“Major Minority” ; The Great Gathering of a Tribe

March 13, 2014 Artists, Interview

Poesia and EKG Talk to BSA about an Audacious Survey

A new show organized by Poesia, a San Francisco based graffiti artist and founder of the site Graffuturism, pulls together one hundred or so artists from eighteen countries with the goal of mapping one constellation in the cosmos – a global survey of urban artists that hopes to articulate a body of aesthetics he’s calling Othercontemporary. And why not? Audacity and vision are qualities these times call for and if successful could lead to a clearer understanding of the trends, techniques, practices, and narratives underlying what has been happening on the streets for the last half century.

Kwest (photo © Brock Brake)

With New York artist/historian/semiotic explorer EKG as a guide, the two have been synthesizing their findings and discovering the genuine firing of synapses that indicate they are uncovering the electrical impulses that have made graffiti / street art/ urban art feel so completely relevant to the last two generations. A “Major Minority” hopes to chart the course for the third.

Mags (photo © Brock Brake)

Poesia invites you here to take a look at some of the pieces that will be on display, as shot by Brock Brake. Brooklyn Street Art asked Poesia and EKG about the survey and to make some conjecture about the way forward.

Brooklyn Street Art: Each generation and movement is defined and labeled by its participants, peers, and observers. In your treatise on this moment and this collection of artists you say that Stefano Antonelli coined the term Othercontemporary to perhaps set it apart from Contemporary. Why does this term sound appropriate to you?
Poesia: I had initially used the term Neo-Contemporary. After a brief discussion amongst some peers Stefano mentioned this term – it seemed the most accurate out of the terms being discussed. I feel it’s important because it starts a conversation about something other than contemporary art, and describes rather bluntly our separation from contemporary art, yet defines the contemporary nature of our art form. I have grown tired of comparing what we do to contemporary art, maybe this term will get people talking about something more present.

Slicer (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: Take a guess and swing the bat wide, why has the established art world taken so long to give recognition to the urban artist?
Poesia: Canonization usually takes place long after the genuine moments of art movements, or when they are at their peak. Its no different even in today’s Internet era, even with all the information at their fingertips academics won’t ever understand why a 12 year old child and a 50 year old adult writes on walls. Its easier to make use of their MFAs by extending the reach of the contemporary art conversation than it is to look at society and to try to understand the writing on the walls.

Hellbent (photo © Hellbent)

Brooklyn Street Art: Has something happened in the last 5-10 years that has caused so many urban/street/graffiti artists to make more geometric and abstract work that usually avoids the organic, figurative, and pop? Any idea what is driving it?
Poesia: It’s a culmination – one of those things where maybe all the right ingredients are there and it happens.

Graffiti, being an abstract art form in its nature, lends itself to pure abstraction. Experimentation with the letterform usually takes place more with color and shape than it does conceptually or from a representational perspective. Additionally with the birth of Street Art it opened up the playing field a bit. Artists now were forced to compete visually with representational imagery on walls. It has allowed many artists to leave letterform and the rectangular space of a piece or even “wild style”. The horizontal rectangle was replaced with the square or vertical rectangle – that also pushed for the evolution of the artist.

Silvio Magaglio (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: What will a viewer begin to realize when looking over the constellation of works in this show?
Poesia: That painting is alive, and urban art seems to be the most relevant embodiment of this. This post-historical art form seems to be sending a message that there is something left in the visual image and its power. The goal was to show the widest spectrum possible from figurative to minimal in the area of Urban Art and I think we accomplished that.

Silvio Magaglio (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you speak about the “unique participatory and non-exclusionary nature” of urban/street/graffiti art practices?
EKG: Graffiti/Street Art (here defined as the public surfaces they affix themselves to, the container superseding the content, the medium as the message) is a broadcast channel that will not exclude anyone who wants to participate. Anybody with a passion to be seen and heard can broadcast on the graffiti/street art wavelength, as long as they are driven to take the risk of breaking the law in order to make their aesthetic statement.

