West Coast graffiti superstar RISK, bomber of freeway overpasses, designer of graffiti-inspired clothing, regaler of rap and rock videos; a self-aware sage-like lion-maned merging of Rick Rubins, Greg Allman, and a Norse Yggdrasil, now brings you the psychedelic slaughter of a Cleveland façade.
“We had crowds come every day to watch us paint,” he says of the technicolor splashfest he did along with Nashville artist Chris Zidek. The mural wraps the entire venue, a nonprofit that raises money to provide educational scholarships to youth who can use them – among other missions. With his distinctive style of saturated striped washes flooding the entire block Risk foregoes the letterform on the outside, but ventured in to catch a wild styled tag.
About this new full-spectrum piece that ties together his nearly forty years of graffiti practice along with his contemporary art practice, the muralist says, “I call it beautifully destroyed.”
UK based Irish painter and muralist Conor Harrington was in New York City for the last month with stirring new works inside the gallery space and outside on the street. His signature forms and flying garments were there: indistinctly heroic, Bacon-blurred men in an epic struggle, each wearing richly hued militaristic finery. His dramatic heroes and saboteurs race now across two canvasses on display at the massive Beyond The Streets exhibition in Brooklyn as well as across one daunting five-story walkup on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Set aside the mercurial, blasting sun and drenching rains and otherwise sticky conditions in Gotham’s gritty summer, Harrington may not have realized that the wall was so huge. Done in concert with the L.I.S.A. Project NYC and the BTS exhibition, Conor crushed it with so much color and dramatic action across the surface (his first mural in NYC in a decade or so) that observers will be stultified by its scale and the mysterious storyline that animates it for a long time to come. The subject of the painting might be of an officer with the British army during the American Revolutionary War. If one were to imagine the piece of art differently by changing the garments and closing our eyes the figure as it is in action could very well be of a matador in a bullring confronting and taunting the bull with his cape. With a background in graffiti and a truly painterly command of the cans, you can imagine the feeling of revelation observers felt as Conor daily revealed this gripping piece in this city of immigrants, of struggle, of dreams.
It’s the fourth edition of “Without Frontiers”, a festival of urban art in Mantova Italy, organized by Simona Gavioli and Giulia Giliberti. This is the first mural we’ve seen from the 2019 edition, a hail of man-made products falling from the sky called “Plastic Rain” by Street Artist Mr. Fijodor. Here Mr. Fijodor is helping to continue a recently begun public painting tradition in this city with his illustrative scene of humans repairing a robot amid destruction, a storm of plastic bottles falling all around them.
Since 2016 the festival has tried to balance the new muralism of the moment with the history of Mantova (or Mantua in Emilian dialect) sometimes referred to as “the cradle of Renaissance culture”. Truthfully it’s a city known perhaps more for its Gonzaga tapestries than it’s Street Art culture but since 2016 “Without Frontiers” has hosted artists including Bianco-Valente, Boogie Ead, Corn79, Elbi Elem, Ericailcane and Bastardilla, Etnik, Fabio Petani, Mach505, Made514, Molis, Panem and Circenses, Perino and Vele, Peeta, Sebas Velasco, Vesod, Zedz, Joan Aguilò and Joys.
How many times have you heard that? The animal kingdom has nothing on our subways, which can present a parade of species at all hours, from the scaley to the furry to the creatures covered with multi-colored feathers.
As anthropomorphic art became a trend in the 2000’s we began to see animals and humans merge in street art. The artist named Vinz Feel Free certainly comes to mind for his sexualized birds. Even early Gaia (circa late 2000s) used pigs, horses, roosters heads on human bodies, and a handful of other artists combined features cleverly on the street as well.
So it is again exciting to find that artist Jake Genen has recently postered his own curious campaign of surrealistic images that look like something from a mad scientist’s laboratory of the late 1800s perhaps. Posed as serious studio photos in period costume, your imagination is set aflame, imagining a world where full-size human-rabbits might sit for a formal shot. Although George Bush spoke of human–animal hybrids in 2006 at his State of the Union speech, we still haven’t seen evidence of such dastardly commingling of species. But keep your eyes open in the subway, bro.
Enjoy these wheat-pasted posters of Mr. Genen’s campaign at this years’ Welling Court community Street Art event in Queens.
We’re in the thick sticky summer of it now -with Street Artists flooding the walls with many new unpermissioned illegal works. From small scale and new kids on the block to large legal/commercial murals by more established names- the public space in New York is teeming again with new ideas.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street (or boardwalk), this time featuring Adreian Wilson, Bert MTA, Bia Ferrer, Blaze, Captain Eyeliner, El Sol 25, Faust, Gatos a Gatas, H Lucatelli, Homoriot, Jason Naylor, Jilly Ballistic, Libranos, Movimiento Petrushaus, My 2 Cents, Nomad Clan, Novy, Pork, Shin Shin, Subdude, and Tatyana Fazlilazadeh.
