A Diverse Mix on All Accounts – HK Walls 2017, Dispatch 4

March 25, 2017 Artists

This week BSA and Urban Nation (UN) are in Hong Kong for the 4th edition of HKwalls to capture a very international and local mix of artists in this East/West nexus; a world-class city for art and culture, English and Cantonese, hi-tech and traditional methods – all during the enormous Art Basel week. We’ll bring you the new walls, some previous pieces, some graffiti, stickers, and a whole lot of color from this fast moving and dynamic city on the Pearl River Delta of East Asia.

Last night was a blast with Louisa Haining and “Secret Walls” at the HKwalls HQ here on the southside of Hong Kong. DJs were pumping old school hiphop hits and happy jams from 80s and 90s and the young and extremely attentive HK crowd was happy and savvy, although a BK crowd would have singing/yelling the lyrics and fronting and jumping around more probably.

Debe. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It’s a sort of franchise, these Secret Walls events, begun In Berlin in the 90s(?) and the competition of multiple artists and art styles up on a stage creating in teams in a semi-competitive environment with black instruments on a white wall – all while the audience is swilling beer and pumping to jams blasted by a DJ… is just flexible enough to respond to any range of tastes and ultimately does what we love the most; engages people directly with the creative spirit.

Also we appreciated the diverse mix of graff writers and Street Artists from Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, UK, Italy and US – not unlike the representation of people in HKwalls itself out here on the street.

Debe. Process shot. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And that spirit has been alive on the streets for HKwalls these last few warm and sticky days, now at full volume with artists around many corners (and up a few elevators) making new murals in this industrial and auto neighborhood now in the early-throes of gentrification. On the one hand, walking on some streets is so loud and near-death-defying with boldly defiant drivers who don’t appear to register your existence as you scurry across the street in front of them.

On the other hand there are some of those trendy shops with pressed panninis and olives in a tub and pretty mommies and business suit daddies ferrying their progeny up the elevator of new glass buildings to private day care activities – and of course the sparkling green soccer fields full of teams playing every night.

Debe. Process shot. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It helps matters that there is a brand new extension of the MTR train system, all shiny and smooth and hi-tech and friendly, running right though the neighborhood out to the furthest island of Apleichu – now five minutes away.

Enter the HKwalls festival. Run by three partners – founders Jason Dembski and Stan Wu and managing director Maria Wong. This is the fourth time out for the festival, which has been held in different neighborhoods and had various configurations in terms of art and artists. Determined to break the mold in whatever ways are possible, the three have backgrounds in graffiti, architecture, marketing, entrepreneurship, and curating/producing events.

Tuts. Process shot. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The mix of artists is about a third from Pacific Rim, a third Euro-US, and a third locals and expats. Respected by the graff kids and old schoolers, they are smart to be inclusive of HK’s professional artistic folks too, including inroads from the illustration side, tape artistry, brushwork of all manner, aerosol freehand, stencil, projection mapping. More on this later but just wanted to give you a little background on the solid knowledge that is in effect, yo. Suffice to say more attention needs to given to this hard-working big hearted team.

Tuts completed his wall. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Today’s update gives you a sense of some of the flavor on the festival tip, along with some shots of pieces inside the Art Central show on the other side of mountain on this island.

While it was good see the offerings in the deliriously corporate environment under giant tents near a Ferris Wheel – and a number of the full ceiling to floor sculptural installations were of good quality – there is a definite reigned-in quality, with a slight tendency toward cute. As artists in certain parts of the Western world and even the Middle East have become more activist and challenging in certain aspects, the art fairs in general are sort of playing it safe.

Spok. Process shot. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mauy. Process shot. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jecks. Process shot. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Messy Desk . SeeNaeMe. Process shot. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dilk. Process shot. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aspire. Process shot. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wong Ting Fung. Process shot. HKwalls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cleon Patterson at Art Central Art Fair. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey at Art Central Art Fair. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Desire Obtain Cherish at Art Central Art Fair. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Anida Yeou Ali at Art Central Art Fair. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Invader at Art Central Art Fair. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Craneo at Art Central Art Fair. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

HKWalls and Hong Kong stories come to you courtesy BSA in Partnership with Urban Nation (UN)

#urbannationberlin #allnationsunderoneroof #unblog @urbannationberlin @bkstreetart

BSA Film Friday: 03.24.17 – Hong Kong Edition

March 24, 2017 Artists

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

This week BSA and Urban Nation (UN) are in Hong Kong checking out flavors and practices on a true international scene. Street Art and graffitti too Euro-centric for you? No worries, Asia has a growing, shape-shifting series of scenes of their own, not easy to categorize and very alive.