When someone illegally transmits a signal on a public surface, aka a wall or monitor, there is no editorial hierarchy, no censorship board, no review panel, and no proofreaders. It is an individualistic and anarchistic means of expression. In order to transmit your mark, you don’t have to pay anyone, you don’t have to ask for permission, you don’t have to take a vote, you don’t have to take into account anyone else’s approval or opinion about your message.

At heart, graffiti/street art are visual civil disobedience, no matter the initial conscious intention of the mark maker, although a combination of action and intention can make the mark more meaningful to the receiver once they learn more about the broadcaster.

Vsod (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: “Illegal” and “transgressive” are two root words that reappear in your discussion of the collection. Did this movement germinate from anti-establishment sentiments, marginalized populations?
EKG: Doing anything illegal can be considered transgressive, but, more specifically for this discussion, illegal aesthetic manifestations are a minor infrastructural irritant that accrue a massive semiotic tumescence of cultural weight.

Currently incarcerated under the simplistic and myopic legal category defined as vandalism, aka criminal mischief, illegal aesthetic manifestations should instead be interpreted as more of a cultural statement than actually being a debilitating crime that selfishly and meaninglessly attacks a particular individual or society as a whole, as has been promoted by institutional authorities protecting the status quo.

The Original Writers discovered that Graffiti was a powerful means to: express rebellious dissatisfaction on political, economic, societal and cultural levels; define one’s identity as a powerful entity that was omnipresent, by proxy omniscient; delineate physical and semiotic territories that were theirs as opposed to their foes or society at large; connect with other members of their age group to form alternative communities of like-minds; and gain recognition with their peers and the public overall.

Like the seers who were channeling the oracles of our time, the old school original writers instinctually discovered an art form that continues to engage and challenge our global culture. Fifty years later the movement is still kept alive inside and outside by practitioners of all ages, styles, and intentions. Graffiti is no longer perceived as merely vandalism perpetrated by megalomaniac antisocial teens, but a positive and powerful cultural change agent practiced by conscious objectors of all ages.

Drew Young (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: Specifics please: please place an artists name next to each of the following word whose work comes to mind.

Poesia: Okay, here are examples.

Activist: Boniface Mwangi
Idealist: Moneyless
Geometric: Nawer
Minimal: Christopher Derek Bruno
Expressionist: Jaybo Monk

Askew (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: Sometimes it appears that the street is providing the stage for an explosion/implosion of all other historical art movements coalescing and deconstructing and recombining and mutating before us. Perhaps it’s because the street is reflecting society and we are all drinking from the Internet River. Maybe we’re witnessing a true globalism. You can say the movement on the street has roots in graffiti, and we would agree. But is it even possible to make sense of what is happening right now?
Poesia: I can only be a participant in this moment and hope to engage the conversation in real time versus when it won’t matter anymore. I think Urban Art is one of many emerging art forms that have been bubbling on the surface for a while now. As the generation shift takes place we will be accepted at the moment when we are irrelevant, as so many art forms before us. This makes today more important than tomorrow. I don’t know if I have the capability to make sense of it all, but I appreciate every second of it.

Bezt Etam (photo © Brock Brake)

Vincent Abadie Hafez Zepha (photo © Brock Brake)

Thiago Toes (photo © Brock Brake)

Sat One (photo © Brock Brake)

Katre (photo © Brock Brake)

Sowat (photo © Brock Brake)

Gilbert1 (photo © Brock Brake)

Dem189 (photo © Brock Brake)

Bom.k (photo © Brock Brake)

Borondo (photo © Brock Brake)

“A Major Minority” opens this Friday, March 14 at 1AM Gallery in San Francisco, CA.

Click HERE for more details on this show.

The Full Essay “A Major Minority” Group Exhibition by Poesia and EKG can be found HERE.

The interview answers from EKG were edited for length – please see his full responses on his Facebook page HERE.

