DavidL Paints Hitchcock, Warhol, Tim Burton, Kubrick: Through The Lens of Fer Alcala

DavidL Paints Hitchcock, Warhol, Tim Burton, Kubrick: Through The Lens of Fer Alcala

February 1, 2018

Photographer Fer Alcala recently explored an abandoned place known to some as Fraggle Rock with Street Artist/graffiti writer DavidL, who is specializing in personality infused portraits of cinematic and pop personae drawn primarily from the second half of the 20th century. Today he tells BSA readers about his experience on this road trip.

How I spent one day with DavidL in a marvelous abandoned place in the middle of nowhere watching him paint

~ Fer Acala

After 25 years writing graffiti, DavidL has found his own way of working. It’s funny because one of the inherent issues about graffiti and street art is visibility. All the trains, the bombing, the tagging…it’s all about being noticed, being every f-ing where. It has been like this since day one (Taki 183, Terror161, 1UP…you know how it works).

But for David it’s not like that anymore.

DavidL. Alfred Hitchcock. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Maybe it’s a sign of the days that we are living with social media, communication 2.0, etcetera. It’s obvious that if you have certain skills managing all this and a little bit of talent, plus a pinch of good taste, you can reach a global audience and show your work to the entire world even when you are concentrating the majority of your creations in a secret location.

What I like about David’s way of working is that he creates his own world. I’m not speaking about his wonderful caricatures. No. I mean that he has built (is still building) a certain kind of artwork with a lot of discipline and a strong working ethic behind it. Almost a hermit when we speak about painting walls, David is creating a beautiful personal universe ruled by his own choices. And, hey! It totally works.

DavidL. Alfred Hitchcock. Detail. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Some days ago I had the chance to accompany David to his ‘headquarters’. I can’t say much about the location, but it took a while to go there by car from Barcelona and the enchanted abandoned landscape was astonishing. Obviously, I wasn’t the first person to be there. Everyone who drives by can have their own “urbex” experience in this abandoned place and they wouldn’t be disappointed with their findings.

Other artists and friends have painted there but I felt very honored to have the opportunity to go with David, to explore and to watch him create a piece from nothing. It felt like a privilege to enter his world invited by the host and to witness the whole process.

DavidL. Edward Scissorhands. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Despite the cold, the hunger, and the absence of beers, it was important for me to capture the details. I wanted to share the thoughts and the doubts, to see the commitment behind the creation of a piece in a single room for seven hours while listening to hip hop beats. I explored the place and went here and there but it is not and everyday experience for me to witness such a private way of working outside of the four walls of a studio.

David’s pieces are about pop culture. He chooses them kind of randomly and takes them to his own world. Movies, comic books, art figures…have being transformed using a very recognizable style. As a part of the process, DavidL keeps the original sketches and drawings and he sells them at a very reasonable price.

DavidL. Tim Burton. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

It’s just a matter of time before DavidL is discovered and we both wonder if he will be able to keep this place and the art of its walls under the radar much longer. How long it will it continue to paint in places like this without time constriction and be peaceful and be calm and work without any hurries and be in control of the timing and go back there the next day to finish the work?

I haven’t the answers to all these questions, but what I know is that there are still tons of empty rooms waiting for DavidL to paint them. And, my friends, that will happen for sure. – FA

DavidL. Beetlejuice. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Hellboy. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. ET. Detail. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. ET. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Doc Brown. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Stanley Kubrick. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Village of The Damned. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Village of The Damned. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Process shot. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

 

DavidL. Process shot. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Process shot. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Process shot. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Process shot. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Process shot. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Andy Warhol. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Ursula. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

DavidL. Invented character. Fraggle Rock. Spain. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

 

Read more
Julieta XLF & Bifido Emancipate “Le Baccanti” in Requena

Julieta XLF & Bifido Emancipate “Le Baccanti” in Requena

January 31, 2018

The  Street Art duo of Julieta XLF and Bifido continues to produce works that blend together their strongest individual talents with elements of photorealism and decorative painting organically combined. This time we are in Requena, Spain and looking at the reflection of a girl looking at herself as a free woman, say the artists. “Le Baccanti”, from the Greek tragedian of classical Athens named Euripides, features such a figure unaware perhaps of the possibility of her own emancipation.

