Fumero Fumero combines the American pop culture of urban art with his caricature-like, figurative paintings. The “wildstyle” letter design, with its highly stylized alphabetical abstractions and decorative embellishments transformes into the dynamic energy of his abstracted human figure. The visually psychological power derives from a technique illustrating a harmonious interaction among bold contour lines, and shapes filled with vivid colors. Within the contours of the hard edged shapes are intense contrasting colors that interact with each other, creating a moving energy that powerfully projects outward to the viewer.
As a little boy at the age of four, Fumero discovered that he liked to draw. Beginning with stick figures to oval shapes, by age five he began to copy newspaper comics such as, Ziggy and Snoopy. At the same time, family visits from New Jersey to the Bronx exposed him to the graffiti painted New York City subway trains. Looking out of the car window and starring at the trains’ vibrantly painted cartoons and colorfully animated 3-D lettering fascinated him as a child and left an impression that would resurface later on.
At the age of thirteen, Fumero began to create graffiti-style lettering starting with colored markers on paper and ventured onto walls with simple tags and bubble letter throw-ups. By fourteen, Fumero completed his first 4 colored piece and graffiti became Fumero’s primary artistic focus. To Fumero, graffiti was simply an added extension of cartooning and provided a means to explore lines, shapes, colors and letter design in a new and exciting way. The remaining teenage years focused on graffiti art and the development of his cartoon characters, letter styles and color schemes which filled his sketchbook. After high school Fumero attended county college in New Jersey as a graphic design major and then went to the School of Visual Arts in New York City, as a cartooning/illustration major. At SVA, Fumero developed a personal style and the infancy of Fumeroism was born.
Specter at The Festival of Ideas for the Bushwick Art Park 2011
BUSHWICK ART PARK
A one day community event June 4th, 1-7pm
Located at the proposed Bushwick Art Park on Vandervoort Place
Ribbon Cutting Ceremony with Council Member Diana Reyna at 2:30pm
The Bushwick Art Park hosted by Trust Art, Norte Maar and Factory Fresh, featuring works previously showcased at
the Festival of Ideas in May 2011, expands into a Sculpture Garden at the proposed Bushwick Art Park site on
Vandevoort Place. We invite guests to enjoy the fresh air and local views surrounded by outdoor sculptures.
Sculptures by Bast, Leon Reid IV, Specter, Skewville,
Ben Godward, Infinity, Garry Nichols and El Celso.
Political Podium by Seth Aylmer.
New Bushwick Art Park mural by Veng.
RYAN MICHAEL FORD “Me VS Myself,” 2011 (image courtesy of the gallery)
SURREALISM:
twenty artists from the neighborhood wrestle their unconscious.
An exhibition at Factory Fresh for Bushwick Open Studios curated by Jason Andrew and Ali Ha.
Jim Avignon, Kevin Curran, Ryan Michael Ford, Paul D’Agostino, Ben Godward, Tamara Gonzales, Andrew Hurst,
Rebecca Litt, Francesco Longnecker, Norman Jabaut, J.P. Marin, Brooke Moyse, Garry Nichols, Patricia Satterlee,
Pufferella, Skewville, John Sunderland, Sweet Toof, Marjorie Van Cura & Veng
Show runs from June 4-26.
Factory Freshis located at 1053 Flushing Avenue between Morgan and Knickerbocker, off the L train Morgan Stop
War Boutique “Metropolitan Peace” (image courtesy of the gallery)
BANKSY | GROUND FLOOR GALLERY
It has been an eventful 6 months for renowned street artist Banksy. His highly contentious opening sequence for popular TV series The Simpsons an Oscar nomination for his documentary film Exit Through The Gift Shop – an event accompanied by the artist’s own unofficial awards campaign where his works mysteriously appeared on billboards and walls across Los Angeles. As well as the ever-present threats to expose his carefully guarded identity. Banksy’s continuing high profile has brought with it an explosion in international demand for his work. In response Andipa Gallery is pleased to announce BANKSY | WAR BOUTIQUE, an exhibition showcasing an un-paralleled collection of iconic and sought after paintings by Banksy, from the collection of Andipa Gallery, one of the largest in the UK. Original works on display will include Banksy’s Laugh Now, a unique painting depicting one of the artist’s emblematic monkeys, scaled-up to human size, set upon the panels of a wooden door. A rare work that succeeds in projecting all of the character and raw charisma of a street piece despite being a fully authenticated studio work. Girl with Balloon, one of Banksy’s most iconic images, which infamously appeared on the Palestinian side of the West Bank Barrier, and Custardised Oil, a work of satirical humour distorting traditional aristocratic imagery. Acoris Andipa, Director of Andipa Gallery, comments: “As the first gallery to put on a major exhibition of Banksy’s work on the secondary market, which attracted 25,000 visitors, we have witnessed the market for urban art continuing to expand and integrate into the mainstream. Works by urban artists are now beginning to be included in the collections of the most respected museums and public galleries worldwide, including MOCA, LA, who plan to put on the first major survey of street art to be shown in the US later this year. BANKSY | WAR BOUTIQUE will present an exciting opportunity for collectors to acquire original works by two mavericks of urban art – one just emerging onto the international stage, choosing to put on his first commercial exhibition at Andipa, and one already recognised as amongst the biggest names in contemporary art today.” Showing at Andipa Gallery from 9 June to Saturday 9 July 2011, in parallel with an exhibition of works by urban artist War Boutique, the exhibition BANKSY | WAR BOUTIQUE follows Andipa Gallery’s, recent exhibition of original works by Banksy in Gstaad, Switzerland. An annual show which attracted the highest number of attendees to date, from Geneva, Zurich and beyond, further illustrating Banksy’s internationally acclaimed position. WAR BOUTIQUE | LOWER GROUND FLOOR GALLERY From a rebelliousyouth growing up in Glasgow to the fractious student captured in the BBC 4 documentary: Goldsmiths: But Is It Art? to a ballistics expert with government security clearance but most importantly an artist, War Boutique’s work is as much about transformation as his life. Re-modeling the fabrics of war into installations for peace, the artist’s passion for textiles took him beyond his everyday work and into the realms of wearable art… with a cause. War Boutique’s textiles of choice are Kevlar and Dyneema designed to resist bullets; his form is the flak jacket emblazoned with Metropolitan Peace or the fully armoured chalk-stripe suit for the City Gent Soldier. The artist known as War Boutique has provided his work for photo-shoots with the late Alexander McQueen CBE as well as collaborating with the royal and military tailor, Gieves & Hawkes, to create City Gent Soldier. He has also provided artwork for some of the most renowned contemporary artists including the infamous street artist Banksy for his controversial Banksy Versus Bristol Museum show and YBA Sarah Lucas. Working for a body armour company on obtaining his degree in Textiles and Fashion Design, he has designed armour and uniforms from fabrics specially formulated for military use or the British, Egyptian, Indian, Pakistani and Algerian armies, as well as the Metropolitan Police, Italian Carabinieri and Mexico City Police. The arresting symbolic potential of these textiles led War Boutique to requisition and recycle uniforms, military and ballistic materials and use them in his art, to alert us to the creeping militarisation of our society, encourage us to work towards peace and remind us of our duty to realise this.
The Peace Pods, which have hung from trees and rafters from Tate Modern, Tate Britain, British Museum and Regent’s Park are places of respite for people to enter and feel and make peace. Designed so that its essential for the individuals inside to cooperate peacefully to avoid the destabilisation of the pod and inspired by the form of crinoline (a skirt stiffened with hoops used by courtly ladies) these works provoke us to question the necessity of war and to explore ways of experiencing peace. Commissioned by Gieves & Hawkes, City Gent Soldier (2005) wears a perfectly tailored suit using the finest Gieves & Hawkes cloth cut and sewn by their finest military tailors which functions as a fully protective bullet proof garment. It is the contemporary embodiment of the metaphorical ‘armour of God’ needed to stand firm against the villainous violence of today’s world. The City Gent’s accouterments are the breastplate of righteousness: a ballistic chest plate; the shield of faith: a ballistic briefcase; the sword of the spirit: an umbrella sword and the shoes for the gospel of peace: Special Forces boots. He has also produced child sized stab vests, for the Bak 2 Skool project – a reaction to child stabbings in Peckam – that when displayed in his carefully created mock-up of a Peckham shop front attracted swarms of parents from the local area requesting anti-stab vests to protect their children for the new school term. A sign of the times. Using textiles bullet proof ceramics, shells and bomb blankets as the conduit to express his ideas, “War Boutique symbolically transforms instruments of war and destruction into constructive items embodying creativity, peace and critical social commentary.” Society for Contemporary Craft.
The Active Space will be presenting “Stay Gold” during Bushwick Open Studios. The group exhibition features Bushwick artists Don Pablo Pedro, Nathan Pickett, QRST, Quel Beast and Vahge.
Stay Gold is a showcase of five exemplary artists who are based in Bushwick. The expression “stay gold” derives from a Robert Frost poem but became widely known in pop culture because its two short words deliver a simple but powerful directive: be true to yourself and your own character. The works in this show embody these local artists’ commitment to this principle. Each artist has developed their own visual language to communicate their ideas, and when the works are considered together, a motif emerges that reflects the complexities of human experience. The work comprises oil paintings, acrylic portraits, narrative mixed-media works and collage.
Participating artists:
Don Pablo Pedro
There once was a beautiful nymph, an amazing creature with five heads and three vaginas. She was seduced by a magnificent satyr, a satyr who was revered as the greatest painter in the small port town in which both beings hid. The nymph bore two sons from this union, although both were extremely unusual. The first son was born with a lavish beard that reached down to the tips of his toes, and had a mysterious eye which resided on his single testicle. The second son was born with a pussy for a face, and had an arm in place of his penis. In an epic battle not long after birth, the long bearded boy killed and raped his mutilated brother. This bearded son lives on today, as Don Pablo Pedro.
Nathan Pickett
Nathan Pickett’s nonlinear narratives explore human experience and its inherent tension and contradictions. In wondering where our culture is headed tomorrow, Pickett looks from present to ancient past in his examination of the individual’s struggle to understand its self and its place in society. Pickett’s work includes symbolism that references universal truths embedded within archetypes that transcend the boundaries of language, time and form. Through fine-art painting techniques, intricate paper-cutting, stencils, patterns and line, and spray painting, Pickett depicts our myths, fantasies and fears. His compositions offer a perspective from which the viewer can consider the multidimensional aspects of his work as a reflection of the complexity and dichotomies of their own life experience.
QRST
The mysterious Brooklyn-based QRST, formerly the mysterious San Francisco-based QRST, sometimes makes paintings for inside and sometimes makes paintings for outside. QRST often paints animals, but describes painting a human as “simply one more strange creature with questionable motivations inhabiting…strange and bent places.” The artist says his paintings often focus on “the intersection of memory, wool-gathering and dreaming.”
Quel Beast
Quel Beast creates figurative paintings which balance emotion and gesture in a self-created style that blends fine-art and graffiti sensibilities. His work toys with the dual motivating forces that distract us from ultimate death, while simultaneously celebrating these vulnerabilities.
Vahge
Vahge grew up in too-quiet suburbs where neighbors with watchful eyes kept too-perfect lawns. An isolated child with few friends, she withdrew to her imagination and began making collages that contrast whimsical and romantic with unsettling aspects of reality. She incorporates elements of dreams, literature, music, theater and classic portraiture, and draws heavily from German expressionism and Victorian culture. Vahge often crafts her highly detailed works on a small scale, using layers of paper to construct characters and scenes with precise proportion and depth. She often makes females her central characters, exposing all their faults and unique beauty. In all her work, Vahge celebrates oddity with elegance.
Opening party Saturday, June 4th, 7 – 10 PM
Open to the public during Bushwick Open Studios (June 3 – 5) and through July 5, 2011, by appointment. Curbs & Stoops, 566 Johnson Ave., Brooklyn, NY
The famed Barracuda Wall plays host to the Street Art conversation in LA once again with this ironic installation from Cyrcle and Muska, captured here by photographer Carlos Gonzales. Post No Bills, for readers who live outside of Metropolis, is a standard warning that appears on the walls of construction sites to discourage outdoor advertisers from plastering their entreaties for you to purchase deodorant, electronic devices, hair straightening goo, and cruises to Killarney.
