It’s been a struggle to mount art events in the last year and a half for many reasons. That includes the 6th edition of GarGar Murals and Rural Art Festival in Penelles, Spain.
Instead of grouping all the artists and events and fans together for one short period of high activity, the organizers this year decided “to progressively invite the artists in smaller numbers so they could paint more confidently and feel protected from the virus.”
Now that all the 2021 murals have been painted, BSA collaborator Lluis Olive-Bulbena traveled an hour and a half from Barcelona to capture fresh paint! We thank him and we invite you to enjoy GarGar!
The first is to investigate buildings that are being reclaimed by nature and develop site-specific installations that work in harmony with the history of the relationship between architecture and nature. The second, of which we have an example for you today, is a mural installation on active buildings within cities, perhaps invoking a more integrated ecology of symbols and natural systems around it. These two lines of inquiry comprise his project “HABITAT”, a sincere stream of research that lies on the border between anthropic space and natural space
Here in Milan, the school façade will now display Gola’s dedication to life and its movements – called “Convective Motions”. While the mural composition begins from a central element of cosmic energy, a solar force that unravels centrifugally outward, he also has plans to do plantings around the mural and the property in September to extend the reach of the painted portion of his installation.
“Leaves are painted as if they were part of a fire explosion, following and growing the movement,” he tells us, “generates new ones – involving celestial bodies upon contiguous facades, symbolically returning toward the central sun in a perpetual cyclical movement.”
When completed and grown, Mr. Hundun says the entire composition will include endemic plants grass, bushes, hornbeam trees, dogwood trees, hazel trees, hawthorns, and an English oak placed on an axis with the tree painted on the wall.
“The idea is to create a simulacrum of the wood that is used to dress this municipality of Vimodrone – all spread before the building,” he says. “The tree of life here is the same kind you’ll find monotheistic or pagan religions. The two trees will be set in two movements: the painted one will be crystallized, whereas the real tree will grow inexorably.”
This project is organized by industri scenica – INNESCHI festival in partnership with VIMODRONE City Hall sustained by Fondazione di Comunità Milano Onlus Consultancy about nests by LIPU MILANO Pics iranacredi
Can you feel the power of July’s full Buck Moon that arrived this weekend? Not to be confused with the full buck-naked moon; those are the guys climbing the fence to skinny dip in McCarren Pool.
Looks like the new George Floyd statue in Flatbush, Brooklyn got defaced by racists but will be restored and move to Union Square in Manhattan. The vandals must have been mad about all the confederate statues that have been coming down around the country.
You’ll be thrilled to learn that two self-driving cars were tested in New York this week, and no skateboarders or seniors were mowed down. The footage looks pretty tame, to tell the truth. Let’s try the test on any average drunken Saturday night and see how the rabble-rousers fare. Truthfully, a driverless car is exactly the way it feels taking a yellow cab sometimes.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fu, Adrian Wilson, Allison Dayka, Baston, Captain Eyeliner, City Kitty, Comik, David Puck, SEK@DX, Denis Ouch, Duel Heck, Flore, Foxito, La Plaga Invade, Lorenzo Masnah, Lunge Box, Rex Bantron, S. Cifu, Sinclair The Vandal, Sticky Monger, Sule Cant Cook, and Westgard.
For five years conceptual artists Biancoshock and Harmen de Hoop have been giving each other assignments as part of a common project that can range from titillating to amusing to incomprehensible.
As with so many works in public space by either of these two interpreters of societal nomenclature, these works field-test theories of the visual prank as much as they level observations or critiques of human behavior. With each installation, you are welcomed to examine one more of myriad modern idiosyncrasies – now placed in a new context. Your interpretation may vary.
The current chapter of their collaboration finds Biancoshock in the Corsican mountains for the art festival called “Popularte”, featuring artists including Bordalo II, Escif, Dan Rawlings, Elea Battini, and Julien de Casabianca.
Renovating an abandoned vehicle there, he transforms it into a so-called “Google car”, one of the Street View cars wandering the earth since 2007 to document for Google Maps. While many cities have been re-shot multiple times, some have only been shot once, and certain countries in regions including a large part of the Middle East and Africa have never been photographed at all.