Julieta XFL . Bifido. “Le Baccanti”. Requena, Spain. January 2018. (photo © Roberto Palmer)

Say the artists; “The wine, represented by some grape berries held in her hands, serves as chance of something else; the richness of the land and unconsciousness of one’s ability to achieve full awareness. The girl, split, looks at her previous self. She is a free woman, able to be whatever she is, without compromise. A woman as fierce as the surrounding landscape that she holds strongly, making herself part of it.”

Julieta XFL . Bifido. “Le Baccanti”. Requena, Spain. January 2018. (photo © Roberto Palmer)

Julieta XFL . Bifido. “Le Baccanti”. Requena, Spain. January 2018. (photo © Roberto Palmer)

Julieta XFL . Bifido. “Le Baccanti”. Requena, Spain. January 2018. (photo © Roberto Palmer)

Read more
Converting Gold From Our Waste: “Bordalo II / 2011 – 2017”

Converting Gold From Our Waste: “Bordalo II / 2011 – 2017”

January 30, 2018

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Are those Ai Weiwei bicycles clustered and suspended in the air overhead? Rather they are stored here like a 3 layer spoke, wheel, and frame cake, pressed to the side of this bricked wall tin-roof warehouse along with rolling office chairs waving their legs in the air like little lady bugs stuck on their backs.

Everything here has been pressed into position by the small mountains of white garbage bags filled with something soft, like dollops of whipped cream. The entire confection is sprinkled across the top with lanterns and light fixtures plucked from decades of the last half-century.

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Such is the splendid stuff of dreams and discovery for Bordalo II, the Lisbon-based Street Artist and maker of garbage relief animal portraits in cities across the world.

These are the things that when arranged on shelves and in placed relation to a floor plan, within parameters and boundaries of our mundanity, will comprise a perfect environment of domesticity; full of memory, associative emotion, symmetry. Objects, materials melted and poured, carved and plain, screwed and snapped, polished and sprayed, emulsified, inset, extruded, coiled, soldiered, plated, woven. These dimensional collections of matter matter to us. Metal alloy. Plastic polymer. Blown glass. Rubber, copper, steel, bakelite, particle board, glue.

Disarrange. You create chaos, disruption, disunity, discontent. Arrange again and create a muskrat, a buck deer, a petulant parakeet, an undulant octopus.

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Bordalo II, so-named after his watercolor master grandfather Real Bordalo who passed last year at 91, has in six or seven short years made a name for himself with your garbage, refusing to allow it to go to the junkyard or to float in the ocean just yet.

“After surveying the variety of offerings that included industrial, commercial, and consumer detritus, he speedily chose what appear to me to be a random bunch of junk,” writes five-decade photographer of urban art and artists, Martha Cooper about how he captured her interest.

“It was a genuine pleasure to watch an animal evolve before everyone’s eyes. As I watched him create the sculptural mural I was amazed to see how he utilized the shapes, textures, and aesthetic qualities of the found items to recreate the octopus in such a true-to-life manner.”

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Hers and others’ observations and essays are collected in “Bordalo II, 2011-2017” released in concert with his massive solo show “Attero” this November in Lisbon. A graffiti writer as a youth with his crew R315 Dream Team, the artist credits the three years at the Fine Arts Faculty in his city for allowing him to discover sculpture and to experiment with different materials, seducing him away from strictly painting. With it he is creating critique of our love of “things” and the excesses of consumerism, especially those excesses that are endangering wildlife.

“Bordalo is a master of our refuse,” says writer and critic Carlo McCormick, “what we throw way in our endless glut of consumption, the ideas, sensibilities and dreams we discard in the name of progress and all that accumulates unwanted, ignored, and even reviled by society’s voracious appetite for something disposable.” McCormick looks carefully at the implications of such an art practice and praises Bordalo II for the sharp tongue he brings to a sometimes superficial conversation occurring in the Street Art scene.

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

No hero is he, nor does he pretend to be. Rather Bordalo II uses his work to remind us of our integral part of a cycle that includes everyone and everything. João Pedro Matos Fernandes, the Portuguese Minister of Environment adds his voice to those in this unassuming but powerful tome after laying out the treacherous story of our trash.

