“In true form, GAIA found himself in some of Chicago’s worst neighborhoods during one of the bloodiest summers on record,” says Nick Marzullo, owner of Pawn Works Gallery. According to most news reports the city has suffered the most violence in years, and the summer heat seems to exacerbate the duress. “Homicides are up by 38 percent from a year ago, and shootings have increased as well, even as killings have held steady or dropped in New York, Los Angeles and some other cities,” writes Monica Davey in the New York Times, and while July’s total of 49 murders represented a drop, it is hard to feel safe on many streets.
How a Street Artist decides to put up work in a dangerous neighborhood is not clear, or what motivates the work. Sometimes it is to activate a space, to humanize it. Other times it is merely an opportunity to get up. These pieces somehow feel contextual, especially the large floating head. While the portrait may not be a direct commentary on the violence, we know that many of the dead in these crimes are fathers, brothers, and sons.
Graffitimundo is proud to present “The Talking Walls of Buenos Aires”. Opening September 6th at Londonewcastle Project Space, the exhibition explores Argentina’s unique culture of urban art.
Urban art in Buenos Aires reflects the city’s turbulent history and rich cultural heritage. Throughout the last century the city walls have been extensively painted, by artists, activists, political groups and the public, making the city walls of Buenos Aires an established and dynamic channel for expression.
During the last two decades several different artistic styles have developed. The devastating Argentine economic crisis of 2001 created a generation of young artists determined to take to the streets and reclaim their city. As they collaborated in a spirit of solidarity a new and distinctive visual language began to emerge.
“The Talking Walls of Buenos Aires” features mural art and original artworks from leading Argentine artists and art collectives, as well as video works and historical and contemporary photography portraying the urban landscape of Buenos Aires and seminal moments in the country’s history.
The exhibition celebrates a form of expression rooted in activism and a desire to transform public space, and in the process challenges conventional views on what graffiti is, what street art represents, who creates it, and why.
Artists:
Cabaio Stencil / Chu / Corona / Defi / Ever / Fede Minuchin / Gonzalo Dobleg / Gualicho / Jaz Malatesta / Nasa / Pastel / Pedro Perelman / Poeta / Prensa La Libertad / Pum Pum / Roma Stencil Land / Tec / Tester / Zumi
Event information
“The Talking Walls of Buenos Aires” will be held at Londonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch Street, London, E2 7DP
The exhibition opens to the public from 6pm-10pm on September 6th, 2012.
The gallery is free and open to the public daily from 12pm – 7pm, until September 13th, 2012.
(from the left: street painting by rundontwalk / silhouettes of the disappeared (ph. Mónica Hasenberg) / Artwork by Pedro Perelman)
Hosted at See//Exhibition Space
25-25 44th Drive
Long Island City 11101
Saturday, September 8
Salon and Beauty Shop: 7pm-midnight
Party: 7pm onward
Admission: $20; Salon Services: $5-500 Tickets: www.pearlysbeautyshop.eventbrite.com
The artist Swoon hosts a pop-up salon/party of ecstatic aesthetic embellishments to support the creation of a community activated arts center in North Braddock, PA.
Pearly’s Beauty Shop – A full service salon like no other.
Join us for an evening of celebration and artistic pampering from head to toe. Pearly’s Beauty Shop is a full service unisex salon and party all in
one. Artists will do you up and you will dance it out.
How it works: You pick an option from our menu of salon services. Nails done by a painter? Hair diorama by a sculptor? Makeup by a conceptual artist? Performance artist paraffin dip? No matter your desire, one of our artists will attend to your every need.
Look and be looked: You’ll find our salon stations throughout the party, with revelry all around. DJ’s Dirty Finger, Manhate, and 3 Kings International Sound will make your body move and your fresh coat of glam shine while you explore indoor and outdoor dance parties, music, installations and performances by Roofeeo, Shenandoah Davis, Lady Circus’ Anya Sapozhnikova, Audra Pace, Yea, Well, Whatever, all situated in a stunning visual landscape.
The party benefits the re-envisioning of a formerly abandoned church to become a community resource and an arts destination. All our artists are donating their time and skills for the night, including Mickalene Thomas, Dzine, Dustin Yellin, Swoon, Duke Riley, Natalie Frank, K8 Hardy, Chris Stain, Michael Anderson and many more.
The Outsiders Newcastle invite you to join us on the evening of Thursday 23rd August at the opening party for ‘Walls Are Two-Sided‘, the new solo exhibition by young American artist BORF. The event takes place from 6 ’til 9pm in the gallery at 77 Quayside, Newcastle upon Tyne.