Since de Hoop challenged Biancoshock to “Make a work about time passing”, the artist used his smashed sculpture to comment on the fact that rural areas often are represented by photos more than a decade old. Noting that Corsica’s streets have not been photographed since 2009, Biancoshock says, “In the cities, everything must be updated in real-time, in the small villages nothing changes so quickly.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Only Sydney’s Finest: Dave & Phibs 2. Toy Story by BAER, Parts 1, 2, 3, & 4
BSA Special Feature: Only Sydney’s Finest: Dave & Phibs
“Ralph Bakshi’s representation of good and evil wizards is the setting chosen by Australians Phibs and Dave to contrast their clash of styles. In this spectacular video, Colin McKinnon captures the process of this wall production carried out in Sydney.”
But Ma! — the music is what makes this epic.
Only Sydney’s Finest: Dave & Phibs
Toy Story by BAER
A promising hand-made 4 episode pilot about a mini-vandal racking and wrecking. Just don’t call him a TOY.
School is out, unemployment is higher than they’re reporting, and your younger sister is driving you crazy. Time to take off with some friends to the local abandoned building for some summer spray-cation!
Maybe you’ll finally do that masterpiece, maybe you’ll just spray some genitalia or extremely large breasts. Since they are on your mind anyway, why not? These are the last days of July, you might as well carry on what has become a modern tradition for many urban youths over the years.
For those who are nostalgic for the early days of the Internet and the pop of Lichtenstein shredded by the hands of Jacques Villeglé, here balances the bright fluorescence of Dante Arcade. The self-described urban and contemporary artist from Barcelona is here in Torre-Pacheco, a municipality in the autonomous community of Murcia in southeastern Spain, bringing the colors and swimming likening his street experience to the digital dreams possible in Photoshop and less fancy paint programs.
In a world where everything now appears in your life like a screen, his new wall for the Artate Fest is transformed equally so, complete with pop-up messages and layers of content piling up and interrupting one another.
Please clean up this desktop! That’s what folders are for, people! Honestly.
But for Dante and his multi-color soaked tableau, this is about love via the comic strip… one “in which you can interpret a romantic love scene in the purest Vintage comic style. An intervention that transports us the madness of the digital boom and the appearance of technology as we know them.”
Super Walls 2021 says that the theme of this year’s festival is “Rebirth” – which is in alignment with the mission of the public art project, bringing new life to Veneto, Italy with 38 urban artists of all stripes.
Street artist Mr. Fijodor selected this image of a burning cigarette on the ICS Briosco middle school sidewall to illustrate a larger theme and point to a culprit of the modern age: thoughtless, toxic consumerism.
“The cigarette is the iconography of a ritual gesture that many people perform daily, sometimes without even realizing it,” he says of the white and black burning column stained with yellow nicotine. “A practice dictated by a physical as much as unconscious addiction.”
The larger theme is portrayed in a horror of bodies, animals, plants and objects all being consumed mindlessly. In pursuit, you may ask, of what?
He calls the work “Consumerism Consumes Us.” Indeed during the fires that rage across our lands in summers that stretch further into the year, one may sense that this way of life is going up in smoke.
At a time when Barcelona has received criticism for allowing iconic murals to disappear, it is a joyful sight to witness street artist and muralist Jaz create a new iconic one after full immersion into the neighborhood of Trinidad Nova. Similarly, it is gratifying to see a contemporary painter creating something relevant and new for a community rather than creating banal niceties or, worse, using public space to sell a sneaker or brand.
Intended as part of a permanent dialogue between the neighborhood and artist, this clearly links to the people’s fighting spirit here, complete with pugnacious bulls, roaring boars, and rebels on motorcycles. The Argentinian consulted closely over a period of weeks with panels of leaders, circles of residents, experts, and historians in the square.
A coalition project under the auspices of B-Murals, Centro de Arte Urbano, and School of Restoration and Conservation of Cultural Heritage of Catalonia, Jaz integrated histories and aspirations into a triumphant, defiant, and uniquely expressive tableau worthy of a people. With his talents, the artist reflects the community and empowers it – honoring a TIME of the past while propelling its intentions of actualization into a TIME of the future…
People are so careful sometimes to let you know that certain artists are self-taught. You wouldn’t think it so necessary to make the distinction but it’s often an important demarcation for the academic or self-appointed expert who wants to preserve the class divide, assuring that only persons from families who can afford luxury branded education could possibly be awarded highest distinction in any category.