Now screening :
1. Graffiti Asia
2. BSA Right now at HKwalls2017
3. UTAH & ETHER – Hong Kong
4. M.I.A. – Rewear It

BSA Special Feature: Graffiti Asia

Hong Kong, Shenzen, Shanghai represent!

Let’s make some noise for Indonesia, Thailand, Malayasia, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan! Phillipines in da house! Jakarta where you at?

Here is your inside trip around some of the most popular graffiti locations, words of some of the emerging and established artists, a good selection of the attitudes and incidental atmospheric sounds and details that are evocative of life and the street scene in each.

The mini-documentary dates back a handful of years yet remains completely relevant and accessible – possibly because it does not rely heavily on spoken word, allowing you to gain a sense of the practice through other means. Clearly the international style is evolving, local flavor is always king, and you can see how Graffiti Asia changes the game.

HKwalls has a nice selection of videos looping on a wall inside their main event space that highlights a variety of aspects of current street culture. We feature this one because it keeps the focus on the people who are organically preparing the creative soil for what comes next.

BSA Right Now at HKwalls2017

No need to wait for the fancy video team here to cut together all the best shots – Jaime’s got his phone, yo. 60 seconds of right now at HKwalls.

Featuring still-wet and fumey pieces from Alphabet Monsters (Amuse and Merlot), Spok Brillor, Dilk, Mauy, and Tuts.

UTAH & ETHER – Hong Kong

The Grifters invariably take the thrill level ten times higher toward hair raising painting adventure with UTAH & Ether.

UTAH & ETHER – PROBATION VACATION: LOST IN ASIA (Episode 10 – Hong Kong) from The Grifters on Vimeo.

M.I.A. – Rewear It

And let’s get up and dance. It’s Friday !

HKWalls and Hong Kong stories come to you courtesy BSA in Partnership with Urban Nation (UN)

#urbannationberlin #allnationsunderoneroof #unblog @urbannationberlin @bkstreetart

The Tiniest Brutalist Sculptures – HKWalls 2017, Dispatch 3 (as in 3 x 3 x 3)

March 23, 2017 Artists, Interview

This week BSA and Urban Nation (UN) are in Hong Kong for the 4th edition of HKWalls to capture a very international and local mix of artists in this East/West nexus; a world-class city for art and culture, English and Cantonese, hi-tech and traditional methods – all during the enormous Art Basel week. We’ll bring you the new walls, some previous pieces, some graffiti, stickers, and a whole lot of color from this fast moving and dynamic city on the Pearl River Delta of East Asia.

When you spot one of these palm-sized concrete sculptures on the street in Hong Kong they may remind you of Brutalist architecture or the dense clustering of concrete beehives like so many of this cities’ neighborhoods.

3 x 3 x 3. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The tiny formations by UK Street Artist Steev Saunders aka 3x3x3 may point you toward the man-made environment, but they may also recall organic shapes, sort of like industrial barnacles which attach themselves to the bodies of factory-whales during their free-swimming concrete larval stage.

These could be hi/low tech sensors of the city environment, in much the same way as Hong Kong ocean scientists use selected barnacles as biomonitors to measure concentrations of trace metals like arsenic, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, manganese, nickel, silver, zinc.

3 x 3 x 3. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

3x3x3 has worked as a sculptor and sound designer with complex creations that employ fundamentalist mechanics in rather a Steam-Punkian manner and style. On the street simply as “3” he has used a triad of sprayed repetitions of stenciled symbols and the numeral 3 as well as larger complex tags formed with rebar that is fired and pounded and beaten and bent into outlines.

These smaller pieces are so understated that they may well be overlooked, but once you discover them you are tempted to childhood, playing with your toys, imagining all the tiny people who live within them and realizing what a gargantuan giant you have become.

3 x 3 x 3. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Certainly these expressions of the creative spirit on the street are not easily grouped with the massive murals that have characterized the rise of so-called Street Art festivals, and their humble simplicity and scale makes the impact that much more impressive.

An invited exhibiting artist in the formal inside exhibition at HKWalls this year, 3x3x3 tells us that these pieces on the street art not only recalling his experience of the city, but also the country.

BSA: What inspires these small sculptures? Architecture? Materials? Comic books?
3x3x3: Architecture is the inspiration behind the concrete pieces, as you can see around, HK is packed with the stuff. Yeah they are brutalist style but in a delicate way. I’m not a fan of giant skyscrapers, I like the countryside, mountains and rocks.

3 x 3 x 3. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Have you watched someone discover one of these pieces? How do they react?
3x3x3: I haven’t watched anyone discover the pieces. They are so small I think few people notice them and I often put them in positions where they blend into the surroundings, I like that they can be unnoticed but in plain view. Some government workers have even painted around them.

