Suppose it is not so insulting for someone to say that you tend to take a romanticized view of things. Frankly, the world could use a lot more romanticism, and less of the callous, obtuse, horror please.
ELFO may be projecting his rose tinted view upon this abandoned and degraded building in Florence, Italy, but then again his lo-fi naïve lettering tells us he is in on the joke too – he’s just playing with you.
And what a romantic view it is, don’t you think?
As illegal Street Art morphed into legal murals we began to witness the entry of formally trained artists and professionals who not only abandoned the politically charged or socially challenging themes in favor of pleasant topics and commercial aesthetics but accidentally launched an arms race for the biggest, tallest, widest walls possible.
Soon the descriptions we received about new artist works shifted from discussions on themes and messages to statistics about square meters covered, the number of stories high the building was, and how many cans or gallons of paint were required to finish it.
Spanish artist, designer, and photographer Octavi Serra would like a larger wall please. The one that Contorno Urbano gave him for their 11th mural this year in Barcelona seems dreadfully small, and he has really big ideas. He calls this mural “Insufficient”.
Serra says his work often “focuses on capturing the irony, truisms and frustrations of modern life,” and while this piece is evidently meant to be tongue in cheek, he is tapping into a general sense of dissatisfaction that is part of a materialistic culture, and part of the human condition.
By letting the typography bleed off the edges, you also sense the claustrophobic feelings that are playing with the artists mind. “There is this feeling of never being completely satisfied even though reason argues that we should be,” he says. “There is this desire to always have more, which make the road impossible to enjoy.”
The mural is part of the 12 + 1 public mural project of Barcelona – at the Civic Center Cotxeres Borrell. Before the end of the year they are planning a collective exhibition where works by all the artists who have participated in the edition of the 12 + 1 2019 Barcelona project will be on display. The show will feature artists Jay Visual, Ivan Floro, Margalef, Anna Taratiel, Nuria Toll, Flavita Banana, Cristina Lina, Degon, Mr. Sis, Cristina Daura, Laia and Octavi Serra.
“Distinguish sense from nonsense.”
Easier said than done perhaps, but that was probably one of our favorite signs Friday at the Global Climate March here in New York. With a steady flood of disinformation affecting the corporately owned media the popular movements that are rising may not be getting the coverage they deserve, but they are getting to talk to each other and skillfully dismantle the Fog State.
It was a sunny week in New York again and despite the worries that are plaguing our minds, and there are many, the streets came alive with so many positive messages that even the casual passerby had to be moved by the enthusiasm, the optimism, and determination on display from thousands of their fellow New Yorkers.
This Sunday’s collection of images have one thing in common; text. With the exception of one, the Invader piece, all the others have a message to convey in the written word.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring signs from the Global Climate March and Invader, Sara Lynne Leo, Space Invader, and Steve ESPO Powers.
This March we were in Madrid hosting three days of BSA Talks at
We’re happy to see that the quality perseveres at Tramontana as the magazine publishes its third edition of the year, and its editorial standards continue to be very high. Rarely do we see a magazine these days that is so well edited, designed and with extraordinary, well-written content.
Leveraging its history as a Spanish aerosol paint manufacturer and art supplies brand that many within the graffiti/Street Art community use and laud, Montana Colors here ventures into a contemporary direction with the trappings of and subtle refinements more often associated with galleries and museums. It’s a safe bet at this point, but they’re not resting on their laurels – this is cut above what we’re used to seeing in terms of content, documentation, preservation, storytelling, and even academic detailing.
Don’t worry; you’ll also enjoy it. The Spanish/English format is open and accessible, the reasonably short essays and interviews are good for today’s attention spans, the balance of text to images and graphics suitable to one another. You may long for a glossy richness of image occasionally, and undoubtedly that is coming, but the design supports without overwhelming or calling attention away from what amounts to a textbook of the moment for the thinking fans, students, and collectors.
Issue 3 boasts interviews with people like photographer Martha Cooper, filmmaker Selina Miles, impresario Roger Gastman, graffiti writers Shiat, Ellas, muralists Shan and Spok. There is a condensed history of Punks and City Kids in 1970s-80s Amsterdam by Remko Koopman, an interview with teacher/author/photographer of NYC trains Craig Castleman as he tours Europe speaking, and an essay on the elusive quality of originality by conceptual Street Artist SpY.
You also get a one-shot impression of Amsterdam graffiti and an extensive train bombing background story on Chilean-Canadian couple LOS KEOS with Mr. Garcia Mora. From that interview, the world-travelers share their influences, techniques, and negotiating their way through variable legal/penal systems of different countries, but we also learn about the social interactions with writers and crews.
