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.
In a space massive enough for a Dutch sea vessel, the Street Art Museum of Amsterdam (STRAAT) has one of the largest collections of today’s mural stars anywhere. During its official maiden voyage, curious street art/graffiti/contemporary art fans look to see if this ship is seaworthy. The brainchild of former graffiti writer, curator, and publisher Peter Ernst Coolen in the early 2010s, the D.N.A. of the museum is rooted in his forward vision as much as the ideal waterfront warehouse that showcases close to 200 international artists.
STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam.
Housed in a massive yet austere ship hull-welding hanger that closed in the 1980s, the airy space later hosted flea markets and similar events. Today the STRAAT is evolving into something more closely resembling a museum space due to recent structural and lighting improvements, but it hasn’t become a white box. If its origination story of punk culture, D.I.Y., and a well-loved graffiti Hall of Fame still holds water, this street art home by NDSM Wharf has the potential to be a world-class icon that retains credibility and out-paces other contenders.
The museum delivers a promise with a significant renovation, focused programming, public/private tours, an investment in marketing, branding/partnering, a sexy website, invited curators, and (no Banksy jokes, please) a gift shop. We’ve encountered the palpable energy of the select crew of creative directors, curators, content creators, and experience managers over the last few years. There is the desire to forge a soul of the new enterprise, as helmed by Coolen’s original business partner and civil engineer Peter Hoogewerf.
STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Kobra on the facade.
To appreciate where it may be heading, you now have a guidebook of works by the 200 or so artists who have created canvasses and sculpture here in the permanent collection. Given the wide span presented, the challenge will be to define a direction for this 8000 square meter shipyard space – aside from merely offering a broad survey of current names on the global stage.
STRAAT: Quote from the Streets (Lannoo Uitgeverij) is the name of the opening exhibition and a thick softcover tome of attractive art plates. It offers a collection of artists’ profiles, reflections, and artworks laid out in a spare and modern way, allowing the mind to wander or rest. With an intro by curator and founder of the Paris-based agency Le Grand Jeu Christian Omodeo, the travel/street art blogger Giulia Riva and writer Giovanna Di Giacomo are authors. Their essay explains that the STRAAT collection is organized here according to categories of Aesthetic, Ground, Empathic, and Conscious – with detailed descriptions of the respective characteristics and rationale laid out in the opening texts.
Sliks. STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam.
The range of styles and techniques here mirrors many of the mural movements on streets around the world today. The writers give valuable contextual background for decoding what often are high-quality artworks. A unifying and concise overview of each artist is a supporting firmament with enough academic rigor to enlighten the reader – no small feat in a world populated with fanboys and pseudo-intellectualizing. Because of it, this introduction to the museum is more than average data reportage – helping to broaden understanding of this multi-headed hydra called the street art scene. With a firm grip guiding the rudder, this ship looks like it is ready to sail.
ASTRO. STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Guido van Helten paints STRAAT’s Peter Hoogewerf. STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Ben Slow. STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Lannoo Uitgeverij.Adele Renault. STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Lannoo Uitgeverij.Ever. STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Lannoo Uitgeverij.Mr. June. STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Lannoo Uitgeverij.Dan Kitchner. STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Lannoo Uitgeverij.Icy & Sot. STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Lannoo Uitgeverij.Alaniz. STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Lannoo Uitgeverij.STRAAT Museum of Amsterdam. Lannoo Uitgeverij.
STRAAT MUSEUM: Quotes From The Streets. Published by Lannoo. Click HERE to learn more about STRAAT and to purchase the book.
“I was subconsciously gathering up all that information being passed down to me. The moon calendar, what to plant when, how to prepare the earth,” says street artist/fine artist Adelle Renault about her formative years in the early 1990s planting gardens with her mother in the Belgian Ardennes.
Adele Renault. “Plantasia. Birds Of Paradise”. Galerie Quai4. Belgium. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“Even though I lived most of my adult life in large cities,” she says, “you can take the girl out of the garden but you can’t take the garden out of the girl.”
