the street in the 2000s are true heads in the graff game and he rocked aerosol and markers long before these fully formed characters. “I was very much a graffiti artist for a long time. I love all the big heads like Noxer, Cope2, Cost,” he says. “I like lettering a lot but then when I got into sculpture, something about a 3D. It’s so alive to me. So I wondered why not put 3D work on the street which I love so much? I also love graffiti but it started to look flat to me. I wanted to work more on something that ‘pops.’ ”
You’ll see his cats and other characters more now than before as he is seriously dedicating himself to conceiving storylines and sculptures regularly – even though he has a straight 9 to 5 that takes up his time when not in the studio or on the street. And of course, there has to be time for prowling…
“Stray cat strut, I’m a ladies cat
I’m a feline Casanova, hey man that’s that
Get a shoe thrown at me from a mean old man
Get my dinner from a garbage can.”
This 1980s rockabilly song is not the only thing from that period that we are reminded of when talking to this guy born in the 90s. A fine arts grad from FIT in 2014, many of his artistic inspirations from the street come from that first wave of renegades, as well as a few from this century.
“I’m inspired by Keith Haring, Basquiat, Andy Warhol, a lot of the graffiti legends – Lee (Quinones) I like a lot. Banksy, especially during my graffiti teenage years.” Perhaps surprising is his mention of Lucian Freud, the British painter and draftsman, until you think of the rendered full forms in his portraits with figures almost appearing to have been modeled in clay.
Anonymous and largely unknown personally to many artists whom you meet on the New York scene, StrayOnes couldn’t be more enthusiastic or committed to it.
“NYC is the Street Art Capital and I’m happy to be a part of it. I always felt that with Street Art and graffiti you are just born loving it and I wanted do it. That’s how I grew up and the people who I grew up with – they all feel like that,” he says.
“So I’m happy to be a part of the Street Art scene. Actually nothing makes me happier. I feel like a rush, being involved in it. And I feel like it is very much alive and so is graffiti. They are not going anywhere. I’m an innovative street artists and I feel like more people are starting being innovative. I love it all.
BSA talked to StrayOnes about his pensive and inquisitive movements around the block, his affinity for sculpture, his interactions with police, Pokémon, and what he’s been reading lately.
BSA:Why do you sculpt cats and put them on the street? StrayOnes: After graffiti a got into sculpting and I wanted to put people on the street. Life-size figures. But I realized that they were kind of big. They were cool, some people were a bit creeped out about them. But then I moved to Brooklyn and I got inspired by my roommate’s cat; By the way it moved so I thought about putting a cat sculpture on the streets.
I still wanted to continue doing graffiti but at the same time I wanted to try something new. A cat sculpture always fits perfectly in the little niches and spaces on the street. Unlike my people sculptures that are always very big. The other element is the fact that they are stray cats. I feel like strays represent New Yorkers in a way.
BSA:Why did you transition from graffiti to sculptures? StrayOnes: Part of it started with the spray paint; I don’t really like the fumes that much. But I still love graffiti, typography and love doing tags with markers. I do use spray with the sculptures but now I use a mask. But something about the sculptures that is so alive. It is like when you see it it looks like a real thing and to me that’s what drew me to sculpting.
I also wanted to be unique and do something new. I also really understand the material and have figured out how to get it out on the street. I use chicken wire and it’s pretty cheap. The material is pretty hardy but it’s also light. So switching to sculptures to me is doable. It’s manageable. It isn’t a crazy process.
BSA:Do you have a cat? StrayOnes: I used to have a cat but it passed away. But that was the cat that inspired all of it in a way. It made very much realize how much I remember every stray cat interaction I had.
BSA:I like the transparency of the material and how it perfectly camouflages on the streets. StrayOnes: Yes that’s before I used to paint them. But you caught a very early one.
BSA:How do you choose the spots for your cats? StrayOnes: I usually pick a high foot-traffic block. That’s my goal. Then I look for a steel fence or grate that is a cool distance away so people can’t snatch them, but not too high that people won’t be able to see them. Lately I’ve trying to get a good contrast. My last one was a yellow cat and I place it on a bright red background so it pops more.
I really wanted people to see them actually. I didn’t intend for them to be super subtle. So I began painting them. So I went for bright colors.
