Sometimes it is a talisman who is having adventures on the behalf of an artist, a part of him/herself who stays behind and watches the area.
At other times it is a character seen through a mirror, an alter-ego who represents a fictional part of their inner world who has been set free onto the street to interact. It may be a branding element, a logo, or signature that lays claim to the artwork it is attached to. By itself it is often a form of marking territory; a practice begun by graffiti writers decades ago.
Whether it is a symbol or a figure, it is undoubtedly a personification of some part of the artists id, one that is so individual that you can spot it from a distance and if you are a fan, you’ll smile in recognition.
Many street artists have a discernable style, that is true; a hand-style, a recurrent motif, color palette, a topic that reappears, a technique of application, even a likely location in the urban landscape where they are most likely to appear.
Of that number, fewer have developed a character or a motif so well defined in our minds that it can stand alone, but we have found a few over the decades. Each is imbued with memory, with place, with personality, with character.
Painted in the stairway of Kunstlabor in Munich for their second Urban Art show, street artist and immunologist Lapiz brought his strong opinions and shares them with you here.
There is no Planet B
A searing damnation of the 1st world consumer mentality, Lapiz critiques the guy in this scene, finding him guilty of oblivious attitudes and self-serving behaviors.
“A man is sitting in a comfortable lounge chair escaping into the digital world. Maybe, he watches a documentary about the “green lung” – the untouched part of the Amazon rainforest on Netflix. As he is sitting there enjoying himself he does not pay any attention to his surroundings. The almond milk in his feel-good tote bag might protect dairy cows but their plantations demand so much water that vast areas are running dry. He doesn’t pay attention to the rose that is cultivated cheap in Africa and flown to Europe for Valentine’s Day (he is a romantic after all), nor the energy used to order his VR glasses or streaming. Instead of enjoying nature as it is, a parallel, untouched universe is consumed.”
Still Love and Wallporn For his second installation Lapiz says he wanted to question how the female body and sexuality are viewed in public.
“Commonly, the female body is sexualized in advertisements, media, pornography, or prostitution while female sexuality and normal bodily functions are deemed private or even taboo (period shaming, pinky gloves). Disguised as fancy wallpaper and hiding in plain sight are all sorts of sex toys: dildos, vibrators, etc. The flowers of the still life (“Still Love”) look a bit off as they show soft tampons, which are also often used by prostitutes to keep on working. My motive was to try and take these seemingly private things that are supposed to happen behind closed doors and show them as what they are – normal and beautiful.”
Also included in the show were Sebastian Bühler, Miriam Ganser, Patricija Gilyte, Julia Klemm, Eva Krusche, Lando, Lapiz, Christine Liebich, Loomit, Timur Lukas, Sophia Mainka, Daniel Man, Nina Annabelle Märkl, Bernhard McQueen, Marlene Meier, Ray Moore, Monika Morito, Matthias Mross, Ena Oppenheimer, Esther Irina Pschibul, Cornelia Rapp, Felix Rodewaldt, Sophie Schmidt, Magdalena Waller, Matt Wiegele, Zrok, and Ian Zak. Learn more about KunstLabor HERE.
Just as we were starting to feel a sense of relief that Covid is letting go of us….
Russia has invaded Ukraine. Not only is this a horror for Ukraine, this elective aggression may spread, resulting in retaliation.
If you want to help, we found this list from Fortune magazine:
Voices of Children Voices of Children is a charitable foundation that focuses on addressing the psychological effect of armed conflict on children. Founded in 2015 in response to the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Voices of Children provides art therapy, mobile psychologists, and individualized support to traumatized children. Individuals can donate through bank transfer, credit/debit card, or Apple Pay via its website.
The International Rescue Committee The International Rescue Committee has a long history of providing resources to refugees fleeing countries facing humanitarian crisis. Its leaders have responded to the situation in Ukraine by meeting with organizations in Poland and Ukraine to gauge the potential number of refugees and their needs so it can quickly mobilize and provide whatever assistance is needed. You can make a donation via its website.
