Street Artist and fine artist Dan Witz is prepping for his part in a new group show titled “Bedlam” in the deep recesses of London with Lazarides Gallery. “We’re doing this huge thing in the tunnels below the Old Vic – should be massive,” he tells us with some thrill in his email voice. It’s good to hear Dan happy, because his work can be so dark. Just back from Frankfurt where he worked with Amnesty International to highlight the human rights and justice work that organization does for all of us, these new images on the streets of London are the Street Art component of Witz’s practice that is quietly compelling and unsettling.
Certainly the aim of these pieces is not to put us at ease, to “Keep Calm and Carry On”. The figures behind the glass are depicted as imprisoned or trapped, and your second glance at them will leave you disconcerted and troubled. Witz goes where many artists won’t or can’t in his explorations of the human condition and man’s inhumanity – reminding us that art can serve more than to just send us home happy and content. It can also connect us with a truer sense of the world, provide a bit of grounding and remind us of the work that needs to be done. With this work Witz give a voice to those who don’t have words to express their suffering.
Our thanks to Dan for sharing these super fresh images exclusively for BSA readers.
Dan Witz in Frankfurt for Amnesty International. Frankfurt, Germany 2012. Work in Progress. All artworks by Dan Witz. Photos by Dan Witz and Hans-Juergen Kaemmerer.
Lazarides is mounting “Bedlam” in a maze of tunnels below Old Vic beginning October 09, evoking the historic mental asylum. “Bedlam over the years has become synonymous with madness, chaos and pandemonium, it seemed like the perfect theme for a world gone mad. Be afraid.” -Steve Lazarides. Participating Artists include: Vhils, Conor Harrington, Doug Foster, Ian Francis, Kelsey Brookes, Karim Zeriahen, Klaus Weiskopf, Lucy McLauchlan, Artists Anonymous, Michael Najjar, Till Rabus, Jonathan Yeo, DAn Witz and Antony Micallef.
Kosmopolite Aerosol Bridge Club and Urban Stylistix present KOSMOPOLITE ART TOUR – warm-up edition for 2013 – an international exhibition and big mural painting in Amsterdam, JustWritingMyName and more side-events.
13 internationally renowned urban artists from the Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Spain and Switzerland exhibit at MC Theater Amsterdam from October 7th. The exhibition opening will start at 17:00 and include an eclectic line-up:
All artists team up with a crowd of local heroes to paint a 650qm mural painting in the Northern part of Amsterdam within a common theme: “Circle of time” – 2012 the year of the Mayan Calendar.
The Kosmopolite Art Tour will host the international Graffiti event “JustWritingMyName” providing extra wall space for invited artists from Amsterdam and Den Haag.
The Kosmopolite Art Tour was originally initiated by three contemporary art collectives: Mac Crew (Paris/Bagnolet), Farm Prod (Brussels) and Aerosol Bridge Club (Amsterdam) in order to promote the development of pictorial art through the model of international artistic meetings and exchanges.
The project has started in three European cities in 2009 – Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris – with the objective to present an eclectic overview of contemporary pictorial art through mural creations and exhibitions. The project expanded internationally in 2011 involving the cities of Johannesburg, Jakarta, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
Now the KAT will return to Amsterdam for the second time!
Details:
KOSMOPOLITE ART TOUR AMSTERDAM International exhibition of Urban Artists
Date: 07.10. – 14.10.2012 Exhibition opening: 07.10.2012 – 17:00, free entrance Location: MC Theater, Polonceaukade 5 . Westerpark . Amsterdam Curator: Daniel Doebner, Markus Hinger, Sandor Sweet Website:http://www.kosmo-art-tour.com
Low Brow Artique presents their first solo exhibition, The Penis Mightier Than the Sword, featuring the work of Dickchicken. Returning from nearly a three-year hiatus for one last show, The Penis Mightier Than the Sword will represent a spectrum of the artist’s work, including a combination of new and previously unseen images. This body of work will be on display to the public from October 12th – November 3rd with an opening to the public October 12th from 7-10pm.
In his own words, Dickchicken says, “this thing started as a joke. I was attempting to have fun. So I continued doing it until it was no longer fun[ny]. The graffiti community in NYC is full of high school style drama. When that crept into this idea it ruined it. So I made the call to cut it off. Now and again certain opportunities arise. If I think they are worth the time and effort I participate. This is one of those. So here we are, many years later and many experiences have come and gone. This idea persists. You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to hate it. Use whatever energy you have and create something better. “
At the height of this fame, Dickchicken created a series of faux-magazine covers as large panel pieces. Since imaging his Vanity Fair debut, these pieces have been placed into storage. In addition to these previously unseen images Dickchicken will unveil a series of self-portraits with religious figures including the Virgin Mary and L. Ron Hubbard. By inserting himself into Renaissance style religious portraits and glossy covers, Dickchicken’s comprehensive body of work inserts his tongue-in-cheek humor into the historical canon of art history.
