Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. SOFLES / Spillway 2. SOFLES/ Geometric 2 3. Abandoned Places with Cycki and Gienio via Dope Cans 4. The Day the Dollar Died 5/20/21
BSA Special Feature: SOFLES / Spillway
Did they say spillway or speedway?
In this edit by After Midnight Film Co, the low shutter speed effect ramps up the excitement of bombing.
In his comment on Youtube, Maxwell Morris says, “What in the actual f? Best bombing I have ever had the pleasure to witness. Pushing form, color combinations, abstraction, technique and motion and energy to a new level.”
SOFLES / Spillway
SOFLES/ Geometric 2
Abandoned Places with Cycki and Gienio via Dope Cans
In a return to smart sound and video editing, these two remind us how delicious silver bubble tags are. Satin sheeny and crunchy dopeness.
Song shout-out to Nicolas Jaar – “Space is Only Noise if You Can See”
The Day the Dollar Died 5/20/21
“We expect to play a leading role in developing standards for CBDCs,” ~ Fed Chairman Jerome Powell
“So, bye-bye, Miss American Pie Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry And them good ol’ boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye Singin’, “This’ll be the day that I die This’ll be the day that I die”
We hope that “Summer Always Blooms” – and so far so good this year. If you follow the order of flowers blooming in Brooklyn you’ll know that we are in the middle of the peony explosion that happens every year just after the lilacs and just before the roses. Perhaps that’s what was on muralist Ouizi’s mind when she painted this new soft brush portrait of coral charm peonies in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Curated by Charlotte Dutoit of Justkids, the piece coincidences with the new Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition at Crystal Bridges, and you can see that the full pulsating expanse of natural blooms thrills Quizi as much as it did the mother of American modernism.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed being back in Arkansas for this project,” says Ouizi, “and I have heard nothing but positive responses about the mural. I even got to see the dogwoods start to bloom in real life!”
You are not alone. It’s a simple phrase that offers a lot of comfort in difficult times.
For one long, horrible year we’ve been bound to each other by one single catastrophic event: Covid-19. The Pandemic brought so much pain, despair, loss, urgency, clarity, and fear. It forced the invincible to their knees. It didn’t discriminate by class, social status, ethnic groups, skin color, or wealth. A Pandemic that crossed borders and forced us to withdraw almost completely from normality.
Throughout all of this, many of us, millions of us, never felt alone – and that kept us hoping for the ray of light. Hope for the day when we won’t be hearing the sound of sirens from emergency vehicles. Hope for the day when we’d be able to reunite with our loved ones. Hope for a day when going outside wouldn’t feel like risking death. Hope for the simplest of pleasures.
The Pandemic also exposed all of us to see the immense disparity between rich countries and poor ones. A vast and deep fissure in our humanity was exposed to the whole world when we saw images of people being left to die on the sidewalks, alone in nursing homes or their own homes, due to negligence, incompetence, or lack of resources. It may be years before we realize the damage of the Pandemic. At the least, we hope we have learned that we are not alone.
In recent years the city of Kingston has been hosting an urban festival that merges art and healing. The O+ Festival, headquartered here, has a holistic approach and promotes the well-being of individuals through arts, music, and wellness. It was during this visit that we found this piece on a wall on the side of a building. It caught our eyes as it resembled the style of Banksy. But the other characteristic that we noticed was that the unidentified artist was also playing with the words. They took from the ubiquitous “Your Ad Here” signs one sees all over large cities.
It could also have read “Your Logo Here”. Street art has changed throughout the years to become mostly a sanctioned art form with an intense focus on murals. Big and small cities all over the world have embraced the idea of art as a way to revitalize moribund old quarters of their cities and to bring a sense of belonging to an otherwise neglected neighborhood. No matter the original nobility of that idea – inevitably in comes commerce, the slogans, and logos. Then there is the slogan of the city or private organization in charge of producing the festival and suddenly a plethora of small logos and slogans promoting the companies that have contributed either with funds, equipment, or materials to the festival.
