“Szczecin before the Second World War was a German city,” says the street artist named M-City. Now it’s flying as a spaceship in his latest stencil mural here – in Poland.
It was part of a competition in this major cultural city of about 770,000; an airborne urban map inspired as much by the movie Star Wars as the Orion Constellation of this 1100-year-old city only 14 miles from Germany, formerly “Stettin”. It has a history of changing hands between Central European powers, and perhaps why it seems well suited to be up in the air, ready to move, soar, even crash.
About an hour via highway from Berlin, the activist and urban art professor M-City tells us that parts of the city that were not destroyed during WWII capture his imagination even now. “The architecture and plans are quite similar to those of Berlin,” he says. “And it looks like part of a spaceship, or a planet in science fiction movies. For me you can find a Falcon shape from Star Wars in there”.
“I was subconsciously gathering up all that information being passed down to me. The moon calendar, what to plant when, how to prepare the earth,” says street artist/fine artist Adelle Renault about her formative years in the early 1990s planting gardens with her mother in the Belgian Ardennes.
Adele Renault. “Plantasia. Birds Of Paradise”. Galerie Quai4. Belgium. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“Even though I lived most of my adult life in large cities,” she says, “you can take the girl out of the garden but you can’t take the garden out of the girl.”
Adele Renault. “Plantasia. Birds Of Paradise”. Galerie Quai4. Belgium. (photo courtesy of the artist)
So this is how we arrive at her newest paintings that may appear as photography. The selection of canvasses comprising “Plantasia” will be on display tonight at at Galerie Quai 4 in Belgium, with a particular focus on birds of paradise.
“Of course nature – flowers, trees, landscapes – is the most common of subject, alongside portraiture, in painting,” Adele says. “But I hope that my microscope approach can still bring something new to the table.”
Adele Renault. “Plantasia. Birds Of Paradise”. Galerie Quai4. Belgium. (photo courtesy of the artist)
PLANTASIA
Birds of Paradise
This Thursday 9 September 2021 from 16:00 to 20:00
At Galerie Quai 4 4 Quai Churchill 4020 Liège Belgium
“The idea is there will be two figures dancing while sharing a beautiful blanket, one figure on each wall,” she explained in this project she intended to paint. In May of 2020 she was preparing with her hosts at the festival Echappées d’Arts in Angers, France.
Born in Argentina in 1974, she eventually moved to Spain. Well regarded during the last decade or so in the Street Art world, she made many friends and family during her travels to many world cities to paint. In an act of gratitude and tribute to their friend Hyuro two artists, Faith XLVII of South Africa and Helen Bur of England, each realized these figures from her preparatory sketches.
“The concept of the wall that I like the most is one of a kind of celebration of life… in my personal situation it is a make it very special concept to me,” she wrote.
Hyuro. Sketch for “Douce Vie” (photo courtesy of Eric Surmont)
“Big thanks to @blame_eric_surmont_ and the city of Angers, France for organising this moving tribute to Hyuro’s work and to @escif and @axelvoid for entrusting Faith and I with the task of continuing Tamara’s legacy and sharing her work,” wrote Ms. Bur on her Instagram page.
“One last dance for our friend @h_y_u_r_o ,” says Faith XLVII in her tribute. “It felt strange and difficult to try to mimic Tamara’s sketch that she had planned for these walls. So elegantly thought out with her poetic sense of space and metaphor. We tried not to leave our own mark and to stay true to her rough design. How we will miss the messages that you gave to us. Waking us slowly from our slumber. May you rest sweet sister.”
History is presented in a linear fashion often in the university, but in truth it happens in fragments. No life, no personal history adheres to a predictable and rational pattern?
Street Art duo DOURONE has been capturing and displaying a series they call “Fragmented Record” with murals this summer. The first featured friends and family, the second a group of 7 women living in Belgium.
DourOne “3”. Helsingborg, Sweden. (photo courtesy of the artists)
Here in Sweden in Helsingborg they turn the mirror upon themselves for the third in the series. It is “a more intimate and personal stage,” they tell us, in which the artist and his partner Elodie “become protagonists of the work and reveal their feelings in the present moment that they are living.”
The palette is saturated with deep blues and blood orange, the harsh lines of a bright sun soaked summer day. While the progression of images and events may be clear to the authors, a passerby will agree that the story is, without a doubt, fragmented.
DourOne “3”. Helsingborg, Sweden. (photo courtesy of the artists)DourOne “3”. Helsingborg, Sweden. (photo courtesy of the artists)DourOne “3”. Helsingborg, Sweden. (photo courtesy of the artists)
We were battered like hell this week by the remnants of a hurricane – not the actual hurricane itself. Yet New York was unprepared for the onslaught of precipitation in such a short period of time – producing flooding like we haven’t seen in ages, or ever. Basement apartments were overtaken in hours, first floors soon after – and lives were lost. We mourn the victims and console their families.
Roads, tunnels, trains, streets, airports – all paralyzed. The seriousness of the damage makes many of us take a step back, take stock – and wonder how many more years the PR disinformation industry can cloud our minds with doubt about climate change. It worked for decades with cigarettes, has worked for decades with the war machine, the health industry, the financial industry, against voting rights, against labor unions….
Hmm… at this rate, it looks like we better buy some flippers and a snorkel.
And in the streets, we are comforted by images of our pop heroes, rock gods, and asundry archetypes.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Allison Dayka, Almost Over Keep Smiling, Came Moreno, DEK2DX, Foxito, Goblin, Hek Tad, HOACS, Lorenzo Masnah, Lucas Official, Psycho Love, Ramiro Davaro-Comas, Roio47, Smet Sky, Tomer Linaje, Trace1, Ultramarine Dream, Vitruvian Truth, and Voxx Romana.
“An archetypal image”, Edoardo Tresoldi says, “is capable of creating a dialogue between past and present, using a language comprised of meanings that recur over time.”
Again he tarries in this trade: the recurrent symbol or motif in architecture lifted from its source and presented in wire and light to evoke hallowed, revered spaces elsewhere. It’s a stunning realization that your emotional rapture is triggered in some way, insignificant or profound, by this relatively simple recreative act.
Opening this week at the Art Museum of the City of Ravenna, Tresoldi re-calls his piece called Sacral for an exhibition called “Dante. The Eyes and the Mind”. Viewable until January 9 the installation occupies the eye of your mind, the central tenant of this Castle of the Great Souls. According to Dante, this central location – pivotal, buoyant, luminous – “is a symbolic place inhabited by the souls of those who left honor and fame behind them on earth. They are the great souls of antiquity – philosophers, poets, scientists, and writers – with grave and slow-moving eyes.”
We’re pleased to help readers gaze upon it and see what essence has been captured from the 16th-century cloister that is relevant to our present – or at the very least, inspirational to it.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Faith XLVII X KOLEKA PUTUMA 2. Moments Like This Never Last. Cheryl Dunn/Dash Snow. Trailer 3. 9 Ways To Draw a Person
BSA Special Feature: Faith XLVII X KOLEKA PUTUMA
South African Street Artist Liberty Du, known as Faith XLVII shares her new collaboration with Koleka Putuma, the South African queer poet and theatre-maker, this week on BSA Film Friday.
“South African women are brave. Strong. And not just a little strong. They are strong down to their bone marrow. They have known great suffering. And still, they sing. What an honor it’s been to know such women! I’ve been humbled in my life again and again by the sheer resilience of friends. The pain is inexplicable. In the first 3 weeks of lockdown, more than 120 000 cases of Gender-Based Violence were reported across the country. We are exhausted from the news each week. Our sisters, mothers, grandmothers, our children were violated, abused, and murdered. Working on this project alongside Koleka Putuma is not something I take lightly, Koleka is a force. Her words break up open in order to really have real conversations about what’s happening.”
Faith XLVII X KOLEKA PUTUMA
Moments Like This Never Last. Cheryl Dunn/Dash Snow. Trailer
The mythmaking stories continue to propagate about this anti-authoritarian creative skateboarding graffiti-writing white guy from a wealthy family who died too young in a drug-fueled life of experimentation and excess. Cheryl Dunn pulls all the stories together to help establish his talents and hijinx as veritable proof that the early millenial was onto something new in the graffiti/street/art milieu of IRAK crew of 2000s New York – partying hard and hitting the heights.
9 Ways To Draw a Person
The possibilities are absolutely endless, if you are to follow the guidance of film director, artist, animator Sasha Svirsky. By mixing abstraction, collage, and animation, he pulls you in and reawakens your earliest knowledge about creativity, reaffirming that you too, can draw a person.
The genesis of Pener’s new wall in Olsztyn, Poland goes back a year ago. He and Krzysztof Dąbkowski, who is the director of the Municipal Public Library of Olsztyn, agreed on the idea that the project should reflect the literary tradition of Warmia and Mazury, the Polish region in which Olsztyn is located.
Says Pener, “Specifically intertwined with the notion of “Atlantis of the North”, the author of which is the poet and writer Kazimierz Brakoniecki. I am very open to this type of synergistic projects that can significantly encourage reflection on our identity. As a creator and artist, I wanted to create something more than just an illustration for a literary text”.
In a bit of cynical irony on the street, creative director/UX designer Mikel Parera teams up with this cluster of graffiti/street artists in Barcelona to parody the grey lines between using art as activism and merely imitating styles to push content. This new collection of graffiti styles are completely divorced from any contribution to or critique of society. The advertising “Creative” is portrayed little more than pre-meditated aesthetic manipulation – in service of a brand.
Roughly translated, here is his wall screed – naturally followed by Instagram handles.
“Who has not ever enjoyed seeing good graffiti? But there is a problem: – Everybody steps on everybody – General discomfort and confusion. – That shouldn’t be like that. It doesn’t seem fair to us either. That is why we make graffiti useful for people. Take a look at our work, contact us and start a project. Use graffiti to create quality content in your projects. Write us today! Refuse dishonest solutions. Don’t hurt your brand or your audience. Get original work and have an excellent experience. Go from feeling disoriented to standing out, being a benchmark in your sector.”
We’ve been through this before, right? – throngs of new excited students marching and plodding back to classrooms as fall approaches full of expectations. And yet, the adults in the room are scrambling to figure out how.
With 90% of families desperate for in-school learning and most kids too young to have vaccine shots, there are still debates about whether masks and social distancing are enough to keep everyone safe. Add to this the periodic closures because some classmates test positive and the rest have to go into quarantine- while parents and grandparents and all kinds of caretakers scramble for childcare and keeping their jobs if they have one. Stir in a toxic politicization of those who are sure this is a political conspiracy of some sort deviously designed to deny personal freedom, and suddenly an auspicious new school year feels like a stove gas leak filling your home with fumes.
You can always rely on street artist Winston Tseng to light a match at the right time. His bright flat graphics are on target: easily read and evidently easily misinterpreted. Familiar images and shapes sometimes require decoding – and he is happy to lead you to the hot spots in our current societal debates. This new fake poster is popping up around New York City this week; making some laugh, and making others breathe fire.
“We are committed to improving our town centre and art and culture has a big part to play in its future,” says Leader of Basildon Council Councillor Andrew Baggott. “We are also committed to climate change and are working towards a carbon net-zero borough by 2050.”
With a new street art initiative called Our Towns, curators Doug Gillen and Charlotte Pyatt are tying together environmental and social concerns with new large-scale murals here in the Essex, UK town.
Partnering artists with the local schools, university, market and community organizations, Gillen and Pyatt have been introducing new public artworks all summer by international artists like Arches (Ireland), Franco ‘JAZ’ Fasoli (Argentina/Italy), and Marina Capdevila (Spain), as well as homegrown UK talents including Erin Holly, Gabriel Pitcher, INSA, Michele Curtis, and Helen Bur.
While some on the roster are known for their street art and others have backgrounds in more formal studio practice, collectively perhaps their works are softening some of the brutalist edges of this town of just over 100,000 residents.
Owing its name to an idea of challenging ourselves to see art and public space in original and meaningful ways that affect positive change, the Re:Framed project is steered by two pros in street art cultural production and analysis. “We are dedicated to developing new and innovative strategies to reposition the role of culture in social and environmental conversations,” says a joint statement by the curators.
“The Our Towns: Climate project will be our most ambitious to date, the legacy for which will see Basildon join the growing number of cities and towns across the world adopting the Global Goals.”
Giving their partnership the moniker Re:FRAMED, Pyatt and Gillen have worked in production, strategy, consultancy and documentation with art on the streets for approximately the last decade and plan to coalesce artists and organizations around social and environmental themes going forward. With high-quality artists and artworks like these, you can look forward to the two reframing both contexts and conversations in public space in their future.
The summer storms keep coming, and yet somehow so does the incredible show of creativity on our streets; the celebration of murals and graffiti burners and painters and sculptors and characters and opinions and cogitations. However hot and steamy and hard New York can be sometimes, it also is positively ebullient and inspiring. We know our many differences are our greater asset, our combined aspirations a stunning new possibility.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring A. Smith, Captain Eyeliner, China, Cody James, CP Won, David Puck, Gabriel Specter, Huetek, Iquene, Jason Naylor, Jitr!, Amanda Valdes, Lorenzo Masnah, M.R.S.N., Not Your Muse, Peachee Blue, Sara Lynne Leo, Sasha Velour, Say No Sleep, Tyler Ives, and Winston Tseng.
CP Won (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Say No Sleep (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Say No Sleep (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Say No Sleep (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Winston Tseng (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Sara Lynne-Leo in collaboration with Tyler Ives. “Remedial Purge” (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Captain Eyeliner (photo @ Jaime Rojo)A Smith (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Specter (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Huetek. Detail. Work in progress for The Bushwick Collective 10th Anniversary edition. (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Cody James. Work in progress for The Bushwick Collective 10th Anniversary edition. (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Jason Naylor. Work in progress for The Bushwick Collective 10th Anniversary edition. (photo @ Jaime Rojo)China (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Jitr! (photo @ Jaime Rojo)David Puck (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Iquena (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Not Your Muse (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Peachee Blue (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Amanda Valdes (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Masnah (photo @ Jaime Rojo)M.R.S.N. (photo @ Jaime Rojo)Unidentified artists (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
