Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Adriana Vila, Stikman, City Kitty, Raddington Falls, Miyok, Neon Savage, Vegas, Clone, Samva, SEO Panic, Miki Mu23, and 2Won.
In the last week, we’ve marked the first anniversary of the war now taking place in Ukraine with an installation by exiled Ukrainian street artist/muralist Waone in New York and exiled Russian artist Kuril CHTO in Lisbon. Today we bring news of a reorganized urban art-related biennale being mounted in Moscow this May.
“According to the Chinese curse, may we live in interesting times,” says Andrey Parshikov, curator of the IV Biennale of street art ARTMOSSPHERE on the website for this newest iteration of a festival mounted in public space and gallery space that is at least partially funded by the government. Selections of artists were made with consultation of a ten-member international committee of advisors from the commercial, publishing, institutional and intellectual world who have expertise in graffiti, street art, and its various expressions more broadly referred to as Urban Contemporary. The fourth edition of the international event, this year more than 70% are nationals; 38 Russian and 15 international artists.
The expert committee, according to organizers, have allowed for a diverse range of artistic formats and techniques to be employed by the participants, resulting in something that sounds like it will be more of an experimental exhibition than previous editions; featuring murals, graffiti, public art, installations, performances, and theatrical actions that will be open to the public.
“This season we are bringing back the original idea of the show – street art should live in the urban environment, in the open space,” says Sabina Chagina, one of the co-founders of the biennale in 2014 who is now the Art Director of the Winzavod Contemporary Art Center and Artistic Director of the Biennale. Winzavod has provided a varied artists compound of creative spaces for a decade and a half in Moscow that many credit as a laboratory for cultivating opportunities for experimentation and support for artists working in the public realm.
“Two years ago, ARTMOSSPHERE received permanent institutional support from the Winzavod Contemporary Art Center and became part of it,” says the press release about the collective exhibition that has launched parallel programs and special projects in public space in the last decade.
A difficult exhibition program to pull off during peacetime, this one is mounted during a hotly debated war that is being watched by most of the world. Like all arts programming, people will be measuring it at least in part to see how it responds to the times and political realities.
International artists include: ARIS ONER (Germany), Matteo Ceretto Castigliano (CT) (Italy), Amaro (Brazil), Pablo Harymbat (Argentina), IHAR (Belarus), Varenje Organism (Israel), GAYA SOFO (Armenia), Maria Bokovnia (Germany), Daria Goffman (Armenia), Filip Radonjic (USA/Serbia), Neon Spidertag (Spain), Hakob Balayan (Armenian Center of Experimental and Contemporary Art (NPAK) (Armenia).
Artists from inside the Russian Federation include: Anastasia Litvinova (Moscow), Sasha Braulov (St. Petersburg), Wearing Tail and artist Eldar Ganeyev (ZIP Group) (Moscow-Krasnodar), Lubov Vink (Krasnoyarsk), Philip Kitsenko (Moscow), Masha Smorodina (Moscow), Alena Troitskaya and Ksenia Sharapova (Moscow-Cyprus), Fork (Moscow), Alexander Gushchin (Yekaterinburg), Out Band Mucha (Samara), KTK (Moscow-Spb-Ekb), Anya, come! (Khabarovsk), Anna Tararova (Moscow), Elena Kholodova (Moscow), Alexandra Kuznetsova (Moscow), Ozerki, Andrey Shkarin and Maria Yefimova (Moscow), Galina Andreeva (Moscow), Krasil Makar (Ekaterinburg), Twenty Two (Moscow), New City Artists, Ivan Volkov (Protvino), Frukty Vrukty (Perm).
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening:
1. BANKSY – A Quick Look Back – Exit Through the Gift Shop (August 2011)
2. Revenge of Nature – Orakle And Atmo
3. 5 Minutes With: IKARUS in Berlin. Via I Love Graffiti
4. De La Soul – A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturday
Because retrospectively assessing hype can be illuminating, and you can see how it has aged, and because we are always attracted to this contorted phone booth sculpture that undeniably emanates the style of Banksy, here’s a snippet from “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” A Dozen years on, what are your impressions?
REVENGE OF NATURE – Orakle And Atmo. Via Spray Daily.
Damn, that is serious rappelling! This is anonymously rappelling a dam for serious impact.