“We have met many people over the years, not all of them well-known. The best relationships are the ones where we share more than just painting: our lifestyle, our political thinking, the desire to go out to explore a city and learn a little about the local culture.”
The intersecting cultures of graffiti, Street Art, urban art, and Contemporary continue to blend, reorganize, and propagate. Tramontana appears poised to capture and communicate with respect the history, techniques, soft and hard sciences that all convene to study the movement, where it moves.
Tramontana Magazine is published by Montana Colors under the guidance of its CEO Jordi Rubio Rocabert and the Editorial Director Antonio Garcia Mora. This magazine is free.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. “REWILD” from Escif
2. Guido van Helten in Faulkton, South Dakota by Brian Siskind
3. How Artist JR Is Helping Connect Our Humanity Through Street Art
As part of our core commitment as a non-commercial platform that has helped hundreds of artists over the last decade+, BSA significantly helped Escif to raise money for his Indiegogo fundraiser in Spring 2017 when we promoted his “Breath-Time” horticultural project heavily as he planted trees to reforest Mount Olivella in Southern Italy.
Today BSA debuts REWILD, a new tree-related project by the Spanish Street Artists – just as the Global Climate March is spreading to cities around the world, including New York.
The concept of the short film is simple: can’t we just push the “Rewind” button?
“The narrative runs in reverse, rewinding the clock on deforestation to undo the damage caused by the unsustainable production of one of the worlds most versatile commodities. Beyond the
Finally, a stunning custom soundtrack by Indonesian composer Nursalim Yadi Anugerah captures and carries this into another world, which is possible.
Shout out to the folks behind the project Splash and Burn: a cultural initiative curated by Ernest Zacharevic and coordinated by Charlotte Pyatt run in association with the Sumatran Orangutan Society and the Orangutan Information Centre.
Guido van Helten in Faulkton, South Dakota by Brian Siskind
A massive piece by the observant eye of Guido van Helten, who knows how to capture a spirit, a gesture, a knowing expression. Here on a grain elevator in Faulkton, South Dakota, his piece becomes a clarion, captured here by Brian Siskind.
How Artist JR Is Helping Connect Our Humanity Through Street Art |
The Brooklyn Museum will be unveiling an exhibition with the works of French Street Artist JR this October. Here’s a small video of him explaining how his work is a connector between humans.
Fresh from Torino, Italy, the Swiss artists Nevercrew did this commissioned piece for a coffee company with the theme of “responsible consumption” – which immediately reminds us that we were planning to switch from using K-cups to drip coffee. The image is abstract and realistic at the same time, a map of some sort folded into an airplane, a portion of it possible torched by a lighter. It looks fragile, yet full of possibility.
“We decided to work around the concept of carefreeness to evoke both the human responsibility on the production and consumption side,” says Christian Rebecchi, “and the planetary emergency we’re already living.”
The image of a simple childs’ toy is meant to imply a story of two logics, says the other member of the duo, Pablo Togni. “The positive logic of the game and the negative one of the lack of conscience and the unnatural use of resources,” he says.
“There is a care-freeness that’s about acting unaware of the large-scale repercussions of the exploitation of resources, of what precedes and follows every small action and, at the same time, a reference to the lightness of the game, to all that is now put at risk for the generations that will hold the future of the planet.”
“I chose whales because despite of their size, so many are found on our beaches with the stomach full of plastic,” says Alessio Bolognesi about this new mural for the ST.ART festival in Italy. “It’s a symbol, in my mind, of how even the huge animals are so powerless.”
The image of large seafaring creatures washing up on shore starved of nutrition and bloated with plastic is becoming more common as we continue to poison ourselves and the world. Not surprisingly, similar images are also popping up in Street Art in other locations.
Originally from Ferrara in the north of Italy, the 3D graphic designer also once belonged to a graffiti crew as a kid, and he now balances professional design work with an increasing number of mural painting opportunities. Here in Provincia di Vicenza (Veneto region), he says he chose a whale drowning in plastic for this secondary school façade. But he didn’t want to be completely didactic, preferring to let the viewer make the connections themselves.
“I like to paint murals with a ‘multi-layer’ reading approach,” he explains. “You can look to the mural and just see the obvious image or you can try to go deeper and capture some more meaningful detail.”
Last night we listened to artist Futura speak with Timothy Anne Burnside at the “Beyond the Streets” about his initial impetus for hitting the streets as a teenage graffiti writer in the late 1960s in New York – an urban environment he described aptly as “the city was on fire”.