The most critically lauded young talent in urban art, BORF (AKA John Tsombikos) returns to The Outsiders Newcastle gallery. An exhibition exploring conflict, serenity and contradiction, Walls are Two-Sided features ten large canvases. All feature the artist’s charm, sensitivity and humour underlaid with yearning idealism and quiet but passionate anger. Five of the paintings are detailed close-ups of derelict houses in the artist’s resident town of Detroit, and a further five feature “old school” graffiti overlaid with colour fields in the style of late abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko.
“Rothko talked about wrestling with opposing and competing elements to eventually discover an equilibrium, what he called a pocket of silence” says BORF. “For this show I was fighting through layers of ambivalence and opposites: graffiti as youth expression and Rothko as adult expression; the art market and property rights; education and improvisation, youth and adulthood.”
Reception: Sunday, August 19, 2012, 6pm (Screening wil commence at 7pm.)
Carmichael Gallery is pleased to announce a special screening of the new documentary short Bumblebeelovesyou, a visual profile of Los Angeles-based artist Bumblebee. Presented by The Downey Arts Coalition, Bumblebeelovesyou was produced by HANDi, a team of Downey-based filmmakers.
There will be a reception and screening at the Epic Lounge in Downey on Sunday, August 19, 2012, followed by a discussion on the documentary and the growing art scene in Downey. A series of new works by Bumblebee will also be on view.
About the artist:
Bumblebee’s work first came to life on the streets and abandoned buildings of Downey, a city located in southeast Los Angeles County. With a focus on themes of innocence, communication and coming of age, his stencil and sculptural works are most often rendered in the simple, but instantly identifiable color palette of yellow and black. Ongoing campaigns range from the remodeling of urban furniture such as abandoned phone kiosks and newspaper boxes to large-scale mural projects that address and work to raise awareness of issues such as youth homelessness.
Bumblebee has exhibited his work in group exhibitions at Carmichael Gallery, Mark Moore Gallery, Thinkspace Gallery (who also included him in their curated exhibitions at Together Gallery and London Miles Gallery), LeBasse Projects and the Portsmouth Museum of Art. Online and print media outlets in which he and his work have been featured include tasj magazine, Ekosystem, TEDxBloomington, The Downey Patriot, Unurth, SlamxHype, Arrested Motion, PSFK, The Dirt Floor, Vandalog, GOOD, Wooster Collective, My Modern Met, Sour Harvest, Daily du Jour and The Daily Portsmouth. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
About the filmmakers:
The person next to you has a story. If you could see the world through their eyes for a moment or two, your heart would open up just a little more. With each story we tell, we hope to highlight what makes us human and show that we can all relate to each other in some way. We want to erase the lines that divide us so we can see each other clearly.
HANDi is a team of filmmakers based in Downey, CA.
The name HANDi is synonymous with the prefix “handy” which is associated with a convenient and useful product. “Handy” also pertains to the hands and a handmade quality. Our philosophy is embedded in this single idea. Being handmade, we use whatever we can find on a shoestring budget and craft everything ourselves.
Here is our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Andrzej Urbankski, Dyke, False, Icy & SOT, Indigo, Jeice 2, Karma, Love Me, Nick Walker, Rambo, and Sorta. Somehow we’ve assembled a rather eclectic collection for you that includes some black and white billboard images by Jaime Rojo that are more on the graffiti tip, as well as new images from Baltimore, Berlin and Spain.
Speaking of black and white, we’ve noticed that quite a few artists are limiting their palettes to something more monochromatic lately. Have you noticed that too? It’s also kind of cool to see these new pieces from the Iranian Street Artists Icy and Sot, who have their first solo show coming up shortly in New York.
Workers around the world look amazingly similar, no matter the city.
Street Artist Robbbb, who we last saw in Beijing, is introducing some of the people from that city to be a part of Dubai and two of Turkeys largest cities, Istanbul and Izmir.
“This series of works from China are images of the most common people. I took them to foreign countries with an attempt to explore differences of political and social background, and to highlight their mode of existence,” he observes as he speaks about the enlarged wheat pastes he hand colored.
With this project Robbbb brings a Chinese man on a rickshaw to the a waste disposal back alley of Istanbul, a lady with a pushcart to a side lot in Izmir, and a man loaded down with bags to a small busy street in Dubai. These are all cities with workers going about their every day life and among them Robbbb wants to introduce their counterparts; images frozen and in mid-action while performing their daily chores and routines on foreign soil.
The concept is well executed as you often will see a local performing the same action while passing the wheatpast, so similar are our daily routines: Pushing a grocery cart, riding a bike to work, toiling, walking a child to school or to a friends home. With this project Robbbb shows our similarities despite differences in physical appearance, clothing, and cultural differences.