Adele Renault. “Plantasia. Birds Of Paradise”. Galerie Quai4. Belgium. (photo courtesy of the artist)
So this is how we arrive at her newest paintings that may appear as photography. The selection of canvasses comprising “Plantasia” will be on display tonight at at Galerie Quai 4 in Belgium, with a particular focus on birds of paradise.
“Of course nature – flowers, trees, landscapes – is the most common of subject, alongside portraiture, in painting,” Adele says. “But I hope that my microscope approach can still bring something new to the table.”
Adele Renault. “Plantasia. Birds Of Paradise”. Galerie Quai4. Belgium. (photo courtesy of the artist)
PLANTASIA
Birds of Paradise
This Thursday 9 September 2021 from 16:00 to 20:00
At Galerie Quai 4 4 Quai Churchill 4020 Liège Belgium
High in a number of nutrients, today it is used to treat inflammation, blood pressure, blood sugar, even hayfever.
Pursuing her new fascination with detailed realism and the plant world muralist Adele enlarges the leaf for you to gain a greater appreciation of its aesthetic qualities, its patterning and geometries.
Sadly, during this painting in Sweden, the artist learned of the untimely passing of “two beautiful teens who died in an accident,” she says. Children of her friends, whom she says, are “beautiful amazing people who do a lot for the community,” the loss is incalculable. For them, she dedicates this new mural to “friends Edson and Nica and Spehrane, Andrea and Antonella.”
Something completely fresh today from artist Adele Renault, who tells us she is thinking about the beauty of nature more than ever. With this new mural of green leafy covering in Liège, Belgium, she is beginning a series she will call Plantasia (#plantasia) and will be developing into a new solo gallery show focusing on the plant world. It’s as old as the hills and the forests, but this new focus feels fresh to this aerosol master. We asked Adele how this new direction began to grow.
BSA: Millions of people worldwide are finally venturing out without masks, and many countries are opening up after a horrific year during the Pandemic. You are not an exception. You are painting murals again—only this time with a new direction. Now you are painting plants. Did the lockdown and the isolation make you re-think the direction of your career?
Adele Renault: I never really stopped painting, luckily murals were considered like construction, and most murals could still go ahead; we are fortunate. It’s probably the only cultural sector that hasn’t been completely devastated. Traveling was an issue, of course, and many events got canceled or perpetually postponed. What the lockdown allowed me to do (just like everyone else) was to slow down a bit, and for me, that meant more time for gardening/planting. That’s a passion that’s literally been “growing” my whole life without me even being aware of it.
As a kid, I always had to help my mum in her large vegetable garden, sometimes fun, sometimes felt more like a chore. But I was subconsciously gathering up all that information being passed down to me—the moon calendar, what to plant when, how to prepare the earth. And then, like so many, I lived in cities where gardening didn’t have a place.
Until I moved to L.A. and was fascinated by the vegetation at every street corner, everything and anything seemed to be growing. And then a revelation came when I realized I was enjoying growing things in pots, didn’t even need to have a patch or a backyard.
I occasionally went to help my friend Ron Finley in his garden, and that’s where I realized you could have a massive garden, all growing in pots if you are surrounded by concrete. And pots are actually fun; you can compose pots like a painting, put together different things that grow at different speeds or heights, play with colors and textures. So right now, I spend a lot of time growing stuff indoors in pots and veggies outside.
BSA:Why did you choose plants as your subjects? AR: I’ve always painted the mundane, whatever was around me. People, pigeons. I see beauty everywhere and in everything, and for me, it was always about showing beauty where you least expect it, but the subject could have been anything. It never had to be “special” to be painted. Now, yet again, the subject chose me rather than the other way around. I spend more time looking at plants from up close, and so I end up painting plants. But it’s not an overnight decision. The seed was planted a long time ago, quite literally.
BSA: Will you paint plant life that is native to the country or city where you will be creating? AR: Probably, but not always. I will repaint the mundane, like stinging nettles or a cabbage leaf. Of course, I will sometimes make site-specific installations, but I also paint what speaks to me or fits a building. Right now, I am starting to work on a solo show. It will be in Belgium, and I am in Europe now, but I miss Los Angeles a lot, so I will probably end up painting some California plants.