BSA:When they are painted bright colors people see them and sometimes they take them. Do you care when that happens? StrayOnes: At first it pissed me off a lot. Like now it doesn’t piss me off as much. When I used to do graffiti people get buffed all the time. It is part of the game. The art is in the wild. Like leaving something in the jungle.
BSA:With your work sometimes I think that a certain piece is not going to run for a long time and others I think they will run for a long time and I’m often wrong. Do you know why? StrayOnes: I’ve gotten much better about knowing which piece will run for a long time. My intention is for a piece to run for as much as it could be possible. Of course they are on the street and it is what it is. But that’s my intention. Blocks that are covered with Street Art already they are usually good spots.
BSA:Do you feel like they are the anti-heroes on the streets; The badass actors of the streets? I’ve seen a couple of your sculptures where the cats are going after mice or birds. StrayOnes: I feel like cats represent us in a way – like strays are us. And for the bird piece you mentioned I feel like the bird was looking at the enemy on the face. Most of the time rats run away from the strays. They just don’t stop to look at cat on their face. So on the bird piece the pray is very aggressively looking back. That’s the subtle commentary running trough my work right now.
BSA:You have also sculpted other animals besides cats. I saw a raccoon recently and a Pokémon too! Are you getting bored with the cats? StrayOnes: I just wanted to have more variety. Then I got to the point where I was also getting inspired by things. Like I saw a hawk that landed on top of the ledge so I decided to do a hawk. I also see tons of raccoons in the Heights. Raccoons are really cool. It is like the animals I see in New York.
BSA:Yes many New Yorkers don’t even realize how much wildlife there’s in the city but you are bringing the wildlife to their doorsteps, or their window sills, if you will. StrayOnes: Yes stray cats are wild. They live free on the streets.
BSA:Do you have a specific time to put your work up on the street? StrayOnes: I usually go alone during the day. When it’s very sunny and everyone is in a good mood. Two o’clock in the afternoon. I used to do it at night but then I had to hop up ladders and people might have thought I was robbing their apartments. So when I do it during the day I sort of look the part and people don’t bother me. I mean people watch me doing it but they don’t have issues because they think it is cool.
BSA:How about the police? Do they bother you? StrayOnes: I haven’t dealt with the police yet. I have been stopped by park rangers. I tried to put one up in a park but they were very chill about it. They just told me to take it down. So it wasn’t a big deal. With the police you just don’t act suspiciously when you are putting the work up. It takes a lot of time do it. I tie the sculptures with wire. Sometimes I use screws and tie the sculptures to the screws. I don’t use nails. And it really isn’t easy to take them down. If they take them down they will damage the sculptures in the process. I do the same thing with the plaques.
BSA:Are you currently reading any books? Short stories? StrayOnes: Right now I am reading “King Leopold’s Ghost”. Is a historical book about the King of Belgium who made a colony in the Congo and killed millions of people. This is pretty much unspoken about in the history books. I didn’t know about it until I began reading this book. It actually explains a lot about American history. This books describe Americans from a European eyes and different points of view of the world and Africa from the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s. A co-worker recommended it to me.
I’ve been into history lately and with all the conflicts we are seeing today I’m trying to understand how we got to where we are. Currently the world is a mess and there’s a reason why. When I’m reading this book I see why people act the way they do now. This book was written in 1998 describes events from 150 years ago and many of the same things are still happening in today’s world. The way they teach history in America is way too American. There are all these other countries to consider and the histories can be complex.
BSA:How often do you put work up? StrayOnes: Every two or three weeks I’m working on a new sculpture. But I have also started making wood pieces.
BSA:Do you get cut a lot? Sometimes it isn’t easy to work with gloves. StrayOnes: Yes a lot. I usually start with gloves and about the time I’m done sculpting they gloves are off to do the finer work.
BSA:Have you met some of your peers in NYC? Some other Street Artists? StrayOnes: I’ve only met a couple of them but I’d like to start meeting more. I’d like to meet as many people as possible.