“I wanted to express myself,” he said. “That’s all anyone wants to do, no matter how they do it.”
As we move further from graffiti and mark-making in public art-making, is it a revelation that the desire to be seen, to have your voice heard, is the common denominator again, regardless of the form of expression.
In this case, a tram shelter in Poland preserves the natural world in resin, transparently.
Like a mix master, the artist here samples someone else’s handiwork and remixes it, adding a filter, chopping it up and repeating it.
Dominika Cebula, a
She’s calling it “Nostalgia”, and you can see how those minutes of waiting could be affected; your memories triggered to remember birthdays, weddings, funerals, walks by yourself along a train track or beside the river. Hundreds of dried flowers are embedded in the resin, including cornflowers, forget-me-nots, roses, narcissus, freesias, daisies, fern leaves,
Curated by Michał Bieżyński, “Nostalgia” is an unusual horticultural intervention that adds one more point of visual interest in a city that has enjoyed an alluvial visual invasion of murals and sculptural works in the last decade.
Dave II is an aptly comedic
All freshly painted this year, this bounty of boffo brutes and beasts are available for you to discover lurking around the corners of this undisclosed location in the area of Barcelona, Spain, thanks to the effort exploration and documentation of frequent BSA collaborator Lluis Olive Bulbena.
Did you see that micro-moon on Friday the 13th? We were up on the roof with artists and friends and weirdos celebrating “mid autumn moon” and looking at the New York skyline and that beautiful moon, which didn’t seem 14% smaller, did it? Seemed like your run-of-the-mill gorgeous Harvest Moon, right? Also, a dope opportunity to say “apogee“, which you just don’t get to say very much. No those are not those tassels that exotic dancers put on their nipples.
So here’s our harvest of Street Art and graffiti for you! The city has been producing amazing crops all year, to tell the truth.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Almost Over Keep Smiling, Crappytalism, Jason Naylor, Jocelyn Tsajh, Li-Hill, Peoples Power Assembly, Plannedalism, Pure Genius, Rider, Subway Doodle, Surface of Beauty, The Joker, Thomas Allen, and Will Kurtz.
A few new marine-themed murals today from Benicarló in Valencia.
The realistic romantic stylings of many a muralist is a staple of current Urban Art Festivals right now, including a new one painted by the artist named El Niño de las
Completed in July during the annual patron saint festival, this year including the third edition of the urban art initiative Camden Bló, El Nino (from Granada) was joined by Xolaka, from Alcúdia (Valencia), the Argentinian Andrés Cobre, and illustrator César Cataldo.
It’s good to see the variety of styles being favored for local festivals and great to see artists getting opportunities to paint in the public sphere – even endorsed by the ministry of culture in this small town of 26,000 along the Mediterranean coast. Special thanks to photographer Lluis Olive Bulbena, who shares his photos with BSA readers.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. “Word on the Street” Debut
2. INO – “Freedom For Sale” in Athens
3. Two in a Row from Alex Prager: “La Grande Sortie” & “Despair”
“Fuck the old days. Graffiti is now!”
The last five years have been explosive for Street Art worldwide, and with “Word On The Street” you have a good indicator that the graff writing game is alive and well in New York as well – and tenaciously prolific.
Anonymous filmmakers infused the doc with vibrating audio and visual distortion and a sense of ever-present surveillance, or the implication of it cloaked in darkness. Interviews,
It’s first public screening is coming up September 29 in Brooklyn. Click HERE for more information.
It’s first public screening is coming up September 29 in Brooklyn. Click HERE for more information.
Featuring 143, AJES, BIO, BRAT, CASH4, CARL WESTON, CLAW, CHRIS RWK, DEK 2DX, DIVA, DSR, EDO, EL7, FAES, FLASH, JAKEE, JESUS SAVES, KLOPS, LEX, LOOSE, MERK, MRS, MUTZ, NEG, NOXER, PANIC, PLASMA SLUG, POE, SCAE, SEO, SILON, SMURFO, SPRAY, STOR, STU, and
INO – “Freedom For Sale” in Athens
Constantino Mass adds just the right amount of slickly pounding wipes and cuts to this installation by INO in Athens. We published photos from this a few days ago so have a look and enjoy the video.
Two in a Row from Alex Prager
Alex Prager debuted a new short film at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York this month, and it has piqued the interest of many in her work of disconnected, reconnected narratives. Impeccably styled, humorously shot, it’s a staged invoking of old Hollywood and street scenes, enveloped in drama and frequently suspense. Often the
“La Grande Sortie” by Alex Prager
“Despair” by Alex Prager
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY