A funny thing happened on the way to Public Space.
Street Artist XAM has started a new series of miniature billboards that poke their little fingers in the eye of advertising and in the process call into question what kind of messages are legal or illegal. After the Public Ad Campaign last year successfully drew attention to the thousands of outdoor spaces in New York City that were illegally being used for advertising and poster glut was cut, the public became a little more aware of the street fight for their eyeballs.
Not sure what XAM means to say here, but they’re clever installations that can cause a cringe and a chuckle at the same time. These petite Out Of Home (OOH) message platters first seen in LA last week mounted on the back of street signs appear to be faithful reproductions of their gigantic cousins, and ironically the same size as that glowing rectangle you have in your purse or pocket right now.
Here’s Part II of our tour of the museum at the “Art in the Streets” show that opened a week ago at MOCA LA. The breadth and depth of the show must have blown away many of the potential critics, because the grousing never really materialized. For our part, the review on the Huffington Post of the show itself (Red Hot and Street: “Art in the Streets” Brings Fire to MOCA) and the images of stuff on the street in 4 0r 5 neighborhoods in LA (Hitting Up LA: The Streets Outside the Show) have been fodder for some conversation (and voting!) and it’s a blast to see how this graffiti/street art movement sparks such intense opinion and feelings.
MOCA Part II Images of the Week, this week featuring Banksy, Barry McGee, ESPO,Steve Powers, Craig Stecyk III, Ed Templeton, Freedom, Invader, Martha Cooper, John Fekner, John Ahearn, Kenny Scharf, Lee Quinones, Margaret Kilgallen, Nunca, Os Gemeos, ROA, and Swoon.
Street Artist NohJColey continues to stretch his character studies and symbol-heavy storylines and build them into ever more interactive street sculpture. Not content with laborious hand cut and colored wheat-pasted flat pieces, his stuff on the street for almost a year has more dimension and engagement. Naturally, people interact with it and pretty quickly pieces are missing. Maybe it’s curiosity or maybe a Lower East Side messenger needed something to lock his bike to, but here are a couple of images of the piece as it first appeared in Manhattan, where the central form can be adjusted to simulate the figurative and literal falling that can happen in a life.
“Suicidal Tendancies”, by NohJ Coley
Like the protagonist in Don DeLillos Falling Man, Coley’s character could be a metaphor for so many in New York who are losing jobs, wages, and a frayed social net that once prevented them from hitting the pavement. While DeLilos book begins at the Twin Towers during a “time and space of falling ash and near night,” and the vision of office workers jumping out of the buildings, the simulation NohJColey creates here pertains to the plight of bankers, latinos and those affected by mental illness. With American society as a burning building, this piece is entitled “Suicidal Tendencies” and the passerby can actually participate by preventing one man from jumping to his death, see another jumping in front of a train, and witness the anguished expression of the third at the base who has sadly succeeded in his pursuit.
Below are images taken yesterday of the installation, with parts already missing. While the complete story is not told with what remains, somehow they are still interactive.
Coley spoke to Brooklyn Street Art about the stories behind the three chapter piece:
“I’m currently working on a series of interactive sculptures that are focused on recognizing mental illness. Suicidal Tendencies, which is the first of the three is of course concentrated on suicide. The main figure is a stock broker who is unable to continue existing after the stock market has crashed. So, with his office windows ajar he jumps out. He is partially in purgatory and partially in what we know as existence.
When interacting with Suicidal Tendencies the main objective is to prevent two of the three subjects from committing the act of suicide. When in front of the main figure the viewer is meant to pull the subject up, averting the subject from committing the act of suicide. The succeeding figure is a Hispanic activist that turns to suicide after becoming exhausted with the notion of Hispanics being treated unjustly in the US. So, after another unsuccessful demonstration he comes to the conclusion that he wants to jump in front of a moving train. The main objective with the activist is to prevent the smaller figure from jumping in front of the moving train. The tertiary figure is a young college student that is too far gone to be redeemed.”
It’s Good Friday today, which of course means I got a seat on the subway this morning. Apparently it’s a holiday of some sort. Anyway, we have some Street Art news, and some completely unrelated frivolity because it’s good to take a break, for Christ’s sake.
LONDON—A year after the tragic explosion and oil spill that caused petroleum giant BP to cease operations in the Gulf of Mexico, the company announced Wednesday that it was once again ready to begin oil spilling.
Image here is the winner of LogoMyWay’s contest to redesign the BP Logo — Stuart Croft, an English Graphics Designer working and studying in Bangkok, Thailand.
Jean Faucher – Early Street Art Pioneer Show Tomorrow in LA
New York’s grand dame fashionista Lynn Dell shows how to rock a big hat like this for your Sunday stroll on Fifth Avenue or Flatbush Avenue for Easter. Showing you can be hot at any age, this 78 year old Gotham gal has a whole slideshow here, including this pic from Ari Cohen.