CARE International humanitarian organization CARE has set up an emergency Ukrainian Crisis Fund with the goal of providing immediate support for 4 million people. Donations will go toward providing Ukrainians with water, food, supplies, hygiene kits, immediate support and aid, and cash. CARE notes that its prioritizing supporting women, girls, families, and elderly.CARE makes it easy to donate via its website using PayPal or a credit card.
International Medical Corps This nonprofit is focused on providing health-care services, psychosocial support, and care to citizens of countries dealing with disaster, disease, and conflict. It’s currently accepting monetary gifts that will go toward providing Ukrainians with better access to medical and mental health resources. You can make a donation via the website using a credit/debit card, bank transfer, or PayPal.
Project Hope It’s currently sending medical supplies to Ukrainians. You can make donations via its website using a credit/debit card, bank transfer, or PayPal.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Captain Eyeliner, Sonni, CRKSHNK, Kobra, Robert Janz, Goog, Degrupo, Suso33, Leviticus, Niagra, Homesick, Allan Molho, YNWA, Divock Okoth Origi, Emune, Lancelot, and Outersource.
Up-to-the-moment street art today from Polish artist M-City (Mariusz Waras), who converts the façade of a Gdansk warehouse into a social media primer on how to support the people of Ukraine. Sharing a border with this post-Soviet state which has just been invaded by Russian forces, Poland is acutely affected by the implications of possible further aggression – as are the Baltic states and the rest of Europe.
The short list asserts that many social media users may not be fully cognizant of the implications of their posting actions – especially during wartime. M-City took to the walls today to instruct some best practices in these painted advisory messages on how to create your digital ones.
In additional acts of irony, he posts these street art messages on his social media channels – and we publish them for the BSA audience as well.
BSA:Where is this located? M-City: It’s located in a very well-known building which part of Stocznia Gdańska, now Stocznia Cesarska. It is part of the Imperial Shipyard where the workers’ movement, Soliderność (Solidarity), was born.
BSA: What would you like people to understand? M-City: Our Social media landscape is full of fakes and is full of superficial messages. Because of this, many people have a bigger challenge to make their messages visible when they try to organize something and help the Ukrainians.
BSA:Did you create this for a local audience, or specifically an international audience. M-City: It’s in English because now this is a global problem. I wanted to create simple sentences so everyone can understand.
BSA:Are you personally affected by the invasion? M-City: No, it’s still far from us. But I have a lot of friends in Ukraine and I painted there a few times. Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus are next to our border. Many Ukrainian people are working here now. They arrived here mostly after the beginning of this conflict years ago.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. BSA Special Feature: Pejac: “SO FAR, SO CLOSE” 2. ‘APNEA’ Exhibition by Pejac. Berlin, Germany. 3. MadC – Mural Oasis
BSA Special Feature: Pejac: “SO FAR, SO CLOSE” The making of a print.
A recent print by street artist Pejac has a sudden additional resonance as we consider it. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is directly adjacent to Europe and NATO member countries, yet in another perspective, it feels far away for many Europeans.
In an interconnected world that is reliant upon trade and diplomatic ties, and one that is weighted with entrenched war industry interests, no one is far from it today.
“This delicate piece of art depicts a bird’s-eye view of a battle in an infinite trench. ‘‘Sometimes perceiving someone as a friend or foe is just a matter of perspective’, Pejac comments in reference to his artistic rendition of the absurdity of combat.”
“At the tail end of October 2021, a former train manufacturing site in Berlin was home to a 10 days-long exhibition. It was Pejac’s fourth self-produced solo show that saw the Spanish artist push his exposition practice to new levels. Having at his disposal eight different rooms and spaces, Pejac put on display over forty new artworks that literally came in all shapes and sizes.”
MadC – Mural Oasis
“MadC paints 3 murals for Mural Oasis at Prizm OPutlet in Primm, Nevada in 2019, video by Chop ’em Down”
Observing the events of the last weeks and today on the world stage, we are reminded of this street art piece created by artist Lapiz in Lemwerder, Germany in 2018.
“I painted it during the time that the FIFA WorldCup took place in Russia,” the artist tells us, “and it was intended to highlight Putin’s narcissism and homophobia.” You can see the reference to homophobia in the artist choice of multiple colors that are in the LGBTQ pride flag.
