“Power
is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul.
It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it
is in your relationship to the earth.” —Winona LaDuke
Street Artist Jetsonorama is concerned about what we are
doing to our sources of power in his new photography-based work called “Four
Meditations on a Changing Climate” that he completed at the Elko festival in Elko,
Nevada.
“The first image is a portrait of 2 shrubs that were scorched recently in a brush fire near my home,” he tells us. “The second image is a collage of seagulls and fish bones on the beach of the Salton Sea.” A theme of dessication begins to emerge as you go from sepia panel to panel.
“The third image comes from a show I did last spring with Lakota artist Cannupa Hanska Luger,” he says. “He created costumes (for which his mom, Kathy Whitman, did the beadwork on the masks), representing warrior twins in the Lakota tradition. They are called ‘The One Who Checks’ and ‘The One Who Balances.’ In this image, appalled by the havoc we’re wreaking upon the planet, they’ve returned to Earth.”
Finally the Earth, the source of power. If you look to this image to examine our relation to it, we’re in trouble.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Welcome to October – the time when the leaves turn yellow and orange and when your local pharmacy is selling Halloween candy and Christmas decorations because why the hell not? We’ve got The Actual Joker in the White House ready to shred all pretense of civility and rule of law before a terrified nation, not that he was holding that down at all.
Makes us think of the sentiment of this new Street Art piece below by Sara Lynne-Leo. “Why are you still holding on?”
But we know the answer — Because the grand finale of this burning dumpster fire will be huge! – friggin’ ratings will be off the charts for this one, dawg. Plus the Demopublicans have already lined up the Warren White House so we know what’s coming on TV next on DNC.
** chomps popcorn, smacks lips
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring DAK, Dede Bandaid, Dee Dee, Demure, Dirk, Don Rimx, Insurgo, Invader, Jeff Henriquez, Jona, Muebon, Neckface, Nite Owl, Nitzan Mintz, No Sleep, Panda Bear, Salami Doggy, Sara Lynne Leo, Seemerch, Unify Art, and WK Interact.
Imagine swimming with your art in the ocean, bobbing up and down in the blue waves and buffeting breezes in the sun just off the coast of Brazil. Bright and bouncing like beacons while paying tribute to the fishing community just inland, those bikinied and briefed beauties who are cavorting with victorious hands in the air are the artists who painted these sails, and photographer Martha Cooper was there to capture them for BSA readers to enjoy today.
The Além da Rua festival saw its first edition in 2010, founded by Duo Acidum Project in collaboration with Ato Marketing Cultural. This year’s edition was organized by Marcelo Pimentel and Marina Bortoluzzi of Instagrafite and the concept of painting on sails is the first of its kind that we know of. One that speaks directly to the community and the history of the fishing trade in this Port of Pecém District, in São Gonçalo do Amarante. This two-week experience during September on the northern coast of Brazil included painting sails for the typical fishing rafts that fishermen/women have used on the ocean here for a long time.
Not strictly Street Art, this oceanic open-air gallery is created by Street Artists who hail from this region of the world – Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and of course Brazil. The program also included murals painted on walls of the homes of the fishing people, further connecting neighbors, place, pride, and a sense of community.
We have been observing a gradual evolution in the practices of the so-called “mural festivals” that evolved from the illegal Street Art scene in the last few years and we have spoken many times here and in presentations and panels about being leery of what we call a certain “cultural imperialism” that accompanies many of them today. The mural works are simply foisted by a starry-eyed fan-curator upon a neighborhood based on their knowledge of an edgy art movement. Nearly anyone can curate events and exhibitions with the BIG names – a grab bag of stars takes very little creative acumen and the results are often as cohesive as the offerings on folding card tables at your local flea market that sells iPhone 6 cases, 8-pack packages of athletic tube socks, and velvet paintings of Elvis and horses.
By involving artists with the community, as Ms. Bortoluzzi and Mr. Pimentel artfully did, the resulting artworks can have more meaning to the folks who must live with them long after the artists leave. It’s a tricky area to discuss sometimes though because everyone reading this has seen that the worst public art in almost every city often results from the choking, stultifying, uninspiring effects of bureaucratic “design by committee” processes, so we aren’t advocating for that either.