We are a society of advertisements, often prodded to buy something or to endorse something. Whether driving on the highway or flying or on a train or walking or sitting on the couch in our home, we can’t escape logos, slogans, and general advertisements. There are only a few precious areas left on earth without billboards and electronic signs. That’s why it’s especially jarring to also see them on display at art events.
Italian street artist Etnik has created a new “Botanica Resistente” in Rome to commemorate “Liberation Day” in Italy, which marks April 25th as the end of the Nazi’s occupation and the liberation from Fascism.
He calls the colorful and abstractly organic 4-story work “Botanica Resistente”, which he says may have multiple readings. Mostly, it is “A direct reference to the toponymy that characterizes the whole district of Centocelle – with its streets named after plants, trees, and flowers.”
As a story of overcoming great obstacles and thriving in adversity, he also posits that “in the mural concrete blocks, asphalt and artificial works succumb to natural elements, giving life to a slow but gradual reconquest of spaces taken from nature.”
“The work is representative of familiar urban corners, on the border, where between asphalt and concrete, spontaneous plants are in a constant struggle for survival.”
Completed in conjunction with the help and guidance of Mirko Pierri, curator of urban art for the a.DNA association, Etnik took about 5 days to transform this facade of the Liceo Scientifico Statale Francesco D’Assisi, between via Castore Durante e Viale Palmiro Togliatti.
Welcome to Brooklyn, where the lilacs are in bloom and people are smoking weed in the park, like it was 1985 or something. Remember summer of ’85 in Washington Square Park with rambunctious teens backward skating in the dry fountain on roller skates and people were blasting “Shout” by Tears for Fears on their boxes?
As the COVID positivity rate in New York dove toward 1% this week, we’re all encouraging each other to take off masks, but no one is sure when and where it’s completely safe, except when taking a shower by yourself. On the street and on the Subway the results are mixed, with most New Yorkers opting for being safe.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: 7 Line Art Studio, Acne, Cabaio, Freakotrophic, G Money NFT, Jet, JJ Veronis, Jowl, Luke Dragon 911, No Sleep, Save Art Space, and Zephyr.
Highbrow art institutions have coalesced behind a small recurring collection of well-known graffiti/street artists in recent years, granting them a lot of space and a powerful entrée to blue-check media parties, blue-chip platforms, and blue blood collectors. The bigger (and frequently well-funded) names are often the easiest to explain to an unfamiliar general audience of art viewers and, of course, will appeal to that younger demographic everyone is after. It shouldn’t surprise anyone when even the New York City Ballet spawned a series of collaborations with street artists in the last five years to bolster flagging attendance due to aging and, well, dying fans.
Graffiti and street art have long since become bywords of edgy culture that can be commodified and proudly owned by all strata of incomes and stations, and our interest in all things street abides still. Brands have ironically manipulated pop icons and sprinkle paint splashes, drips, and bubble tags across everything from ladies’ clutches to watches to vapes. Fashion continues to dip into this well of light anarchy as a signal of cool rebellion, as sold across a gamut – from couture Saint Laurent to off-the-rack Walmart. Sometimes the imagery or lettering is easily recognizable as a particular artist’s style on the products for sale. Other times a staff graphic designer has skillfully approximated the stencils, wheat-pastes, and drippy tags without steering into copyright infringement territory.
Street Artist Shepard Fairey is probably best known for making art and commerce symbiotic with the interplay of his screenprints, stickers, vandalism, street art, and the Obey brand, and Keith Haring literally opened his own Pop Shop store in Soho way back in the 1980s; his illegal vandalism in the subway being de facto advertisements for products you could purchase above ground. Banksy’s movie title Exit Through The Gift shop may have been intended as a sarcastic critique, but everyone now considers it a command. Curatorial considerations may not be explicitly tied to the development of product lines, but the discussions of both may happen in the same marketing meeting.