BSA: You have also tagged with a metal cutout of the number “3”. Are you the 3rd child in the family?
3x3x3: Ha ha , I’m not the 3rd but I like the number, it has many graphic possibilities , it’s a nice shape and it’s a lucky number too. In the graffiti scene it’s all about getting your name up so I thought “I’ll be just a number”.

3 x 3 x 3. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: There is a rebar sculpture in the fine art show for HK Walls. Can you talk about your interest in art that takes a third dimension in public space?
3x3x3: I’ve always been interested in sculpture, making stuff is fun and the processes bring up new ideas. Welding and bending steel is physically demanding so I don’t focus on that exclusively. In 1995 I started carving spirals into wet concrete whenever I came across it, which was fairly often in HK. When street art started to become noticed more I was inspired but wanted to do something unique so in 2003 I put up my first concrete pieces.

3 x 3 x 3. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How to Detect a Brutalist Building by Charles Humphries (© Charles Humphries)

HKWalls and Hong Kong stories come to you courtesy BSA in Partnership with Urban Nation (UN)

#urbannationberlin #allnationsunderoneroof #unblog @urbannationberlin @bkstreetart

SNIK, Flip-Flops, Amuse & Merlot – HKWalls 2017, Dispatch 2

March 22, 2017 Artists

“Hong Kong is that tough sweaty dude with a gas blowtorch in his hands, soldiering a metal frame on the sidewalk while wearing a muscle shirt and flip flops with a cigarette tucked over his ear and a lit one in his mouth,” to roughly paraphrase the description of this city from an artist at a discussion panel here last night.

As he delivers this gem, you look to your left at the pink-cheeked bearded half of the artist duo SNIK, who shakes his head in agreement. Yes, this does seem like a good description of HK so far.

The first finished wall for HK Walls 2017 is this multi-layered stencil by the duo Snik. Detail. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hong Kong also is the top-boss-lip-gloss power babe waiting for a train at the Prince Edward station with sharply drawn persimmon red lips and cinnamon-bun braided hair bobs that look like Mickey Mouse ears on her head – striking a commanding stance with one hand on her waist and her cool eyes laser-focused on her phone screen.

Also, Hong Kong is the pounding staccato noise of 5 double-decker buses hurtling around a concrete road curve at top speed only 5 meters away from you on the sidewalk, propelling hot bluffs of gritty wind that push you closer to base of factories here here on Wong Chuk Hang Road.

Snik. Process shot. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Merlot and Amuse, an artist duo who know a lot about letter style, hand style, and style in general are painting a massive 30 meter long tag in a opening between industrial buildings knocking out their text based monikers that borrow and snatch from raw graffiti, wildstyle, pop, and advertising design. Lately, drips.

Merlot is originally from Seattle and its outskirts and has been writing/painting for a decade roughly. For the last two years she and Amuse have been hanging together, sometimes calling their two-person crew “The Alphabet Monsters”, possibly alluding to the cosmic comic influences that may evoke fantasies and stories from graphic novels.

Snik. Process shot. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

I’ve been testing and doing a bunch of different things because I am a graphic designer and so I like exploring a couple of different approaches,” she explains during a break from painting. “Typically the letters will all stay pretty much the same but with this one we wanted to have more fun and do something different,” which includes painting letters in each others names.

We point out the “S” in amuse, which appears to split wide at the top – little molecules spreading apart and spraying upwards. That’s his “S,” but she says he’s coming over later to give the treatment to her “O”.

BSA: Have you two used the fire extinguisher much before?
Merlot: I haven’t but he has before and I would really like to start using it more. He is into this very drippy kind of zone right now and I think that is what he wants his new look to be this year – he actually did a new fire extinguisher piece recently and he incorporated all of these different elements and it was really amazing.

Snik. Process shot. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Where did you learn how to paint with the extinguisher?
Amuse: My buddy Morgan is a big solid influence of mine and he said to me, “We need to try something different.” Now that is all I want to do. A graffiti writer for more than fifteen years, Amuse says he gets his new tricks sometimes from other guys in other crews he is part of. “Morgan is another guy in the crew – we’re all in the same crew and his approach – Also a very good street artist who I grew up with (in Chicago)- Esteban del Valle – he is amazing and he has this same approach with the dripping and then the nice detailed line work over it,” Amuse explains, “and he told me ‘dude you are killing yourself with all the spray paint – why don’t you incorporate some other kind of paint?’ And he’s right, the bucket paint allows you to paint so much bigger and faster and then you can go back and work on it.”

