Street Art continues to redefine itself as the artists’ approach to finding an audience embraces the direct-to-viewer paradigm. These are exciting times in Summer 2010 as every week produces stuff we’ve never seen before, from names previously unknown. These new voices are joining the conversation at a feverish pace, mostly due to the warm weather. But it’s more than just the weather.
In this week’s Images of the Week we present a brand new kid on the block, figuratively speaking. White Cocoa is the name, and these finely rendered pencil drawing series with washes appeared in Brooklyn last week with a quiet bang. Impossible to ignore, the personalities of the subjects nearly yell to you above the the cacophony of their surroundings. Are these sketches, studio drawings, or finished pieces? One cannot know for sure but their placement make them feel like the latter.
To open and close this week’s segment we offer you two very good examples of the work that veteran Aussie street artist Miso just put on the streets of Brooklyn as well. The austere portraits of women show us how less is best sometimes. The artist’s use of economical fine pencil lines to for detail on the subject’s faces and headwear offers stark contrast to their paper cut-out ensembles. The juxtaposition of these two dignified women at different stages, rendered tone on tone against the urban backround without pretension are singular in placement.
Move over little dog, Brooklyn Street Artist Elbow Toe is moving in with teeth-baring charm. Breaking loose from the studio he runs a little wild with this piece “Move It On Over”, named after the Hank Williams song. With this disposition this mean dog looks more like the George Thorogood version.
Our weekly interview with the street; this week featuring Andy Kessler Foundation, ASVP, Bishop203, Brummel, Clown Soldier, Imminent Disaster, JC2, JJ Veronis, Mr. DiMaggio, QRST, Shin Shin, Special Graffiti Unit, Zako, Zhe155
This summer has the floodgates open for all manner of oddities and agendas evident on the walls in NYC. While there is beauty and skill of varying degrees, more often you’ll also encounter themes better categorized as anxiety-ridden. Don’t look to our street artists to shield us from the rawness of messy life that is lurking under the cosmopolish of a world city. The conversations on the street continue to contemplate war and violence, render social and political critique, create memorials, offer blunt opinion and propose existential questions. Conversations among street artists also continue before our eyes, making for progressive theater and on-the-fly “collaboration”.
We start off with something more along the lines of graff, framed by July’s succulent green.
American Street Artist MOMO has been working with abstract, geometric and modernist elements on scaffoldings and walls in New York for a few years. This new video of his participation in the FAME festival shows his sense of humor, command of negative space, and sophistication of placement.
In the video for another piece we see Gaia’s “Ungnyeo in Namdaemun”
“The body of Ungnyeo is composed of buddhist cloud motifs and the center of the massive body has an oval silhouette to signify the womb flanked by two strong inwardly turned hands. The earth woman is then hybridized with the supremacy of the sky to institute the female figure into a role of reproduction versus reception. Within this new iteration of the ancient narrative, the woman animal becomes the most prominent figure of genesis.”
“Never Trust Your Own Eyes. Believe What You Are Told,” says the ironic slogan in the freshly wheat-pasted graphic piece by street artist Shepard Fairey on the side of a clothing store in San Diego, the town that chased him out for doing street art. One may believe Fairey’s politics to be Orwellian reference. Just as easily it could be applied to the academics, historians and would-be art critics struggling daily to describe with any authority what street art is and how it should be regarded. Luckily, we have been able to trust our eyes to make this analysis so far.
Our weekly interview with the street; this week featuring 907, Bast, Faro, Goya, Hellbent, Nick Walker, Nutterfly, Pan Am, Sadue, Shin Shin, Specter, Swamp Donkey, TWA, UFO, and Conor Harrington.
Street Art collective Nomadé harnesses the majestic power of a galloping team of white stallions in this large scale paste up discovered among the ruins of Los Angeles. The spear wielding Greco-Roman-artist soldier is not about to let his Empire to decline further, his paint splattered shield protecting from assault as he commands his oiled and strapping squadron through the streets. Nomadé continues to forcefully impale the warlike subtext permeating popular consciousness with cleverly surrealist depictions of proud warriors defending the detritus of a crumbling urban infrastructure.
Contact: Michael Lyons Wier, Gallery@LyonsWierGallery.com
Mint&Serf SGU (Special Graffiti Unit) is an exhibition at Lyons Wier Gallery, curated by Derrick B. Harden, featuring new work by New York visual artists Mint&Serf. The exhibition pays homage to the longest running television program that defines New York City. Mint&Serf SGU is a multi-disciplinary exhibition incorporating painting, photography and video that is an interpretation of the artists’ personal encounters with the law in New York City and within their community.
Mint&Serf SGU (Special Graffiti Unit) cleverly captures Mint&Serf and company in their habitat by placing them in their own adapted version of Law & Order. By appropriating this iconic television drama, Mint&Serf: SGU turns photographed moments of vandalism, street-art and nightlife into a series of silk-screened vignettes. In Mint&Serf: SGU, the two artists portray themselves as part of the “Special Graffiti Unit,” an elite graffiti squad.
Most recently, Mint&Serf created and curated original artwork for the Ace Hotel in New York City. However, for the past ten years, Mint&Serf have been collaboratively producing artwork generating a vast range of large-scale murals, paintings, photographs, sculpture and street art throughout New York City and around the world. In 2005, as an extension to their art, they launched The Canal Chapter, a gallery platform for emerging artists, designers and musicians. In 2008, after the success of The Canal Chapter, they launched The Stanton Chapter, a street level art space in Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City. Mint&Serfhave exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. They have created commissioned work for the Ace Hotel, Nike, Marc Jacobs, Red Bull, Ogilvy&Mather, Adidas, Yahoo, Boost Mobile, PowerHouse Books among other clients.
If you pay close attention, you will always see something new on the street in Brooklyn. Thanks to the imagination and efforts of General Howe, a street artist who has been laboring carefully in small scale plastic soldiers placed in historically accurate locations on the street, you may also get an education. In this most unusual of street artists lies a deep commitment to honoring the sacrifices of soldiers of war and he deploys his installations to help us learn some of the history that our culture has forgotten – and hopefully draw some connections to the current wars we are engaged in.
From General Howe:
“I make war in Brooklyn. Did you know the Revolutionary War was fought in Brooklyn? Did you know we’re at war in Afghanistan and Iraq? It’s easy to forget we’re battling in foreign lands against invisible adversaries. I bet you know more about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This is why I make war in Brooklyn.”
Brooklyn Street Art: How did you get so interested in history?
General Howe: I used to work in the United States Senate and was exposed to U.S. government, politics, and history all day, every day. If I found something interesting I would explore it further in the senate library. After reading the book 1776 by David McCullough I realized that a portion of the Revolutionary War (now known as the Battle of Brooklyn) went down in the neighborhoods I lived and travel in within Brooklyn. I’ve been researching locations and events of the Battle of Brooklyn for about three years now. For example, the area of the Brooklyn Navy Yard was a bay filled with British prison ships. Over ten thousand patriot soldiers died in those ships due to poor conditions or torture. Places where we live, work, eat, and socialize are the same places where people fought, killed, and died during a revolution. Coincidentally, I find a lot of street artists working in these same locations.
BSA: In your art you work with plastic toy soldiers in installations and collage, do you go back to memories of your childhood playing with toy soldiers?
General Howe: Childhood experiences have become a big part of my process. If you watch a 5-year-old play, they have so much magic and imagination going through them that is hard to match as an adult. The battles I make are influenced by all the pretend battles I fought growing up. Reflecting on the countless hours I would spend with my friends or by myself hunting down bad guys with plastic guns or spears made of tree branches was so intensely creative. I try to tap into that same energy. To help me do this, I have been collecting old coloring books, games, and toys that I had growing up.
A look around his fort reveals influences for General Howe.
BSA:The Battle of Brooklyn plays a big role in your installations. What significance is this battle to you and to the country?
General Howe: The significance of The Battle of Brooklyn is that I feel more connected to it and its purpose then the current wars we’re fighting in the Middle East. It’s definitely significant to our history as a country. We almost lost the entire revolution in Brooklyn. Washington recognized that the British had the upper hand at the time, so he had the entire army retreat to Manhattan. It took many losing battles and retreats, but eventually we gained the upper hand and the rest is history.
BSA: Is there a central message that you want to convey with your work and installations?
General Howe: There isn’t really a central message, more like a central goal. The goal of my work is for the viewer, or participant, to have an experience of reflection on his or her own experiences. Be it, war, childhood, or anything else that comes to the surface. We were attacked on 9-11 and we’ve been fighting 2 wars in the Middle East. It seems like that is all easily forgotten in our daily life. As we get older our childhood diminishes and memories are forgotten. For myself, I need to hold onto those memories in order to understand what’s going on now and live through it.
BSA: The American assemblage artist Joseph Cornell spent a lot of his life in Queens. Do you see his work as an important influence on yours?
General Howe: The quality a self-taught artist produces is intriguing to me, but Joseph Cornell has not had an influence on my work. The work for shows, and recent street ICON pieces I have been making, are influenced by religious icons. One summer I spent some time studying art in Venice, Italy and I would sometimes stumble across religious icons built into actual walls of buildings in random streets and alleyways. Their purpose is to invoke spirituality and reflection. I try to achieve this same experience in the context of being in the street environment, childhood play, and of actual war.
The writings of John Dewey have had a major influence on my work and me personally. Walking around Brooklyn looking at the different textures and decay along with various forms of street art and graffiti provides constant inspiration.
A rendering by Goya for his “Disasters of War”
Influential Artists for General Howe:
Seeing SWOON’S (and many partners) boats from Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea float down the East River will be a memory I never forget. The wheat pastes of Elbow-Toe never get old. Thundercut crosswalk stickers are brilliant and I always look forward to new Peru Ana Ana Peru films. The prints of Goya, especially Disasters of War are timeless and three of my favorite paintings are Thérèse Dreaming by Balthus, The Guitar Player by Manet, and The Death of Marat by David.
I am also an art teacher at a rigorous high school and the drive and dedication my students posses definitely keeps me going.
BSA: When you are manipulating and carefully placing your figures, do you worry that they will be stepped on?
General Howe: No way, part of the reason I became interested in street art was the ephemeral quality the work attains once placed in the street. The environment, nature, or people will unpredictably change the work. In one installation someone melted all the soldiers down to figurative stumps. Another person tastefully rearranged a battle inside a hollowed out log. Whether they’re playing with or destroying a battle, the fact that they’re spending time to do that and having an experience is why I create work in the street.
Evangelicalism, Shamanism, Buddhism, Confucianism. Place together in a Hot Stone bowl and crack an egg on top. Stir.
New York Street Artist Gaia talks to BSA about his second in a series of street art pieces he is doing in Seoul, South Korea, which are combining religious and traditional cultural symbols in ways not seen before.
BSA: What have you been learning about your host country that affects your street art?
Gaia: Korea is an amazing place to work in because it is so culturally rich and ripe with tradition and folklore. But furthermore, it has westernized at such an incredible pace that there is a deep schism between the traditional and the contemporary. That conflict makes for an exciting environment to make hybrid work, to explore these boundaries. For example, the tiger rabbit is the annual cycle but also the shift in identity from Korea’s representation as a rabbit under Japanese colonialism, to its assertion with the coming independence the peninsula of the tiger.
BSA: Who is the figure in the new piece you just completed? Gaia: The piece is of a Buddhist monk image from the door of a small temple in the mountains that I was visiting for field research. With the wave of (Christian) evangelicalism that has arrived with the western wash that is suffusing Korea right now, I thought it would be pertinent to hybridize/subvert the old tradition with the new influence. Shamanism and Buddhism were expelled from the city of Seoul when the Joseon Dynasty adopted Confucianism.
BSA: This looks like Buddist imagery combined with your classical hands from earlier pieces.
Gaia: The Image of buddhism has returned to the the walls of the palace just a block away from the gate of Gyeongbokgung, the time by the hands of a westerner, and contrasted with praying hands inscribed with the symbols of St Andrew; A portrait of passing times.
BSA: Do you have any new favorite foods? Gaia: My new favorite foods are bibimbop (duh nam june paik), boolgogi, and the ultimate being Naengmyeon.
The finished piece, and the route to it. Both are completely intertwined.
During yesterday’s creation of Nick Walker’s brand new stencil entitled, “Amerikarma” we met so many people on the sidewalk as we continually shifted our stance under the trees while the sun scorched the Brooklyn sky. The events of the day (as well as the prep for the day) all somehow infuse the artists’ final piece in your mind.
As much advance planning as you make, you’re going to run out of supplies (masking tape). And water. And then you have to have to pee. The natural and man-made elements can aid or complicate (bright light, blasting heat, dripping air conditioners). Visitors stop by to say hello and take pictures and catch up a little or comment, Kathleen from the Front Room brings you the third pitcher of iced tea with cups, and Tanley from Arrested Motion arrives with Thai food for everybody’s lunch.
All the while Nick is calculating and measuring and problem-solving as he executes this new stencil for the first time – discovering what works and what needs to be adjusted. It’s all very ALIVE – the honking horns, the beautiful young women and men in their summer clothes, the 60-ish father from Virginia who stops to ask 3 of us to help him lift a clothes rack into his daughters’ apartment, the musicians going in and out of the downstairs next to us, and Stuart borrowing a kids bike for a spin or another one’s baseball glove for a game of catch across Roebling Street traffic.
By the time Nick is putting the Mickey Pistol portion across the bottom of the bullets and stripes flag, all the conversations have been had, the popsicles eaten, and cell phones have little warnings about low power on their screens. A few finishing details sharpen the image and accentuate the impact before final pictures are taken and chairs are returned to Daniel and Kathleen, along with the orange extension chord.
People now slow down to look at the piece, and the kids start splitting because dinner is ready back home. Nick decides to do a full signature instead of his typical symbol with the date. He likes it so much that he announces he may begin signing all of his stencils like that. The process of making the piece is intrinsically woven into the street environment, and the art is the only only reminder that remains.
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
“Sunrise Neighbor” (image © Gaia)