Speaking of Bordalo’s work, Mr. Fernandes writes,” It calls to our attention the choices we make in our everyday life, and to the consequences of our actions. And he does so in a scathing fashion, which I thoroughly enjoy, by using trash to represent some of the more emblematic species which our behavior puts at risk.”

It’s a brief snapshot of the artist in motion, with surely more evolutions to come. Ever the delicious quipster with the poetic tongue, McCormick lauds the street trash wizard.

“And in this world where we choke the planet with out incessant rubbish, let us celebrate those alchemical artists like Bordalo II who have that rare gift of being able to turn shit into gold.”

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Read more
Vlady Art Spreads A Poem Across Stockholm : “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep”

Vlady Art Spreads A Poem Across Stockholm : “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep”

January 29, 2018

When you live in a city your everyday interaction with the built environment may make one feel quite divorced from nature. Thanks to the parks and trees and the changing of the seasons, however, you can be poignantly reminded of the passage of time and a touch upon a somewhat grounded awareness of life’s cycles.

Somehow we know that the proximity to the sun and the tilt of the globe determines the length of our days, and seasons appear in literature and lyrics across our various screens for all of our lives.

Vlady Art. “Do not stand at my grave and weep” (Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905-2004) (photo © Vlady Art)

Stockholm Street Artist Vlady Art says that he waited through all of the seasons of a year to install a poem throughout his city that speaks to the season of loss, and remembrance. Using recycled real estate lawn signs, Vlady reprised in portions the poem “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep”, written in 1932 by the American Mary Elizabeth Frye.

“Today is one of the most popular poems in the world, crossing national boundaries for use on bereavement cards and at funerals regardless of race, religion or social status. Its spiritual words demonstrated a remarkable power to soothe loss,” he says as he describes his text-based interventions that span locations as well as seasons.

Vlady Art. “Do not stand at my grave and weep” (Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905-2004) (photo © Vlady Art)

“As the poem openly talks about nature and elements, I found that the perfect set for those spiritual words would have been outside. There the people should have it. The poem seemed to contemplate the same places that I admired while walking or cycling. Here in Sweden we have a close relation with the seasons and the outdoors. It’s not strange at all even for a Stockholm person to have a stroll in the forest or bath in a lake in the silence of the midnight light,” he says.

“During the summer days one of the most popular activities here is to wait the sunset on a top of a hill. And this is not a farming countryside, but a million’s people capital. I specify this because that might explain the mood behind the work. Also by disconnecting the verses and isolating them, I find it pleasant. Yes, I had to wait for the snow, the autumn rain or the mature grain. Is quite normal to handle more projects in the same time and wait for the right moment to strike.”

Vlady Art. “Do not stand at my grave and weep” (Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905-2004) (photo © Vlady Art)

Obviously the foresight, planning, and dedication that this took to fully implement is much more than the more common Street Art interventions that we are familiar with. Viewing the documentation today makes it all seen worth it.

In case you’re wondering, Vlady is hooked on the process and will have more installations to come. “For another project involving the autumn leaves I waited also about a year. I have already a good idea for the next Christmas, as well!”

Vlady Art. “Do not stand at my grave and weep” (Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905-2004) (photo © Vlady Art)

Vlady Art. “Do not stand at my grave and weep” (Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905-2004) (photo © Vlady Art)

Vlady Art. “Do not stand at my grave and weep” (Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905-2004) (photo © Vlady Art)

Vlady Art. “Do not stand at my grave and weep” (Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905-2004) (photo © Vlady Art)

Vlady Art. “Do not stand at my grave and weep” (Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905-2004) (photo © Vlady Art)

Vlady Art. “Do not stand at my grave and weep” (Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905-2004) (photo © Vlady Art)

Do not stand at my grave and weep (Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1905-2004)

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sun on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.

I am the soft star-shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Stand_at_My_Grave_and_Weep


Read more
BSA Images Of The Week: 01.28.18

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.28.18

January 28, 2018 ,

BSA-Images-Week-Jan2015

Stumbling and slipping and dancing through January here in New York requires dexterity and a tolerance for dry skin and flattened hat-hair and the occasional sore throat.  Thankfully there are great indoor activities sometimes like the huge trippy balloon installations by suave art dynamo Jihan Zencirli at her opening exhibition inside the NYC Ballet atrium Friday night. Hundreds of thousands of balloons, free bourbon, and a DJ after a surprisingly post-post-modern program of envelope pushing dancing on the mainstage by amazing pros! Gurl, that ballet is ballin’.

Elsewhere in art news the Guggenheim’s Nancy Specter offered a gold-plated toilet to the White House after turning down their request to borrow a VanGogh, people lined up to see “One Basquiat” at the Brooklyn Museum this week while they streamed by many Basquiats on New York Streets without looking in the 80s, and New York magazine announced a “public art” campaign with 50 artists (Yoko Ono, Barbara Krueger, Marilyn Minter) this year that sounds a lot like it is borrowing heavily from Street Art techniques “throughout the five boroughs and in a variety of formats, such as on street lamps or “wild postings” on walls around the city.” Wild postings?

One more indoor exhibit totally worth your time is Ann Lewis’s installations at a no-name popup in Manhattatan.  The conceptual Street/gallery activist artist continues to push her own boundaries, and many of ours, with her work addressing difficult social and political issues like police brutality, institutional bias against women, racism, the Resistance. At a time when we need women’s voices to rise, she collaborates with StudioSpaceNYC at a pop-up at 149 West 14th Street (shots from the installation below).

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Ann Lewis, Atomik, Jihan Zencirli, Obey, Pet-de-None, Shepard Fairey, Studio Space NYC and Tona.

Top Image: TONA in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

OBEY in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ann Lewis and Studio Space NYC  exhibition/collaboration “Unspoken”. Stay tuned for more on this exhibition. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ann Lewis and Studio Space NYC  exhibition/collaboration “Unspoken”. Stay tuned for more on this exhibition. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pet-de-None in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cinza in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Atomik in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hasta la vista B2B in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DON’T EAT ME in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We couldn’t read this tag…help anyone? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jihan Zencirli AKA Geronimo at the NYC Ballet installation. Detail. More to come shortly… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jihan Zencirli AKA Geronimo at the NYC Ballet installation. Detail. More to come shortly… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Manhattan and the East River from the Williamsburg Bridge. January 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Read more
Saturday is Good for SAMO in China as Imagined by 0907

Saturday is Good for SAMO in China as Imagined by 0907

January 27, 2018

Street Artist 0907 is somewhere in China today with this new multiples stencil of Jean Michel Basquiat as shot by Andy Warhol. If you had a doubt about the global appreciation of these artists on the street, here’s at least one answer.

0907 tribute to SAMO in China. (photo © 0907)

0907 tribute to SAMO in China. (photo © 0907)

Read more
BSA Film Friday 01.26.18

BSA Film Friday 01.26.18

January 26, 2018

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. Vermibus – In Absentia
2. Balú – Hutsean
3. Pati Baztán for Contorno Urbano 12 + 1 in Barcelona
4. Ai Weiwei: Human Flow. Trailer
5. Balloons Festoon the Ballet with Jihan Zencirli

bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: Vermibus – In Absentia

The Francis Bacon of advertising posters, Vermibus returns today in the Parisian Metro, solvent in hand. In such a fashionable city, where the image of beauty has been examined from every angle, it’s the visual pollution of consumerism that the Berlin-based artist targets. Shot in a very public series of venues, the Xar Lee directed video is significant for its absence of public, the intended audience for the beauty posters in this, their public space.

Hutsean – Balú

“Art is not in museums. Art is in all men and women,” proclaims Balú in tribute to Jorge Oteiza. The multidisciplinary artist from Basque country commissions his own intervention to honor this BAsque sculptor and thinker who has been a reference point for thought and art since Balú began his career. The intervention carried out in the Paseo Nuevo de Donosti, is located under the sculpture “empty construction” by Jorge Oteiza.

 

Pati Baztán for Contorno Urbano 12 + 1 in Barcelona

Pati Baztán takes special pleasure in savoring the color, the process, the materiality of her lifeblood. Here you can see the models of contemporary staking claim in the public sphere, asserting the massive blocks of color and volume as ends unto themselves, upending conventions of aerosol wizardry and defining a different approach to intervention.