Artists: TrustoCorp
Location: The Outsiders – Newcastle
Dates: Friday 5th of October 2012 to Saturday 10th of November 2012
21st century iconoclasts Trustocorp make their debut outside of the USA at The Outsiders Newcastle gallery this autumn. International Bank of Trustocorp is a landmark interactive show will appeal to anyone interested in contemporary art and future politics.
A paradigm shift in protest art, Trustocorp use a visual language more commonly associated with mainstream media and big business to pursue an insurrectionary agenda. The collective has placed fake products in supermarkets, installed ersatz magazine covers on newsstands and placed subversive street signs across America.
Trustocorp eschew the hackneyed politics of the established left in favour of ‘post post-modern’ politics that preach self-reliance, self-worth. Their maniefesto especially rejects our fearful, material and hedonistic contemporary society perpetuated by a nanny state and alarmist media.
For ‘International Bank of Trustocorp’ the accomplished apostates will employ their high production values to transform the gallery into a counterfeit counting house that examines the power of currency.
“We’re exploring the power of money in our lives on a local and international level,” a Trustocorp spokesperson explains. “From the high power gambling of Wall Street to the broken dreams of ‘Main Street USA,’ money is simultaneously the root of all evil and the solution to all problems. This show is our take on the global effect of greed and the need for money.”
PRIVATE VIEW DETAILS – Thursday 4th October from 6pm ‘til 9pm at The Outsiders Newcastle.
‘The International Bank Of TrustoCorp’ will be open to the public from 5th October – 10th November 2012, Tuesday to Saturday 12 – 6pm, admission is, as always, free.
The Outsiders Newcastle, 77 Quayside, Newcastle upon Tyne.
They say that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, but what about those on the outside looking in? Living in a Glass House, the latest free public art initiative of aMBUSH Gallery, shows that a better policy is that no one should throw stones, regardless of their accommodation, and simply look under them instead. You never know what you might find.
Presented by Sydney’s GLASSHOUSE and aMBUSH Gallery, Living in a Glass House comprises the work of fifty contemporary street, graffiti and urban artists from almost all the major cities in Australia. Located across the three levels of the GLASSHOUSE, the pop-up exhibition brings the most prominent figures in Australian art together in an ambitious and dynamic display of home-grown talent.
Produced and curated by aMBUSH Gallery, Living in a Glass House will exhibit new and original works by Brisbane artists Benjamin Reeve and Gimiks Born; Adnate, Itch, Lucy Lucy and Slicer, four of Melbourne’s indomitable AWOL crew; Gary Seaman from Adelaide; and Sydney’s own Brett Chan, Jodee Knowles, Deb, Bei Bad Girl, Bridge Stehli, Jumbo, Ben Brown and Ears, plus 36 more artists, hailing from across the nation.
On Wednesday October 3, to mark the launch of this exciting new project, Deb and Bei Bad Girl will bring their bombshell attitudes and signature femininity to GLASSHOUSE with a live painting display from 11am to 2pm.
All works from Living in a Glass House will be for sale, and aMBUSH Gallery will release an online catalogue on October 3 that audiences can browse and from which purchases can be made. The catalogue will be available at www.livinginaglasshouse.com and 100% of sales go to the artists themselves.
Dedicated to the uncovering and dazzling display of new and exciting artists and their works, aMBUSH Gallery and GLASSHOUSE are proud to present Living in a Glass House, a vibrant addition to Sydney’s burgeoning public art space and a testament to the talent beholden by Australia’s shores.
A one woman urban renewal project, Street Artist Gilf! has been prettifying the decay in a few cities over the last year or so with hand made fluorescent blooms. Not purely decorative, she thinks of them as sculptural, a public works project, and a sort of rorschach test that reveals as much about the audience as the artist. As with any artworks put out on the street, the public will render a verdict. In New York, they ride for about a minute before someone rips them off the wall – to take home in many cases. Also, New Yorkers don’t like “pretty” as much as they like tough stuff – skulls, violence, brooding, etc. With recent blooms popping up inside abandoned buildings, it will be interesting to see how long the garden grows.
We’ve collected a number of these for you to look at together, a sort of urban bouquet for Tuesday. While not wholely representative of Gilf!s various ventures on the street, these installations have a certain signature that’s revealed through these shots from Brooklyn, Baltimore, and Detroit.
