Yesterday, we shared with you the current edition of The Crystal Ship, a Belgian street art festival located in Ostend, which is located in the Flemish Region of Belgium. The collection of images that we presented was taken by photographer Martha Cooper, a frequent collaborator of BSA, during her recent trip to Ostend as a special guest of the festival.
In line with her usual practice, Ms. Cooper did not limit her work to capturing photos of the murals being painted for this year’s festival edition; she also endeavored to take as many photos of murals painted during previous editions of the festival. We are pleased to present a selection of these murals, painted over several years, with photographs taken by Martha Cooper herself.
This selection of murals is an exciting representation of the diverse and captivating street art that has been featured at The Crystal Ship Festival throughout the years, much of it creating a gallery of contemporary artists whose work is arresting and appealing to a general audience. The dedication and hard work put forth by Martha Cooper in capturing these pieces in all their artistic glory is genuinely commendable. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into the festival’s vibrant history and the incredible art showcased in the public square in Ostend over the years.
“Ostend isn’t a metropolis like London, Berlin and Paris” explains Belgian art curator Bjørn Van Poucke to reporter Colin Clapson. He’s referring to the limitation in the number of walls available for legal murals. He should know, he’s responsible for The Crystal Ship, a contemporary art festival that has taken place in this coastal city since 2016 and has become one of the most significant street art festivals in Europe, attracting renowned artists from around the world.
“Ostend certainly has an impressive collection of street art with a wide variety of large and small pieces painted on all kinds of residential and commercial buildings,” says renowned photographer Martha Cooper, who was invited there by Mr. Van Poucke this year. “There’s a good paper map available at the tourist office and also an excellent website so people can find the walls,” says Cooper.
Every year the Crystal Ship invites a diverse range of international artists to create large-scale murals and public art installations throughout the city – names have included well-known and regarded artists like Miss Van, Alexis Diaz, and Fintan Magee – each bringing their own aesthetic to this festival/event that receives support from a mix of private and government funding that is local and national. For more about the past artists, you can check out The Crystal Ship website. Many of these artists’ work can also be found in Ruby Gallery, where Van Poucke and co-owner Thierry Dubois organize exhibitions on canvas.
In the past, the festival has showcased over 60 murals and art installations, and many are spaced far from one another, so Ms. Cooper tells us she had an excellent driver named Lorre Soenen to take her around. “He was very knowledgeable about the murals,” she says.
“Bringing people closer to art is the aim of The Crystal Ship” explains Mayor Bart Tommelein on the VRT news website. “It happens at the heart of the city, on walls at the centre of neighbourhoods, where people live and work.”
Brazil based Cranio has a quickly identifiable character – the cerulean blue native in traditional garb who feels entirely outside the modern consumerist world, even as he negotiates his way through it. According to the artist, the blue is a nod to his cultural heritage as an indigenous person from the Xingu region of Brazil. The blue figures in his work often appear to connect his personal history with broader social and political issues, particularly those regarding the marginalization and erasure of indigenous cultures.
Fabio de Oliveira Parnaiba began painting in the streets of Sao Paulo in the early 2000s and has since become known for his distinctive aesthetic and commentary on contemporary society delivered with humor and pathos. A school of illustration influences the overall style you may associate with other Brazillian street artists such as Os Gemeos – an adventure-seeking childlike superhero who is willing to play the game as soon as they can confidently discern what it is.
In many of Cranio’s works, his blue figures are placed within a modern, commercial world, surrounded by symbols of consumerism such as logos, billboards, shopping bags – and destruction. The traditional clothing and markings of the indigenous figures are not meant to be ironic but may strike you so as you realize the path to becoming a successful artist includes embracing the modern urban environment – even while commenting on how globalization and capitalism have impacted indigenous communities. Today Cranio’s work can be found in cities around the world, from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to Paris, London, and New York and in addition to his street art, he has also exhibited in galleries and museums and has collaborated with brands such as Adidas and Mini Cooper.