We would like to thank Brock Brake for his excellent photos of the art and to Poesia and EKG for their thoughtful and insightful answers to our questions.

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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Abandoned Graffiti-Covered New Jersey : NSFW

March 12, 2014 Artists

With New York’s hallowed graffiti hotspot 5 Pointz buffed and freshly hit up with GILF! and BAMN’s yellow gentrification tape installation, we’ve been thinking about the disappearing quantity of ratty real estate in the Go-Go 20-teens.

Not only does the cycle of industry abandonment–artists discovery–developer revival now occur so quickly for some neighborhoods when it comes to gentrification, it seems like sometimes the bong smoke doesn’t even have time to clear before the wrecking ball swings, the latte quotient doubles, and a woman in a sports bra runs you over with a stroller.

So today we’re heading to Jersey!

Numskull (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yes, the Garden state has become a punch line lately – what with the unfolding scandals around the George Washington Bridge and the once-hopeful-now-doubtful presidential governor. So the bridge is closed, you got a problem with that?

But you know what? Jersey has some of the best graffiti-covered abandoned and neglected real estate west of the Hudson River and unlike NYC, which likes to knock down perfectly good buildings long before their expiration date, Jersey knows how to let them decay. These buildings have a patina, have character, and can even feel haunted and full of adventure to your average urban explorer.

Numskull (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We know Street Art and graffiti is ephemeral, transitory, a moment in time. Here is one of those moments; somewhere between the 20th century industrial world and the hoisting of new I-beams toward a fabulous glass and steel future – we find the aerosol tags, pieces, fill-ins, bubble letters, and characters whose bended boobs spell out your name.

In this interstice of time between abandonment and development these artists will entertain, confuse, disgust and possibly entreat you to wander further along. These galleries are not advertised and you should be careful since safe building codes don’t apply here and a falling block could clock you, but the admission price is right and gentrification is still up the street a distance. Hurry, before the artists move in and start squatting.

Numskull (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lush (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lush and friends. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elbo, Gent, William Kasso. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elbo, Gent, William Kasso. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Yok (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Tags Wall of Fame (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ree (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Senic (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yes, you may reblog this if you like. Reblog (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nark (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hosae (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gent . Spok (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Follow (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fave (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Acroe (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. Please help ID the tag. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Drastic (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. Please help ID the tag. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Side-busting a Tag with MeerSau

March 11, 2014 Artists

Meer Sau continues the conversation on the street with graff writers by altering their tags original intent – a high minded term called side-busting.

It’s a harmless sort of annoyance that your younger brother does just to get you overheated so you smack him and he tells on you to your mom.

When you see stuff like this on the street you may also be reminded of the thrilling repartee scratched on the back door of a 5th grade bathroom stall with a pen knife. Such gems come to mind such as “There once was a vickar named Nick, whose…”, “Here I sit all broken hearted, …”, and “Jenny Hunt goes all the way. call 212-309-______ for a good time”.

Just thinking out loud here people.

MeerSau. “Art Is Not A Crime…for sure…” Salzburg, Austria. March, 2014. (photo © MeerSau)

MeerSau. “I Love Porn s” Salzburg, Austria. March, 2014. (photo © MeerSau)

MeerSau. “Cupcake Killer” Salzburg, Austria. March, 2014. (photo © MeerSau)

Stikki Peaches, Fashionable Storm Troopers, and Ruling the World

March 10, 2014 Artists

Montreal’s Stikki Peaches wonders what would it be like if art ruled the world and we were shocked to learn that it doesn’t. Although if the last few days of art fairs are to be relied upon for global governance, the world seems smothered with credit cards, luxury logos, and every possible reworked iteration and echo of Andy Warhol you can imagine.

Stikki Peaches (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Peaches mines the image pools of popular culture as well, returning often to hand-cut print outs of celebrities, superheroes, and royalty for quick-read icons that he then customizes with stickers, paint drips, mohawks, metal spikes, and hand rendered facial tattoos. These new wheat-pasted pieces popped up in Brooklyn and Manhattan last week in well traveled high-profile locations sure to capture many an eye with images that are easily recognized, newly re-freshed, and stikki.