BSA:What are your feelings about the color green? You’ll be using gallons of it moving forward. AR: I wouldn’t say I like green. When I buy clothes or shoes, I would never buy something green. Or paint the walls inside my house green! But I love green in nature. I think everybody does instinctively like green nature, green plants. And in a way, when I cover a building in a green leaf, well, I m quite literally letting nature envelop and reclaim a bit of manufactured concrete. Even though it’s not eco graffiti and spray paint isn’t quite “green nature” taking over, but it can at least symbolize it and inspire people for a greener future. I am obviously not the first or last person to paint plants, and I think it’s one of the natural subject matters, just like portraiture. But I hope to bring something new with my approach.
Photographer Martha Cooper again rules the roost at BSA with her new photos of the 20×21 EUG Festival in Eugene, Oregon. Organized and funded by the City of Eugene’s Cultural Services Public Art Program, the citizenry is invited to be a part of events and symposia – an intimate affair with this years select list of invited artists.
“This year 20×21 organized ‘viewing parties’ at the walls to give the community an official chance to meet and socialize the artists at their walls,” says Ms. Cooper about the 10 day series of events. You could meet Fintan Magee at his wall, or talk to Sidney Waerts aka SIT at Well Balanced (center for integrative care), consort with local muralist Kari Johnson at Lane County’s Dining Room, or see a new show of incredibly framed artworks at Coffee Plant Roaster with painter Adele Renault and photographer Ms. Cooper.
Blending
small family owned businesses, the chamber of commerce and cultural
organizations together with the artists and artworks is a finely balanced
effort, and according to people we spoke with Eugene is careful to get the
balance right. For example the combination of Adele’s mural and Ms. Coopers
photo installation was in a coffee shop owned by Irv Weiner, who is a pigeon
flyer/fancier originally from New York.
“His
coop is on top of the building with the pigeon mural and the coffee shop is
inside,” says Martha of the interconnectedness of programming. Now Mr. Weiner
has added to his list a cannabis growing supplies business; a rather normal development
in this city that has become known for its marijuana-related economy during the
last decade.
Here are exclusive images of the artists at work, as well as some additional interesting details and local color about this mural-centric cultural event in Eugene.
Eugene was first recognized as good mural festival location perhaps because of the work done here by activist, performer, storyteller, and public artist Kari Johnson. Her dedication to her work as social mission and communication inspires her peers and is emblematic of what Eugene is.
“Both of my grandmothers were painters named Ida. They managed to paint landscapes and still lifes in spare moments while raising big families during the Great Depression and WWII. Continuing where they left off I began painting when I was 14 and completed my first mural 10 years later. Other than learning how to make prints with potatoes at a summer fair, I am self-taught.
I feel the most inspired when I’m making public art. Being a public artist is like being an architect of mood, stirring feelings and inspiring connection, helping to anchor and identify a place. In my art I particularly care about promoting social justice, harmony between humans and our plant and animal relations. I want my art to invite individuals to belong to the place, join community, and help shape our human story.”
St+Art Delhi continues apace with an ever-expanding roster of artists and financial/commercial/municipal partners five years after we first began writing about it, and photographer Martha Cooper brings us today some of the newest installations and shots that she recently discovered while there.
A mural program at heart, many of the artists invited here bring a decorative character to the districts of Shahpurjat, Khirki Village and Hauz Khas Village also have roots in illegal graffiti and Street Art back home, and during their youth.
Over the years that list has included an international and local array of artists invited to paint at Lohdi Colony from all the continents – well maybe not Antarctica. Names have included ECB, Lady Aiko, local students Avinash and Kamesh, Suiko of Japan, Reko Rennie from Australia, Lek & Sowat from France, Kureshi from India, Inkbrushnme from India, Dutch artist Niels Shoe Meulman, Swiss duo Never Crew, Tofu from Germany, Mattia from Italy, Artez from Serbia, M-City from Poland, Ano from Taiwan…
Notable here is the architectural framing convention for most of these murals- the distinctive facades of Lodhi Colony architecture that features a central archway and four windows divided by it on a semi-ornate face forward. Some of the arches begin on the ground while others have been bricked into windows. Each provides a view inside the entry or courtyard, while others are bursting out with limbs and trees that protrude through them to the street.
Originally designed by the British-born architect William Henry Medd in the late 1930s and early 1940s as part of a program to house certain populations, this unifying pattern sets the quiet neighborhood apart from others in the city.
As Chief Architect to the Government of India during that period, Mr. Medd
oversaw much of the design of the relatively new city as well as buildings like
the Cathedral Church of the Redemption and Sacred Heart Cathedral, both of which
reflect his affinity for the high arches that distinguish the period.
“It’s interesting to see how the very different artists have incorporated the arch into their murals,” says photographer Cooper. “The uniform size and shape of the walls unify the disparate collection and the arches give the whole area an exotic touch.”
As is her practice many of these images also skillfully incorporate the foot traffic and community who live here and who are beginning to associate these figurative, abstract and folk-inspired murals into their daily lives. Asking people to pose in front of the new paintings gives them context, somehow also bringing them alive in certain cases. At other times, her timing and eagle eye capture the passerby who unknowingly creates a serendipitous counterpoint to the new work.
“It’s a quiet neighborhood compared to the rest of Delhi,”
Martha says, “making it a very pleasant place for an afternoon walking tour.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Escif: Magic Piano 2. Adele Renault: St+Art India. Lodhi Art Festival 2019 3. Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean Museum 4. OS Gemeos: Flying Steps at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin
BSA Special Feature: Escif: Magic Piano
Spanish Street Artist Escif creates a museum installation that uses irony, sarcasm, and deep truths that we’re not always ready to see.
By hi-jacking some of the current interactive nomenclature enabled by augmented/mixed realities and the normalizing of tablet use, he alerts viewers to the connection of age-old mineral mining that is just as contemporary as the hi-tech gadgetry many have embraced.
Since you can use the device to contemplate human suffering and make music, it is an indictment of modern attitudes that dehumanize and turn real stories into a video game.
From the artist:
“Coltan is a mineral, found specially in eastern Congo, used to make cells and computer chips. Violent rebel groups are exploiting coltan mining to help finance a bloody civil war which is now in its 12th year.
The link between the bloodshed and coltan is causing alarm among high-tec manufacturers slowly they are beginning to realise that their products may contain the tainted fruits of civil war. Since the outbreak of fighting in august 1998: an estimated 5.4 million people have died; 45.000 continue to die each month; Children account for 47% of these deaths.
Magic Piano is a music installation. With the help of a tablet (that obviously contains coltan) you will be able to play the piano. Use the device to navigate on the wall. When you pass on the screen over a charater, a sound will be activated. If you push the character with your finger a sound loop will be activated. You will also activate the animation of each character.”
Adele Renault: St+Art India. Lodhi Art Festival 2019
📺Lodhi Art Festival 2019 || Adele RenaultAdele's imprints are visible in the winged beauties that now adorn the walls at Lodhi. Laying on a main arterial road know the colony, her birds now peek through the trees and woo passersby.Watch the film to get a closer look into her creative process! 📽 Pranav Gohill & Jay NuEdited by Filterkaypee Festival supported by Asian Paints.#artforall #startindia #startdelhi #startdelhi2019 #asianpaints #lodhiartdistrict #lodhiartfestival2019
Posted by St+art India on Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean Museum
“It lacks all the give and the breath of fresh art,” the
bespectacled art critic intones with all the weight of a final damnation.
“We need haters out there. They are affirmations that we’re doing something right,” says the streetwise pop star with clever sunnies and sans big hat.
Taking a break from the Banksy beat, Doug appears to put forth that supposition that Jeff Koons is proving once again that as long as you are a white guy and you reference European art history you are 80% on your way as an artist whose work will be collected and exhibited.
OS Gemeos: Flying Steps at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin
A splendid hybrid that sends heartbeats racing, even
involuntarily, here is a trailer for Flying Steps and Os Gemeos as they interpret
Mussorgsky’s
“Pictures at an Exhibition”, the famous piano composition that has become a
showpiece for virtuoso pianists. Good to see museums of contemporary art truly
stretching, redefining the street and Street Art.
Belgian Street Artist Adele winged it over to New Delhi last week to bring one of her multi-feathered friends to this new wall in the Lodhi Colony.