Today, the real power players in the cultural currency game are the artists who can market their own products, sometimes commanding licensing fees simply for being featured on retail platforms and venues. In the case of KAWS: What Partyat the Brooklyn Museum, the sales of the Brooklyn artists’ “Companion” toy collectibles exhausted supply within hours of the opening, and the mania of buying multiples in multi-visit daily shopping trips created lines so long that they backed up into the exhibition. The museum store began posting strict buying limits and regulations of items sold.
On a recent weekday, eager groupings of friends and family arrive into the Brooklyn Museum lobby with palpable excitement, and nearly all pose in front of the towering 18-foot high wooden KAWS sculpture, “Along the Way.” Our guide, Sharon Matt Atkins, Deputy Director for Art, tells us that the response to the show in terms of attendance has been robust. As we wend through the galleries, we see guests in their teens and twenties often posing before sculptures and paintings, imitating the forward bending head, cradling their face in hands with a mocked portrayal of being overwhelmed. The striking of poses in front of artworks is possibly as much a part of the museum experience as excitedly identifying which pop culture character or famous painting had been appropriated for an X-eyed portrait. Those images are spread across social media, and the KAWS character is seen by many more.
After the show, guests queue in line to the store to pick up a catalog, tote bag, lapel pin, or other KAWS product. Artists names like Matt Groenig, Charles Schultz, and Hugh Harman may not trip off the tongue, but their repurposed characters like the Simpsons, Snoopy, and Mickey have all been burned into western mass culture history. Those nostalgic and reassuring associations are captured by KAWS repeatedly and altered with modest modification.
Matt Atkins observes that KAWS discovered the power of pop references to manga and anime in the subculture Otaku were crucial to forming bonds with Japanese people in ways that language would not allow during his trips to Tokyo in the late 1990s. The power of that kind of cross-cultural communication stayed with him and is offered as an explanation for referencing commonly known images. Indeed, this method of reinterpretation of pre-established icons and personalities has been employed on the street for many years, including right now with street artists like The Postman who reworks famous images of celebrities and characters like Syd Vicious, Elton John, Willy Wonka, Boy George, Grace Jones, and Elvis Presley. The contemporary acid-pop treatment he pours on the photographs is eye-catching in doorways or alleys. If you like what you see on the street, you can go to his website store to purchase them as prints or customized aerosol spray cans. Before ‘always on’ connectivity, these bridges between art and collecting were never so seamless.
As new rules in street art and commerce come online daily, perhaps we’ll be developing new terminology to describe and novel ways to define the roles of museums, exhibitions, and stores. Similarly, norms about patronage, fandom, art history, civic engagement, and cultural literacy, no doubt, are evolving at a rapid pace in ways previously unconsidered.
As in the ‘woke’ culture that the art world is trying to enter, we’re having difficult but necessary conversations revolving around identity politics and systemic, historical inequities. Maybe we should also discuss the role of commerce in mediating decisions about which rebellious graffiti or street artists we are heralding or overlooking.
What clinches the final decision when granting a gallery or exhibition replete with all the trimmings? In an art practice born from typically marginalized sectors of the dominant culture originally, who is currently getting the brunt of the attention, and why? What role does consumer culture, pop sensibility, and commodification of our creative commons play when selecting which artists from the graffiti and street art fields are elevated – and which ones are not. As always, there are few obviously correct answers. But the questions may lead us in new directions.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Blinded By The Lines in Poland 2. Dr. Audrey Fernandes Satar and Arif Satar / WA Street Art on The Collie Mural Trail in Australia 3. FAITH XLVII / CHANT
BSA Special Feature: Blinded By The Lines
And the beat goes on – a new homemade video from Poland from taggers Ready (ALKO) Finer (TNA U7) Febs (Legz) Zion (DSTS) Lokal (DRS) in the night putting throwups, tags, and quick silvers.