Stikki Peaches (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Images of The Week: 03.09.14

March 9, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Hi Everybody! Two things – We saw a big uptick in next generation Street Artists this week in the Armory Week shows and wrote about it yesterday; New High-Water Mark for Street Art at Fairs for Armory Week. So that is Thing One. Thing Two is yesterday was warm – like 60 degrees. That’s all.

Yes, there was Ash Wednesday this week with people walking through NYC streets with smudges on their foreheads and we may have entered a new cold war with Russia invading Ukraine and Rick Perry looks really really super smart just by adding heavy rectangular glasses – but for many in NYC, the pent up desire to run naked through the streets yesterday was superceded only by the fact that the last two months were spent eating large helpings of comfort food and peering out the ice-frosted window.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Acet, Bunny M, Damon, Hek Tad, Hyland Mather, Judith Supine, Kram, Kuma, Olek, and Red Grooms.

Top Image >> Judith Supine. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Judith Supine (photo © Jaime Rojo)

OLEK uses some fencing to reference a fencing term: Touché ! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Acet on a box truck. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kuma reflecting on the toxic state of the Gowanus. Plase help ID the tags. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hyland Mather’s installation using found wood and objects from the streets of Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yeah, dude, we do too! Hek Tad (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Red Grooms. Clearly someone has some toe-stomping advantage in this scenario. “Be Aware of a Wolf in the Alley” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Red Grooms. “Be Aware of a Wolf in the Alley” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist who wishes to remain anonymous. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Talk about a social x-ray. bunny M (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kram2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Brooklyn, NY. March 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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New High-Water Mark for Street Art at Fairs for Armory Week

March 8, 2014 Artists

This year represents a high-water mark for current Street Artists being represented at the New York fairs if what we have just seen over the last couple of days is any indication. For those who have been following the trajectory of the new kids we’ve been talking about for the last decade, the room is rather getting a lot more crowded. Only a handful of years ago names that produced blank stares at your forehead and a little sniff of dismissal are garnering an extra lingering moment near the canvas and snap of the cellphone pic, complimentary champagne flute in hand.

Hellbent at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With the gusts of wind provided by a couple of recent auctions, optimism about an up-turning economy, and even the Banksy one-month residency, it is not hard to imagine that we have some “overnight” stars in the midst of this constellation, but it is really anyone’s guess.

While we are certainly aware of it, we don’t dedicate too much ink to the commercial aspect of the Street Art scene, preferring to learn the lingua franca of these artists who have developed their narrative and visual style before our eyes, to celebrate experimentation, the creative spirit, and to give a pedestrian view of the street without being pedestrian.

But just as neighborhoods like Bushwick in Brooklyn, El Raval in Barcelona, LA’s downtown Arts District, and parts of London, Berlin, and Paris have been transforming by gentrification, we would be remiss if we didn’t note the more frequent raising of commercial eyebrows all around us when the topic turns to Street Art. It’s not a fever pitch, but can it be far off? There is already a solid first tier that everyone can name – and the stratification is taking shape below it.

Herb Smith (previously Veng RWK) at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Buffeted by blossoming sales of works by early 2000s Street Artists and the burgeoning of lifestyle companies now appropriating this cultural wealth and transforming it into “content” that helpfully couriers all manner of merch from spirits to soda, sneakers, and electronic smoking devices, we are looking for our seat belts as there a major shift in popular acceptance and critical embracing of 21^st century Street Artists up ahead.

As for the streets, the flood is going to continue. Street Art is Dead? Yes, we’ve been hearing this since 2002…

Here’s a brief non-specific and uneven survey of only some work showing this weekend by current or former Street Artists and graffiti writers – perhaps a third of what you can see in the New York fairs and satellite galleries.