Snik. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Evidently HK Walls is in full effect right now, with the French trio Anyway, Berlin Duo Snik, Hong Kong’s Wong Ting Fung, Philippine’s Kris Abrigo, and Italy’s Pixel Pancho all on the street, on ladders, on bamboo scaffolding, on cherry pickers. Just saw Spain’s Spok in an elevator, Zoer showed us his purple/moss/tan color pallet on his phone and tape artist Buff Diss has been lurking from every corner.

And this is a taste of what it is like on the street; The electric/eclectic High/Low influences of Hong Kong are knocking everyone about – sounds of traffic and trucks and construction and laughter and the smell of a cigar smoke and petrol and sweaty basketball players on the public court and aerosol paint and flowering trees all blend together in a heady HK romance sort of way.

Thinking of buying some flip-flops.

Pixel Pancho. Process shot. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wong Ting Fung. Process shot. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Anyway. Process shot. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kris Abrigo. Process shot. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Amuse . Merlot. Process shot. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mundano . Martha Cooper. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We met with Brazilian Street Artist Mundano, who just one first prize at the International Public Art Awards for 2017 for his “Pimp my Carroça” project here in Hong Kong Sunday night. He gave us this hand-made book that he made with photographer Martha Cooper calle “Viva or Catadores”. Congratulations Mundano!

Mundano . Martha Cooper. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

HKWalls and Hong Kong stories come to you courtesy BSA in Partnership with Urban Nation (UN)

#urbannationberlin #allnationsunderoneroof #unblog @urbannationberlin @bkstreetart

Catching Up With Hong Kong – HK Walls 2017, Dispatch 1

March 21, 2017 Artists

A day after heaving rains delayed the first couple of walls and a projection mapping show on Sunday, a few walls are getting started, like the sprawling text of Amuse and Merlot, a vertically soaring robot of certain pedigree by Pixel Pancho and the trio called Anyway deconstructing a car on a roll-down gate that covers the mechanic shop.

Unidentified Artist. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As the artists arrive into HKWalls headquarters in the base of the Ovolo Southside hotel in the Wong Chuk Hang neighborhood, we decide to head up north to the more congested and commercial center of Kowloon to say hello to Pixel and Dr. Fjordor as they start to sketch out the new figure of their wall way up above the traffic on a cherry picker.

Pixel radios to a young guy who is about 22 years old in English his next directions for where he would like to move the the basket they are riding in next. The helper then translates into Chinese the directions – move to the left and a few meters upward – to a grey haired gentlemen manning the mechanical controls that are mounted to the back of the crane on the street. We ask the walkie-talkie guy to tell Pancho we say “hello” and he turns in his bucket to wave down 10 stories below.

Peeta. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We hop back on the super modern and smooth MTR system train to the Sham Shui Po neighborhood and wander through the markets and alleys and congested commercial streets to see the vendors selling fabrics, zippers, buttons, leather goods… and small groups of guys playing poker on card tables.

We also find a huge 3-D text piece by Italian Street Artist Peeta that wraps around corner of the second story façade that may remind you of a department store at a mall. Eventually we found more free-form one-color characters in some thin alleyways and a very talk Okuda multi-colored geometric patterned fox mural sandwiched between residential high-rises with freshly washed clothing and bed linens hanging outside apartment windows.

Paola Delfin. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Riding the high-tech train back to Wong Chuk Hang at rush hour and crammed closely with people who are poking and swiping at their phones playing games or texting friends, you could watch world news on the screen just above your head as you ride. The images and headlines are featuring news about FBI Director Comey talking about an investigation into Russian interference in the US elections – and an image of Donald Trump inveighing at a rally microphone with a few guys wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps smiling behind him.

It strikes you that a fourteen hour flight to literally the other side of the world has just collapsed into one second. It’s true that people around the world watch these political developments and make judgements – which is why someone tells an American at a party at the end of the night that just hearing his US accent makes the guy think he must be a racist. Real talk, bro.

Shida. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Okuda. Detail. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Okuda. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

GR1. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zids. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Phron & Sars = Seduce. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Suiko. HK Walls. Hong Kong – March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

HKWalls and Hong Kong stories come to you courtesy BSA in Partnership with Urban Nation (UN)

#urbannationberlin #allnationsunderoneroof #unblog @urbannationberlin @bkstreetart

GAIA Paints in Virtual Reality for New Mural in Gainesville, FL

March 20, 2017 Artists

Street Artist and renaissance man Gaia tried his hand at developing his mural for the Grove Street Neighborhood in Gainesville, Florida in Virtual Reality recently and we have few new shots to prove it.