Many Street Artists and graffiti writers create a new character to inhabit – as actor or director. New on NYC streets, illustrator Sara Lynne Leo seeks to capture your attention with little hand rendered characters making cleverly sideways critiques and observations – but only if you are good at noticing the small details of the street. These emotional mites and monsters are suffering the absurdities and insecurities of daily life, providing possibly a mirror to the everyday pedestrian as they wait at the crosswalk or stand in a doorway.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. VHILS “Debris” Sets Macau in Golden Nostalgia 2. OKUDA: The International Church Of Cannabis 3. Mr. Sis. and #SoloUnBeso 4. Parees International Mural Festival. Oviedo, Spain. Edition 2018.
BSA Special Feature: VHILS “Debris” Sets Macau in Golden Nostalgia
Is
anybody listening?
Last year Vhils published this film about communication – personal, intimate, and global. We waited a year to see if it felt equally timeless as the first time we viewed it and indeed it is. Some stories like these have an additional element that secures their status. Surrounding the portraits created by the Portuguese Street Artist in Macau, this collage of images, interactions, flashes of expression and sequences of behavior is accompanied by a linear/circular narration that attempts to reconnect to a personal history while chiding the narrators own behavior.
It’s a winsome recounting of memories that are shared globally; a communal and personal experience at once told with clarity and emotional nostalgia, written and directed by José Pando Lucas.
OKUDA: The International Church Of Cannabis
One would hope that the International Church of Cannibis would look like this! Owing perhaps to psychedelic art of 1960s counterculture, liquid light art, concert posters, murals, underground newspapers, and of course kaleidoscoping the world with new eyes, the Spanish Street Artists Okuda San Miguel transformed this internal architecture into a truly holy space. Denver is one of those American cities that still has a good economy thanks to Colorado’s low taxes, growing marijuana industry and soaring real estate market. It seems like the whole city has invited many Street Artists to transform street space over the last decade and with a good collector’s base, the art galleries are busy and special projects are popping up everywhere to show off the skillz.
With a new church that uses pot as a sacrament, this project is spearheaded by Steve Berke, who’s Wikipedia posting lists him as “two-time candidate for mayor of Miami Beach, cannabis activist, rapper, YouTuber, entrepreneur, and former All-American tennis player.” Dude, just gaze at the ceilings here and you realize that the possibilities are awesome.
Mr. Sis. and #SoloUnBeso
“Artist Mr. Sis is in Barcelona painting this pair of full figured females going in for the kiss on this billboard for Contorno Urbano,” we wrote a few weeks ago in a posting about this wall. Today we have the finished video.
Parees International Mural Festival. Oviedo, Spain. Edition 2018.
A new mini-doc from the
Parees Festival in Oviedo, Spain has just been released about the 2018 edition.
It features on-screen interviews with many of the artists who were involved,
including Colectivo Licuado, Roc BlackBlock, Taquen, Xav, Andrea Ravo Mattoni,
Kruella d’Enfer, Alfalfa y Twee Muizen.
Spidertag started in the early 2010s as a string artist an we used to bring you his installations in abandoned places in Spain. He then moved to experimentations with neon electric wire in unusual public activations in city margins, a sudden maze of intertwined light strings transforming in three dimensions. Today we see the latest experiments of Spidertag at the commercial/community Mural Festival in downtown Montreal.
Joy Gilleard and Hayley Garner are up on the lift, their buddy Samo the Artist cheering them on. They’ve committed themselves to a huge mural during Pride Week and they really could be having more fun socializing right now.
However, the UK based mural duo known on the street as Cbloxx and Aylo back in Manchester, are taking on a heavier job here – paying tribute to the million or more people buried on New York’s potter’s field, called Hart Island.
A stylistic blend photorealism and fantasy, both artists have had the opportunity to travel to many cities in the last five years – often creating works that are directly tied into the history of the location. Warm and direct, you can see that both artists are dedicated to social justice and often consider their work to be an important component in catalyzing positive change through awareness. Known variously as the home for a Union Civil War prison camp, a psychiatric institution, a tuberculosis sanatorium, a potter’s field, a homeless shelter, a boys’ reformatory, a jail, and a drug rehabilitation center, if you had forgotten the folks buried on Hart Island, Nomad Clan will help make sure that you remember.
“Dedicated
To the lost, to the forgotten
To the beaten and trodden
To the oppressed, the brave
To the anonymous who lay in mass graves
We see you!
To the numbers and the names
To the battles and the gains
To the quiet, the unseen
The kings and queens
We see you!!!”
New York artist Ori Carino does a roll down gate in the Lower East Side neighborhood in Manhattan, which he grew up in, to pay tribute to a movement that shaped his life.