BSA: Is this one going outside? StrayOnes: That one has been on the street already. But it is the first one I ever did so I kept it to myself. I just sprayed it with color but underneath the layers you can see the original wire. He was going on a catwalk.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Jumping Rooftops with Ilko Iliev & Marin Kafedjiiski in Bulgaria 2. Urban Art Festival Basel/Switzerland 2017
3. Three in a Row from Grenoble Street Art Fest 2017: Seth, How Nosm, Monkey Bird
4.”Sky Is The Limit” by Jérome Thomas
BSA Special Feature: Jumping Rooftops with Ilko Iliev & Marin Kafedjiiski in Bulgaria
To get your heart racing on Friday here’s free-runner and stunt person Ilko Iliev jumping over obstacles, across rooftops, and scaling buildings across Bulgaria. No doubt it gives you a taste of the daring feats done in darkness by many a graffiti writer and Street Artist as acts of athleticism and adrenaline-pushing cat and mouse scenarios.
Winner of this years Best Drone Film at the Drone Film Festival for Australia + New Zealand, Director of Photography Marin Kafedjiiski takes you along with the action as seen from above and almost makes you catch your breath.
Urban Art Festival Basel/Switzerland 2017
Right now Art Basel is in Miami but last month it was in Switzerland where the Urban Art Festival was held indoors in the Messe Basel exhibition area. Well organized and really engaging for an attentive audience, the show had all the elements – combining graffiti bombers alongside Street Artists bombing large walls inside the exhibition space while curious fans checked them out. With Bustart at the helm as founder, he says that, “The main goal was and is to support the urban art in Switzerland and help artists.”
The 16 artist event drew over 70,000 visitors according to organizers, and we’re please to debut the re-cap video here on BSA Film Friday.
3 in a Row from Grenoble Street Art Fest 2017.
The 3rd iteration of the French festival was held in June and the whole city is involved – with murals, a conference, a film festival, classes, tours… Here are three brief videos of the murals from Seth, How Nosm, and Monkey Bird from this summer.
SETH
How & Nosm
Monkey Bird
“Sky Is The Limit” by Jérome Thomas
Here’s a trailer for new documentary following artists as they paint large-scale murals worldwide. It’s called “Sky Is The Limit”. True.
Ahhhhh the sun! The sea! The cigarette butt stuck to my leg from last night.
Also, did I wear ONLY this swimsuit and shoes, or did I originally go out with more clothes?
Anyway this is Miami and the annual mural-street art-graffiti-gallery show-art fair-melee is afoot. Wherever you go in Wynwood you are bound to find Instagrammable moments and pretty things pontificating about this or that, but if you want to see good stuff we’re suggesting this year that downtown is the next Wynwood, beginning with the historic Walgreens Building on 200 East Flager Street. Its second iteration, the Juxtapoz Clubhouse feels more like an organically spawned environment; cognizant of the many tributaries from where this art scene evolved, with room for free thought, experimentation, and growth.
Take a trip to another part of Miami this year and see JUX’s many assorted exhibitions and exhibitionists. Here’s a few of the hits we hope you hit.
Juxtapoz Clubhouse Miami 2017
Juxtapoz Magazine is taking over a 3-story department store with art installations, activations, murals, and site-specific projects, featuring works by Conor Harrington, Jean Jullien, Faith XLVII with Inka Kendzia, Ron English, Laurence Vallières, Serge Lowrider, Low Bros, Zane Meyer, Jillian Evelyn, Alex Yanes.
Juxtapoz will also be releasing their new Quarterly edition at the Clubhouse along with editions of Shepard Fairey’s “The Damage Times” newspaper, created in conjunction with his Damaged solo show.
Juxtapoz is also showcasing projects from Jonathan LeVine Projects, Thinkspace, Corey Helford Gallery, Think Tank, Athen B Gallery, Good Mother Gallery, Superchief Gallery, First Amendment, Station 16 Gallery and Urban Nation.
Juxtapoz will also once again team up with Mana Contemporary on a special mural by Conor Harrington and a-soon-to-be revealed skate park project – remember the massive skate park with Mana and Andrew Schoultz in the Wynwood neighborhood.
Historic Walgreens Building
200 East Flager Street
December 7 – 10, 2017
Opening Reception: December 6, 4 – 9 pm
Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to present a group exhibition at the Juxtapoz Clubhouse featuring the following artists:
Adam Wallacavage, David Choong Lee, Handiendan, Jeremy Fish, Jim Salvati, Jim Woodring, João Ruas, Josh Tiessen, Julia Ibbini, Kevin Cyr, Kip Omolade, Prefab77, Radosław Liweń and Ronald Gonzalez.