Gaia. Gove Street Neighborhood. Gainesville, FL. February 2017. (photo © Iryna Kanishcheva)

Part of a community mural revitalization project in the historic neighborhood, Gais features a magnolia/azalea framed duo of local prominent educator Wilhelmina Johnson and the beat poet Jack Kerouac. Together they are connected by literary and African American history, says the artist. Now they are connected by virtual reality as well.

Gaia hitting the high notes at the Civic Media center in Gainesfille Florida. Here he is painting in the air and in Virtual Reality as a parallel performance to the wall installation above.

Gaia. Gove Street Neighborhood. Gainesville, FL. February 2017. (photo © Iryna Kanishcheva)

Following those images are new walls painted as part of the community initiative that is volunteer run and relies on community support. Walls here include local artist Nicole Holderbaum and Martin Torres (Jacksonville), Steven Speir and Sanders Soloman (Gainesville), Rachel Sommer (Gainesville), Chaya Av (Orlando), with contemporary graffiti by Ras Justo Luis (Gainesville) and Bhuta Bhavana Das Adhikari (Gainesville).

Ruben Ubiera. Gove Street Neighborhood. Gainesville, FL. February 2017. (photo © Iryna Kanishcheva)

Chaya Av. Gove Street Neighborhood. Gainesville, FL. February 2017. (photo © Iryna Kanishcheva)

Nicole Holderbaum . Martin Torres. Gove Street Neighborhood. Gainesville, FL. February 2017. (photo © Iryna Kanishcheva)

Grove Street Neighborhood in Gainesville, Florida is founded and coordinated by Iryna Kanishcheva (Curator and Photographer) and Maria Huff Edwards (Project Coordinator). The project is coordinated by including Iryna Kanishcheva, Maria Huff Edwards, David Edwards, John Wilson, Rachel Sommer, neighborhood supporters Mary Mehn, Tom Salmon, and Greg Stetz. For more information please click HERE.

BSA Images Of The Week: 03.19.17

March 19, 2017 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Baron Von Fancy, City Kitty, Claudio Dre, Consumer Art, Ethan Armen, Humenbote, Jerk Face, Mr. Sis, Pantonio, Paola Delfin, Paris Sketch Culture, Peter Tunney, Sac Six, Thomas Allen, Tictail, and Zor.

Top image: Jerk Face (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Baron Von Fancy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Phone booth ad take over by an identified artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tictail…speaking of female resistance… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Consumer Art borrows from Banksy and quotes the current occupant in the Oval Office. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Paola Delfin. Detail. Barcelona. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A clever paste-up collab between Ethan Armen and Thomas Allen with the humenbote logo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Claudio Dre. Detail. Barcelona. (photo © Luis Olive Bulbena)

Peter Tunney (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Paris Sketch Culture (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zor (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pantonio. Detail. Barcelona (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

City Kitty takes the children for a ride on the Kittymobile…(photo © Jaime Rojo)

Love this tag…who is the writer? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Sis. Detail. Barcelona (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sac Six (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Jerry and his birds. Manhattan, NYC. March 2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Beau Stanton Opens Minds to the “Megacosm”

March 18, 2017 Artists

We stopped by the Brilliant Champions Gallery in Bushwick this week to see “Megacosm”, a solo show by Beau Stanton and found that he is cryptically transmitting brain signals across more frequencies than ever.

Beau Stanton. “Celestial Floatsam” MEGACOSM. Brilliant Champions Gallery. Brooklyn, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With Victorian ornamentation and quirky jerky animation, Beau is franchising his particular set of idiosyncrasies into a amplitude of items and disciplines including oil paintings, sculpture, printmaking, and increasingly now video.

Here are a few seafaring and exploration views of the show that is open until April 1 followed my a captivating sequence of Beau’s video animation art.

Beau Stanton. “Titan” MEGACOSM. Brilliant Champions Gallery. Brooklyn, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Beau Stanton. “Ornamented Head” MEGACOSM. Brilliant Champions Gallery. Brooklyn, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Beau Stanton. “Ornamented Man (Blue Orange)” . Derelict Vessel (Turquoise). MEGACOSM. Brilliant Champions Gallery. Brooklyn, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Beau Stanton MEGACOSM exhibition is currently on view at the Brilliant Champions Gallery and will run until April 1st.

BSA Film Friday 03.17.17

March 17, 2017 Artists

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

Now screening :
1. Mayonaize: Star Lyric Theatre
2. Ugangprosjektet. Drammen, Norway
3. Blade and Maze: From Here To Canarsie by Henry Chalfant

BSA Special Feature: Mayonaize: Star Lyric Theatre

Melbourne-based artist Mayonaize has celebrated the letter-making craft long enough and often enough to have completely deconstructed it and allowed it to become gestural. A tattooist and Street Artist, the full-body choreography of this calligraffiti calls to mind the expanding school of text based artists whom first alerted us about the practice like Niels Shoe Meulman and Retna and even Jose Parla.

