Kobra Pays Honor to Architect Niemeyer in São Paulo

February 18, 2013 ,

Brazilian Street Artist Eduardo Kobra and four other painters have been working six hours a day since January 14th to complete a 52 meter high mural that honors architect Oscar Niemeyer who passed away in December just days before his 105th birthday. Covering the entire side of a skyscraper on Paulista Avenue in São Paulo’s financial district, the artwork is inspired by Niemeyer’s architecture, his love of concrete and Le Corbusier.

If you look closely among the colorful forms that overlay the photo-realistic portrait, you’ll find that some of them are based on Niemeyer’s works. In this case, art on the street could not find a more fitting tributary than a modern architect who espoused populist sentiments that his field should serve everyone, not just the privileged few.

Eduardo Kobra. Installation in progress. São Paulo, Brazil. (photo © Alan Teixeira)

“Oscar Niemeyer was an important figure to us,” explains Kobra during a break from painting, as he talks about the Rio born citizen of the world and Brazils modernist icon, “The decision to paint this here reminds us of the importance of the several works he did in the city. Given their relevance even today, I think he deserved this great space on Paulista Avenue.”

The logistics and costs of this labor of love have been as great at the mural is high. Beginning in the early autumn, the process included getting permission from the building and city hall, placing the scaffolds, agreeing on and setting the design, and buying the paint. “In the end, the paperwork was the most difficult part and I wanted to get it all resolved so I could paint the mural,” explains the artist.

“Furthermore it was a very expensive project. The staff of the building gave us the paint, the André Art Gallery helped us with the equipment, there was a hotel near the building that hosted us and we also got a restaurant to help us with food. This project relied upon genuine cultural support and it could only happen  because of it,” says Kobra. “For this project we didn’t receive a penny of compensation – we are doing it for the pleasure of doing a job here at Paulista, the most important avenue in São Paulo.”


Eduardo Kobra. Detail. São Paulo, Brazil. (photo © Alan Teixeira)


Eduardo Kobra. Detail. São Paulo, Brazil. (photo © Alan Teixeira)

Eduardo Kobra. Detail. São Paulo, Brazil. (photo © Alan Teixeira)

Eduardo Kobra. Detail. São Paulo, Brazil. (photo © Alan Teixeira)

 

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Images of the Week: 02.17.13

February 17, 2013

Guess it shouldn’t surprise us when we find out that the sticker, wheat-paste, or mural we published of “Street Art” or graffiti actually turns out to be a logo or promotion for someone who is selling sneakers, t-shirts, lip-gloss, tampons, or toe fungus spray. That’s how people pay the rent, yo!

After all, we get press releases all the time from “Street Artists” who purport to get up all over the place in their home city of New Jesusville – but nobody we talk to has heard of them. Eventually word gets around and its not our business to trash people. And we all know at least one or two fine artists who have used the strategy of putting their stuff on the street to add some sort of “cred” to their “brand”. Fine. And look at the countless corporate names that have been inserting (or “integrating”) themselves into all manner of social/electronic media and “stories” in the last couple of years – just to leach off grassroots D.I.Y. culture and make the money and get the clicks but not actually support the art community that birthed it. It’s a complex story.

But it’s hard not to feel a little bit like you just got punked when you walk into a store and find the stuff you shot in a putrid garbage strewn alley is now silk-screened across a cheap flask or frisbee or truckers cap, giving it about as much meaning as a Kardashian wedding ring.

What are we going to do? Oh probably nothing – there is no purity test or reliable scale for measuring when someone has “sold out” and we don’t like pompous peeps who pretend otherwise. We’re just keeping an eye out, sister, and trying not to get fooled again.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alinic, ASK, BAMN, Chris & Veng RWK, Gilf!, Icy & Sot, Lambros, Meer Sau, Mosstika, MUDA, Pixote, Tripel, and WD.