1. Chatroulette Gone Wrong, and So Right (Call Me Maybe?) (VIDEO)
2. “Beautiful Darling” Warhol Film Friday Night in Manhattan
3. Living Walls, The City Speaks, All Weekend (ATL)
4. Please Don’t Tell Anybody But Detroit Is Where It’s At
5. Paraphernalia by Narcelio Grud (VIDEO)
“Beautiful Darling” Warhol Film Friday Night in Manhattan
Candy Darling was an Andy Warhol muse in both his films and on his canvases. A regular at The Factory she knew how to camp it up and was adored by the camera. In the movies she could be glamorous or trashy, somewhat sweet and very vicious but always an interesting screen presence and never dull to watch. The Anonymous Gallery Film Club would be screening “Beautiful Darling” today at the Tribeca Grand in Manhattan. This film should acquaint you with life and infamy of one Candy Darling.
For further information regarding this event click here.
Living Walls, The City Speaks, All Weekend (ATL)
This whole weekend Atlanta as in Georgia is hot and we are not talking climate change here…The town is hosting a bevy of internationally known, talented, bad ass and intelligent ONLY WOMEN Street Art Art Festival commonly known as Living Walls Conference: The City Speaks. Atlanta 2012. Now on its third edition the curators and organizers decided to move things further by garnering this female energy and present their production for FREE to the Atlanta folks. This is not an easy feast to put together. Getting a group of artists in one room is as difficult as herding cats, try getting 27 FEMALE ONLY artists from all over the world to come to one city for one week to paint walls and you’d know hoe hard the organizers have been working to make this a reality.
The list includes: Indigo (Canada), Fefe (Brazil), TIKA (Switzerland), EME (Spain), Hyuro (Argentina), Martina Merlini (Italy), Miso (Australia), Cake (New York), Swoon (New York), Martha Cooper (New York), Sheryo (New York), White Cocoa (New York), Jessie Unterhalter and Katie Truhn (Baltimore), Molly Rose Freeman (Memphis), Teen Witch (San Francisco), olive47 (Atlanta), Paper Twins (Atlanta), Sarah Emerson (Atlanta), Sheila Pree Bright (Atlanta), Marcy Starz (Atlanta), Sten and Lex (Italy), Karen Tauches (Atlanta), Knitterati (Atlanta), Plastic Aztecs (Atlanta), Nikita Gale (Atlanta), Patricia Lacrete (Atlanta), Mon Ellis (Atlanta), and Andrzej Blazej Urbanski (Poland).
For further information and full schedule of events click here.
Living Walls Conference Day 3 (VIDEO)
Please Don’t Tell Anybody But Detroit Is Where It’s At
Look this whole city has been abandoned by the corporations who took the factories where there are no rooools to follow and no living wages to pay. Then of course the banks picked over the carcass before leaving. Much of the industry that once made this city rich and prosperous has long shut down the engines.
Naturally, this is where we must go to live now, but don’t tell everybody, yo, because the whole city will turn into Williamsburg – bland, chattering. Detroit is not completely abandoned of course but there are whole neighborhoods that look like ghost towns. The streets are empty, the city has cut the street lights in whole neighborhoods. For blocks and blocks once majestic homes now lay in ruins, gradually engulfed by trees and vines coming out of their windows and surrounded by overgrown bushes. Closed factories are in decay, leaving you to admire beautiful architectural details and their exposed “bones”.
These days the only souls venturing to these desolate areas are the artists that have come here to create. Leave it to the artists to find a way to make do with what they find on the streets. Like pioneers wandering in the wreckage. We’re pleased to tell you of some scruffy outliers called the Fourteen Eighty Gallery who are hosting The Superior Bugout from Brooklyn, who will present an art show with live music and they want you there. These are the sounds of the the new Detroit Rock City.
Monty and The Boozehound have been working all week collecting, scavenging, creating and now the show is going up. Thanks to Andrew H. Shirley of The Superior Bugout for these teaser shots.
Street Artist Gaia visited Chicago last week to hit some walls in his grandly fulsome style with imaginative remixing of classics. Here’s a guy who is perfectly badass about handily switching symbols, metaphors, cultures, belief systems, history, art history. The results are perplexing if you think too hard about it, thrilling if you are willing to detach the forms from their original contexts and appreciate the new associations that their juxtapositions can present.
Hosted by the fellas at Pawn Works Gallery and shot by talented photographer Brock Brake, Gaia created his new pieces as part of their ongoing project “Art in Public Places” in the Pilsen neighborhood and in Chicago’s West Town.