Watch Mayonaize here on the floor of theater in Fitzroy, working outward from the center using only white paint and a successively larger size of brush to create this mandella. Combined with the soundtrack from Tree and filmed/edited by Chris Matthews, it is just the beauty you needed to inspire you to access the creative spirit today.

Ugangprosjektet. Drammen, Norway

“I see Street Art and graffiti as part of a very long tradition of ours to embellish on the outside of buildings. It is so basic to our old ancient culture. We now have a contemporary expression that has the same job,” says Åsmund Thorkildsen during his narration of the various city scenes and art installations here for Dramman festival in Norway. A clean and sweeping survey of the graffiti and Street Artists as they work in different areas of this Norwegian city using a number of techniques with cans and brushes.

Blade and Maze: From Here To Canarsie by Henry Chalfant

A small documentary from a few years ago co-produced by Henry Chalfant, Sam Henriques and Jim Prigoff about the reuniting of Blade and Maze on a wall in Orchard Beach, the Bronx.

“The original design is by Blade. Dolores is there to recount her adventures going into the layups while Blade painted. Blades 1972 Thunderbird is featured. The mural is a theme inspired by outer space. One of the park workers who passes by to admire the wall likens it to The Chariots of the Gods, by Erich Von Daniken.”

Rocking “THE HAUS” : A 5-Floor Berlin Bank is Transformed by Artists

March 16, 2017 Artists, Interview

“Normally we paint advertising – hand-painted advertising, mostly with cans. So we work all over Germany, with a lot of crews, “ says Kimo, a bearded, bald energetic and sharp witted guy who is lighting up a cigarette in this tattered, beige ex-conference room. That explanation doesn’t prepare you for what you will see in the rooms upstairs.

Size Two. The Haus. Berlin. March 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The floors are piled with unopened paint buckets and brushes and cans and the walls in this organizing office are covered with scotch-taped project timelines, to-do lists, and floor plans of the old bank. Each former office space is plainly labled with names of German Street Artists or graffiti crews, some you recognize, others you don’t. More recent Street Art names are next to classic Graff heads, installation artists mix freely with Optic Artists, photographers, sculptors, even a live moss installation.

Case Maclaim is right next door to Turbokultur with Stohead out in the hall on floor 1. El Bocho and Emess are in small rooms to either side of 1UP on the 3rd. Herakut in a corner room numbered 506 is right next to Nick Platt and Paul Punk in 505.

What are all these artists, more than 175 of them and almost entirely German, all doing throughout a five-floor bank building in central Berlin on the Kudamm?

You’ll find out in April when the doors open to thousands of graffiti/Street Art/contemporary art fans to tour through THE HAUS, an enthusiastic life-affirming joyful and pissed-off D.I.Y.-flavored fun-haus of fully realized installations, painting, projections, exhibits, and interventions.

You’ve been to (or at least read about) these last-hurrah urban art installations before – celebrations of artists’ visions that inhabit a building destined to be demolished soon. Possibly because of their ephemeral nature or a lack of serious interest in art-making, often the artworks and their execution are a bit slap-dash and loosely committed.

Not at THE HAUS. You’ll likely be surprised by the conceptual sophistication at times and wowed by technical dexterity, stagecraft, attention to details, and genuinely mind-challenging immersive environments.

But this is Berlin after all, an urban art capital where graffiti crews are known for getting way up on impossible walls with foolhardy and militarily precise plans – sometimes implemented with rehearsal and execution under cover of night.

The logistical planning of Street Art and graffiti interventions here often centers around devising a slick and ingeniously resourceful roll-out of the aesthetic attack- some times given as much attention as executing the artwork.

“We do not curate any of the room concepts,” explains Kimo as he leads you from room to room, sometime removing protective tape over doorways and turning on lights to allow a guest to see inside. “There is no over all concept. It has to be really really nice, but that’s it.”

Okay, there are some challenging themes around violence, graphic sexuality, and the horror of human trafficking. More often they are driven by character, text, and slaughtering with paint and pattern. As with most creative ventures of this size, it is impossible for organizers to know when or if to draw the line on content.

There is also a darkened and completely life-sized realistic portion of a train-yard with a capped train over head, rails below, and cables and ground stones. A companion “white box” installation is said to be somewhere right now inside an underground Berlin train station. It is evident that weeks of preparation went into many of these dioramas and scenes.

“We just called around 50 artists to invite them here to take a look at the building and we told them, ‘If you know guys who have skills like you, just tell them.’ We’re looking for more artists,” Kimo says.