2000 Images of MOCA “Art in the Streets”
Produced by Roger L. Griffith
“A frame by frame animation of the 2011 MOCA show Art In The Streets. This is not meant to be a complete census of all the art at the MOCA, but an introduction and basic virtual tour of the exhibit. Enjoy”
Responding to a museum show that brings Street Art inside and charges admission to see it, a local Street Artist tweaks the nose of MOCA’s “Art in the Streets” with some actual Street Art in situ. Ironically, it also drew a crowd of curious admirers to the sidewalk.
Eddie Colla says his billboard takeover is a response to a Huffington Post article last week where a finger wagging tone was on display toward current street artists, “MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch pegs it on the ‘young’ and ‘anarchic,’ and is quoted giving this message to illegal taggers: ‘If you harness your talent you can be in a museum some day, make a contribution and a living from it.’ ”
A testament to the current fascination among teens, 20 and 30-somethings with the entire topic of Street Art, observers report that the installation of Colla’s piece drew a small crowd of tourists, who took turns snapping photos and posing in front of it – some of which we show here. Even more incredibly, after the poster company covered it and left yesterday, witnesses say a bystander apparently began removing the advertising posters.
Reached for comment, the artist told us the message of the piece is pretty self evident and he hung around after putting it up to listen to people stopping to take pictures.
Brooklyn Street Art: What kind of reaction did the installation get on the street?
Eddie Colla: It ranged from “Is that Bansky?”, “Are you Banksy?”, “I think that’s f*ckin Banksy”, and “Holy sh*t! It’s Banksy”. Of course there’s the one nob who always mispronounces Banksy and says “Yo It’s BAN-SKY”. So there was that and a couple “hey cools” and “what do you make your stencils out of?” and “you’re eddie right?”.
Brooklyn Street Art: Did you think that people would actually pose in front of it for a group photo?
Eddie Colla: Sure why not, It’s a nice sort of background. Much better than the movie posters that were there when I started.
Brooklyn Street Art: When do you think this Street Art madness, I mean fascination, end?
Eddie Colla: When they release “Exit through the gift shop 2 – Electric Boogaloo”. I think that will be the beginning of the end.
Italian Street Artist Göla is in Sao Paulo for his show with Brazilian Paulo Auma called “Hibrido”, or Hybrid. A wild man who channels his emotions into walls and sculptures composed of a kaleidoscope of intense colors and shapes, Göla studies the human condition, the natural world, genetic modification, biodiversity and the spiritual universe, free associating his way from there with saturated color, biomorphic shapes, and vibrating pattern. Together with Auma, he has begun a series of installations outside the gallery for a show that blends blend anger with joy, natural with man made, in a integrated collection of public works.
Here is a sample of some of his new work. More to come.
In select neighborhoods of Los Angeles, certain street artists keep it local. You might see them in one neighborhood but not another, as the term “all-city” is not too important. Here’s a selection of pieces from the Arts District, Culver City, West Hollywood, Echo Park and Venice.
As we depart the City of Angels and the Devils go back to dirty old New York here are some images from the more organic and populist walls that exist in certain neighborhoods in every city. A Street Art pulse-taking, you can observe and assess the vitals of a community and some of the currents running through it just by observing these magnet walls that attract a cacophony of expression.
In the case of this block of walls, the Street Art is notable also for the high degree of political speech one can not find in “papers of record” on display for anyone who cares to see it or report on it. Whether it’s AIDS, censorship, or the military industrial complex, political speech has always been integral to the conversation on the street that these artists bring. With references to leaders like Julian Assange, Ronald Reagan, Ben Bernanke, and Nelson Mandela as well topics ranging from Abu Graib, FOX News, corporatized American Indians, and of course MOCA’s Jeffrey Dietch whitewashing the work of Italian Street Artist BLU’s wall, the LA Street Art scene is on fire with popular discontent and acidic criticism. With roots in people’s movements, seeing these displays from a great number of sources is actually a bit of a tribute to free speech and the city that permits its continuance.
The variety of styles and processes is pretty wide, ranging from large-run stickers and screen printed posters to hand stitched abstract geometry and penciled portraits, some exhibiting the New Guard that didn’t make it into the timeline at the museum show running this summer. Aside from the political, other themes include celebrity, video games, pop culture and simple illustrations and fascinations or daydreams. As usual, some of the freshest stuff is displayed in the gallery of the streets – uncurated, unpermissioned, unbought, unbossed, and – giving lie to the charge of street art as a simple marketing tool – many times it is unsigned. As today’s new street artists claim what they consider a birthright to circumvent the established system and take their work to the street, you’ll see an ongoing conversation that is full of life.
It’s been a hot week in Los Angeles for the Brooklyn set, this much warmth and sun consecutively is unsettling for cold northerners accustomed to six months of winter and unbearable cold. The hundreds of museum goers who are lined up to enter the MOCA “Art in the Streets” show this morning mark the end of official events over the last week as well as the private openings, events, and walls that popped up everywhere.