First off is the piece with African masks and a Cuban female figure that references the historical ties of the two regions. “Thanks to the lovely people at Nini’s Cuban Deli,” says Pawn Works Nick Marzullo of this place tucked into Chicago’s West Town. Gaia says the mural depicts the rich alloy that is Santeria. In it the Catholic twin saints Damian and Cosmas flank the African Ibeji masks.
“These are icons which were imported by the Spanish through Catholicism. African slaves sit underneath a woman performing a ceremony as Oshun, an Oshira of love and the river,” Gaia explains on his Flickr page.
Following are images of a considerably longer mural that the Street Artist did while in the Chicago. In a practice that is often his case, this mural is also site-specific. Reflecting the neighborhood of Pilsen, it’s meant as a visual representation of two other cultures merging that have successively defined it. Gaia says that he is exploring the notion of the word “immigrant”.
“It is about the confluence of Polish and Mexican culture, says Gaia, “I just used Michaelangelo figures from the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgement scene primarily because both cultures share Catholicism – and because the bodies are so dynamic.” That explains why some of the figures looks so Michaelangelic – but with animal heads replacing the original figures human/god-like ones.
Gaia did this one in coordination with Pawn Works, the Chicago Urban Art Society and the office of Alderman Danny Solis.
For the last two years at Living Walls Atlanta it’s been like graffiti summer camp; bodies and pillows and aerosol cans intermingled and stacked indiscriminately across the living room floors of friends apartments. Sketchbooks. Pizza boxes. Condoms. Campfire songs.
The third installment of the conference for Living Walls, The City Speaks, starting today and running through the 19th, will build on the comaraderie established since then and on the lessons learned by those organizers who dared to mount this huge Street Art event on a shoe string budget and a dream. The number one change this year is that there is a bit of funding. Thanks to diligent fundraising and the donations of generous people like BSA readers who clicked a banner and gave, the Street Artists and other participants this year are actually staying in hotel rooms and everyone has a bed.
“All of the out of town artists are here, Hyuro just got in last night,” excitedly reports Living Walls organizer and BSA contributor Alexandra Parrish. So everybody is rested and ready to go.
The second important change this year is that it is all about the women.
In a completely unheard of and shocking move, the organizers/curators have invited only female Street Artists to participate this time, making this the World’s First All Female Paint Fest! It’s a remarkable achievement in a scene that has been dominated by the male of the species, almost by definition, since the graffiti scene began in US cities about a half century ago. In most people’s opinion, it’s about time too. Speculation abounds about how the atmosphere and the output will be affected. For one thing, there will probably be fewer toilet seats thoughtlessly left up. Also, better hair care products (no offense Gaia).
“Over the past two years, 50 artists have participated – only two were female, and neither of them had a chance to paint a wall,” remarks Parrish as she illustrates the imbalance.
Of course there are already new pieces up to greet the participants that were done since March leading up to today’s opening that were not done expressly by females. Readers of BSA have seen an array of international artists from all over the world that came to paint big murals every month since including Gaia, Nanook, La Pandilla, Trek Matthews, Interesni Kazki, Evereman and Neuzz.
BSA has brought you full detail coverage of all those walls going up and now we’re gonna shout it from the roof tops as all this female power is loosed on the streets of Atlanta. And what an amazing lineup it is! The list includes: Indigo (Canada), Fefe (Brazil), TIKA (Switzerland), EME (Spain), Hyuro (Argentina), Martina Merlini (Italy), Miso (Australia), Cake (New York), Swoon (New York), Martha Cooper (New York), Sheryo (New York), White Cocoa (New York), Jessie Unterhalter and Katie Truhn (Baltimore), Molly Rose Freeman (Memphis), Teen Witch (San Francisco), olive47 (Atlanta), Paper Twins (Atlanta), Sarah Emerson (Atlanta), Sheila Pree Bright (Atlanta), Marcy Starz (Atlanta), Sten and Lex (Italy), Karen Tauches (Atlanta), Knitterati (Atlanta), Plastic Aztecs (Atlanta), Nikita Gale (Atlanta), Patricia Lacrete (Atlanta), Mon Ellis (Atlanta), and Andrzej Blazej Urbanski (Poland).
Here’s a Teaser for DAY 1
For a full list of events, schedules maps and other details click here:
TONIGHT:
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15TH Vandalog Movie Night Wren’s Nest in West End
9:00pm-11:00pm
RJ Rushmore from Vandalog will present a series of street art and graffiti short movies.
See the BSA posts this year for all of the installations leading up to this day:
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