With more than three times that number coming and installing in the HAUS building over the last four months, there are still more artists who are clamoring to get in. “Now we have 100 artists on the waiting list”.

The existence of this list would sound like bragadoccio coming from another organizer of an event like this, but when you see the calendars, lists of names, video scheduling, website design schedule, team responsibilities, art materials, contracts, even marketing plans printed and thumb-tacked on the walls of the Orga, you know that these three partners have created a supportive art-making environment with a sense of purpose.

“Bolle and Jörni have been painting for 25 years,” says Kimo of his two partners. The three are members of their own crew called DIE DIXONS. Kimo says he cannot paint. “I tried but I can’t, I don’t have the patience to paint”. Instead he says he has great organizational abilities and love for the art subculture and the graffiti/Street Art game.

Together the DIE DIXONS also own the professional sign-painting company Xi-Design who originated THE HAUS project, and it is their multiple contacts with real estate, construction, lifestyle brands, paint suppliers, and highly-skilled commercial painters that makes this endeavor a POWER HAUS like few you’ll find.

This show is planned to be destroyed in a few months along with the building for a new project with condos and retail, but the quality here in many cases actually rivals art fairs we have seen in the last few years. Based on the buzz it has it safe to say that by the time the doors open in April, it will already have been declared a success.

Please note: Under the agreement with the organizers we agreed to publish only details of the pieces, so the surprise is not ruined. Some of these are installations in progress along with completed installations.

We wish to express our sincere thanks to Kimo, Bolle, Jörni and their team for all the time and assistance provided to us for the production of this article. Thank you to Katrin for helping with the artists IDs, and to Lisa Schmidt for her help with information as well.

Elbi Elem Breaks the Rectangle for 12+1 in Barcelona

March 15, 2017 Artists

“Break with the rectangle as the space to intervened,” says artist Elbi Elem, the March painter for this wall curated monthly in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain. The abstract muralist says she began making kinetic sculpture in 2002 and has an interest in movement, composition and form.

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

In fact she has redirected the attention outside of the rectangular canvas with an arching red line that extends beyond the stage, perhaps to annex a part of the sky and add it to the composition.

In her description of the new piece just completed, Ms. Elem says the flexible tube forms “forming a visual circuit” that captures the movement of the trains above – and becomes a framing device for anyone who may want to pose with it on the landing.

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Far from the rectilinear boxing of Mondrian and certainly not in his primary palette, the work is nonetheless geometric abstraction, calling to mind some of the heroic adds for locomotives and rail transportation of our last mid century.

By inducing the element of the handrail diagonally bisecting the wall, Elem opens the experience, rather than sealing it closed, symbolizing, as she says “traveling, moving forward, and action.”

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fer Alcalá)

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

Elbi Elem. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

For more information about Contorno Urbano please click HERE.

Vegan Activist Artists Don’t Sell Burgers : Louis Masai Speaks Out About Beef

March 14, 2017 Artists

It’s just the irony of it; A guy who makes art in the streets to raise awareness about endangered species has his mural of a bog turtle used to sell burgers and bacon on a bagel by a fast food company that has been regularly accused over many years of creating deforestation that’s caused by cattle production.

McDonald’s of course, didn’t make or contribute much to this graffiti/Street Art/mural scene, nor did they take any time to understand it. Creative culture vultures everywhere know that it is far easier just to seize other people’s work and slap it into a product than to do the homework. If they’d talked to Louis Masai, they would have gotten an earful.

Preliminary signs point to a lot of people not knowing how Street Artists work would have ended up airing without permission in the newest campaign for McDonald’s in Netherlands that purrs with pride over its connection to real street flava in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick. AdWeek displayed the videos in an article discussing the campaign, but mysteriously the videos have disappeared from that posting and the McDonald’s YouTube channel. The Street Art blog Vandalog had an article about the matter yesterday, and perhaps that fire added to the unbearable heat in McD’s kitchen, as it were.

Naturally on social media posts fingers have been furiously pointing at Joe Ficalora of the Bushwick Collective because he appears giving a tour in the long-form “documentary” style ads that were made by the creative agency who was producing the campaign. In the montages of images, voices, and music you see interviews with four early NYC graffiti writers and one Brazilian street artist – each of whom Joe invited and who created work for the campaign.

People are quick to pounce and surmise and pontificate about who got paid and what everyone’s good and bad intentions were – and then extrapolate outward into discussions around gentrification, cultural hegemony, parasitic behaviors, selling out a culture, etc. We don’t know for sure what all those details are so we’ll stop short of making accusations at the moment – much will come out in lawsuits going forward no doubt – and really we’re supposed to be writing an intro here…

The thing we do know for sure is there were a lot of shots of other works in those videos by artists – including from another community wall initiative named JMZ Walls – who are all saying that they were never contacted nor did they give McDonald’s permission to use their work in promoting McD’s. This group includes Louis Masai, who writes an editorial essay today here about what his experience was, what his personal opinions are and what he thinks about using his artwork to sell burgers.