This weeks interview with the streets is largely an interview with Daniel Lahoda, an Angelino who has procured walls for visiting and local street artists in a few neighborhoods of the city since 2009. With no membership fee or admission, everyone is able to see the work of a whole lot of street artists where it was originated thanks to his organizational and diplomatic skills and his vision. We were very fortunate to receive a personal tour of the walls from Daniel over the course of a couple of days, including the gargantuan piece finished this week by Dabs & Myla with How & Nosm and the still fresh 42nd LA Free Wall as it was being completed by Street Artist Aiko. Since so many artists were in town for the general craziness, expect to see some new walls going up shortly that will thrill and delight.
So here’s this weeks interview with the street featuring Aiko, Augustine Kofie, CA, Carl Rauschenbach, Crayola, Dabs & Myla, David Flores, DFace, X, Herakut, How & Nosm, JR, Kid Zoom, M-City, Nomade, Philip Lumbang, Ripo, Roa, Saber, and Shepard Fairey.
Amid the madness that is the MOCA LA rollout of “Art in the Streets” this week, one of Brooklyn’s hometown favorites popped in her falsies and applied a fresh coat of Chanel Rouge lipstick before sinking her pointy incisors into the New Image Gallery in West Hollywood.
Dressed head to stiletto in black and florescent night glamooouuuur, the gallery that had the balls to champion a number of unconventional street artists for more than a decade gave every inch of floor, wall and ceiling to Street Artist Judith Supine for this installation. Since the MOCA show so far looks like a compendium of the last 50 years, it’s understandable that it overlooks the 30 or so New Guard on the streets today who are ushering in an era of storytelling and mashups, but clearly Miss Supine will be in BSA’s “Art In The Streets” show when we’re talking about the 2010s.
A smaller version of the full blowout Supine did at English Kills in Bushwick Brooklyn a couple of years ago, “Ladyboy” is a more focused and tight hallucinatory play of collaged and freakish imagery alluding to the underground sex industry, child exploitation, and the magnetic allure of iniquity. When this heavy stuff is cut with a handy pen knife in your handbag, fed through the surreal filter of Ms. Supine’s mind and flooded over with a thick shiny coat of liquid glass, the dark magic is suspended in time. Our time.
Yes, Banksy is here. The giant “Art in the Streets” show opening this weekend at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles gives a patch of real estate to the international man of mystery who has contributed greatly to the worldwide profile of this soon to be, maybe already, mainstream phenomenon known as street art. A smattering of his pranksterism is an absolute must for any show staking claim to the mantle of comprehensive survey and an excellent way to garner attention. But “Streets” gets it’s momentum by presenting a multi-torch colorful and explosive people’s history that began way before Banksy was born and likely will continue for a while after.
“Art In the Streets” has begun exactly where it started – outside on walls. The number of people in Los Angeles this week to mark Sunday’s opening of the show at the Museum of Contemporary Art grows by the hour and there are more walls in progress than a housing boom. Just in the last couple of days we’ve seen commissioned and non-commissioned new murals, pieces, tags, and installations freshly dripping by people like How & Nosm, Lee Quinones, Shepard Fairey, Blade, Cern1, JR, Augustine Kofie, Invader, Os Gemeos, Nomade, Saner, and many others.
Futura says it’s like Summer camp and others have likened it to a family reunion, which makes us think of lawn chairs, cheap beer, barbecue, and crazy old uncle Jed sitting on a picnic table rubbing egg salad into his hair and talking about the Republicans. But yeah, right now in this little part of LA there is a feeling of a camp that is headed maniacally toward total circus.
The show itself, which we’ve seen in it’s entirety, is an audacious and colorful endeavor to bring about 50 years of Graffiti and Street Art history and a number of it’s influencers and influences under one roof. Engaging and educational, visitors will have the opportunity to learn how certain tributaries lead to this river. No show on this worldwide phenomenon could ever hope to include everyone, and Curator Jeffrey Deitch, along with associate curators Roger Gastman and Aaron Rose have chosen touchstones and flashpoints that push their individual visions of how the story unfolded. While it doesn’t break much brand new ground, only the Bittersons (or Jealousinskis) will find sufficient cause to try to mug this solid, entertaining and participatory show full of surprises. But for a scene that never sought permission in the first place, it won’t matter.
Here are a collection of images on the museum grounds itself. Previews from the show tomorrow.
Barry McGee (Twist) finished this wall before heading indoors to reprise an installation he did in 2000 with ESPO and REAS called Street Market. Roger Gastman says of the new installation that was still being finished as of yesterday afternoon, “This is another version ten years later, basically on crack. They brought in a number of other great artists to help work with them on it. Now it includes Alexis Ross, Dan Murphy, Jeff Flynn and a few others.” (photos tomorrow)
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