Rubin at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fumero at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gilf! and Icy & Sot at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

EKG and Lamour Supreme at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alice Mizrachi and Jon Burgerman at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain and Rubin at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

See One and Chuck Berrett/Nicole Salgar of Cargo Collective at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JMR and Cake at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vicki DaSilva at Fountain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pose at Volta (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vinz at Scope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Amanda Marie at Scope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tip Toe at Scope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Mac at Scope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Know Hope at Scope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cope at Scope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash Nihalini at Scope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy and friends at Scope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Film Friday: 03.07.14

March 7, 2014 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. Icy & Sot “Art Pollution”
2. Stikki Peaches and Fashionable Storm Troopers
3. Shift & Shine. How to pimp your ride in Barcelona
4. Japanther x Droid “DO IT (don’t try it)”
4b. “Subterranean Homesick Blues” Bob Dylan
5. Alice Pasquini in Tuffelo, Rome

BSA Special Feature: Icy & Sot “Art Pollution”

A short lively exposure to the brothers who have been cutting stencils and hopping roofs around the neighborhood lately, this new video follows Icy & Sot as they explore new and well run territory and put their own stamp on this moment.

Stikki Peaches and Fashionable Storm Troopers

A one minute short of Stikki Peaches wheatpasting the helmeted and fashionable storm troopers that you are now beginning to associate with the name.

Shift & Shine. How to pimp your ride in Barcelona

A D.I.Y. take on giving your bike a facelift with stuff bought at a flea market. Upgrade!

Japanther x Droid “DO IT (don’t try it)”

To promote the upcoming release by Japanther, it looks like Droid had a hand at multiple sticker slaps. Sort of recalls Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues. This one features live hand drawing of all the lyrics on stickers that are then taken out into the street. See all the proper credits for this fine work on the Vimeo page.

Possibly the very first rap video, here’s Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” from 1965 with camera work by Bob Neuwirth and directed by D.A. Pennebaker. (Alan Ginsberg hangs out in the back)

Alice Pasquini in Tuffelo, Rome

Ever wonder what street life is like when you are painting your piece? It’s not quiet, if that is what you imagined. Every Tomazio, Shanequa, and Akim seems to come out of the woodwork to ask questions, discuss, and as you can see here, offer opinions. We always say that Street Art and public art and graffiti are all part of a conversation in the street, and here’s some evidence of that in Rome.

POSE Back in NYC

March 6, 2014 Artists

Chicago based graffiti artist POSE is back in New York City for Armory Week and he found a window of opportunity to hit up a wall this week. Last time he was in town it was for his Houston Wall with Revok in the beastly New York heat last summer, so obviously he is a pro who can endure the polarity of temperatures because it is still bitter on the streets right now. Actually maybe the cold caused this mural to go up so rapidly on Lafayette in conjunction with The L.I.S.A. Project NYC and the Jonathan LeVine Gallery.

The new colorful piece is a furtherance of his experimenting with “pounce patterns” and his own remixed deconstructing of pop and commercial elements from vintage sign-language. We have it from a good source that the work on this wall is only a teaser for what’s coming in warmer months – a Summer Blockbuster about five stories high. Don’t touch that dial.

POSE (photo © Jaime Rojo)

POSE. Alix Frey, Director at Jonathan LeVine keeping it cool. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

POSE switching out the cap. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

POSE (photo © Jaime Rojo)

POSE. A + (photo © Jaime Rojo)

POSE. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

POSE. Reflection. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

POSE (photo © Jaime Rojo)

POSE is also showing with JLV at the Volta Art Fair with a solo presentation of works at 82 Mercer Street this weekend. More information via the gallery.

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How & Nosm’s Red, Hot, Scorching Monoprints Unveiled

March 5, 2014 Artists

Intermezzo: the midst of a roiling mass of interrelated actions, staccato storylines, rotating currents, complicating drama, and banal daily existence. At any moment your life can be this, or seventy-five variations of it.

How & Nosm “Drought Portal” Detail. 40 x 30 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm regulated their daily existence for nearly seven months to create what may be the most challenging campaign of layered, collaborative, organized hot chaos that they ever have produced. Under the guidance of master print maker Jo Watanabe and his team at Pace Prints in Brooklyn, the graffiti writers turned their mural marksmen skills and their precise methods of art making inside out to create multiple, fluidly sharp monoprints that are each a painting of its own.

“I went to school myself!” exclaims Raoul of the rhythmic and rigorous schedule that required he and his twin brother Davide to show up to work on multiple pieces of multiple prints simultaneously five days a week from 9:30 to 5:30.

Davide describes the method, “You have a whole sheet of 75 different works, multiplied by however many different combinations and screens you can have – you have a black outline on this small section of an artwork, then magenta here, then we decide to spray a stencil on this portion, or fill this one – and in between you have to clean all these different screens. So in the end…”

We interject, “In the end, your head almost explodes.”

How & Nosm “Drought Portal” close up. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Well, at some point. Jo is very good at working systematically, because that’s how the Japanese work,” explains the rigidly methodical and razor sharp German who is never late to a meeting with us. He catches himself and laughs in baritone that reverberates, “Actually we work very well together, the Germans and the Japanese! It was awesome.”

Walking through the Pace print facility in Manhattan’s mid 20s it strikes you just how much of a step this is for the brothers to collaborate side by side and fully immersed with such a prestigious fine art print publisher that has been in business since 1968. Names like Chuck Close, Julian Schnabel, Ryan McGuinness, and Qin Feng randomly jump out at you from rack labels while you stroll past acres of contemporary art history in the grand and airy facility.

How & Nosm “Every All” Detail. 40 x 30 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We only took seven months to do ours,” says Raoul, “some of these prints, like one from Chuck Close I think, took two and a half years to complete,” he marvels. Only. This from one half of a mural team that knocks out mammoth 20’ x 30’ walls in their signature red, white and black palette with exacting detail in the same time that other artists take to sketch their outlines and block in the preliminary color.

As with their walls, the symbolic imagery calls to mind sequences in history, allusions to memories, sharp pangs of emotion; all layered and nested and swimming with one another without beginning or end. If it feels chaotic, it is by design, to drive away the dullness of the repetition that a typical print run and a typical life can produce.

“You have 25 to 30 screens and you gotta create something new every day,” says Raoul of the challenge to make each one unique. “But you get into a routine. It’s like everyday life. You wake up and have your routine, but you have to make it interesting to yourself every day. “

How & Nosm “Every All” close up. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

So the education of this experience has produced a riveting and color drenched array of polarities pulling and pushing across paper like few of their previous projects, and you can see that the results have enlivened their minds, sharpened their eyes. Additionally, How Nosm are proud that no computers were used in the project whatsoever.

“So that’s how we started,” says Raoul, “we painted on mylar, – it’s like a plastic,” he holds up the transparent sheet to show. “We used that to shoot the screens. We didn’t paint anything on the computer. Everything is hand painted; the layers – and they had so many machines and different ways of achieving effects, I didn’t know. “

How & Nosm “Under my Thumb” Detail. 40 x 40 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Did Mr. Watanabe and his team learn any new tricks from the grown up graffiti kids? “I mean we are like underdogs compared to who has done prints with them before,” says Davide. “We are the first ones with a hard core graff background. But they admitted that they really actually liked the work and they learned something from us too I think.”

We ask in what way – how the guys think about their work, their process? “Basically how spontaneous you can be with a spray can,” he says as he offers to let us feel the built up aerosol portion of one print that the brothers created with a simple stencil. “All this could have meant extra screens, but we saved them time, and they liked the effect.”

When the opening reception takes place this week at Pace and other new works from the series are unveiled simultaneously at the Armory show, How and Nosm are thinking that in the middle of it all will be some sort of graduation ceremony, at least figuratively. Suddenly everything they have done up until now has been redefined, refined even. In some way, they’ve done this before and in others it is all new.

What can follow this brief chapter in their storied creative career? Leave that for tomorrow. For now, behold. “They are all so unique, they all look so different,” says Raoul as he carefully pulls out one hand-embellished print after another from their elaborate archival wrappings.

“They are basically painting prints, you know?”

How & Nosm “Under my Thumb” close up. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm “Red Hot Summer” Detail. 40 x 40 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm “Lost Fragments” Detail. 52 x 40 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm “Lost Fragments” Close Up (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How & Nosm “Way Things Are” Solo Exhibition at Pace Prints Opens this Thursday, March 6. Click HERE for details.

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

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Street Artists At The Fairs For Armory Week NYC 2014

March 4, 2014 Artists

Not quite spring, the Art Fairs are arriving in New York ahead of the tulips. We strolled the impossibly long aisles and peered into the booths to find the folks who have at other times been called “Street Artists”. This weekend they’ll be fine artists, and the list is quite a bit longer than years past as the professionalization of the street continues.

Shows like the Armory, Scope, Volta, and Fountain are good testing venues to see the commercial viability for many of these artists and some have foregone representation – preferring to foot the bill on their own. Since walking the streets to see their work requires multiple layers and hats and gloves – traipsing through the fairs can be far preferable than dirty old Brooklyn streets. It’s also nice to see how some of these folks look in a tie or a blouse – or even just hit a comb. Here below we include some possible gems for you to hunt down.

THE ARMORY SHOW

Pace Prints

How & Nosm at Pier 92

For The Armory Show Art Fair location, dates, times, booth numbers, etc… click HERE

SCOPE ART FAIR

Andenken Gallery

Amanda Marie, VINZ

Vinz at Andenken Gallery (image courtesy the gallery)

Black Book Gallery

Judith Supine, WK Interact, Ben Eine, Cycle, James Reka, Cope2, Indie184, Shepard Fairey

Judith Supine at Black Book Gallery (image courtesy the gallery)

C.A.V.E. Gallery

PEETA, Pure Evil

Pure Evil at C.A.V.E. Gallery (image courtesy the artist)

Fabien Castanier Gallery

Speedy Graphito, Mark Kenkins, RERO

Speedy Graphito at Fabien Castanier Gallery (image courtesy the gallery)

Fuchs Projects

Rafael Fuchs, Aakash Nihalini, Skewville

Krause Gallery

Ben Frost, Hanksy

Ben Frost at Krause Gallery (image courtesy the gallery)

Moniker Projects

Beau Stanton, Ben Eine, David Shillinglaw, Greg Lamarche, Jon Burgerman, Pam Glew, Ron English, Muffinhead, Keira Rathbone.

David Shillinglaw at Moniker Projects (image courtesy the artist)

Natalie Kates Projects

Skullphone, Swoon

ThinkSpace Gallery

Know Hope

Vertical Gallery

Stormie Mills, My Dog Sighs

For SCOPE Art Fair location, dates, times, booth numbers, etc… click HERE

VOLTA NY

Jonathan LeVine Gallery

POSE

Pose at Jonathan LeVine Gallery (image courtesy the artist)

For VOLTA NY Art Fair location, dates, times and booth numbers, etc… click HERE

FOUNTAIN ART FAIR

Fumeroism, Jay Shells, Leon Reid IV, Vicki DaSilva are all showing at Fountain this year

Vicki DaSilva at Fountain (image courtesy the artist)

Urban Folk Art

Adam Suerte

Adam Suerte (courtesy Urban Folk Art)

Street Art Installation curated by Mighty Tanaka

Alex Emmert will be curating the Street Art Installation and he has invited Chris Stain, Alice Mizrachi, Skewville, Cake, Chris RWK, Joe Iurato, Rubin, EKG, Gilf!, Omen and LNY.