 

Ai Weiwei: Human Flow. Trailer

Chinese contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei keeps the focus where governments and war profiteers would like to distract you from. When entire cultures are displaced, their lives made precarious, it is no longer simply geopolitical grabbing for resources – it is inhumanity. Ai Weiwei finds it and flows it into our midst.

Balloons Festoon the Ballet with Jihan Zencirli

Jihan Zencirli aka GERONIMO takes over the visuals with her ballooning imagination in the winter months at New York City Ballet for the sixth presentation of Art Series. Previous installations have featured notables like Faile,JR, Santtu Mustonen, and Dustin Yellen in the main atrium and onstage at Lincoln Center.

Read more
Canemorto & Angelino Release “Golden Age”

Canemorto & Angelino Release “Golden Age”

January 25, 2018

Not quite Domingo, Carreras, and Pavarotti but it’s still an historic achievement in the field of music. The inimitable trio of lively street canines known as Canemorto (dead dog) have just dropped a new track straight from Italy entitled “Gipsy Kings”, the eponymous single from their EP “Golden Age”, performed near the end of the mini-documentary below.

Canemorto & Angelino “Golden.Age” Hand painted album cover. Studio Cromie. Grottaglie, Italy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And now they’ve brought Angelino into their mix so you know its all FAME for the future with 4 MCs on the mic. Or, to paraphrase the lyrics, Canemorto with their homie from Studio Chromie gives you zero phonies on the microphoney. Talents like this rarely make it past security, let alone into the studio, so the howling results of this musical are remarkably fresh, painfully funny, and sometimes just painful.

Canemorto & Angelino “Golden.Age” Printed album cover. Studio Cromie. Grottaglie, Italy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Seen here is the still-warm vinyl for all the old skool DJs rocking turntables, with a custom screen printed B side. For a frameable edition of the cover the artists have also dug deep in created custom painted versions. A new single to add to a list of musical contributions to the Street Art/graffiti world, surely a greatest hits collection is on the horizon as these neo-brutalists show their tongue-style is as slick as their handstyle.

Canemorto & Angelino “Golden.Age” Lyrics. Studio Cromie. Grottaglie, Italy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Canemorto & Angelino “Golden.Age” The vinyl. Studio Cromie. Grottaglie, Italy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Read more
In Your Face With Sekone and Rexenera Fest in Carballo, Galicia

In Your Face With Sekone and Rexenera Fest in Carballo, Galicia

January 24, 2018

Dude! Turn the can around!

SekOne. Detail. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Sekone caught our eye in this Spanish Oceanside town of 36,000 recently with this mural that gets it all backwards – nevermind the handstyle.

Carballo in Galicia on the northwest tip of Spain is home to the Rexenera Fest, a mural festival that gathers local and international urban artists like Curiot (Mexico), Sekone (Galiza), Pixel Pancho (Valencia), Jorit (Italy), Aryz, Isaac Cordal (Galiza), Cinta Vida (Catalunya, and AnimitoLand (Argentina). Now planning for a fourth year, the town is blessed with some high quality works and photographer Lluis Olive Bulbena shares some of the loot with BSA readers here today.

SekOne. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Cinta Vidal. Detail. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Cinta Vidal. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Yoseba M.P. Detail. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Yoseba M.P. Detail. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Isaac Cordal. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Isaac Cordal. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Jorit Agoch. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Curiot. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Animalito Land. Detail. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Animalito Land. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Saturno. Detail. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Saturno. Detail. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Saturno. Detail. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Saturno. Detail. Rexenera Festival. Third Edition. Carballo, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olivé Bulbena)

Read more
Irene Valiente at Contorno Urbano 12 + 1 in Sant Feliu de Llobregat

Irene Valiente at Contorno Urbano 12 + 1 in Sant Feliu de Llobregat

January 23, 2018

VALIENTE CREATIONS launches the 12+1 project in Sant Feliu – Proyect 12+1, urban art in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain

A teacher of drawing from Barcelona, Irene Valiente loves organic forms, especially those of an aquatic nature. So it makes sense that she dove right in to her mural for the 2018 premier of the 12+1 Project here in Sant Feliu this month.