The tHERApy room 2 exhibition at the Corey Helford Gallery features the solo work of graffiti and street artist Hera (aka Jasmin Siddiqui), one-half of the HERAKUT duo from Germany before they both went on their separate ways. Combining her illustrator, poet, storyteller, and graffiti artist skills, Hera creates fluid figures with elegant and chaotic lines and brushstrokes – and empathy. Her work often reflects on the human condition, relationships, deeply stirring emotions, and experiences of childhood. The accompanying text is clarifying; her characters display hope, magic, and a drive toward escapism.
Hera. “A Brain That Rarely Forgets Needs a Heart That Readly Forgives”. For the exhibition tHERApy room 2 at Corey Helford Gallery. (photo courtesy of CHG)
This new series is reminiscent of her 16-year collaboration with Falk Lehmann, with whom she exhibited in galleries and art fairs worldwide and created over 100 public murals.
Describing her 23-year route forward, her painting partnership with Falk, and the recurring themes and style that persists into this third decade, Hera says that her self-analysis with paint in public places and on canvas has been healing.
“If you will, you could see each piece as a therapy session, where the therapist would be Hera wielding brush and spray paint, and the patient would be Jasmin, the woman underneath the animal metaphor hats and masks,” she says. “Describing my artwork that way makes it seem as if I had never stopped working in a duo. Can this sound schizophrenic and wholesome at the same time?”
Hera. “The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth”. Detail. For the exhibition tHERApy room 2 at Corey Helford Gallery. (photo courtesy of CHG)Hera. “My Dark Thoughts”. For the exhibition tHERApy room 2 at Corey Helford Gallery. (photo courtesy of CHG)Hera. “Never Be a King Just For Yourself”. For the exhibition tHERApy room 2 at Corey Helford Gallery. (photo courtesy of CHG)Hera. “There’s Great Kingship Among The Outcasts”. For the exhibition tHERApy room 2 at Corey Helford Gallery. (photo courtesy of CHG)
Here’s to New York, which we love more than ever – Especially when yahoos come to our fair city and try to trash us and spread lazy untruths about crime and smear us in a hundred ways. Look, my cousin Harold may pick on his younger sister Jicama because of her braids or her attempt to dance with her dumb friends on TikTok, but if you say an unkind word about her he will smack you right into next week. That’s how we feel about New York.
Oddly inarticulate dumbos like Margerine Blather Green and Mike “Mother” Pence might better stay back in Walmart, or wherever they were born. Do they have schools out there? Or were those burned down when they were burning books? When you are ready to tell the truth about our crime rate and quit dog-whistling about all the Jews and blacks and queers we have here, maybe we’ll give you tickets to see “Wicked”. Right after that you can hit the Olive Garden and the M&Ms store – and then you have to leave.
“In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” said Tennyson. You’re welcome. Also, his fancy turns to thoughts of sex. The same applies to young women, of course, but Tennyson was obviously sexist. This also applies to pigeons, two of whom are currently making awkward, chaotic, scuffling, fluttering overtures toward one another and cooing softly on the scaffolding outside my apartment window right now.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: CRKSHNK, Below Key, Degrupo, Homesick, Calicho Art, Habibi, Le Crue, Lasak, Cloudy is Here, Gina Minichino, They It Forward, Channin Fulton, Dragon Fly, Gert Robijns, Jozzy Camacho, Nandos, Mini Mantis Art, and Pablo West.
Saturdays and Elfo; they appear to go well together on BSA. A master of broad overstatement or obscurely uttered truths without further qualification, their work can summon the instinct to laugh – bursting from your chest before quite considering why.
Is it the unartful roller painting, the wandering scale of the message that could have said something moving, meaningful, sublime, profound? A missed opportunity or a spot-on and concise summation? Or are you projecting your own needs as an artist onto the work of someone else?
Here we have the crumbling architecture of a particular period drifting downward back into the earth where it was summoned from. En route to its final demise, Elfo gives it a swift kick in the ribs, perhaps mocking it for its earlier airs of greatness or condemning our casual disposal of buildings (and everything else). Dust to dust.
Of this “new piece in the midst of nowhere,” Elfo says, “It’ s…… ironic / auto ironic Iconic / anti iconic Dramatic / funny.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Mr. Kriss – In Our Hands
2. You Are The Subject: Richard Serra at Glenstone
3. Indecline: “Ironic, Isn’t It?”
BSA Special Feature: Mr. Kriss – In Our Hands
Kristián Mensa, better know by his stage name Mr. Kriss, is a Czech actor, dancer and illustrator based in London, UK.