Blinded By The Lines PT. 1
Dr. Audrey Fernandes Satar and Arif Satar / WA Street Art on The Collie Mural Trail
“This was never an empty wall and we’ve added to this wall another layer of history,” says Dr Audrey Fernandes Satar about her new collaborative mural with Arif Satar in Collie, Western Australia.
From the video description: “The work is Titled ‘Ground’ and is a panoptic drawing of the hills draped with patterns inspired by banksia seed pods, calling attention to the fragility of Collie’s ancient landscape where the river flows gently.”
FAITH XLVII / CHANT
Umber tones of war and oppression, this video directed by A. L. Crego introduces the new show by street artist and fine artist Faith XLVII called CHANT. Incorporating her repetitive, rhythmically placed street texts with overlays of tone and texture and her ferocious and wild animal kingdom, she unearths again layers of history that we have as a people, and as people.
“We CHANT. A ritualistic meditative call. We assimilate this earthly drama through pitches of reciting tones, shades and textures. Sacred attempts of setting a frequency for unlearning. breaking open. seeing. A mantra.”
New York City is gradually opening up for business, and that includes art shows. Curator Robert Aloia has organized a small exhibition of graffiti writers including one of the few photographers who was there when the action was happening on the trains and in the yards during the 1970’s and 80’s, Martha Cooper. Martha has provided prints of her vintage photos that she took of the graffiti writers, Skeme and TKid decades ago when they were young and bombing the New York City subway trains. Skeme and Tkid are using the prints as canvases in a remix collaboration with Martha.
We stopped by the raw space which is serving as a pop-up gallery to give you a sneak peek of the exhibition while in the process of being installed. The lighting was not adjusted and not all the art pieces were yet framed or hung on the walls.
Mr. Aloia tells us that Snake 1, Terrible TKid, Olga, Martha Cooper, Kade198, and Skeme Originally slated for last year this show was manifested from the mind of graffiti writer Skeme to do a show where the artists were in charge. Some of the artists are working in the space to finish their works and for the first time ever Skeme, Tkid and Martha Cooper have signed prints of Martha’s photos of them.
This is the 6th event at the space- previously featuring art from Al Diaz, Queen Andrea, Janette Beckman. Todd James & Testify Books, Sue Kwon, Chris RWK, Dr. Revolt, Peter Paid, ASVP and JJ Veronis.
Mr. Aloia says, “The vibes at the space between the artists, myself, friends, and passersby have been so good we can’t wait to open to the public this Friday.”
We spoke with Robert Aloia, Skeme, and JJ Veronis briefly while they were preparing for the show.
BSA:How did you select such a diverse collection of artists across techniques genres and decades?
Robert Aloia: It was mainly SKEME’s idea and then we collaborated on who could be in it. So I’m going to give all the credit to him. I just helped edit the process
BSA: Does it feel like New York art culture is gradually waking up or did it never go to sleep? Robert Aloia: I think for me it never went to sleep it’s the same for a lot of our collaborators and friends. And maybe to the general public it went to sleep a little bit. But it’s been vibrant – obviously during the beginning of lockdown it was dead for a little while.
JJ Veronis: Not for me. It’s been a great time for art and artists with all the boarded walls and everything – The legal and the illegal. BSA:How do you feel about doing those remixes with Martha’s work now after all these years? SKEME: Well I think they’re great. I feel like Dorian Gray, man, looking at all those photos we’re coming up on 40 years since some of these pictures were taken. My favorite of course is the one with me and TKid. Because now we’re both old and a little pudgy, you know, but I love the photo and the fact that we are able to come back and celebrate our friendship. Marty is always on the spot with the right photo, at the right time to catch the moment.
BSA:She has this uncanny ability to be at the right time at the right place. SKEME: It’s not an accident. That’s what separates the great from the mediocre
BSA: Robert told me that you initiated this exhibition a show where the artists are in charge. What does that mean in this circumstance? SKEME: The artist is always in charge. It’s up to the artist to bring the creation to the venue. Even if you have a curator, and of course a curator’s job is very important right, but if the artist doesn’t bring potential or good works – what is there for a curator to pick from? You know it’s a symbiotic relationship man but the artist is always in charge to some degree.
BSA:How do you know when you have reached the point where the work is finished? SKEME: When it conveys what I’m trying to say. So this one, for example – when you look at this I want you to believe that the plane is flying. If you can look at it and believe that the plane is flying then I am done.
Outlaw Arts Presents: “S.T.O.C.K.S. & BOBMS” A Group Exhibition. 205 Allen St. New York City. May 14th -23rd.205 Allen St. L.E.S. Fridays 5-9 pm Saturdays & Sundays 1-6 pm.
Street Artist Faring Purth is back on BSA again after a little while, this time on a commissioned piece in Old North St. Louis, Missouri. Typically known for its historic 19th-century brick homes and its award-winning community gardens, the 205-year-old “village” is slowly rebuilding after years of population loss and economic challenge.
In this case, her mural is on the side of a modern home constructed with recycled shipping containers, designed primarily by Travis Sheridan – after his friends built the first such home in the neighborhood a couple of years ago.
“The house is situated two blocks from a grammar school,” says the artist, “in a part of the city known for its beautiful dilapidated buildings, gun violence, but also its resilience and hope.”
Working with the corrugated surface was undoubtedly more time-consuming – ask any graffiti writer who’s done a piece on a pull-down gate. This one is a portrait she calls “Capacity,” a woman filled with the universe and still down to Earth.
“I traveled from California & painted her slowly over a month,” Faring says, “due to complications with lift maneuvering, extremes of weather, and lastly because I’m now a full time, breastfeeding mum to a beautiful little girl. So she took some time, but it was time enjoyed.”
Born in the Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop
Yes, Yes, Y’all, it’s been a decade since this volume, “Born in the Bronx,” was released. The images here by photographer Joe Conzo seem even more deeply soaked in the amber light of early Hip Hop culture from the late 1970s and early 80s, now taking on a deepened sense of the historical.
As the city and the original players of this story have evolved through the decades that followed the nascent Hip Hop era, it’s clearer than ever that this was nothing less than a full-force eruption, a revelation that cracked and shook and rocket-fueled an entire culture. Thanks to Conzo it was captured and preserved, not likely to be repeated.
The book is masterfully edited by Johan Kugelberg, the true visionary of this project, who established and has overseen the growth of a collection of memorabilia and history for the Hip Hop History Archive at Cornell University – which now boasts a quarter million items. A modestly thick hardcover, it’s rich in its choices. Posters, handbills, album covers, original lyrics by performers, stunning portraits backstage, on stage, on the mike, and on the street; this is a world you can immerse yourself into quickly and without pretension.
Born in the Bronx is full of gems, insider observations, interviews, and personal hand-drawn artworks. One critical cornerstone is a timeline from Jeff Chang that begins in 1963 as the boastful but failed Urban Planner Robert Moses constructed the Cross Bronx Expressway – painfully destroying and displacing people and families, severing culturally significant, vibrant areas of the borough and producing a dangerous malaise.
An ensuing blight only fueled the “white flight” from the city, leaving a growing number of dispossessed black and brown neighborhoods that suffered for decades afterward. His timeline ends in 1986 with Run DMC going platinum and a drug war ramping up to see a booming prison population. With these events as bookends, you know the music, art, dance, fashion, and performance culture that grew out of the Boogie Down was going to be commanding and resilient.
Afrika Baambatta recounts a foreword to Miss Rosen, LL Kool J does a brief “kick-off,” the Cold Crush Brothers hit the stage, and the packed crowd is enthralled. To get the full story about how to document the scene, check out Joe Conzo’s account told to Miss Rosen – the story of a shy chubby boy – the son and grandson of community activists who became his high school’s resident photographer and who parlayed subsequent connections into an exploration of music, performance, and the burgeoning Hip Hop scene at the moment it was happening.