We’ve been supporting the work of the New York organization Art In Odd Places (AiOP) for years and are always intrigued and inspired by their productions and the artists they select to offer their proposals. Mounted outdoors along and below 14th Street in Manhattan, we’ve seen works by performing artists, painters, sculptors, conceptual artists, dancers, and a myriad of artists who defy categorization and refused to be boxed in. This is what makes this a unique art event in the city; its ability to be inclusive, fearless, and unconventional. We look forward to being surprised once again this year.
Art in Odd Places (AiOP) 2022 will be present with the theme of “Story” this September and curated by Atlanta artist Jessica Elaine Blinkhorn, who asks “Will the story of your existence endure the test of time?”
Today, public personal merit is based on the number of followers on social media – and relevance changes with the shifting weather. True identity and community are where words are genuinely heard, truths shared, stories told, and perceptions possibly changed.”
AiOP 2022: STORY seeks imaginative proposals by artists from the Disabled, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and Allied communities that tell her, his, their “Story”
“I am very happy with how the Mural turned out,” says Marcos Chelo aka Akimbo, of this new mural, his first large format, in Valencia, Spain. A tribute to trans people in general and to Margarida Borrás in particular, this multicolored deity of style is likely more a feature of Akimbo’s modern tastes and imagination than what Borrás wore in the 1450s, where the prized yet persecuted beauty is said to have visited many a home of noble society in Valencia.
Commissioned by the Intramurs festival, Senorita Borràs overlooks the open-air parking lot of the vendors of the nearby Mercat Central de Valencia not far from Plaza del Mercat where public records say she was hanged in 1460. “I represent Margarida interpreting her image from my erotic-festive galactic imaginary,” says Akimbo in his Instagram posting, “turning her into a futuristic Saint, returning her the mystic quality and the honor that Christianity took from us hundreds of years ago.”
According to Ferran Bono in El Pais, the spot has been formally recognized by the city and named for the trans woman, which we translate here: “The priest Melcior Miralles recorded such a tragic outcome in his 15th-century work Crònica i dietari del capellà d’Alfons el Magnànim: ‘In the year 1460, Monday, July 28, in the Valencia market, Margarida was hanged, and she was man, and his name was Miquel Borras, who was the son of a notary from Mallorca and was dressed as a woman, and he was in many houses in Valencia dressed as a woman, which was known, and he was imprisoned and tortured. And because of the said Margarida or Miquel, some were imprisoned and tortured’.
A few years ago, the Valencian researcher and writer Vicente Adelantado investigated the Manuals de Consells of the old juries that ran the city and the municipal archive to prepare his doctoral thesis on the origin of theater in Valencia and found traces of Margarida.”
Street artists and fine artist David Hollier has made innumerable portraits of political and pop figures in the last couple of decades – often with their own words, and often with stunning capturing of their likeness. Today on President’s day in the US, we give you John F. Kennedy.
The words with which the President’s features are created are lifted from one of his more famous speeches in April of 1961 given to the American Newspaper Publishers Association in New York. He had been discontented with the press coverage of the Bay of Pigs incident and spoke of a need for “far greater official secrecy.”
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week, where New York keeps pushing forward through this stormy winter – although the amount of new street art and graffiti dissipates this time of year as artists stay in their creative caves, waiting for spring. Hang in there peeps.
Great news for New York artists this week: artists can now apply for a monthly stipend of $1,000. This is big news because unlike a lot of Europe, the US and its institutions do not support artists or cultural workers.
Speaking of exemplary New Yorkers, Jeffery Epstein’s friend Jean-Luc Brunel has been found dead in his prison cell, mysteriously. One of Epstein’s other friends, Prince Andrew, reportedly settled out of court this week. “Prince Andrew reportedly agreed to never again deny raping Virginia Giuffre”, says the New York Post, The Independent, and The Sun. The Times says: “A new nursery rhyme is doing the rounds at the Palace:
‘The grand old Duke of York, he had 12 million quid. He gave it to someone he’d never met, for something he never did’”.