Here photographer Martha Cooper
captures the energy and enthusiasm of the artists and fisherpeople and the
natural beauty that inspires them all in at Além da Rua.
“Evoca is here painting Ednardo Palmeira’s portrait,” Martha tells us. “The portrait is on the outside of the place where Mr. Palmeira trims, preserves, and sells freshly caught fish. Ednardo seems to be the main person to do that in Pecém. Fishermen bring their fish to him.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Gross Domestic Product – Banksy 2. New Stop Animation Project from Caledonia Curry AKA Swoon. 3. Henry Chalfant “Art vs Transit 1977-1987” Bronx Museum of the Arts 4. Street Art Summer Round-Up – 2019 from Fifth Wall TV / Doug Gillen
BSA Special Feature: Gross Domestic Product – Banksy
The doublespeak of Banksy very effectively demanded a whirlwind of media attention in the art/Street Art world once again this week. The anti-capitalist launched a full street-side exhibition while his personal/anonymous brand benefitted by the new record auction price of 9.9 million pounds with fees for one of his works depicting a “Devolved Parliament” full of apes – precisely during the height of inpending Brexit hysteria.
Gross Domestic Product / Banksy Installation. Video Courtesy Ash Versus
New Stop Animation Project from Caledonia Curry AKA Swoon.
Street Artist Swoon (Caledonia Curry) has been pushing her creative limits in a medium she is not known for, and the results are exhilarating.
Facing a backlog of fears and eager to go out of her comfort zones of that include linotype printing and wheat-pasting on the street – and the many projects building community – her last two years of study in stop animation are ready to be seen. Present her narrative practice and character in a surprising new way, Swoon takes chances bravely, and is ready to share her new work.
Her new exhibition with Jeffery Deitch is coming up in New York – but today we offer a sneak peek of what the deep diving Swoon has discovered.
Henry Chalfant “Art vs Transit 1977-1987” Bronx Museum of the Arts
Its here and the reviews have been glowing. One of the originals in documenting and providing platforms to artists and participants of art on the streets and trains, Henry Chalfant is please to present an impressive retrospective through next spring at Bronx Museum of the Arts.
Street Art Summer Round-Up – 2019 from Fifth Wall TV / Doug Gillen
Hop into the Doug soup of insight, mangled pronunciation and zealous fannery for projects and Street/public art concepts he wants you to remember from this summer.
“Not all people like Street Art and not everyone likes Mickey Mouse!” said street artist L7Matrix on his Instagram earlier this year, which may explain his collections of birds, tigers, even jellyfish realistically rendered, then exploded in colorful abstract.
His signature style is typically aviary
and it has taken him from Berlin to Brooklyn to LA to Talinn to Paris to the
Twitter office in his native Brazil to complete his attractive mural making for
clients and festivals.
Here we have his latest fresco
completed as part of the Wall Street Art festival in Grand Paris Sud. Organizer
Gaultier Jourdain tells us that this is the first urban fresco completed in
this southern French town of Moissy-Cramayel.
The evolution of an artist’s practice is something we feel very privileged to observe over time and we revel in the successful steps forward that any artist takes, preferring to see it as an act of courage. Street Artist Isaac Cordal is currently taking a big jump forward, consolidating his strengths and doubling down on his convictions in ever more powerful ways for his new exhibition entitled “Ego Monuments”, now showing at Galerie C.O.A. in Montreal, Canada.
His vocabulary intact and increasingly sophisticated, something tells you that it is all synthesizing and gathering with the momentum of a storm. Here he is mocking the clique mentality of the politburo, presenting his company men as a block of distracted dullards, each separately miserable and indistinguishable in their groupthink.
The image of one of his hapless figures as a crucified businessman with slightly ghoulish smirk taps into the themes of self-important sacrifice and holy reverence of so-many corporate heroes, frankly flagellating the idea of either. Elsewhere soaring pedestals lift the individual so high that coming down would likely result in death.
As a disarming collection of
installations in the gallery you may revel at the methods Cordal devises to
communicate the collective blindness pushing us further toward oblivion, his
blunt critique of consumer culture and mindless navel-gazing is a reassuring
mediocrity that warms you gradually– as the water rolls toward a boil.
“We are the new version of
colonialism,” Cordal says his new press release, “we are waiting for climate
change by sunbathing on the beach. We live permanently exposed, controlled,
leaning out to the public balcony of the social networks and Big Brother has
become our flat-mate.”