Styled as a nihilist dark pair of dual painting eco-activists, these Berlin-based Pixacao performance artists Orakle and Atmo want you to think about the “Revenge of Nature” that is currently underway. Selling the earth to the highest bidding abuser drives us down, and O&A are casting the case in dramatic thriller-movie terms to blow up their message.
5 MINUTES WITH: IKARUS in BERLIN. Via I Love Graffiti
BYY Laura subtly shadows pixacao-writing, train-surfing Icarus as he hops over third rails and climbs out onto the street from an underground tunnel with master-of-fact aplomb. Great shots and integration. For the record, train surfing kills people. Don’t do it. Beware Icarus; you will very likely regret the fall.
“Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight, For the greatest tragedy of them all, Is never to feel the burning light.”
Attributed to Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright, 1854-1900
De La Soul – A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturday
Celebrating Trugoy and De La Soul today and Every Day. Wanna go skating this weekend?
Photos from the Beyond the Streets exhibition in London are slowly trickling in – today we bring you just a few more from the team at Beyond The Streets. More from the opening will be coming soon. See our previous coverage at : Niels “Shoe” Meulman Reminisces, Shows New Work at Beyond The Streets in London, and “Pushing the Global Narrative”: Beyond The Streets Opens in London.
Beyond The Streets – London. Click HERE for more details, the schedule of events, tickets, and exhibition times.
Street artist and public artist SpY took his opportunity to rock the crowd in February at the 12th annual Llum BCN Festival this year with his interpretation of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film “2001”.
Filling a vertical industrial space with his signature red projections was amplified by his electrified sense of kinetic structuralism that has activated atoms across massive expanses outside using lasers in past projects. Here he augments with sound to give the effect of a “magical mirror,” he says, an homage to our integration of screens into daily life and the topic of our increased digitization.
The festival is organized by the Barcelona Institute of Culture (ICUB) and gives a platform to around 15 professionals in the digital and lighting arts every year to let them showcase new ideas. SpY tells us that he names his tall thin rectangular performance “Monolith.” Soaring high like an icy hardened cathedral, the space still can evoke claustrophobia, a sensation of being trapped between machined slabs or menacing rows of computational clouds.
The artist says he wants us to consider how much our personal information is now harvested, monetized, and manipulated as other’s property. Carrying his imagination to the extremes that a movie like “2001” first suggested, he poses questions to trigger our attention. “Are we already in a time when humans become data? How will we confront the integration of bodies and devices? Is this the last generation of humans who are not digitally transformed?”
Llum BCN, Festival de artes lumínicas 2023
Artistic direction: Maria Güell
Curatorship: Oriol Pastor
Soundtrack: Omar TenanI
“The war is not over yet. It has crawled into our everyday landscape,” says
Russian-born artist Kuril Chto.
Living in exile from his birthplace of Saint Petersburg, the artist says he founded and curated the Museum of Street Art there but his criticism of the annexation of Crimea and his exhibition of a Ukrainian artists’ works in the museum forced him to abandon the project. Here in the streets of Lisbon, Portugal, he carries the daily topic of war wherever he goes.
One year since this war between Russian and Ukraine began, Kuril Chto says that he is afraid that the constant news about the war is now becoming normalized for the average person, causing them to care less. His new piece in the Graça neighborhood of Lisbon is meant to convey the quotidian quality of this horror by depicting the most mundane of home laundry tools, a drying rack. So familiar that it becomes invisible. A passerby may not make a note of the wall illustration until they consider the military uniform that is hanging on it.
“This intrusive element in the midst of mundanity is a mass-produced object employed in the mass production of death,” he says.
A new vinyl installation in Manhattan’s East Village uses the visual language of a mural and appeals to a popular sentiment of New Yorkers toward the war in the Ukraine. Attached to a long low wall in vinyl, the work features the well-known street artist/fine artist WAONE and his uniquely surreal collection of imagined icons and symbology afloat across a bisection of yellow and blue, like the exiled artist’s flag.
As we collectively mark one year of this war costing Ukrainian and Russian lives and largely paid for by the US and NATO and the Russian Federation, we have seen countless references in the street from artists of many disciplines, using many techniques. We’ve seen graffiti, stencils, murals, chalk murals, stickers, and aerosol screeds. The artwork has been angry or sentimental, stoking patriotism, a sense of humanity, bitter cynicism, and plain hatred.
