White Walls Gallery Project Space Presents: Word to Mother “Fuck You Pay Me” (San Francisco, CA)

Fuck You Pay Me is an ongoing project from London based Artist, Word To Mother. Being self employed for a decade and frustrated with the constant struggle of getting paid by clients, WTM has been producing “Fuck You Pay Me” Bats as an embodiment of his disdain.

“Any self employed Creative will understand how frustrating it is to get paid by clients who want work done immediately but then are reluctant to pay. I have devised a solution to the problem, the ‘Fuck You Pay Me’ bat. If you have not received your payment within 30 days of completing the job, simply take the bat to the employer who is reluctant to pay and let the bat do the talking. 100% success rate guaranteed.”

http://www.whitewallssf.com/blog/2013/01/ww-project-space-grand-opening-word-to-mother/

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FAILE’s Towering Night at the Ballet

FAILE’s Towering Night at the Ballet

The dance of high and low art lifts 40 feet into the air as Brooklyn Street Art duo Faile unveil their repertoire of ironic pop imagery at the New York City Ballet this week. As street artists in the then-industrial wasteland of Williamsburg at the turn of the century, Patrick Miller and Patrick McNeil would have not sought such attention but ducked the bright lights as they aerosol sprayed their stencils on street walls in the late hours.

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Now in this most unusual high/low hallelujah junction, NYCB’s Peter Martins brings Faile’s towering visual vocabulary, rising and spilling out at the base, into this hallowed Phillip Johnson designed atrium at the modernist Lincoln Center. Like a painted wooden fountain, Faile’s recombinant cultural appropriations reach a new height; their 5-month study of NYCB’s printed archives producing newly entwined storylines and inflections mirroring those they once imagined only for the street.

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As you walk around its base and view it from the tiered balcony gallery, you can see Faile is messing with stuff again: the re-imaginings of dancers with half-sleeve tattoos as Faile brings in skater culture, the remixing of bodega signage and graffiti writing with art-deco showbill refinement, and even the sly dark humor of a ballerina flying through the air past an appreciative viewer as she sunnily gleams out her high-rise New York apartment window. This is the visual vocabulary that unfolds in your manège around the base; the imagery, symbols, and pop witticisms that Faile layers deliberately into this one-column retrospective. For their hardcore fans, there are of course the Mao, the Prince Charles, the horse-headed surfer and monkeys in dresses. And 1986.

 

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

How did it get here, a soon-opening exhibit “Les Ballets de Faile”? Not a typical gig for Street Art, true, but ballet as an art form has a sort of thinning crowd of fans while Street Art has a sort of exploding one – one that is capturing the imagination of many of the same people these seats have been missing.

“It is such an institution,” says Faile’s Patrick McNeil as he describes the New York City Ballet, “You have people who have been coming for 30-40-50 years to see performances.” Precisely. Quick tangential math inspired by that statement helps explain the necessity of bringing in artists like Faile and coaxing in the Millenials, who will hopefully pry themselves from the glowing blue little screens in their laps long enough to watch the live show onstage. Well perhaps they could send one discreet Tweet about it – #faileballetisawesome .  One additional benefit will be that the dancers will see at least some people their own age when the lights come up.

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“So we had a meeting with Peter Martins, who is the Ballet Master in Chief,” says the other Faile, Patrick Miller, as he talks about the new art series the ballet is sponsoring, “and we just kind of showed him our work and all the things we had done – it was amazing actually. He was so enthusiastic. And when we heard of all the artists who have been involved with them before we were just like, “Alright, just tell us when you are ready to say ‘go’!” – A completely understandable response when you realize you’ve just joined a list of artists that include Warhol, Noguchi, Clemente, and Lichtenstein, among others.

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

During a recent visit to the duo’s studio in Brooklyn, Patrick and Patrick showed a number of the works that will be on display on the tower, as well as some of the variations on the ballet themes that may not. Because they believe strongly in their process of discovery, the end results, however precise, can be sort of surprising to them. Not that they didn’t do their homework.

Brooklyn Street Art: So you gained access to the archives of visual materials from the New York City Ballet…
Patrick Miller: Yeah so they opened up the archives – they were way underground some place in the Wall Street area – all their old programs, ephemera, – and we kind of took a lot of that in… (he gestures to a wood painting) this body of the dragon is in a perfume ad in one of the playbills and after seeing the ballet I liked the idea of seeing lightning bolt legs for the ballerinas, so…

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The two Faile nights at the ballet quickly sold out because of this marrying of high and low, and possibly because the $29 ticket price also came with a 2” x 2” wooden Faile block made especially for the occasion. For the guys, it looks like a sweet and entertaining fusion of disparate elements – like they are accustomed to. “We were not into ballet, and we didn’t really know much about ballet,” says McNeil about their experience at the outset, “Our work is from the street and something that is not really from that world at all. We felt a little out of place just going there, you know.”