The Fame Festival doesn’t take itself too seriously, but you should. Now in its fifth year, the festival is run by one fella and his friends, offering interesting walls and an opportunity to work with local artisans in the “aesthetically depressed” areas of this beautiful town named Grottaglie. A dozen or so international artists descended here again this year as summer turned to fall to eat amazing food, paint huge walls, and to create pottery works and limited edition prints with their host, Angelo Milano, in his print shop called Studiocromie.
Free from corporate sponsors or too many meddlesome civic interests, which can muddy the creative waters and contort presentation, FAME has reliably produced singularly striking work on the Streets: the kind of free-form ingenuity that could only result from a being in a positive environment. Artists who return from the experience report that Studiocromie and their peeps know how to make you feel right at home, complete with the dysfunctional human frailties we’re all prone to. Again this year some of the pieces that have come out of FAME have been remarkable for one reason or another – it also helps when the talent pool is so strong.
Photographer and BSA contributor Henrik Haven was on hand the to cover FAME and he shares these exclusive images with BSA readers of works in progress by Erica Il Cane and completed walls by Vhils, Interesni Kazki and Conor Harrington. The videos are produced by FAME and they give an additional cinematic appreciation and humor to the entire experience.
Angelo remarks on the FAME website what his take on the festival has been as he sets up the video below, “It’s been an intense couple of weeks here at FAME, three artists at the same time and it was a hell of a mess. This is what happened with KING Erica il Cane. Here’s my advice to all artists around, both new and old, watch him doing what he does, and how he does it. You won’t get as good as he is, you won’t end up painting such a huge wall in just two days, but at least you can take notes: have fun and don’t think about the whole art world bullshit.”
The harrowing and hilarious video helps explain why Interesni Kazki needed 12 days to complete the piece. Angelo describes it as “an extreme amount of bad luck”.
This week seemed busy on the streets of New York after LA graff writer Saber started us off on Sunday with a sky-writing campaign that was politically charged arts advocacy and a social media-soaked smackdown of the right wing in the US. From culture-jamming to political commentary to social advocacy, it looks like some Street Artists are getting back their voice in many pieces that are espousing a message. Not all of them of course.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bast, Billi Kid, Creepy, Classic, Espo, Home Sick, JB Rock, Jeice 2, Meer Sau, ND’A, Olek, OverUnder, PM AM, Reader, and Ugo Rondinone. Locations include New York, Istanbul, London, Portugal, Sicily, and the Pilbara desert in the Northwest of Australia.
As he paints the giant 8-shaped snake biting it’s tail, the Italian Street Artist JB Rock explains his new piece this way, “This is a portrait of our modern society and especially of my beautiful but very counterproductive country. For this work I’ve been inspired by the UROBORUS concept, remixed with the Infinity symbol”.
“I traveled up to Port Hedland which is an industry Port in the North West of Australia and painted some walls and found objects in the desert as part of a residency with FORM gallery,” says the Perth-based Creepy.
Gola Hundun, Kenor and H101 otherwise known as the Art Collective Los Brujos, recently participated in the Sub Urb Art 2 in Torino, Italy with a patchwork hand-painted re-creation of the mystic Eye inside a large open warehouse space.
Call it The Eye of Glory, The All Seeing Eye, The Eye of The World, The Eye of Providence or the Eye of Horus, the human eye has been imbued with supernatural powers, omnipresence, and intuitive abilities for centuries by various cultures and belief systems worldwide. Three members of Los Brujos pose carefully here with the new piece by way of drawing our focus back to it’s various meanings.
As they draw your attention to the third eye looming behind them, Los Brujos appear in various costume while positioning themselves symbolically in front of the work, adding a decidedly pagan connotation to the work. The juxtaposition reminds you that dimension, abstraction, and geometry have roots in folk art, religion and mysticism – far predating the modern age fascination with geometry and minimalism. While these guys and many in the alt-art party circuit are sometimes thought of as avant-garde, you can also see them as revivalists of our clan-based past.
BROOKLYN! Jay-Z opens the new stadium in Brooklyn tonight with a lot of fanfare – and if you don’t have tickets just have a blast in the hundreds of studio spaces and gallery shows and “in the street” installations and performances starting tonight at the Dumbo Arts Festival that brings thousands coursing through the neighborhood over the next three days.
Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, and Quincy Jones. (VIDEO)
Here’s a clean way to see writing on Brooklyn walls and to practice your lyrical skillz.
1. Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, and Quincy Jones. (VIDEO)
2. Nuart 2012 Begins in Norway
3. NY ART BOOK FAIR at PS1 (LIC, Queens)
4. DUMBO ARTS FESTIVAL 2012 (Brooklyn)
5. Futurism 2.0 at Blackall Studios (London)
6. JAZ “Metodologias del Discurso” (Argentina)
7. Narcelio Grud “Paraphernalia” (VIDEO)
8. Daytime Bombing with HNR (VIDEO)
Nuart 2012 Begins in Norway
Named the Cultural Capital of Europe a few years back, Stavanger has remarkably open minds and has embraced a select slice of the Street Art scene that is displayed this time of year via large mural installations, indoor shows, and speakers. NUART was born here and it set the standards for many Street Art Festivals that have followed since NUiART first opened its walls to visiting international Street Artists in the early 2000s. NUART 2012 opened Thursday with a full day of activities related to NUART PLUS and it will continue thorughout the weekend with the opening of Tout Scene on Saturday. The list of participating artists this year include: AAKASH NIHALANI (US), DOLK (NO), EINE (UK), RON ENGLISH (US), SABER (US), HOWNOSM (US), MOBSTR (UK) NIELS SHOW MEULMAN (NL), JORDAN SEILER (US), THE WA (FR), SICKBOY (UK).
For more information on all activities and schedules regarding NUART PLUS click here.
For more information regarding Saturday’s Opening of Tout Scene click here.
NY ART BOOK FAIR at PS1 (LIC, Queens)
People who are designing and creating independent zines and books are a really important part of the Street Art and graffiti D.I.Y. culture and PS1 in Long Island City is a vast feast of cool printed matter this weekend. Starting today and running through Sunday, the Fair is presented by the esteemed establishment Printed Matter and if you don’t find stuff that engages you and blows your mind, it will be a surprise. One of the groups we highly recommend that you go and visit is the Pantheon Projects table (#12) where you’d find delicious hand crafted zines by Avoid, Droid, R2 and Carnage.
These little art books capture stuff on the street in a way that helps you organize and appreciate it – with wit and a street poet approach. They also can give advice occasionally, like the recipe we found for juicing cucumbers/pineapple and something else to produce “donut water”. Feast your eyes on the dope images and take in the authors’ notes and observations as they rack up serious road miles for the love of art and discovery. Here is a selection of images from spreads of these zines to give you an idea of what we’re talking about.
For further information, schedules and transportation regarding this Art Fair click here.
DUMBO ARTS FESTIVAL 2012 (Brooklyn)
This weekend Brooklyn is the the cultural STAR of New York City once again. The DUMBO Arts Festival opens today with more than 500 artists participating from all over the world. There will be open studios for you to visit, outdoor installations for you to explorer and huge video projections for you to be in awe of. Hop on the F train and get off at Jay Street and take in the breathtaking and majestic views of the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges with the city’s skyline as a background.
The Future is in London tonight with FUTURISM 2.0 a group exhibition at the Blackall Studios presented by Gamma Proforma is now opens today to the general public with a reception starting at 6:00 pm.
For further information regarding this show click here.
JAZ “Metodologias del Discurso” (Argentina)
JAZ’s new solo show is now open at the Kosovo Gallery in Cordoba, Argentina. Known for his representational exploration of beasts and men this artists likess to work big with over scaled representations of his subjects. Internationally known, you’ll see his stuff at Street Art Festivals around the world, and in some back alleys and empty lots too.
This spring we were invited to attend and speak at this years Nuart festival and although we can’t be there personally we’ve still have some great talents on the Stavanger front who will be providing you with stunning and scintillating BSA exclusive action over the next few weeks. So two days before the official opening, here are a few shots of Street Artists in preparation for this non-commercial festival/symposium/party/debauched art camp that has taken place in Norway for the last decade or so.
All the artists arrived a week ago and they have been getting busy on their designated outdoors walls and indoors tunnels. Martyn Reed invites participants inside this complex of buildings that once housed a brewery with interconnecting tunnels – a fitting atmosphere for the hooligans who are accustomed to exploring the urban environment. The official date for the public to see the completed walls is this Saturday with the opening night of Tout Scene.
This year’s talent lineup again represents a wide swath of mostly European and American Street Artists including Aakash Nihalani (US), Dolk (NO), Eine (UK), Ron English (US), Saber (US), How Nosm (US), Mobstr (UK), Niels Show Meulman (NL), Jordan Seiler (US), The Wa (FR), Sickboy (UK).
With our sincere thanks to the talented photographer and occasional BSA contributor Ian Cox who is also in NUART snapping away as the artists work on their installations. Our thanks also to partners Martyn, Marte and Victoria for helping us bring Nuart to BSA.
Street art welcomes all manner of materials and methods, typically deployed without permission and without apology. This hand-formed wire piece …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