Irene Valiente. Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. Sant Feliu de Llobregat. Barcelona. 01.18 (photo © Clara Antón)

Here are just a couple of new photos from her wall that interprets the amorphous shapes of the nearby swimming pool at the Sant Feliu Swimming Club. The formal painter is normally working on canvasses for exhibition in the gallery when not creating new murals on her city’s streets and she calls this one “Nare”, owing the Latin derivation of fleet.

Check out more of her work HERE.

Irene Valiente. Fundación Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. Sant Feliu de Llobregat. Barcelona. 01.18 (photo © Clara Antón)

Read more
Spider Tag Casts His Glowing Web Higher in Helsingborg

Spider Tag Casts His Glowing Web Higher in Helsingborg

January 22, 2018

When Street Art passes into the realm of public art it takes on the character of permanence that will withstand time. While that may happen with the occasional graffiti burner or mural, more conventional Street Art is illegal and will be crossed over by a rival or eroded by the elements.

Spider Tag. Helsingborg, Sweden. Januray 2018. (photo © Spider Tag)

Spidertag, whose work we began documenting for you years ago when his tools were a hammer, nails, and yarn, has just created his first permanent mural in the city of Helsingborg, Sweden – and he’s more than pleased.

“I’m very happy cause it was a difficult one and a dream come true!” he tells us of the 300 meter long cable on the side of a multi-story building is meant to last for a number of years. The abstract geometry is best seen during nighttime hours, giving it an ethereal quality that occupies an area, rather than simply a wall. Spidertag says that he has his own special cables and this is the largest he’s done.

Spider Tag. Helsingborg, Sweden. Januray 2018. (photo © Spider Tag)

 

Read more
BSA Images Of The Week: 01.21.18

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.21.18

January 21, 2018 ,

BSA-Images-Week-Jan2015

The streets across the US were again flooded with justifiably angry, determined women yesterday. Nothing we can say here will do justice to the enormity of the crowds protesting in 250 cities on the first anniversary of the inauguration, nor the range of political and social fronts that are being contested.

Clearly the world stage has been thrown off kilter by the the erosion of trust and confidence in this government, in the economy, in the fraying social fabric, the attacks on people and the earth. “The decline in confidence in the U.S. president has been severe in some countries since Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017,” says FactCheck.org, and it “is especially pronounced among some of America’s closest allies in Europe and Asia, as well as neighboring Mexico and Canada,” the Pew Global Attitudes Project found. That’s in only one year.

Oh, did we mention that the US has a government shutdown right now?

Today we chose the top image by Alex Senna to symbolize the people who are in the shadows who are hiding and who think we don’t know they are there and that no one is looking out for them. Immigrants across the country are being threatened, yet exploited day after day – afraid to go to the police or even hospitals when abused by employers, by family members, by misguided racists. We see you and we hear you. As a nation descended from immigrants, the indigenous, and the enslaved, we remember our history. Similarly, people who are being sex trafficked, or who are unable to speak up because of financial restraints, religious restraints, psychological restraints. We see you.

Heavy topics, but these are the streets, our streets, all of us. Roberta Smith said this week in The New York Times when reviewing the Outsider Art Fair; “Art Is Everywhere”. We’ll widen that sentiment and say that art is for everyone, and the street is more than ever a perfect place to see it.

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Ai WeiWei, Alex Senna, Cholula, Ernest Zacharevic, Fontes World, Mr. June, Retna, Roman, Stray Ones, Terry Urban, and Zola.

Top Image: Alex Senna ( photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ai Weiwei. “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”. NYC wide multimedia/multi site exhibition for Public Art Fund. Brooklyn, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Art Council (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Terry Urban (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Adam Fujita and Fontes World collaboration brings to mind our recent article about artists endless fight for affordable housing in NYC Indeed a Dying Breed. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stray Ones (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic fills the space with a cube. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist in Cholula, Puebla. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Paris (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zola (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn vs Everybody (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Retna in Cholula, Puebla. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Román in Cholula, Puebla. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. June for The Buschwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This public ad campaign against fur borrows from the street art stencil technique. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist in Mexico City. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Untitled. January 2018. Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Read more

Recent Articles on BSA