After many conversations, studies, sketches, paintings, screen prints, and nights stacking wood blocks, they don’t have any doubt that Faile belongs at the ballet. After their opening February 1st, few will.

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile. Detail. Studio Visit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Faile Tower installed in the atrium for the New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Faile Tower installed in the atrium for the New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Faile Tower. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Faile Tower. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Faile Tower. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Faile Tower. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Faile Tower. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Faile Tower. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The theater will hold open hours for one week beginning Sunday, February 10 so you can stop by and view the new Faile exhibit. “Les Ballets de Faile” will remain installed on the promenade of the theater from January 15 – February 24, 2013.

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Blog Spotting: Old Walls in Milan Italy

Here’s a new site we found that speaks of peoples’ long-time personal relationship with graffiti and walls, modern urban archaeology, and even the ephemeral nature the art you see on the street today. Alberto Boido was just a kid in Milan in the early nineties when he started taking photos of walls because he liked the graffiti he saw. Two decades later, he’s back to the same walls and shooting them again. The process became a project, and he’s just launched OldWalls to “pay tribute to all the people who gifted colors to Milan.”

Old Walls (photo © Alberto Boido)

Says Boido, “When I was 12 years old I started to ride my bike around Milan looking for the walls on which new amazing graffiti had started to appear. I was used to taking photos and then I spent my free time drawing sketches and trying to reproduce something with the same style and colors.

“Year after year Milan has lost the places I have loved so much – replaced by glass buildings, abandoned areas or grey walls. I had to do something: the same I had done years ago. I take my bike, which is new and bigger, a camera (now digital and more expensive) and because of my passion for graffiti I go to the same place and take pictures from the same point of view, the same angle.

I’m hoping to give everyone the chance to discover the colors and shapes hidden for years or to help remember some forgotten places.”

Old Walls (photo © Alberto Boido)

Old Walls (photo © Alberto Boido)

To see more of Alberto Boido’s project click here.

 

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London Calling : Fresh Art from the Streets

London is looking alive and on top of things at mid-winter, with a great variety of materials and techniques, imaginative styles and of course varying results, according to your tastes. During a quick trip on a somewhat blizzardish day, photographer Geoff Hargadon found “tough conditions: snowy, cold as f***, and a camera battery that refused to stay charged.” Tough going for the intrepid Street Art photog you see. Of course the upside of inclement weather is that no one is outside to obscure your shot. Except the falling snow, that is.

Vhils (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

From the comfort of you warmly glowing flatscreen, this selection of pieces looks like Street Art in London is largely mural based, right now, as much of the scene continues to be. The players are more or less familiar to your eyeballs, with a few newbies on the scene.

Enjoy these exclusive shots just for BSA readers. And special thanks to Geoff for his heroism and for sharing these scenes with us.

Shok-1 with RemiRough (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Local favorite Stik shows what may be a lady in a burka in this coupling. (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Stik (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Stik, simple, and effective. (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Calm (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

This sculptural installation appeared during the London Olympics, the arrows of the gods falling like rain and piercing the side of this building. The installations around the city included javelins, shot puts, bows and arrows and is called “Gifts of the Olympic Gods”.(photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Nasa . Milo Tchais (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Obey looking completely graphic while the snow falls. (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

This dude doing a head spin is by Run. (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

finDAC (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Jimmy C (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

David Walker (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

El Mac (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

The Frenchman C215 is in the window (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Phlegm brings one of his creatures into the street dimension, looking like he is ready to inspect somebody’s backpack.  (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Phlegm (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Excellent use of the front of this bus by Phlegm. Might mess up the visibility though. (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

ROA’s prickly friend looks startled. Could be excited about the new super sewer for London.  (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

D*Face crushes a car . Invader . Obey (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Burning Candy is awfully monochromatically romantic in a digital sort of way.  (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Burning Candy and a sliced screen series from BomK Liliwenn (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Canvaz. Sort of like Warhol portraits of Darger’s Vivian girls, but that’s just me. (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Amigo . Malarky . Milo Tchais (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

 

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Images of the Week: 01.27.13

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 4 Burners Crew, Bast, Billi Kid, Bunny M, Doug Nox aka the Harlequinade, El Sol 25, Entes y Pesimo, How & Nosm, JMR, Kobra, Rubin, and Stikman.

Top image > KOBRA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KOBRA. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin . 4 Burners Crew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JMR in Dallas ( yes that Dallas). (photo © JMR)

How & Nosm covered the windows for their big pop-up show opening this week with Jonathan Levine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Click here to read How & Nosm Confessions.

 Stikman continues to flirts with dangerous dames. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 has a new batch of off-kilter kollage. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Intro at Buswhwick Five Points (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Intro at Bushwick Five Points (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Doug Nox AKA The Harlequinade (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bast (photo © Jaime Rojo)

bunny M (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Billi Kid goes over himself with his own promotional beer. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Entes in Lima, Peru. (photo © Entes)

Entes y Pesimo at the Museum of  Contemporary Art in Lima, Peru. (photo © Entes)

Untitled. Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. January 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

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Lister Gives You a Look in Snowy London

Brooklyn by way of Austrailia Street Artist and fine artist Anthony Lister continues to communicate with the eyes. His disembodied faces and features appear on walls and corrugated surfaces on the streets, like these recent London installations, without context and full of expression. At turns mythic, gothic, and comic, the true intentions may not be clear but the (multiple) eyes say it all.

A new snow in the city blanketed and quieted clattering, chattering public spaces last week, giving a distilled quiet arena to quickly pass through. For the intrepid urban explorer, it can be a quiet city all your own to discover while others huddle inside cooking a winter stew, doodling in a journal, or maybe playing “catch me catch me” with a playmate. The newly pristine coating keeps the public away, but these Listers continue to grapple, grip, and clutch at you who walk by, giving you a look.

Anthony Lister (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Anthony Lister (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Anthony Lister (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

Special thanks to photographer and BSA contributor Geoff Hargadon for sharing these exclusive photos with BSA readers.  Stayed tuned on Monday for more from London.

 

 

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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 01.25.13

BSA Film Friday 01.25.13

 

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

Now screening: Voice of Art – Migration is Beautiful with Favianna Rodriguez, Project Brave with WK Interact,We Will Know When We Are Home with Creepy, and Innerfields: DIY in Berlin.

BSA Special Feature:

Voice of Art – Migration is Beautiful

“Art has the power to shape our laws, change society, and to speak truth to power, “ says Favianna Rodriguez in this new documentary that quickly traces the relationship between immigration law and greed and what is effectively a new system of slavery. In an upbeat way. HOW does she do it?

WK Interact: Project Brave

“A way of giving back to the city,” is how Street Artist WK Interact talks about the inception and development of “Project Brave” – an incredible distillation of the chaos of the events in New York on September 11, 2001.

Kyle Hughes-Odgers: “We Will Know When We Are Home”

A visually rich video showing the Street Artist Creepy as he wanders Port Hedlund Australia through fields and weathered abandoned industrial carcasses in search of surfaces.

Innerfields: DIY in Berlin

Started as a graffiti crew, Innerfields continued to perfect their craft and apply it to commercial work very successfully. But they still love the street.

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I Love Paris In The Winter… New Street Art Dans la Rue

La neige! C’est romantique!

It is snowing in many city Street Art spots this time of year – transforming the evolving visual conversation on the street to something more. It may make you walk faster past it on your way to school or office or apartment, but for Demian Smith, editor at Alternative Paris, it is a source of inspiration, even romance. Today he shares these latest snowy Parisian Street Art scenes exclusively with BSA readers along with his ruminations.
 

The cradle of the French revolutions, a steep and hilly area in north-east Paris known as Belleville, was covered in snow just a day or so ago, and my first thought was to withdraw from this beautiful, dangerous spectacle.

2501 (photo © Demian Smith)

Why expose myself voluntarily to the heart-rending and often precarious trials of seeking out artwork displayed in the streets without censure? Was I going to see an old masterwork? —No.*

However, after reflection, I overcame my repugnance. I had, in my excursions, noticed, among the multifarious artistic creations, so many heterogeneous elements; that is to say, dozens of artists and respondents of all social positions and of so many nationalities, that I began to think it would perhaps be useful to my compatriots at Brooklyn Street Art to view photographs by and by a sincere recital, photographed with a Canon 350D, of the events that are ever more frequently taking place in this part of Western Europe.

Le Module de Zeer (photo © Demian Smith)

All photos were all taken in Belleville in north-east Paris, currently the most active zone for street art and graffiti anywhere in France.