Jesus, let’s go out for a walk and see if we discover some new street art.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Skewville, Specter, City Kitty, Adam Fujita, Pork, Jason Naylor, Below Key, Lexi Bella, Jowl, Nimek, Klonism, Harvey Ball, Eloy Bida, Kat Blouch, Timmy Ache, and Eyedao.
Great to see this new print by Russian graffiti/street artist Dmitri Aske (aka Sicksystems), who has been on the street since 2000 and has developed his fine art practice in studio, in commercial projects, and on large scale murals in recent years. A modern stained glass motif freezes the action of the mundane, catching a moment like a photograph, his figures are transmitted into archetypes in a modern scene.
Dmitri Aske
A student, editor, and lecturer on the Russian graffiti scene, Aske gave us a rare and unexpected personal tour of some of his favorite spots one afternoon in Moscow when we were there to curate at the Atmosphere Biennale in 2018. His ease transversing the margins of the city included revealing hidden walls and stopping into a gallery to show us interactive digital works. This multi-discipline approach is illustrated by his defined colorful graphic approach to mosaic reliefs made of plywood, large-scale murals, and sculptures in public and private.
Here in this new print issued by Winzavod Art Center in Moscow, Aske captures the staid, proforma stances of gallery-goers contemplating the work of an artist, in this case his own. By placing himself in the situation, he is showing you his world, and ours – without outward expression, but capturing the subtleties of spatial relationships and body language that may be expected in the formalized atmosphere of a museum or gallery.
Dmitri Aske
In fact, the new print is a distillation detail from a larger mural work he completed on the campus of Winzavod, a public/private exhibition complex in Moscow that serves as a social and educational platform for discovery and discussion of the legacies of graffiti and street art as they transition into all manner of urban contemporary art.
“Recently, I’ve made a new mural at @winzavod in Moscow (approximately 7x30m, 210m2). It’s called ‘Colleagues’ and is dedicated to viewers, art collectors, curators, and artists, people who are both my peers and whom Winzavod was made for,” he says.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. BSA Special Feature: ‘Gold Mine’ by Pejac 2. Graffiti & Jail: Doug Gillen and FWTV 3. Said Dokins, Cix, and Spaik: Memoria Canera
BSA Special Feature: ‘Gold Mine’ by Pejac
Pejac recently completed a series of interventions within the oldest prison in Spain, the Penitentiary Center of El Dueso. Located at the entrance of artist’s hometown of Santander, overlooking the Cantabrian sea and surrounded by marshes, the prison built at the beginning of the 20th century on the remains of an old Napoleon’s fort was another challenging setting to carry out his poetic interventions.
For 11 days, its walls, courtyards, and corridors became the artist’s workplace, giving life to the Gold Mine project in that sense. The project integrates three singular pieces, which as a whole represent the value of the human condition, its resistance to adversity, the need to create, and its desire, above all, to leave a mark.
“A prison itself is a place wrapped in harsh reality and at the same time, I feel that it has a great surrealist charge. It is as if you only need to scratch a little on its walls to discover the poetry hidden inside.” PEJAC
Graffiti & Jail: Doug Gillen and FWTV
And on another side of the coin, Doug Gillen of FifthWall TV talks about graffiti and street artists who go to prison as punishment for doing illegal graffiti on the streets.
Memoria Canera
Said Dokins, Cix, and Spaik: Memoria Canera was part of a three mural series made by the outstanding Mexican Street Artists Said Dokins, Cix, and Spaik at the Maximum Security Penitentiary in Morelia, Michoacán.
The project intended to shed light on a discussion about Cultural Rights and how artistic and cultural practices can be a valuable tool to mediate against exclusion and marginalization. By disrupting the space with color and text, symbols and patterns, the environment is transformed. The new murals are “Puedes Volver a Volar” (You can Fly Again) by Spaik, “Estado Mental” (Mental State) by Cix, and “Memoria Canera” (Memories from Jail) by Said Dokins.
Street art welcomes all manner of materials and methods, typically deployed without permission and without apology. This hand-formed wire piece …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