As we examine our public statues and the messages of our massive free-standing art in parks, Cordal suggests that size matters in this age of the SELF. “Monuments to the ego would be so big that it was necessary to change the scale of these works to place them into the gallery.”
Elsewhere he comments on the sorrowful narcissism that permeates the culture, as expressed by his figures here: “Almost all the sculptures that are part of the exhibition have their eyes closed, immersed in their smartphones or virtual reality headsets. Blind to their own reality, they don’t want to see beyond their own perimeter. ”
Brisbane based conceptual realist Fintan Magee sends us a new conceptual, figurative piece he just finished in the Mt Pleasant neighborhood of Vancouver, Canada as part of their local mural festival. Included in the lineup were a varied selection of illustrators, graphic designers, old skool graffiti writers, and practitioners of current trends like dark pop surrealism.
Fintan tells us that this mural,
perhaps because of the unusual configuration, was a challenge – and you can see
the original sketch he includes here of a couple who are local events managers
who work in the performing arts.
“They are part of a new series I
am doing that explores story telling through body language,” he says. “The work
also uses public art to celebrate local workers and community contributors over
celebrity or the grandiose.”
Typically you may expect to be praying the novena and asking God for absolution of your dastardly sins here in this sprawling compound called The Konvent near Barcelona. While no one would stop you today, you may also wish to check out a number of new installations throughout the many buildings by Street Artists.
The Roman Catholic former convent hosted 50 or so artists over the last couple of years to transform the space, perhaps to reinterpret its original charge in a modern light, perhaps just to ready the compound for commercial, cultural, and community pursuits of the owners.
Certainly the decaying spaces and austere aesthetic is inviting, calming, possibly frightening, depending on your associations. Now they are home for music, dance, theatre, film festivals, and artist residencies – often offered only in Catalan but some also in European Spanish.
As you walk through the spaces you are welcomed by these works by artists, many of them at one time or another categorized as Street Artists, whose voices now usher in a new era of contemplation and perhaps internal exploration.
Our thanks to photogapher and BSA contributor Lluis Olive Bulbena for sharing these images from El Konvent.
For more information about El Konvent please Click HERE
Gorgeous, tremulous days and nights in New York as we march with determination into fall – Tomokazu Matsuyama and his 12 assistants finished his epic contribution to the Houston Wall, a huge crowd overflowed the Bronx Museum to celebrate the photographer/filmmaker Henry Chalfant and his pivotal work that brought fame to graffiti writers, and Kehinde Wiley stunned Times Square with a new monument entitled “Rumors of War”, which the artist says “attempts to use the language of equestrian portraiture to both embrace and subsume the fetishization of state violence.”
Meanwhile, the highest office in the land lies in disgrace, under a cloud of increasing impeachment odds even as the state exports multiple wars and the Feds are quietly pumping 75 billion dollars into financial markets with more planned over multiple days to stave off the coming crash.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Bunny M, Diana Garcia, Matzu, Muck Rock, RED, Sunflower Soulz, and WK Interact.
The color palette of the new collection of murals at the 3rd edition of Parees Festival is softened, earthen, stable. Adding five new murals brings the total to 23 here in Oviedo The 3rd edition of Parees Festival in Oviedo in Northern Spain, only minutes from the Bay of Biscay.
Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)
As you review the techniques and schools of influence you can see the careful curation of the selection of muralists – each seemingly contextual, whether figurative or abstract of geometric.
Organizers say the newest artist participants, Mina Hamada, Hedof & Joren Joshua, Udatxo, Catalina Rodríguez Villazón & Matth Velvet, were chosen from a global selection yet are expected to be cognizant of their immediate environment in their conception.
Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)
There are themes based on regional culture, say the organizers, and “You can also add to this spirit the main characteristic of the event which make it something different from other urban art festivals in the country: the participatory processes: neighbors from every area where the walls are located collaborate with their authors in order to participate in the final design.”
Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Udatxo. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedfof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Hedof & Joren Joshua. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Catalina Rodriguez Villazon. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Matth Velvet. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Matth Velvet. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Matth Velvet. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Mina Hamada. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Mina Hamada. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)Mina Hamada. Parees Festival 2019. Oviedo, Spain. (photo courtesy Parees Fest)
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. “Nos Jardins” By Anais Florin for Bien Urbain #9 2. Vhils and his Work. A look into the Lisbon based artist 3. YZ Yseult: Making of the Mural La Marianne
BSA Special Feature: “Nos Jardins” By Anais Florin for Bien Urbain #9
Horticultural Street Art Activists to the Rescue
These
gardens have been maintained by gardeners. For generations.
Now the city council wants to take them over to build a new “eco-district” here in the Les Vaîtes neighborhood of Besançon. And the soil tenders say “These are Our Gardens,” resisting the change, insisting on the historical respect they believe these gardens deserve.
After
spending many days with them, taking pictures and speaking with everyone, artist
Anaïs Florin
decided she could help by creating posters to highlight their struggle.
“Les Vaîtes before the eco-discrict” ! She put up some legally, and some illegally in the city center by taking over the bus stop shelter. Viva Les Vaîtes!
Vhils and his Work. A look into the Lisbon based artist
Yes, your grandmother is going to know about Vhils now.
YZ Yseult: Making of the Mural La Marianne
Marianne is a symbol of Republican France. A Marianne is a bust of a proud and determined woman wearing a Phrygian cap. She symbolises the attachment of the common citizens of the revolution to the Republic – Marianne is liberty, egality and fraternity.
The
first thing you should know is that Marianne
is a symbol in France – capturing the spirit of liberty, equality, and
brotherhood/sisterhood (Liberté, Equalité, Fraternité). Commonly depicted as a
proud and determined woman wearing a Phrygian cap, Marianne symbolises the
attachment of the common citizens of the revolution to the Republic.
Street Artist YZ and engraver Elsa Catelin have just finished
their view of the heralded symbol on the streets of Périgueux
(Dordogne) – and it actually became the new face of Marianne stamps. Selected
by the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, YZ had the opportunity to
meet him and see her work unveiled across a 16 meter by 11 meter wall.
French President Emmanuel Macron poses at the end of the inauguration of the newly printed stamps with French national symbol “Marianne” designed by French-British street artist Yseult Digan aka YZ, in Boulazac, southwestern France, on July 19, 2018. Photo by Nicolas Tucat/AFP/Getty Images.French President Emmanuel Macron (C), poses at the end of the inauguration of the newly-printed stamps with French national symbol “Marianne” designed by French-British street artist Yseult Digan aka YZ, in Boulazac, southwestern France, on July 19, 2018. (Photo by Nicolas TUCAT / AFP) (Photo credit should read NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP/Getty Images)
That’s how curator Yasha Young began the UN Biennale in Berlin this month. A fantasy-infused ramble through a future jungle teeming with dark pop goth and an animated gorilla, the multi-featured installation by the outgoing Creative Director was meant to pose questions about a possible future, or many possible futures on an Earth deeply scarred, reclaiming itself from man/womankind’s folly.
Spread along a 100-meter path and teeming with small surprise exhibits popping from the savage magic of two-day overgrowth, the installation appeared to take inspiration, at least in part, from the wildly successful Berlin exhibition two years ago called, “The Haus”, by a trio called Die Dixons. That one featured 175 artists creating immersive, site-specific futurist/fantasy installations on the five floors of a former bank – inviting dance troops and performances and thousands who cued for hours around the block.
One of artists at UN’s “ROBOTS AND RELICS: UN-MANNED”, Herakut, was also in the Haus exhibition and here under the roaring U-Bahn on Bülowstraße produces one of the best synthesis of technology and fantasy. Their sculptural painted theatrical character of Mother Nature is straight from a childs’ imagination, blinking eyes forming a blue inquisitive aura around its visage.
No doubt many visitors winding through this late summer wildness were feeling quizzical to one another, confronting the various staged scenarios by 27 artists and asking “what if…”. Perhaps a lush and greener version of the traveling “29 Rooms” selfie house we saw in Brooklyn a few years ago, this one blended themes of post-disaster with a glistening dark leafy future girded with idiosyncracies and Hans Ruedi Giger airbrushed human/machines locked in biomechanical reverie.
“They
carry us off into barren deserts with relics of human existence,” says the
press release, “colorfully patterned
animals in overgrown areas as well as spherical light worlds.”
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