For Fountain Art Fair location, dates, times, etc…click HERE

The Power Of Slow and the Ascent of the Storytellers

March 3, 2014 Artists

A big deal has been made about the so-called virtual experience of Street Art – made possible by ever more sophisticated phones and digital platforms and technology – producing a pulsating river of visually pleasing delicacies to view across every device at a rapid speed, and then forget.

Sit on the city bus or in a laundromat next to someone reviewing their Instagram/RSS/Facebook feed and you’ll witness a hurried and jerky scrolling with the index finger of images flying by with momentary pauses for absorbing, or perhaps “liking”. The greatest number of “likes” are always for the best eye candy, the most poppy, and the most commercially viable. It’s a sort of visual image consumption gluttony that can be as satisfying as a daily bag of orange colored cheese puffs.

This is probably not what art on the street is meant for. At least, not all of it.

As we have been observing here and in front of audiences for a few years now, the 2000s and 2010s have brought a New Guard and a new style and approach to work in the street that we refer to as the work of storytellers. These artists are doing it slowly, with great purpose, and without the same goals that once characterized graffiti and street art.

While there has been the dual development of a certain digital life during the last decade, these street works are eschewing the shallowness that our electronic behaviors are embracing. Even though the digitization of society has pushed boundaries of speed and eliminated geography almost entirely, it is creating an artificial intelligence of a different kind. In other words there really is still no substitute for being there to see this work, to being present in the moment while cars drive by and chattering pedestrians march up the sidewalk.

Setting aside the recent abundance of large commissioned/permissioned murals and the duplication/repetition practice of spreading identical images on wheatpasted posters and stickers that demark the 1990s and early 2000s in the Street Art continuum, today we wanted to briefly spotlight some of the one of a kind, hand crafted, hand painted, illegally placed art on the streets.

The materials, styles and placements are as varied as the artists themselves: Yarn characters attached to fences, tiles glued to walls, acrylic and oil hand painted wheat pastes on a myriad of surfaces, ink, lead and marker illustrations, carved linotype ink prints, clay sculptures, lego sculptures, intricate hand-cut paper, and hand rendered drawings have slowly appeared on bus shelters, walls, doorways, even tree branches.

They all have a few things in common: The artists didn’t ask for permission to place these labor-intensive pieces on the streets, they are usually one of a kind, and frequently they are linked to personal stories.

We’ve been educating ourselves about these stories and will be sharing some of them with you at the Brooklyn Museum in April, so maybe that’s why we have been thinking about this so much. There is a quality to these works that reflect a sense of personal urgency and a revelation about their uniqueness at the same time.

If the placement of them is hurried the making of them it is not. The themes can be as varied as the materials but in many cases the artist informs the art by his or her autobiography or aspiration. And once again BSA is seeing a steady and genuine growth in storytelling and activism as two of the many themes that we see as we walk the streets of the city.

Images Of The Week: 03.02.14

March 2, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Our piece on the visiting guests from Afghanistan got a lot of attention this week, as well as the Kiev sculpture by Roti, perhaps because of the ongoing powder keg in Ukraine. It is as if global interest in the power of art to affect change is in the air — we feel like we can sense a new sort of activism afoot. Or should we say #ACTIVISM ?

Meanwhile the small idiosyncratic hand-made pieces are starting to show up again in New York after a relative quiet that was enforced by the cold and snow, which both have melted. Oh, wait, another storm is coming tonight. (!) If we find that ground hog he is going to get a smack.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Ainac, DOA, EC13, Geppetto, Lambros, Mr. Toll, Olek, Richard Serra, and Tripel.

The louder you say that, the more we wonder. Tripel references the great and terribly Tricky Dick Nixon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Richard Serra Sighting No. 1.
As admirers of this modern master sculptor we were treated to this sight on Manhattan streets. Usually you can only appreciate his work under heavy scrutiny from security guards, and probably no photos are allowed. So to see these sculptures on the streets and in transportation was what you call a New York Minute. Not exactly Street Art but definitely art on the street. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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