Naturally, poster companies routinely ignore the admonition and plaster thousands of ads every year upon them despite the warnings and usually with indemnity.
Sandwiched between the ads you’ll find the Street Artist, whose voice jumps out from the commercial cacophony and this installation is a commentary on the claim commercial entities have on public space, while the tiny public voice is often squeezed out. While some real estate developers have actually hired Street Artists and others in recent years to adorn their construction sites with their work, the majority of these lots simply are a toggled message of “Post No Bills” one day and hoochie mamas in thongs shilling energy drinks the next.
In this installation Street Artists Cyrcle and Muska playfully draw attention to these signs and cast them as fine art installation, a deliberate postmodern repetitive rhythmic visual chant for pedestrians and drivers in the city to enjoy.
Logan Hicks “Downward Spiral” (image courtesy of the gallery)
Opera Gallery New York presents Logan Hicks’ Pretty Ugly. Hicks is a New York-based stencil artist whose work explores the ever changing nature of the urban environment in which he lives. Through his imagery and masterful etching technique, Hicks’ goal is to create a perfect dichotomy whereby the granular nature of the spray paint expresses the deterioration of the city. Using layers of laser-cut, hand-sprayed stencils on board, acrylic and anodized aluminum, Hicks creates works that capture the sometimes mundane cycle of city life in a haunting, yet controlled aesthetic manner. In the past year, Hicks has participated in several notable projects including creating a forty foot mural for Art Basel Miami 2010 Wynwood Walls as well as contributing new artwork to the Martha Cooper: Remix exhibition at Carmichael Gallery in California. Opera Gallery is proud to present over thirty new works by Logan Hicks.
We’re creating an open and inclusive event that benefits the neighborhood by sharing artistic projects and encouraging community interaction and dialogue. BOS brings the neighborhood’s thousands of artists and performers out into the streets and in view of each other, other community residents, and the general public.
About Arts in Bushwick
Our Mission
Arts in Bushwick is an all volunteer organization that serves and engages artists and other neighborhood residents through creative accessibility and community organizing. It is our goal to create an integrated and sustainable neighborhood, and to bring together all Bushwick residents and stakeholders to counter development-driven displacement.
Our History
Arts In Bushwick was founded in the fall of 2007, as a result of grassroots efforts to produce the 2007 Bushwick Open Studios festival. The organization was founded by a group of roughly fifteen local artists and community organizers, most of whom were involved in planning the 2007 Bushwick Open Studios, and has continued to operate on an all-volunteer, non-hierarchical, break-even basis to today, the fifth annual Bushwick Open Studios we have produced. Arts In Bushwick maintains a completely open structure, inviting all community members to bring their ideas and to participate in collaboratively producing the organization and its activities.
To learn more about all the events, participating artists and venues for BOS 2011 please click on the link below:
Chicago’s own Don’t Fret procured a legal wall in a parking lot to unfold his portrait of a colorful parking attendant gone mad. He says the piece, at 30 feet tall, is the biggest wheat paste ever to hit town.
Says the artist,”Recently I was given my first legal wall in Chicago. I wanted to do something epic and something that was fitting for the environment. This wall sits adjacent to a parking lot that is always just a little too full, so it seemed appropriate to have one of my characters always making the extra spot available by throwing cars. Installing the piece was both a challenging and interesting experience. Hilariously, most people who were walking by when we were installing thought we were taking it off the wall, not putting it up. We actually got boo’d a couple times. I guess people get used to the harshness of the buff in Chicago after a while. I have too to some extent, and that’s why I didn’t tell the wall owners how big the piece was going to be until it was half way up the wall.”
Brooklyn based Street Artist Over Under opens his first solo show in “Building on Building” opening at XYandZ Gallery in Minneapolis, transporting his architectural fever dreams to Minnesota for a hot minute. It’s all about relationships.
Artists who run in the streets of dense cities have a special relationship with buildings, seeing them as potential canvas, laboratory, love affair, and sometimes their perdition. In Over Under’s case, the very structures he was painting and pasting upon got recycled through his mind as worthy of caricature and portrait.