“My artwork
owes a lot to these downtown Heroes, Warrior Saints, visionary activists, and
artists, and I hope to serve them in my work,” he tells us of this new piece he’s
doing to celebrate the LGBTQI+ people who have been all around him since he was
a kid.
“I was born on Houston Street and Sullivan Street in 1982, relatively close to Stonewall, moving two blocks from the Pyramid club when I was 8,” he says of the classic downtown bar known for pushing artistic and social boundaries in wild ways through the 1980s.
“It’s fair to say that my life has been significantly impacted by the sheer artistry and style, bravery, tragedy, and ecstatic triumphs of the gay rights movement. I’m proud that my home has always been a place where we celebrate diversity and fight for each other’s rights.”
There have been many murals in the past month that pay tribute to the history of this NYC scene that started a worldwide movement. For some reason, this one full of archetypal characters in the city strikes a deeper chord.
Ori tells us that it is meant as “an allegorical reminder of the sacrifices and nobility of the myriad heroes who engaged in the fight for equality. Each one embodies an element of the movement, as the shadows of the violent police actions and the forces of ignorance and hate, woven throughout the Stonewall movement histories, are valiantly overcome.
From the peace-sign-waving, protest-sign-wielding archetype, to the flying hero who emerges from the waving flag, each character participates in an unrelenting fight for peace. By incorporating esthetic influences from both Classical Eastern and Western art, this new work reflects that this noble cause encompasses people from all traditions and backgrounds, and the fight goes on!”
Cancer and fashion. Cancer and rugged virile outdoorsmen. Lifestyles of the rich and cancer.
Judith Supine is swaggering back to the street in rawhide stilletos, shooting out a new a campaign of repurposed parts and pieces parsed with a cowboy in a wild chiffon vest. These snatches of lyrics and literature and American mythology are wound tightly round Judith’s twisting id, inviting the sleek Madison Avenue of yestercancer back to the big screen.
Funnily, these new pieces that mark the return of divine Supine appear as camouflage on the streetscape; so fragmented and unsuspecting is the urban psyche now, pummeled and plowed by Polo, Puma, Prada and perpetual peacewar. While many bus-stop takeovers are discovered and removed, these are running for extended engagements, perhaps because these are accompanied by a name that has been seared into your brain. There’s no doubt that Judith will soon be adopted by those who are haute, you reckon?
In honor of the 50th
Anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising in the West Village in Manhattan, we
are giving the spotlight this Sunday to the many artworks that have been
created by dozens of artists from all over the world in the city over the past
weeks. Some of them are commissioned works and others are illegally placed on
the streets, regardless of who made them or under whose sponsorship they were
created or if they were placed illegally the important thing is to realize that
the struggle for recognition, acceptance, and justice didn’t just happen
because somebody was willing to give that to us.
It happened because a lot of people before us dared to challenged the establishment and fought to change the cultural norms, the laws in the books and ultimately the perception from the society at large. People suffered unspeakable evil and pain at the hands of unmoved gatekeepers and power brokers. People died rather than living a lie. People took to the streets to point fingers at those who stood silent when many others were dying and were deemed untouchable.
People marched to vociferate and yelled the truth and were arrested and marked undesirable. Many brothers and sisters who were much more courageous than we’ll ever be, defied a system that was designed to fail them and condemn them. Restless souls confronted our political, business, media and religious leaders right in their front yards with the truth and never backed down.
So we must pay homage to
them. We have what we have because of them. We owe it to them and we need to
understand that it was because of their vision, intelligence and fearless
actions that the majority began to understand that without them and their help
we would never get equal treatment. Equal rights. Equal opportunities.
So yes let’s celebrate,
dance and sing together but let’s feel the pain of those who can’t join in on
the celebrations because today still they are on the margins, hiding in the
shadows, being cast out from their families and communities and even killed and
tortured. Let’s remember that the job isn’t done, indeed far from it. Many
countries still have in their laws harsh punishment for those that don’t
conform to their established norms. Let’s keep the fight on, the light on, the
courage on, the voices loud and the minds open. Happy Pride.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street (or boardwalk), this time featuring Aloha, Buff Monster, David Puck, Divine, Fox Fisher, Homo Riot, IronClad, Jason Naylor, Joe Caslin, JPO, Meres One, Nomad Clan, Ori Carino, Royce Bannon, Sam Kirk, SAMO, SeeTf, and Tatyana Fazlalizadeh.
From Tatyana about this piece: “Some of Us Did Not Die. We’re Still Here. – June Jordan, Black, bi-sexual, activist, poet and writer. .
Last fall I met with members of @griotcircle, a community of LGBTQ+ Black and brown elders for my residency with @nycchr. I got to speak with them about their lives and some things that came up were the challenges of being Black and gay in New York years ago, like having to travel in groups because queer folks would be attacked for walking alone. Or not being served at restaurants because they were also black. “
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