Bvault (photo © Demian Smith)

Jean le Gac (photo © Demian Smith)

Roti (photo © Demian Smith)

Artist Unknown (photo © Demian Smith)

Fred le Chevalier (photo © Demian Smith)

Fred le Chevalier, Gzup and Diamant (photo © Demian Smith)

Fred le Chevalier (photo © Demian Smith)

Ben Vautier (photo © Demian Smith)

Stinkfish (photo © Demian Smith)

MW (photo © Demian Smith)

Artist Unknown (photo © Demian Smith)

Denk Becky (photo © Demian Smith)

Da Cruz for L.E.M.U.R. (photo © Demian Smith)

Cony, Tomek Pal Crew (photo © Demian Smith)

Artist Unknown (photo © Demian Smith)

Mural at rue Denoyez (photo © Demian Smith)

Rue Denoyez (photo © Demian Smith)

 

* Text is adapted from a passage in the 1871 publication, ‘The Insurrection in Paris, by an Englishman: An eye witness account of that frightful war and of the terrible evils which accompanied it’ (1871), on the author’s impressions of Belleville. -Demian Smith

 

Demian Smith is editor at Alternative Paris, which reports on Paris’ street art, graffiti and fringe culture. Our special thanks to him for sharing this with BSA readers.

 

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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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The Sol Still Shines: El Sol 25 Hand Paints New Remixes

Street Artist El Sol 25 is back on the street with riveting visually displaced droids as he hand paints and wheat-pastes the future past on abandoned walls and construction lots through certain parts of New York. Looking at this evermore integrated fusing of limbs, torsos, and heads, you can imaging that the studio of El Sol 25 is a warehouse piled high with the anatomical spare parts of modern and historical figures and everyday people that he mischievously welds into remixed robots wandering the street.

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25. Detail. (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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Weldon Arts Gallery Presents: Nether “Crumbling Cities” (Brooklyn, NY)

Weldon Arts Presents “Crumbling Cities” – A Solo Exhibition by NETHER

Weldon Arts is proud to present Nether in his first New York exhibition. Nether is an urban art campaign that hopes to impact and beautify the bleakness of the city of Baltimore through vibrant street art with the aim of evoking public discussion. The pieces that are wheat pasted to the selected (usually vacant) facades comment on the city below the smog as well as the forces that have brought it to its shameful state. Nether sees his work as a force that solidifies people’s connections to the city Baltimore. The quest is an attempt to reclaim and recycle the tragic landscape all while opening people’s eyes to often ignored issues in the city, such as mass vacancy.

Opening Thursday, January 24th, from 6pm to 9pm. The exhibit runs through Saturday, February 16th.

http://weldonarts.net/

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Turner Galleries Present: Kyle Hughes-Odgers “A thousand lights from a hundred skies” (Northbridge, West Australia)

‘A THOUSAND LIGHTS FROM A HUNDRED SKIES’
OPENS 6PM 8 FEBRUARY – 9 MARCH 2013
TURNER GALLERIES
470 WILLIAM STREET, NORTHBRIDGE WA 6003

Kyle Hughes-Odgers is better known in Perth as Creepy, the popular street artist, renowned for his large scale murals and wall paintings.

These adorn the walls of the Norfolk Basement, the Condor Tower Carpark, the Northbridge Western Power building, Bar 399, and Juicebox Creative. His most recent commission is a whopping 40m, 7 panel mural for Murdoch University. You’ve probably also recently seen his work on the wooden hoardings surrounding new developments on William Street in Northbridge, and around the city in laneways, music festivals and on forgotten walls. His street work is not confined to Perth, he was very happy to discover that some street art he did in New York had been selected for Street Art New York, published by Prestel (Random House) in April 2010. Other travels and interactions with city walls include London, Barcelona, Berlin, Sydney and Melbourne.

http://www.turnergalleries.com.au/exhibitions/index.php

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Lazarides Gallery Presents: Dan Witz “Prisioners 2012-2013” (London, UK)

New York-based artist Dan Witz makes his solo debut with Lazarides at our Rathbone Place gallery with Prisoners 2012-2013, displaying paintings from both his Prisoner and Mosh Pit series.

Dan Witz has been at the forefront of artists working on the street since the late 1970s. Combining digital reproduction with the old master’s technique of illusionism, the artist’s lifelike figures appear as if from nowhere on signposts, walls, windows and manhole covers across the world. Painted and layered over digital photographs, each image is designed to surprise the viewer, taking them aback and from the expected into an alarming state of disbelief.

http://www.lazinc.com/exhibitions/rathbone

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