The community of street artists worldwide has been vocal primarily against this war, its leaders, its profiteers – and for the hapless humans caught in between, with prominent European artists like Banksy from England and C215 from France creating street art pieces directly on walls and tanks on the war field. Elsewhere, artists of all stripes commemorate, express their opinion, or rally their countrymen and countrywomen to do their part. For WAONE the war is not a cause, or a dinner party topic to discuss and debate. It is very personal; he is from Ukraine.
In his statement that accompanies this installation, he draws a direct connection to the very large population of New Yorkers who emigrated originally from Ukraine and pays tribute to them as well as those back home.
“Before the pandemic and before the war, I traveled all over the world to paint large mural works,” he says. “Most of the murals I created fit to the place/surroundings and were inspired by the local cultural specificities. This time I don’t need to do cultural research because I am working on a piece that aims to represent the Ukrainian spirit. It is also so significant for me that this work will be shown in the East Village, near the heart of Ukrainian American culture.”
WAONE of Interesni Kazki. “From Legend To Discovery”. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Optimo NYC on the Houston wall yo! Born and bred, a true New Yorker, and deserving of this wall after paying dues for years. Why does this wall sometimes look better when curated by the street? The holy chaos that reigns here is the pure DNA of the city, unbossed and unbought.
This week the street art is fresh! Never mind the proxy wars, the exploding trains, the 30% YOY drop in 401Ks, the transitory inflation that wasn’t, the Chinese spy balloons that weren’t, the Nordstream 2, the effort to privatize Social Security, the polarization that is encouraged by the media, and the increasing difficulty of New Yorkers to pay the bills… we still have a lot of extraordinary artists, and they are profligate! Also, we have Flaco, the Central Park owl fugitive, and his adorable ear tufts.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Shepard Fairey, Sticker Maul, Modomatic, Bad Brains, NYC Kush Co, Optimo NYC, Pest AC, Valentin Vewer, Holly Sims, Eternal Possessions, Cloudy is Here, and Gosup.
“Like a small team of ants dragging a slice of Wonderbread down the sidewalk to home base, we persevered,” writes OG New York graffiti writer and curator Al Diaz about the collaborative process that produced an exhibition and catalog this winter called “City of Kings: A History of NYC Graffiti.”
Respected on the New York graffiti scene for his contributions as a writer, collaborator, and artist, his street works with Basquiat as part of the SAMO© duo helped to push the boundaries of graffiti and street art, and his overall body of work has had a lasting impact on the development of the graffiti and street art movements.
A wildly dispersed and organic scene like the one birthed by graffiti over more than five decades ago has had thousands of authors, making it a daunting task to tell this story at times, says Diaz. To do so he made sure to work with two other curators who could complement his own knowledge and abilities when researching and collecting proper history to illustrate this movement correctly.
A compact, attractive, and dense show at Howl! Gallery in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the timeline colorfully climbs around three of the space’s four walls. It presents a cogent, multifaceted historical record of the secretive yet public graffiti culture thanks to Diaz and co-curators Eric Felisbret and Mariah Fox.
Felisbret, also known as DEAL CIA was a member of the graffiti crew “CIA” (which stood for “Crazy Inside Artists”) during the 1970s, and he co-authored the book “Graffiti New York” in 2009. He also founded the website “149th Street” in 1997 to document the history of graffiti in New York City – over the years featuring a vast archive of graffiti photos and interviews with graffiti writers, as well as articles and essays on the history and culture of graffiti.
Mariah Fox is an educator, graphic designer, illustrator, and curator who has played a vital role in elucidating the graffiti landscape through her scholarship and love for the scene that formed the practices of pioneers like Diaz and Felisbret. In addition to her expert execution of a design theme and vernacular that supported the history but did not overwhelm the show and the book, Diaz says that Fox kept the project on track for its ultimate success.
Working within the larger community, the three pulled off a comprehensive, educational exhibition and program that included essays by the three and Chris Pape (Freedom), as well as panel discussions with graffiti historians, documentarians, and graffiti writers who were there during the formative chapters New York’s history on trains and walls.
In the beginning, and in the end, it’s all about the writers, say the curators.