OLEK “Playpen” With Corey Helford Gallery
Los Angeles-based Corey Helford Gallery is showing new stuff by OLEK as part of the Juxtapoz Clubhouse. Olek says “Playpen” is a witty and flirtatious series featuring three new sculptures and an impressive 20-foot installation of an 8-legged “Spider Woman,” adorned with motifs like eyes, lips, hearts and flowers.
Look out for sculptures that represent various fantasy objects — a “Cat Snail” playset, a classical-shaped “Woman Bust” and a potted “Cock Plant” — all of which come to life under the glow of black light. Initially inspired by her own play experience as a young girl, OLEK uses this series to explore concepts of womanhood, sexuality, and feminist ideals.
FIRST AMENDMENT
A collection of works by San Francisco based First Amendment gallery artists will be on the third floor, including:
Andrew Antonaccio
Ellen Rutt
Francesco Lo Castro
Hell’O Collective
Hoxxoh
Lena Gustafson
Mando Marie
Scott Albrecht
Thinkspace is 2 for 2 here at the Clubhouse during Art Basel week in Miami with James Bullough and Jaune on site leaving their unmistakable marks.
ATHEN B. GALLERY
A collection of works and installations by Athen B. artists will include
Brett Flanigan
Cannon Dill
Heather Day
Jet Martinez
Kate Klingbeil
Laura Berger
Maxwell McMaster
Meryl Pataky
Muzae Sesay
Nicolas Romero
Nicomi Nix Turner
Pastel
Troy Lovegates
Woodrow White
Zio Ziegler
SUPERCHIEF GALLERY
Superchief will feature works by Parker Day, Don Pablo Pedro, UFO 907, Yu Maeda, and Reginald Pean and will be screening Wastedland 2 on Thursday December 7th at 7pm. See our interview with the director here.
GOOD MOTHER GALLERY
Good Mother will feature Egle Zvirblyte & Jose Mendez
Sophisticated and poppy palette-play coupled with a mid century affection for abstract geometry? Meet the night-glo arcade color selections and graphically charged motion of a 90s inspired digital graffiti artist.
Brad Howe and Demsky, both internationally known on the street and inside gallery walls, are separated by two decades but united by a desire to define the aesthetics and experience of public space.
Their intersections and contrasts are on display in a double-solo show at New York’s GR Gallery with examples of two and three dimensional optical play, similar to the diversionary activities that they both employ on the streets.
A collection of 20 works including paintings, sculptures and installations, “Off the Wall” keeps the focus on interaction with the wall, even though the Californian Howe may be better known for his abstract sculptures, his public art commissions and his Calder-inspired installations.
Demsky’s time-travel to an early virtual place that is optically elegant and illusionary taps a nostalgia for the period when he became a graffiti writer in Spain.
The interplay of these strong singular voices is charged in this common space and is often full of motion.
Much art in the streets is often for aesthetics – whether figurative, representational, or abstract. With roots in graffiti and often influenced by advertising, political protest, and pop culture, you will always find text messages as well.
Whether small missives or massive billboards, direct or somewhat cryptic, many these days are in opposition to current political leaders or critiques of social, political, economic issues and systems. Others are just about love. Whether or not this collection is a true measure of the Vox Populi, it certainly can give you a meaningful survey of opinions on the streets.
At its core, the community mural performs a very important role in unifying a neighborhood by focusing attention and coalescing around a common sentiment. Whether social, political, or poetic, they give a public voice to memories, aspirations, philosophies, agendas.
By highlighting the dominant sentiments about a particular event or topic, community murals in cities and towns also serve as a physical location where people meet in the public context to discuss weighty matters, to share stories, to pass on history, to trade gossip, to organize, to celebrate or mourn individually and collectively.
The United Nation’s World Food Programme worked again this year with a number of Street Artists in San Salvador to create a mural that scrutinizes the nature of a people’s history and the fundamentals of its social, political, economic strengths.