McDonalds x Bushwick Collective

by Louis Masai

Right now I should be painting, I have a solo show coming up. Instead my mind is over consumed by the frustration and outrage of an advert that was brought to my attention mid Friday afternoon by another artist.

He said to go check my Facebook or Instagram account, that McDonalds had just released what has to be one of the most culturally thieving adverts I have ever seen. After 3:37 minutes, for almost 4 seconds, there it was; my mural of a New York state, endangered bog turtle.

My mural is now advertising a New York bagel beef burger and I am not loving it.

A screenshot of Louis Masai’s bog turtle in Bushwick from the Dutch advertisement for McDonald’s. This was the first in a 3 month cross country mural program Louis did which BSA followed from beginning to end.
See One Artist’s Mission to Save Endangered Species: Louis Masai Completes “The Art Of Beeing” Tour.

For those that are unaware of my work – I paint about endangered species; I use public walls with granted permissions to highlight issues such as biodiversity, the sixth mass extinction, deforestation, and climate change. I am also a vegan. So even if McDonalds had asked me if I minded to be included in their campaign, I would have told them where to shove that bun with a hole. Today, Monday March 13^th, after over an hour on the phone talking with the founder of the Bushwick Collective, the three adverts have been removed from the Internet – for now.

Why was I so outraged by all this? Here’s why: The Amazon was the place that inspired scientists to coin the term “biodiversity.” The region is home to 10 percent of all plant and animal species known on Earth. There are approximately 40,000 species of plants, more than 400 mammals, almost 1,300 Birds, and millions of insects. All this life depends on each other and cows are not one of those 400 mammals, according to greenpeace.org.

The production of beef is, without question, the biggest cause of deforestation in the Amazon, with figures ranging from 65 to 70 percent of all deforestation in the area from 2000 to 2005. However these numbers account only for the areas cleared for the creation of pastures, and they fail to include the food being produced for cattle consumption.

The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies stipulates that Brazil alone has 24 to 25 million hectares devoted to the production of soy, 80 percent of which would end up as animal feed. These numbers all contribute to the consensus that the primary reason for rainforest deforestation in the Amazon can be attributed to the beef industry, according to rainforestpartnership.com.

A screenshot that gives that Brooklyn flava from the McDonald’s commercial

McDonalds sells beef burgers, a lot of them. In fact in 2015, despite not being able to disclose exactly how many burgers they sell each year, as this is ‘commercially sensitive information’, it was reported that they expected to sell over 91 million of the world famous Big Mac sandwiches. Who really knows where that hip-hop, New York bagel beef came from? That is why I am outraged that my painting was aired in an advert for McDonalds.

We live in a world where things are perpetually looked at in the wrong light. Think about the text message that you misinterpreted or the tweet that you didn’t manage to squeeze in all the right words for. We live in a “judge me” society, and I’m not favourable of being twinned with a conglomerate company that is directly associated, past or present, with the destruction of biodiversities, lost species and communities.

Portions of another public mural initiative in Brooklyn called JMZ Walls also appear in the commercials.

The fast-food giant announced in 2015 it would be working with its suppliers to end deforestation in its global supply chain. But how much of that is effective? And how aware is the general public? Whether my point of opinions are correct or not, that doesn’t excuse the fact that McDonalds is not a “sustainable” business; they do not help the environment in a meaningful way, and they definitely have a horrendous past track record. These facts I do know.

I also know, the Bushwick Collective allowed McDonalds to have ownership of my artwork and the sharing of my mural on the Internet, even if that did only last 5 days. Why did Bushwick Collective allow for something that they didn’t own the rights for to pass on in the first place, to be sold? It was an insult to me as a vegan, a violation of my artistic rights and somewhat dark waters for the correlation of my works context.

Screenshot of wall by artist LMNOPI, which was done as a result of a private agreement with the landlord.

McDonalds, cowing back to the depths of its shadows, probably due to concerns of legality, removes the issue of copyright infringement but does it remove their intent to exploit a cherished culture. I am sure that this is not the end of the issue as a whole but for now, I hope that this is a warning to others. Artists are not to be taken advantage of anymore, we will not tolerate it and we will fight back.

Now I’m worried about what is next to come. Should I be watching out for Monsanto to use my bee paintings in a ‘documentary’?

The opinions expressed by Mr. Masai are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the editorz.

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