For a richly rendered graffiti context, there is a fully realized recounting of the people and the scenes that informed it in an essay by Carlos MARE 139 Rodriguez called “What You Write?” With it, you get a true sense of a an exciting merging of music, aesthetics, society, street, creativity, and community.
The book closes with a very personal but pertinent poem, it’s short verses ducking and spinning and swaggering with pride at what the Bronx gave birth to; a global culture that continues to resonate worldwide and rock the bells.
“No ends could be made For the price we would pay Economically strapped No time for a nap
‘Cause this is about to go down
The boogie down was burning And my people yearning Just to get a piece of the pie My mind’s eye
Was as big as the sky”
~Luis Cendeno AKA DJ Disco Wiz, from “The Land Before the Rhyme”
BORN IN THE BRONX: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop. Expanded edition published in 2020 by 1xRUN with support from ROCK THE BELLS & BEYOND THE STREETS. Detroit, MI. 2020.
Graffiti writers who have expanded their self-definition in the last two decades endeavor to regard the alphabet as a collection of symbols, of letterforms. In pursuit of a more expansive intellectual and artistic comportment perhaps, curiosity has let certain letter writers even deconstruct the letter to become an abstraction, so far mediated by tools and imagination to become unrecognizable as a letter. Other writers of graffiti have conjoined their street and public-space pursuits with techniques common to tattooists, or calligraphers, or even graphic designers.
Paul Klee, Bauhaus postcard, Weimar, 1923. (image courtesy of Letterform Archive)
San Francisco’s Letterform Archive could easily inspire any fan of lettering; their enormous collection of typographic history includes more than 60,000 objects at last count. With books, magazines, and all manner of prints donated, sometimes they need to de-accession the duplicates.
We’re pleased to show some of the current beauties here – inspirational on their own. Iconic pieces of graphic design, prints, books, periodicals, type specimens, and other typographic ephemera, some are the aesthetic and historical equivalent of gemstones for collectors and artists.
Fre Cohen, Schiphol Gemeente-Luchthaven van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 1932. (image courtesy of Letterform Archive)
Bauhaus and Dada and the more utilitarian of action graphics, diagrammatics, and the dawn of the global corporate nomenclature. The letter symbols interplay with artwork, illustrations, photography, or standing alone as the sole elements. We have seen artists on the street experimenting in some of these directions, but there are many routes to take inspiration from. Included are works from such prominent type foundries as Klingspoor, Schelter & Giesecke, Berthold, Peignot & Fils, and Bauer .
Wednesday May 12 the Letterform Archive is having its first-ever auction through Swann Galleries and you can submit bids in advance or wait till it goes live. We’re looking forward to seeing what sells best as a sort of barometer of tastes. But more importantly we’re pleased to see the letterform once again given the appreciation it deserves.
Here are some examples from the upcoming sale.
Motor/Dynamo, Ludwig & Meyer, Frankfurt, ca. 1930. (image courtesy of Letterform Archive)Lyonel Feininger, Bauhaus postcard, Weimar, 1923. (image courtesy of Letterform Archive)Rudolf Baschant, Bauhaus postcard, Weimar, 1923. (image courtesy of Letterform Archive)Bradbury Thompson, Westvaco Inspirations 210, 1958. (image courtesy of Letterform Archive)Dadaphone No. 7, Paris, 1920. Edited and published by Tristan Tzara. (image courtesy of Letterform Archive)Noel Martin, Sutnar: visual design in action, 1961. (image courtesy of Letterform Archive)Pagina magazine, Issues 1–7, 1962–64. (image courtesy of Letterform Archive)
Letterform Archive is a nonprofit center for inspiration, education, publishing, and community located in San Francisco, CA. To learn more about this organization click HERE.
This one caught our eye for the merging of classic graffiti nerve, blunt style execution, sentimental velvety roses, inspirational verses, …Read More »
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