“The mural itself speaks of the market as a place to exchange goods and that creates community and has done so since El Salvador was a country, when it’s people already cultivated the grains and vegetables that continue to be sold at this market today,” says New Jersey based Street Artist and muralist Layqa Nuna Yawar, originally from Ecuador. He painted side by side his homeboy Mata Ruda along with history student Rafael Osorio and local artists Lolipop, Cristian Lopez and Issac Martinez for this mural on the facade of Mercado Cuscatlan, a public market and Library complex.
“The murals also show us traditional culture, dresses, games, poets, geography and flora and fauna that all have local meaning and importance to the people of San Salvador,” LNY says. “The mural on the library side speaks of knowing your history in order to grow and move forward to a better future. It does so by depicting a young woman, one of the local artist’s family members, reading a book on history. In this book the same girl is depicted in traditional colonial garb reading a book on national history, meanwhile her mind is filled with imagery of the cosmos.”
Part of the ConectArte program in cooperation with San Salvador mayor’s office and the United Nation’s World food program, Layqa Nuna Yawar and Street Artist/organizer Jamie Toll say that the collective process that goes into a community mural is necessary to produce a collective narrative. They say they wanted the artists to function as amplifiers for the ideas as well as the aesthetics.
“We spent time developing the design for the mural collectively without having this be a single authored project but a product of actual exchange and conversation with proper credit going to those involved,” says Layqa Nuna Yawar. “This exchange continues as our relationships with these artists grow beyond the project itself.”
While You Were Sleeping is a Korean TV series about a woman who can see the future in her dreams, and a prosecutor who fights to stop these future events from happening. The title also makes us think about the scam of a Tax bill passed while you were sleeping in the middle of the night between Friday and Saturday.
The servants of the rich, these wolves, are facilitating the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class up to their masters for well into the future, and it appears that few are awake to see it. It also pulls health insurance out from underneath 13 million sleeping people. The majority of the country was against this but the servants pushed it through anyway when you weren’t stirring. Good night!
Street Art better be dope ya’ll, because that’s where many of us will be living soon – the street.
But we are wide awake for sex scandals, by golly. Powerful men are being accused by past alleged victims from every sector in society right now. We are keeping our fingers crossed that Santa Claus can stay above the fray!
Meanwhile, the tree got lit this week in Rockefeller Center, a lot of people are going to get lit this month at their office holiday party, many NYC art denizens are heading to the Miami Basel Circus this week, and apparently there is supposed to be some Street Art thing happening there too.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring BD White, Daek, Elbi Elem, Elisa Capdevila, Faile, Jason Woodside, Jerkface, Kai, Killjoy, Magda Love, Mazatl, Mr. Toll, Ola Kalnins, Praxis, Timothy Goodman, and Sonni.
The Greek Street Artist INO has been consistently observing the social and political factors that are at play in modern society and has been addressing these themes through his work painting large murals in more cities around the world. This week in Fortaleza aside the Atlantic in northeastern Brazil, INO created a headless female form that for him is evocative of a socio-political order that is “Broken”.
“This is a place where someone can see very big contradictions,” he tells us, “the poverty in the street, people begging for food – while you eat in the restaurant, the prostitutes every night in the streets.”
He shows us a photo of a street scene where women are being questioned by the police that he took at night while he was painting his wall from the vantage point of his lift up above. His imagination is activated by the scene, and he thinks of the frightening circumstances that women in the sex trade are put in that exploit them repeatedly.
“All of this, together with the rich people, the expensive apartments in huge luxury buildings that look empty, surrounded by barbed wire fences in each condominium yard…” It all is disturbing to him, and a scene repeated in many cities in so-called developed nations where the stratification between rich and poor is getting more pronounced than ever before in the modern era, leaving more feeling powerless and easily victimized.
For his new mural entitled “Broken”, completed here during the 4th Concreto Festival, the anonymous form is an obvious reference to people caught in a de-humanizing system. “The piece is depicting a naked thin woman in a position of offering her body, with a black splash coming from the head,” he says.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Rough Cut of Haring on Train in Mexico City (DF)
2. Niels Shoe Meulman in Magic City
3. Carlo McCormick talks about ROA at Magic City
4. Miquel Wert / 12 + 1 Contorno Urbano
5. “Awareness, Optimism, Commitment” by GEC Art
BSA Special Feature: Rough Cut of Haring on Train in Mexico City (DF)
It all took us by surprise last week in Mexico City when suddenly a whole train covered on both sides with Keith Haring’s work approached while we were waiting at the platform to catch the Linea 2 of the Metro. He made his name in part by illegally doing drawings like these in NYC subways and here now they are crushing a whole train. The name of the project is “Ser Humano. Ser Urbano” or “Being Human. Being Urban” and it aims to promote human values and human rights. The pattern you see is from “Sin Titulo (Tokyo Fabric Design)” – now stretched across these whole cars, if you will.