“In Our Hands” is an upcoming animated short film by Mr. Kriss.
Camera and Edit – Jan Pivoňka Animation – Petr Šenkýř
You Are The Subject: Richard Serra at Glenstone
“In July of 2021, a 656,000-pound sculpture made of forged steel crossed state lines and bridges on its way to Glenstone. It traveled slowly, winding its way from New Jersey to Maryland. At dusk, it crossed the Susquehanna River. At midnight, it arrived.
You Are The Subject: Richard Serra at Glenstone, a new short film, tells the multi-year story of the installation and opening of Richard Serra’s Four Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, 2017.
Produced with Rava Films, You Are The Subject is now available digitally in collaboration with designboom, following a world premiere at the Montreal International Festival of Films on Art on March 17, 2023.”
Indecline: “Ironic, Isn’t It?”
We recently published HERE the subversive and anonymous collective Indecline’s latest billboard takeover protesting mass shootings and the lack of adequate laws to regulate guns in America. With the most recent mass shooting in Louisville, there have been 146 mass shootings in the USA this year alone. According to existing data, the number makes more mass shootings than days in 2023 so far.
“This is an exhibition focusing on a very specific concept: design. I had to think about how we use the space in the Design Museum as a whole, and the exhibition offers a rich experience of what design is, and how design relates to our past and to our current situation“- Ai Weiwei
Museum Exhibition Spotlight: Design Museum London / Ai Weiwei: Making Sense
Here he goes, picking up the pieces and making newly ordered sense. As the world continues to self-destruct, he will always have plenty of new materials to work with.
Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist living in exile, is well known for his art and activism. Not one to keep his opinions to himself Ai Weiwei has a restless mind. He questions, proves, provokes, challenges, investigates, and eventually executes his ideas across multiple disciplines in painting, sculpture, architecture, film, design, and curating. In close collaboration with the artist, the Design Museum in London organized this exhibition where the artist’s focus is design and its relation with progress/destruction.
The museum’s press release indicates that large site-specific installations constitute the foundation of the exhibition, with the artist employing Stone Age tools, Lego bricks, and hundreds of objects which he’s collected since the ’90s. The materials are spread all over the galleries, and organized in five fields; “Still Life”, “Left Right Studio Material, “Spouts”, “Untitled (Porcelain Balls)”, and “Untitled (Lego Incident)”.
Ai Weiwei’s recreation of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies uses Lego bricks, hia largest Lego work to date. To make the 15-meter Water Lilies #1, the artist used 650,000 LEGO bricks and 22 different colors. On the lower right-hand side of the piece, one sees a dark portal representing the door to the underground dugout in Xinjiang province where Ai and his father, Ai Qing, lived in forced exile in the 1960s.
“This major exhibition, developed in collaboration with the artist, will be the first to present his work as a commentary on design and what it reveals about our changing values. Through his engagement with material culture, Ai explores the tension between past and present, hand and machine, precious and worthless, construction and destruction.
The exhibition draws on Ai’s fascination with historical Chinese artefacts, placing their traditional craftsmanship in dialogue with the more recent history of demolition and urban development in China. The result is a meditation on value – on histories and skills that have been ignored or erased.” ~ Design Museum
London-based street artist, fine artist and muralist D*Face reminds us about the power of cinema as a comforting vehicle to escape reality. With Silver Screen Eye-Cons, his new show opening today at Wunderkammern, he takes well-known artwork from classic movies and customizes it with his visual vocabulary.
Whether these classics cause you to recall the soothing anonymity of a darkened movie theater and early childhood silver screens or the quick flick you just watched on your phone on the plane to Miami, classic artwork by artists often formed your perceptions and impressions. With his first solo exhibition here in Milan, D*Face culls work from his vast archives of movie memorabilia and invites you to his world of pop dreams, romantic idealism, terrifying characters of doomed days in Zombieland, and damsels in distress caught in the embrace of handsome knights trapped forever in the afterlife.