“What makes this exhibit different from others,” says Diaz in an essay from the catalog, “is that the chronological narrative is told through the lens, and voice of the actual players who created graffiti, not observers, gallerists, art historians, collectors or academics. New York City graffiti artists have historically been underrepresented and our narrative has been misinterpreted or skewed. An accessible, concise, clear account for the general public is long overdue.”
“I couldn’t tell the story,” said Terror 161 at the exhibition’s opening, “because you know what? It’s everybody’s story. Like, somebody’s truth is my fiction.” The writer, author, and historian hosted two of the panels – one with first-generation New York City writers Wicked Gary, Coco 144, Mike 171, Ree 2, and Jester, and the other with famed photographer and documentarian Martha Cooper.
Looking over the timeline, it’s clear that this is a commonly held sentiment.
“The exact moment and origin of graffiti as we know it today is complex and heavily disputed,” say the curators in opening Part 1: Genesis, The Wall Era. “The narrators of this story pay credence to their unique New York City socio-cultural landscape as a spawning ground.”
But differences of opinion characterize the entire scene in the telling and the retelling, perhaps giving additional meaning and context to ‘Beef’, a primary feature of the history. For example, the music commonly associated with graffiti culture is Hip-Hop – it is even a forgone conclusion by many. Not so, say some of the pioneer graffiti writers who refer to hard rock as being more influential in their aerosol history.
Terror 161 says graffiti doesn’t need to be paired with either music genre. “I don’t connect music to it at all,” he says. “I say it’s a standalone visual art form that needs nothing attached to it. Dudes listened to what they listened to.”
The chapters of “City of Kings” are loosely gathered according to significant developments in the evolution of the graffiti scene, its practices, and players – all set across a backdrop of benchmarks in the social, economic, and popular aspects of local and worldwide news.
Chapter 1: Genesis (1967-1971) The Wall Era
Chapter 2: Foundation (1971-1973) The Code Forms
Chapter 3: Peak (1973-1976) Refined Tenets
Chapter 4: Revival (1977-1981) Revival
Chapter 5: Buffed (1981-1985) Survival of the Fittest
Chapter 6: Reset (1986-1989) The Die Hards
Chapter 7: Eternal (1989-Present) The Fields Blur
The latter chapter is a catch-all that attempts to contemplate the reverberations of the original scene, which many, including Pape in his essay, say “met its demise” in 1989. Graffiti continued to adopt, adapt, and mutate as it was absorbed into popular culture, adopted by advertisers, and endlessly coupled with the dreams of artists and creatives of all stripes worldwide. Blur is an apt descriptor.
In their brief tutorial named, “Code of Respect” Felisbret and Diaz describe foundational guidelines for writers as a guide, such as “Respect the Name,” “Don’t Bite,” and “Racking Up.” Lest you think there are no rules in graffiti, in the final section called “Following the Code, they offer the proviso, “this attitude always ends in conflict.”
“It’s comprehensive; it’s like a lesson plan,” says Diaz of the show, particularly the illustrated catalog accompanying it. It serves as an excellent primer, vetted and written by the people who were there.
“As an educator, I love covering new topics but it is often difficult to create sound lesson plans from scratch when teaching innovative new courses. The materials exist in various formats, but always need to be organized in a digestible way,” says Fox in her “Note to Educators.”
“This exhibition and accompanying catalog may serve as coursework for a range of all-age students. The content was curated with an inclusive, accessible intent, though this was often challenging to achieve. The time constraints upon us limited our abilities, so this isn’t a perfect package.”
As institutions and researchers continue to build their knowledge about the global democratic people’s art movement spawned by graffiti, “City of Kings” ensures that many of us will have a textbook that helps form the foundation in this ongoing education.
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Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening:
1. A History Of The World According to Getty Images
2. Cypress Hill: INSANE IN THE BRAIN
3. Earth to COP
History is written by the victors: That is, those who dictate and control the dominant culture and hold the reins to industry, property ownership, etc. Not a lot of history is written by slaves, or marginalized populations, or those disempowered by the systems in which they just barely keep their heads above water. So, when we saw this “History of the World”, we were happy to see the “A” in front of it.
In a similar, related vein, FIPADOC releases this film about the moving image in the public domain and reveals that regardless of the original filmmaker’s intent, these can become privatized. Similarly, the narrator poses questions regarding the implied power dynamic between the shooter and subject and comes away with some very enlightening realizations about the form. Who owns access, who controls it, and what stories are told, or hidden?