The train itself is inexplicably having brake troubles, so we get some jerky spur-of-the-moment footage but all week on Instagram and Facebook we’ve received tons of comments from people reacting to this little bit of Keith video by Jaime Rojo on BSA.
Niels Shoe Meulman in Magic City – The Art Of The Street :
Niels Shoe Meulman spent some nights in a Munich jail thirty years ago for mucking about on the walls. This year he was paid to do it in Munich for Magic City, the travelling morphing exhibition (now in Stockholm) where Street Art is celebrated along with all its tributaries – including a film program and a number of photographs by your friends here at BSA.
Born, raised and based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Shoe shares here his new improvisational piece and some of his reflections on his process and his evolution from being in advertising as an art/creative director and reclaiming his soul as a graffiti/Street Art/fine artist. As ever, Martha is in the frame, putting him in the frame.
Carlo McCormick talks about ROA at Magic City – The Art Of The Street / Dresden-Munich-Stockholm
The urban naturalist ROA gets the Carlo McCormick treatment here as the chief curator of Magic City does the talking for the anonymous Ghent-based artist who has globe-trotted for almost a decade with his marginalized animal parade in monochrome. Here you get to see the inside/outside of his practice, a genuine master as work – with the delicious insight of Carlo to guide your appreciation.
Miquel Wert / 12 + 1 Contorno Urbano
In studio with Miguel Wert we get to see him sifting through a pile of black and white photos, assessing the scene, the sitters, the psychological-emotional dynamics of families, lovers, haters.
“In most family photos the interpersonal dynamics are more subtle,” we wrote when the wall was first unveiled in Barcelona, “but a close reading of posture, body language, and facial expressions all give unconsciously a lot of information about the true nature of the relationships officially on display.”
Anamorphic Street Art has been a parallel universe to the illegal Street Art scene for years, and Dutch pop-surrealist Leon Keer is one of the most ingenious on the scene and well travelled; having been to Europe, The United States, The United Arabic Emirates, Australia and several Asian countries with his work.
Here in Venice, Florida before heading to Miami for Art Basel he worked with four other artists to create a huge piece of anamorphic land art in a grass field at the airport grounds for the 10th anniversary of the Chalk Festival during the second week of November.
Using symbols of some of the world’s religion in a 3-D game of tic tac toe, Keer designed an environmentally friendly chalk piece that required the work of 5 artists over 4 days painting with rollers and a handheld garden sprayer. Also, the field had to be mowed. With the longest line in the artwork at 300 feet, you can begin to appreciate how difficult this game is.
Lead artist and design: Leon Keer.
Other artists: Massina, Sjem Bakkus, Ives One and Eric Keer.
We always say that Street Art reflects us back to ourselves and during a recent trip to the streets of Barcelona we found some great examples of regional traditions that build community and celebrate culture, even strengthen it. Of course we also found some great stencil art that we hope you’ll enjoy.
The above stencil is a part of a larger wall where multiple artists have gone up over the years. It depicts a human tower or Castellers a tradition unique in Catalonia that dates back to the 18th century. In today’s Barcelona the Castellers perform in competitions, usually in the Town Hall Square during the traditional holidays of the particular town or city.
The stencil above is also on the same wall as the Castellers. This stencil depicts a Catalan tradition as well called the Correfoc. The Correfocs are a group of individuals dressed as devils playing with fire, mostly fireworks. As the Correfocs light their fireworks they get near the crowds, many spectators choose to participate by getting very close to the devils while others decide to watch the festivities from afar.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
“This is a place where someone can see very big contradictions,” he tells us, “the poverty in the street, people begging for food – while you eat in the restaurant, the prostitutes every night in the streets.”