“With the Silver Screen Eye-Cons exhibition at Wunderkammern, DFace offers a wide range of his works and ideas, with some new elements. […] it should not be forgotten that it was the big screen that made DFace what he is. In fact, it was the 1980s when a very young Dean was thunderstruck by Michael J. Fox’s skateboard in Back to the Future, beginning a journey first into the world of skateboarding and then into the aesthetics of sticker art and street art. Perhaps this is also why DFace felt the need to contaminate old movie posters; proposing, for the Milan exhibition, a selection of Hollywood and Italian film posters: from Django to Platoon, from Il padrino to La mosca, passing through Scarface and Klaus Kinski’s Nosferatu. In these works DFace’s characters, brands, and style contaminate the posters and appropriate and desecrate them, transforming them into “aPOPalyptic” visions, to use a term dear to him.” -Silvano Manganaro
“Throughout the history of cinema, film has been used as a method of escaping reality. More so today than ever, we are allowed to exist in alternate realities which can be endlessly rewatched and revisited – never letting us down because we know how they start and end. […] Are these classics really as good as we hold them up to be, or is it time to take off the rose tints for a better look?” – D*Face
April is Earth Month and the 22nd of April is the dedicated day of the year to focus on planet Earth. The beautifully hued blue planet.
With that in mind, we wanted to show two photographs that speak volumes about our environment; the juxtaposition of images illustrates in a simple microcosmos what’s happening to the earth. During the winter, when the trees are bare and dormant, awaiting the arrival of Spring to show their true colors we notice how chocked full of plastic they are, especially in large cities like NY. It’s a sad sight. When the winds are strong the plastic breaks free of its constriction and is caught on tree branches – and eventually all the way into the oceans.
One feels for the trees and imagines having some sort of superpower to climb them and free them from the “invasive species” that are strangling their branches. But realistically, we can’t do that, can we? Climb every tree we see on the streets to liberate it from the unsightly man-made product?
Most of the plastic we see on trees is plastic deconstructed from either single-use plastic bags ; from the grocery store or possibly from industrial-grade plastic used in construction sites. Other times it may be from eighteen-wheelers transporting construction wood or heavy equipment or industrial-grade plastic wrap used to encase pallets that hold cardboard boxes on truck beds.
We can prevent this by being more self-aware of how we discard our waste. We could carry our own grocery bags. If we stop expecting or demanding plastic bags at the grocery store, they will stop offering them to us – a direct relationship. It’s important to advocate for systemic change by contacting companies and elected officials to urge them to prioritize sustainability and reduce our plastic use. We can all do our part to protect the planet and leave a healthier world for future generations. During this euphoria of spring may we also take a moment to appreciate the beauty of nature, like the Magnolia tree, and work to protect it.
With “La Pugna” (The Fight”) the Catalan artist leaves his fistprint on the walls that were built to contain the waters of río Besós (Besós river), which flows below sea levels through the neighborhood of Santa Coloma in the Spanish city of Barcelona. It’s an apt mural and title for an artist whose work is often imbued with messages about social justice, the environment, and human rights. His fight is the people’s fight, and the earth’s fight.
Once one of the most contaminated rivers in Europe, río Besós has seen a turnaround, and its waters flow again into the Mediterranean Sea free of pollutants. Its walled embankment follows the roughly 11 miles that snake through the city, providing much-needed green areas for its inhabitants to enjoy outdoor activities and enjoy nature.
But the story doesn’t end there. BesArt The River Museum, the art project under the umbrella of the municipality of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, the Mediterranean Association of Street Art, and the Royal Artistic Circle of Barcelona is born. The goal is to invite a constellation of local, national, and international artists to execute works of art on the river’s walls.
When the project is completed, Barcelona will boast one more cultural attraction among the already long list of landmarks that make the city a popular destination. If only its residents would come to grips with the inconveniences that a heavy flow of tourists causes them every year. No fighting, everyone!
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Happy Easter! Happy Passover! Merry Arrestmas!
This is an excellent time to be in New York because everything is in bloom, and for a moment, there is love in the air everywhere you look. Or is that just the legal weed they sell from the truck in front of your apartment the way they used to sell falafel?
This is s beautiful time
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Louis Masai, Jason Naylor, Voxx Romana, HOXXOH, Voxx, Optimo NYC, Vers, Jesus, Lasak, D.Z.L.T., Envio, MENY X, Krave, and Abuse.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