A History Of The World According to Getty Images
Cypress Hill: INSANE IN THE BRAIN / Trailer
Estevan Oriol gives you a deep dive and thoughtful discourse on Cypress Hill as they germinated, grew, and took over – telling “the story of a brotherhood that has withstood the test of time to create a truly original, everlasting legacy.”
EARTH TO COP
The Earth is already speaking to us, and while this video offers astounding views of destruction, let’s take a step back and find out who caused, and is causing, the damage – and if large meetings like COP are holding them responsible, and accountable. Many today point to corporations that are taking on climate change as a virtue signal, a marketing lever, and a way to push other agendas under a green flag.
Suspended time is the thematic thread that runs through an exhibition of six Berlin-based photographers on view at Urban Spree Galerie, itself a rare street adjacent respite balanced on the knife’s edge of renegade artistic autonomy and muscular steely gentrification.
Appropriate for an era when many in modern society feel unsteady and unsure of our collective direction due to shifting power centers, degraded institutions, unraveling capitalism, wars, and rumors of war, ‘Lost in Time’ presents “an eerie cartography of Berlin and beyond, encompassing emptiness, directionless pathways, time capsules, and social nature.”
Featured are photographic works by Anika Spereiter, Lena Lotte Agger, Lukas K. Stiller, Norman Behrendt, Olf, and Romeo Alaeff.
Included in the misty mix are surreal street photography nightscapes, misplaced Texan “cowboys”, a survey of the surreal emptiness in Berlin club culture when no one is there to bump and grind, wandering lonely through streets filled with strangers and ochre, emergency exits perplexingly ajar on the Ubahn, cloud-engulfed confrontations between police and protestors in the forest, and the immigrant curse of always feeling misplaced – a “haunting, cinematic, and evocative survey of Berlin as seen through the lens of an eternal outsider”
The combination of surrealism and ostracism creates a unique blend: irrational and unexpected surveys of the “normal” built city, amplified by feelings of ostracism and detachment. Together, these two elements can create a complex and thought-provoking atmosphere that challenges traditional ideas of reality and belonging. Time becomes malleable, unanchored, and suspended.
Lost in Time: A Photographic Exploration. February 24th – March 19th, 2023. Urban Spree Galerie Revaler Str. 99. Berlin.
The mysterious, trouble-making, wise-cracking, sporty, surfing graffiti-street-art-fine-art duo Yok & Sheryo haven’t graced our pages since pre-pandemic days, which may as well be the Paleolithic Period. With some relief, we report that they are alive and making temples thank god, and now showing one of their most grand upon a sea of red shag carpeting in Perth.
“We escaped to a world of our own,” they tell us, “a mysterious sweltering tropical island with everything we’d ever wanted; killer surf, cold beers, lush, unique flora and fauna with quirky customs, culture, folklore and mythology stories”
Indeed the sun-bleached white and burning blood red-themed installation with The Art Gallery of Western Australia is replete with the eclectic ideas and items that have thrilled Y&S fans for well over a decade.
“There is so much to tell you, where do we even start?,” they exclaim. Begin at the beginning darling, that always seems like a good strategy. “We named it “Yeahnahnesia”, says Sheryo. “It’s our biggest installation to date,” says Yok.
It all makes sense as you wend your way (without shoes, please) around this “Temple of Frivolous Wishes” high on hallucinogenics. There’s the Banana Boner Incense Burner. Hanging up above is The Cool “S. Nearly hidden over here is the Pig-Nose Dragon Cup Thing. Should you get the munchies, you can order snacks from a price menu listing delicacies such as Dragons Claw and Vegemite Toast.
A suave music impresario/high school science teacher will lead you through the offerings in the video below. Maybe later, he’ll invite you to stop by his place for a Pina Colada and to check out his new 2-person Pong video game on the TV – or perhaps take a ride on his velour-covered waterbed.
Still have questions about what Yeahnahnesia is? All the mysteries, culture, and symbology are documented in this exquisitely designed 108-page, full-color, hard-cover scientific journal. Island of Yeahnahnesia, Vol 1. A welcome addition to any lord of the leisures lounge room.
Buy the book here. Or you can buy an Artist Proof HERE or a screen print HERE
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY