“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
That’s the text of a cable sent by the writer Mark Twain from London to the press in the United States after his obituary had been mistakenly published, so the story goes.
Similarly, the “elite” of 2020 may be suitably surprised by this new text piece by street commentator ELFO on the streets of Verona, Italy. Since there are roughly four months remaining to the year, maybe this is a meant to be prophecy, but from what we all can see, the “elite” are getting richer and richer from this pandemic, as well as the custom-tailored “bail-outs” from the right- and left-wing politicians who write the bills.
Stohead (Christoph Häßler) started writing graffiti at 14 in southern Germany, where he was born, and last month he completed his largest mural in Berlin for UN, three decades after he began.
Exhibiting on canvas for the last two decades in galleries and art fairs, he is an innovator with custom tools and he has mastered his own techniques of deconstructing the letterform, repeating and rolling them in layers behind translucence, complementary waves of motion cascading across, over, and down the wall of this eight-story residential building.
Part of the “One Wall” program at the Urban Nation Museum, Stohead is a calligraffitist of the newer international order, not afraid to experiment and grow, borrow and synthesize in untypical directions. Perhaps its this 6th sense that is causing this new work to slow motorists along Delpzeile 14 in Berlin-Charlottenburg.
“Encased in a wooden frame,
the figure of Steve is shown seated, in a palette and pose reminiscent of
traditional celebratory portraits of kings or popes. In his hand, he holds a
timepiece, a symbol to the lost time waiting for change,” says the press
release.
Gabriel Pitcher portrait of Steve Barnabis. Wood Street Walls/Project Zero. London, UK. (photo courtesy of Gabriel Pitcher)
UK artist Gabriel Pitcher has just completed a new community mural to address the topic of vulnerable youths and knife crime in London. Located on Canning Road, the figure of Steve Barnabis rises many stories upward, a local leader who has worked hard to address social and financial inequities for some time. Now the Covid economy is threatening to foist cutbacks and setbacks on the organization he is a youth worker at, Project Zero.
BSA gladly encourages
readers, especially our London readers, to support this youth-centered project
that bridges the gap, creates community engagement, and provides badly needed
servies.
Gabriel Pitcher portrait of Steve Barnabis. Wood Street Walls/Project Zero. London, UK. (photo courtesy of Gabriel Pitcher)
“I have seen first hand the positive impact Steve and Project Zero have had on young people in this borough, and the void it has left in the community. I also recognize the significant financial challenge faced by local authorities suffering cuts from central government funding. These critical services are desperately needed, programs like Steve’s have a life altering effect on the people using them.” ~Mark Clack, Wood Street Walls CIC
Happy EID Mubarek to all our Muslim brothers and sisters. Full moon will wash over our warm summer skies in Brooklyn tomorrow – hopefully you can get up on a roof to see it.
Please tell us again about that two-party system we hear about every day. Why does it look like one party? Have you heard about this new documentary coming called “The Swamp”?
Maybe its the time in quarantine but the quality of the workspersonship on the streets these days appears to have increased overall – perhaps because artists have much more time to pour into their paste-ups, stencils, paintings.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Amir Diop99, BK Foxx, Black Ligma, Captain Eyeliner, City Kitty, De Grupo, Downtown DaVinci, Epizod Tagg, Panam, Texas, Zuli Miau.
Gonzalo Borondo stages an insurrection against the authorities who would hope to instruct you how to think about art in the public sphere, the right of the overlord to pollute the visual landscape at will, and the limitations of our imaginations in Segovia a nine-month installation.
A 32 billboard installation totaling
17 locations, the Spanish street artist and conceptual installation artist
evokes sepia-soaked memories of history as told through the view of those recounted
in a communal uprising here 500 years ago.
Extending beyond the frames with sculpture, layered textures, and projection, the post-industrial modernist documents events and takes liberties with his interpretation, a 5 chapter “INSURRECTA” that instructs and reflects with symbols and figures and open spaces. For those familiar with his vocabulary over the last decade+, it’s a fulsome maturity that commands as it expands, with poetry. Sometimes it plays with it background, other times the background has its way with the canvas.
Paying homage to Goya, his engravings of “Los Caprichos” and “Los Desastres”, he works within a narrow palette and innovates forcefully, playing with perspective and your willingness to interpret.
In his description of the Segovian people
and their fierce spirit of defiance and riotous acts in pursuit of autonomy and
self-reliance, he says he is inspired by “humanity confronting nature, the
discourse of the urban in the natural landscape, the effects of imposition on
society, the reappropriation of spaces by different agents.”
Leaning heavily on visual metaphor,
many in the graffiti and street art communities can identify with his take on reappropriation
of land, resources, and the expression of art in the public sphere. It has
become commonplace to expound upon street art as an “outdoor gallery”, but this
mapped and self-guided tour looks as close to a museum exhibition as we’ve
seen, and it’s even walkable for many.
Gonzalo Borondo presents INSURRECTA alongside the City Council of Segovia in collaboration with Acción Cultural Española (AC/E). The project sees the Department of Culture commemorate the 500th anniversary of the communal uprising in the city.
Segovia, Spain, from 29 June 2020 to 23 April 2021
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. disCONNECT, a “Lock-Down” Artists Takeover
BSA Special Feature: disCONNECT, a “Lock-Down” Artists Takeover
London / 24 July – 23 August 2020
Today a series of videos from the artists takeover of this London home, a testament to the fortitude of organizers and artists who didn’t accept “Lock-down” for an answer. Yes, everyone practiced social distancing, and no, a large public opening event could not take place. But this may serve as one welcome new model for art in the time of Corona.
The video series is expertly produced by Fifth Wall TV and a small consortium of commercial/cultural partners including HK Walls and Schoeni Projects. Details at the end of the video parade.
Mr Cenz / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
David Bray / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
Aida Wilde / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
Alex Fakso / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
Isaac Cordal / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
Herakut / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
Zoer / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
To find more about disCONNECT A “Lock-Down” Artists Takeover / London / 24 July – 23 August 2020 click HERE
Writing large messages with sticky post notes is part of the visual lengua oficina* for many whose career ladder has been in corporate offices for years, decades.
Stockholm based street artist Vlady shares with us a public application under a bridge that also triggers your memories of early pixelated video games with its digitally inspired message “temporary files”.
The meaning of the term “temporary files” is not familiar to the casual user of consumer-class computers. More likely your local IT professional can tell you dryly. As you think about it, you may see how it takes on a rather existential realm to the poet, as a temporary file is created to temporarily store information in order to free memory for other purposes. Mention “memory” and we realize that the vocabulary for man and machine are braiding together more daily before our eyes.
Here we are
at the dawn of Artificial Intelligence and our memories are at full capacity,
needing temporary files to store them.
Sydney-based social realist painter and muralist Fintan Magee has been burrowed in his studio for the last few months, wondering when he was going to be able to do some figurative painting. The plants have kept him company, and he finds it reassuring to watch them in the winter sun as he keeps himself quarantined from unnecessary contact with others during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Every day
while in the lockdown, I photographed and painted two small plants that I had
recently repotted and was keeping on my balcony,” he says as he scans over the
32 small still life works he created. It’s been a good exercise, working
outside his comfort zone perhaps – not photoshoots of subjects, no imagining of
them operating inside a new metaphor.
Now he shares
with BSA readers what the process looks like, and picks 9 of his favorite still-lifes
as a cross-section print for you to marvel. “The work documents the simple act
of keeping the plants alive during the lockdown. Each work took 5-7 hours to
make and allowed me to discard building concepts and focus primarily on the
painting process making each work a daily meditation, allowing reflection on
physical space and the passing of time while marking a day of the crisis.”
For illustrator and muralist Erendaj, that is an open question to us as he reveals the skeleton beneath this soft skinned portrait based on the classical painting of the 19th century. Erendaj says that the painter Ernst Deger of the Dusseldorf School inspired him greatly, and “I had a strange feeling that that very image was ideal.”
The Russian
painter completed one painting directly over another here in Penza, and he
slowly removed one while the camera recorded its progress. When the images are
rolled together for a stop action video one gets a sense of time passing over
this figure, who could be from a few different time periods. “I had to choose
just an image not attached to modern time or reality,” he says.
Painting on
the streets for over 12 years, he says, and Erendaj estimates that he has created
over 100 murals in that time period. Now he is wondering about the impact that
an artist can make in history – or any of us really. And he shares his
manifesto here: “Many people live only for living. They leave nothing after
them. What is living – if you are already dead? Other people create … they
build houses, write books, draw pictures, create couples and families,” he says
before his parting shot “Make history before you go.”
Street artist and conceptual artist John Fekner participated in student demonstrations and peaceful moratoriums in New York in the 1960s, with his first outdoor work completed in 1968. When younger generations of artists are feeling inflamed about this spring and summers’ demonstrations it is helpful to remember that artists of each generation have been a crucial part of many, if not most, movements of social and political change.
With his new mini-retrospective in a space limited by Covid-19 considerations the exhibition is available to see only by appointment in Bayside, Queens, you can see that Fekner’s dedication to drawing our attention to our behaviors as citizens, cities, politicians, and corporations lies at the root of his advocacy.
Putting your mark on
society is an ironic way of describing the literal act artists and vandals engage
in when putting their work on the streets. While “getting up” for many is an
act of self-promotion or marking of territory, Fekner has often used his spray
paint and stencils to critique, to call-out the failure of societies to care or
take responsibility for their actions or inactions, and may trigger you to bear
witness.
Spraying “DECAY” on a rusting hunk of detritus breaks through the psychological defense systems you may array against “seeing” history and outcome. A blunt aesthetic written in a large format makes an impression – the simple act of tagging objects and surfaces of industrial and urban neglect is radical, a defiant gesture that calls the state and the citizen to account. By drawing attention, even cryptically, you may cause one to question – or even to regard these layers of debris as violence toward others, toward the natural world.
For A CHANGE, the show takes his 1981 painting and applies it broadly
to the running narrative throughout his work, as a proponent of self-reflection
and advocate of positive change.
“The economic imbalance,
the energy crisis, health insurance, pollution, and global warming increase
exponentially every day,” Fekner says in an overview of the exhibition, “all
compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. Many of our issues boil below the
surface, making it convenient to turn a blind eye.”
Meticulously curated, the exhibition is showcasing a selection of Fekner’s paintings, mixed media sculpture, and ephemera as well as a “sampling of art objects, photographs, books, and a glimpse into Fekner’s personal archive spanning a fifty-year timeline,” viewers can get a broader overview of the artists’ sincere belief that his art in the streets has the power to affect the world. “Although some of the work is decades old, their relevance resonates today, maybe with even greater urgency,” says his description.
BSA had the opportunity to ask Mr. Fekner about his work and worldview as we appear at a nexus of profound change.
Brooklyn Street Art: Looking back on the issues you contemplated fifty years ago, we can’t deny that things have indeed changed – but we are also discovering that things really didn’t change, especially when it pertains to race and poverty. How do you, as an artist confront this reality? Are you despondent?
John Fekner: The greatest ferment of change, I believe, is the risks that people are willing to take in the face of tremendous setbacks. This has been true throughout history whether it’s the storming of the Bastille to the toppling of Confederate monuments. I’m heartened by the courage I see today and despondent art doesn’t help.
BSA:Rich countries are on a heavy diet of “consumerism” fueled by the endless appetite of tech giants for quarterly profits to appease shareholders. People spend money they don’t have. Most people don’t have savings and live paycheck to paycheck. What went wrong?
John Fekner: This is nothing new. The exploitation of the poor by the rich is the perennial struggle of humanity and will probably always be. There is no reason to stop fighting. We should never lose our courage and vigilance.
BSA:On Wednesday the CEO’s of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will testify before Congress. If you were the one asking the questions what would you ask them?
John Fekner: The greatest safeguard of capitalism in our country has always been the resistance to monopolies. My question would be: ‘What are you going to do to insure that your companies don’t monopolize and dominate every market?’
A painted portrait of Emmett Till, who would have turned 79 yesterday, leads the collection of images this week. A 14 year old sweet faced boy who was brutally mutilated and killed in Mississippi by white men in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman. He was a year younger than representative John Lewis, who was eulogized rest yesterday in Alabama and will lay in state at the Capitol this week. Our legacy of racism haunts us just as abhorrently this summer as it did sixty-five years ago, two hundred years ago…
But in many ways, you have to suspect that these raucous cries are the dying wheezing of racists who have lost the argument and frankly demographics, and it frightens them. They know that the new generations don’t support them, actually resist against them, are determined to light a new path toward reconciliation and healing and equality.
Covid-19 is out of control in the United States thanks to the utter mis-management and lack of leadership in the country. Yesterday, “150 medical experts, scientists and other health professionals signed a letter organized by a prominent consumer group and delivered to government leaders Thursday calling for new shutdowns to bring case counts down and ‘hit the reset button’ to implement a more effective response.” They forecast that we are going to hit 200,000 deaths by November 1.”
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Almost Over Keep Smiling, Billy Barnacles, Catt Caulley, Dyne Elis, Knor, Koffee Creative, Liza and the Clouds, Lorena Tabba, Maya Hayuk, Oliver Rios, One Rad Latina, Ron Haywood Jones, Siva Stardust, Snoe, and Zalv.
“I felt uncomfortable while confronting myself with the reports about the incidents every person has experienced,” says AKUT in his blog about the research he did into the Holocaust for his new project here.
“It’s unbelievable how one can ever cope with it – and it’s completely unacceptable that there are right-wing populists still gaining more support worldwide. One would think that we have learned from history, but present events prove us wrong regularly.”
Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
And here now we have two people whose photorealistic eyes we can look into. One is Horst Sommerfeld, a Polish national who lived in hiding in Berlin for two years before he and his whole family were caught and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was the only family member to live after being liberated by the US army in 1945.
Nonetheless, Mr. Sommerfeld reported, “I have always lived in fear,” before his death in 2019.
Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
The other portrait is of Bella
Shirin, a Lithuanian whose parents were survivors of the concentration camps of
Dachau and Stutthof. While she is determined to live in the present, her own
past is deeply impacted by her mother’s suicide in 1977 that occurred as a result
of her experiences in the camps.
Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
LEST WE FORGET is a
multi-media project by the German-Italian photographer and filmmaker Luigi
Toscano, who has met Holocaust survivors around the world including in the US,
Germany, the Netherlands, Belarus, Ukraine, Israel and Russia since the early
2010s. This month a new mural by street artist/fine artist AKUT (Falk Lehmann)
pays tribute to two persons directly and deeply affected by the events of the
Holocaust.
Rising six stories in Mannheim, Germany, this is the 35th mural since 2013 as part of a program to convert underutilized walls into artworks, the first freely accessible museum for mural art in all of Baden-Württemberg.
Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
“This
expresses the different ways of dealing with their fates, which is certainly
also directly connected to their respective personal stories,” says AKUT. “Horst
was traumatized directly, whereas Bella has indirectly experienced trauma from
her parents’ experiences.”
Falk Lehmann AKA AKUT. “Lest We Forget“. Stadt.Wand.Kunst. Mannheim, Germany. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