Top image > ASK (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lambros (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tripel (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Meer Sau “I Love Porno” in Salzburg, Austria. (photo © Meer Sau)

Meer Sau “Art is not a Crime” in Salzburg, Autria. (photo © Meer Sau)

MUDA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gilf! Her tribute to Malala Yousafzai (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris, Veng RWK (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bishop 203 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BAMN does a memoriam for Aaron Swartz. Pixote on top. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mosstika (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alinic (photo © Jaime Rojo)

WD in Athens, Greece. (photo © Philipp Gor)

Untitled. Brooklyn, NY. Februray 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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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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BAST Collection for FALL 2013 Hits The Streets

February 16, 2013

Fashion Week in New York means more models than usual on the subway and on the sidewalk. Poor us.

Impossibly thin tall pretty and hunky people with beautiful skin and far-away eyes parading up and down the street in their free designer clothes and accessories, peering into their phones at MTA maps and fashion blogs to see if they have shown up somewhere… it’s one of the more glamorous part of the conversation on the street.

Just like most art on the street, these scenes are ethereal. Brooklyn Street Artist BAST takes a turn at the runway this week by installing a new series of saucy models for the street too, and here are a couple of shots from the collection.

Bast (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bast (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Favorite song from a fashion show this week – “Girls” by Beastie Boys, which accompanied the 80s/90s inspired Fall 2013 show by Jeremy Scott, who studied fashion design at Brooklyn’s Pratt.

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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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BSA Film Friday: 02.15.13

February 15, 2013

 

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

Now screening: Miss Van in São Paulo, Ronzo and “Roachio”, and David Gouny: Gouny the Froggy and his Polaroid 1000

 

BSA Special Feature:

Miss Van in São Paulo, Brazil

“I’m trying to find a way to do painting the same way I would do a throw up.”

“I’m over sensitive and I have to use it somehow.”

In this film by Dscreet the Street Artist and fine artist Miss Van shares some insight of her personal approach to her fwork, her roots in graffiti, and her feelings about getting up in the street.

Ronzo and “Roachio”

A short time-lapse of Ronzo on a rooftop in East London doing a painting of his cockroach character “Roachio”.

David Gouny: Gouny the Froggy and his Polaroid 1000

Parisian Street Artist and performance artist David Gouny also creates a bloated form of sculpture and costume – mirroring the full-figured roundness of his ladies on the street. In this brief vignette we see him as frog, taking his polaroid camera to the park to do some photography.

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Stephanie Chefas Projects Presents: “Something Wicked This Way Comes” A Group Exhibition (North Hollywood, CA)

February 14, 2013

Something Wicked This Way Comes
A Group Exhibition Curated by Stephanie Chefas

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 23rd, 2013 from 7-10pm
For an advance online preview, please email info@stephaniechefas.com.

The artwork for Something Wicked This Way Comes is beginning to roll in and it’s deliciously provocative! Featuring multiple works from Annie Owens, Christian Rex van Minnen, Christine Wu, Chrystal Chan, David Ball, Fulvio Di Piazza, Jana Brike, Jessica Ward, Judith Supine, and Michael Page, these innovative artists are creating incredibly strong pieces for the exhibit and I’m very honored to be working with each and every one. As I eagerly await the unveiling on opening night, I’d like to share with you a few sneak peeks of what to expect.

Please join us on February 23rd at Cella Gallery and prepare to feel the hairs on your neck stand straight up; for something wicked this way comes.

http://stephaniechefas.com/#home

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Woodward Gallery Presents: “Detail” A Group Exhibition (Manhattan, NYC)

February 14, 2013

DETAIL
March 2nd – April 28th 2013
Opening Reception:
Saturday March 2nd 6-8pm

Our society places great emphasis on detail, but the rare individual pauses long enough to appreciate this specialty. If detail refers to the parts which make up the whole, this exhibition relies on the small elements considered for each unique work of art. The group of Artists are: Michael Alan, Susan Breen, Thomas Buildmore, Deborah Claxton, Cassius Fouler, Kosbe, Kiriyo Kuchina, Moody, Margaret Morrison, Kenji Nakayama, Jaggu Prassad, and Cristina Vergano.

http://www.woodwardgallery.net/exhibitions/ex-detail.html

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Benjamin Krause Gallery Presents: Moustache Man A Solo Exhibition (Manhattan, NYC)

February 14, 2013

Moustache Man – February 21st – February 24th – 4 days only!
Reception: February, 21st – 7-9pm

Patrick Waldo, a.k.a. Moustache Man, who penned his signature cursive “moustache” tag on thousands of subway ads from 2011 to 2012, is inking upper lips once again in his solo gallery debut, Moustache Man, opening February 21st from 7-9pm at Krause Gallery.

http://www.krausegallery.com/WP/

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BSA Loves You More Every Day: Happy Valentines Day

February 14, 2013

Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
C. S. Lewis

The individual wheat-paster or tagger on the streets may not intend it, but they’re writing an open diary, an invitation to conversation, to tell a story. As we continue to record and examine the stories that are written on the street, we get some powerful insights regularly. How Street Artists express the topic of love is as individual as it is universal.

This is a love letter to the BSA readers who have shown real support to us along the way and with it comes our continued promise to love you more every day.

Love Me (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Uphues (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Uphues (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cake and The Dude Company (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz “Two Hoodies Kissing” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

L.E.T. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A street Jesus with arms wide open.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Blue Abstraction from Doug Fogelson in Chicago

February 13, 2013

The new Street Art Abstraction we’ve been talking about continues apace in the public sphere, perhaps buffeted by current shows like MoMA’s Inventing Abstraction and the 100th anniversary of the earth shaking Armory Show that turned modern art on its head.

Not quite as earth shaking, but still a marker on the path in the urban forest, fine artist Doug Fogelson wheat pasted this mural in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago over the weekend. Ecological and environmental intersects the geometry in the photographed patterning – the same sort of study that launched many a cubist and modernist, stripping the angles, lines, and forms to their fundamentals.

 Doug Fogelson (photo © Doug Fogelson)

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Sheryo and the Dubai Camel

February 12, 2013

You’ve seen her work here for about a year and a half, since Singaporean Street Artist settled in Brooklyn and began painting New York walls in earnest with people like the Australian Yok, Brooklyn’s Bishop 203, and TopDos from Paris. In fact her New York campaign with Yok last year covered so many walls (especially in the summer) that we began to wonder if the twosome had inherited an aerosol factory.

Here we have some new images of the illustrator at work on a large mural with the humble camel as muse at an event sponsored by the cultural arts organization Tiger Translate. Also involved were Auckland street stencillist Enforce One, fine artists and performances.

Sheryo working on her installation. (photo for BSA courtesy © Shadow Professional Photography)

Sheryo working on her installation. (photo for BSA courtesy © Freeflow)

The Dubai Camel by Sheryo.  (photo for BSA courtesy © Freeflow)

Sheryo (photo for BSA courtesy © Custard)

A collaborative wall in Brooklyn from 2012 by TopDos, Sheryo, Bishop 203, and The Yok. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

To learn more about Tiger Translate click here.
See Sheryo in a computer chip makers’ commercial aired in Asia here.

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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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Galerie F Presents: “Don’t Sweat It” A Group Exhibition. (Chicago, Il)

February 11, 2013
Spring break, summer vaccation, paid vacation days (for the older crowd) and the ever elusive three day weekend are the few bits in the year when you have enough time to walk away from your day to day responsibilities and have an adventure!Travel around the world, try new things, explore your hobbies, or just get hammered on a resort in Mexico. “Don’t Sweat It!” celebrates, as well as critiques, these breaks away from the day to day.

A sticker pack, featuring 16 stickers designed by the artists, will be released at the show.

Featured Artists:
The Yok – Sheryo – Brad Rohloff – Nathan Friedman – Dillon Froelich – Michael C. Hsiung – Luke Pelletier – Ben Jensen – Miles Jackson – Jeffery Kubasak – Eric McHenry – Charlie Megna – Sean Morris – Bryan Peterson – Austin England

Opening Reception: Friday, March 8th [6-10p]

Galerie F
2381 N Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL 60647

Don’t Sweat It! A Group Art Exhibition

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