Consider even newer terms like “Outsider Art”. It’s right there in the name, people.
Talk about so-called “outsider artists,” and there is a certain air of incredulity that such original, imaginative, high-quality work and brilliance could come from those who haven’t been to an art academy. The occurrence is likened to a supernatural fluke, something mystical perhaps channeled through this vessel of a person, not indicative of their own talents necessarily.
“Self-taught” is a source of pride for graffiti writers – taught by the university of the streets, a few will tell you. Some street artists like to say they evolved from the Do It Yourself (DIY) subcultures of punk and anarchists. It’s a source of pride, often hard-won. For those making money selling graffiti or street artists’ work in a gallery, however, they’ll check your resume in addition to your canvas. Its easier to assure potential buyers that an artist attended an accredited, if not acclaimed, university or program, or studied under the tutelage of an art star. It’s about branding, for sure, but it is also infused with class.
The Mata Ortiz pottery style from the northern central region of Mexico took hold in the 1990s when the Santa Fe style of home décor became popular in parts of the US. Originating from the Indigenous peoples who lived here and in this region before the Europeans arrived, the geometric designs and stylized animal patterning on pottery fragments from prehistoric cultures like the Mimbres and Casas Grandes inspired a new interest among ceramicists and potters.
A farmer who liked to explore near the remains of Paquime countryside and to discover pottery remnants in this desert and forest region, Juan Quesada took inspiration and began to develop his own pottery designs beginning in the 1960s. Over the course of the next decades, his work was “discovered” by an anthropologist and ceramic collector north of the border, and he helped Quesada to develop a sustainable business of sales and to spread word of his talent. These prized pottery works that later became part of museum private collections eventually spawned a small cottage industry in the surrounding area that is primarily known for ranching and lumber. Today Quesada continues to create his own art and has helped hundreds of family and friends to participate, learn, and thrive with the opportunity he authored.
He was also self-taught.
So, we lift a glass of tequila to him and all the self-taught artists and artisans – and those who share their skills with others.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street here in Mexico, this week featuring ARSK, Aser, Bianca S, BN One, CFN, Damasco, EXPm, Llario, Jeack, Juan Quezada, Mabe, Mecivo, Neth, Pese, RCW, Seyk, and Shutney.
Elfo’s furtive and artful wanderings can veer off into the neo-Dadaist fields at times, sometimes wittily so, and textually. The Italian graffiti writer and street artist uses the simplest of devices to capture attention, a reductive and deliberate strategy born of careful consideration girded by impulses to broadcast his view, to be seen and heard.
Here in Turin (Torino) the artist diagrams the messages in a butcherly way – a triangulation of views on class structures, the street-to-gallery continuum, and the tensions separating carnivores and herbivores. Oink!
He says it is “a new ironic artwork” and pays tribute to the late Italian artist and art collector G.A. Cavellini.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Vhils Explodes in Slow-Mo at Nifty Gateway 2. Giulio Vesprini: No Comply // Struttura G0055 3. RIDE a Film by Paul Bush
BSA Special Feature: Vhils Explodes in Slow-Mo at Nifty Gateway
The time elapsed between blasting a new artwork and destroying it? 2 seconds.
Thanks to documentation, you can luxuriate in this human/natural cycle of creation and destruction over two and a half minutes. Portuguese street artist VHILS explores the space in between, and the rapturous flight of atoms and molecules, volume, velocity, light and dark.
Giulio Vesprini: No Comply // Struttura G0055
Skate parks are sacred spaces for those believers whom you find there endless hours, meditating, catching air, lying prostrate. Giulio Vesprini helps us to understand his process for this artists commission to adorn the temple.
RIDE a Film by Paul Bush
Summer is prime season for bikes, no matter what kind. In a little more than 5 minutes filmmaker Paul Bush bowls us over with stop action bicycles, motorbikes, and your nostalgia.
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