Approximately a year ago when the artist’s prolific output was hard to miss, his fascination with our built environment went on a full REM cycle with a continual metamorphose of architectural elements bending and bundled together with lyrically disembodied limbs. During his nearly two weeks in Minneapolis making work with his buddies Broken Crow, the arms and legs continue to poke into and out of roofs, windows and walls like so many orifices and protuberances entangled in one stately mass.
Passersby here are sometimes astonished, and filled with questions. Is he exploring the relationship between space and personal relationships or is he examining the construct/construction that creates inside and outside, or is he reacting to the ongoing overtaking of Williamsburg and Bushwick real estate by dullard developers? Or is he just in love?
And what about this iconic flying plane with a stream-of-consciousness line of haiku diary entry arching over it? Is it a bird? Is it graffiti, a tag, Street Art or vandalism? Maybe these questions are at play because Over Under is still playing with them, or maybe because there are not clear answers. To us it’s all part of the conversation on the street, which never stops. Tonight, however, the conversation goes in through the doors as Over Under brings the buildings and bridges and foundations and superstructures and rolldown gates and lithe limbs inside for the night. We’ll see what sticks out.
If you decide to stay in the city this holiday weekend you can incite your imagination and feed your intellectual curiosity by walking the streets for the great out door gallery, or go inside to see great new stuff.
1. Happy 70th Birthday Bob Dylan (a couple of days ago)
2. “Paint It Now” Tonight in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
3. Miss Van and Gaia Double Bill at Jonathan Levine
4. Shai Dahan Solo Show in Gothenburg, Sweden
5. Melrose & Fairfax Saturday “What Graffiti is to New York, Street Art is to Los Angeles”
6. FAILE SAYZ: PLAY WITH YOUR ART! Release Puzzle Boxes
7. DJ Mayonaise Hands Insightful Review of ELIK at Brooklynite
8. Narcelio Grud
9. FEIK in Brazil by Sampa Graffiti
Happy 70th Birthday Bob Dylan (a couple of days ago)
“Paint It Now” Tonight in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
Paint It Now makes its NYC debut in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood (just north of Williamsburg). The show’s curators, Thomas Buildmore and Scott Chasse partner with Fowler Arts Collective for this Brooklyn-centric show, although Philadelphia and Boston represent.
Miss Van “Bailarinas” and Gaia “Succession” opened last night at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in Chelsea in Manhattan. Miss Van has been painting since her teenage years in France and in Europe and Gaia is celebrating his recent graduation from MICA in Baltimore. Congratulations GAIA!
(images courtesy of the Gallery)
For more details on this show, times and address click on the link below”
Shai Dahan moved to Sweden last year and, wasting no time, he set up to work on his new art projects as soon as the plane touched ground. Today he invites all people that happen to be in Gothenburg , Sweden to come to the opening of his solo show “Things Come Undone” at the Artspace + Us Gallery.
Melrose & Fairfax Saturday “What Graffiti is to New York, Street Art is to Los Angeles”
On Saturday the West Coast Street Art site Melrose&Fairfax invites you to attend the opening reception of their curatorial debut “What Graffiti is to New York, Street Art is to Los Angeles” at the Maximillian Gallery in West Hollywood, CA.
Street Art Collective Faile have released a set of six different Puzzleboxes to the public. When we visited their studio last year they were in the process of creating these fun, interactive fine art pieces and now they are available, with an app on Itunes to boot.
For information about the Puzzleboxes and to purchase go to:
DJ Mayonaise Hands Insightful Review of ELIK at Brooklynite
Narcelio Grud
Brazilian artist Narcelio Grud was filmed getting up all day in Manhester, UK where the only thing that really got in his way was a flock of adorable baby geese crossing his path.
This one caught our eye for the merging of classic graffiti nerve, blunt style execution, sentimental velvety roses, inspirational verses, …Read More »
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
Fumero combines the American pop culture of urban art with his caricature-like, figurative paintings. The “wildstyle” letter design, with its highly stylized alphabetical abstractions and decorative embellishments transformes into the dynamic energy of his abstracted human figure. The visually psychological power derives from a technique illustrating a harmonious interaction among bold contour lines, and shapes filled with vivid colors. Within the contours of the hard edged shapes are intense contrasting colors that interact with each other, creating a moving energy that powerfully projects outward to the viewer.