With her mother as assistant (and photographer) the intensely detailed and passionate aerosolist hardly stopped while a steady parade of people and animals interrupted their daily travels to gander at the huge bird taking form in front of them.
January is the only cold month in Delhi, she tells us, so she felt quite lucky to be able to paint during a period of relative comfort. “I was greeted by stray dogs every morning,” she says.
“And I was fueled by fresh coconut water, chai, and amazing lunch boxes! It was so nice being in the trees with the birds and monkeys, and all school kids and rickshaw drivers stopping by all day long.”
Adele says she was thankful for a rare opportunity to spend quality time together with her mom Veronique and says they plan to continue their trip through India. We’re pleased to share her photos exclusively for BSA readers today.
As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2018 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s a box of treats to surprise you with every day – and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2019. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to you for inspiring us throughout the year.
Today’s special guest:
Adele Renault, the Belgian Street Artist, muralist, and painter of realistic portraits of pigeons and people.
I’ve been feathering many nests this year but this pile of containers best represents the piles of feathers I’ve been producing.
It was also the first time for me to be invited to paint in my home country Belgium. A home coming!
2018 has been a good year, I had promised myself to have a book out by the time I reach 30 and I did 🙂
Here it is! Photographer Jaime Rojo of BSA selects a handful of his favorite images from his travels through 9 countries and around New York this year to present our 2018 BSA Images of the Year.
Seeing the vast expressions of aesthetics and anti-aesthetic behavior has been a unique experience for us. We’re thankful to all of the artists and co-conspirators for their boundless ideas and energy, perspectives and personas.
Once you accept that much of the world is in a semi-permanent chaos you can embrace it, find order in the disorder, love inside the anger, a rhythm to every street.
And yes, beauty. Hope you enjoy BSA Images of the Year 2018.
Here’s a list of the artists featured in the video. Help us out if we missed someone, or if we misspelled someones nom de plume.
1Up Crew, Abe Lincoln Jr., Adam Fujita, Adele Renault, Adrian Wilson, Alex Sena, Arkane, Banksy, Ben Eine, BKFoxx, Bond Truluv, Bordalo II, Bravin Lee, C215, Cane Morto, Charles Williams, Cranio, Crash, Dee Dee, D*Face, Disordered, Egle Zvirblyte, Ernest Zacharevic, Erre, Faith LXVII, Faust, Geronimo, Gloss Black, Guillermo S. Quintana, Ichibantei, InDecline, Indie 184, Invader, Isaac Cordal, Jayson Naylor JR, Kaos, KNS, Lena McCarthy, Caleb Neelon, LET, Anthony Lister, Naomi Rag, Okuda, Os Gemeos, Owen Dippie, Pejac, Pixel Pancho, Pork, Raf Urban, Resistance is Female, Sainer, Senor Schnu, Skewville, Slinkachu, Solus, Squid Licker, Stinkfish, Strayones, Subway Doodle, The Rus Crew, Tristan Eaton, Vegan Flava, Vhils, Viktor Freso, Vinie, Waone, Winston Tseng, Zola
2018 has been a good year for Street Art books, and your interest in the ones we have highlighted continues to assure us that “Print” is not dead. There is no better way to document a moment in this evolving scene for posterity than with the bound volume, and sometimes there is no better way to appreciate an artists work than to sit by a lamp or window with a book on your lap.
We know that you appreciate our daily analysis and efforts to elucidate and illustrate a fluid global Street Art/ graffiti / urban art scene here in digital, but we’re thrilled to give you solid options in book form as well. If you’re looking for a good quality art book to give this year, consider one of these hits from 2018. Enjoy!
“Certainties, simple explanations, last hopes, magic thoughts and fears. All of them confronted by what is evident.”
Thus describes the figure slung with bullets, holding a necklace with a cross and delicately balancing a small green apple on his index finger on a larger than life mural in Santiago, Chili. The visual language of this graffiti/Street Artist and muralist named Inti is his to wield, a cosmic folk expression that glows with celestial waves surrounding an other-worldly race of characters.
INTI. Éditions Albin Michel, 2017. Paris, France. Click HERE for more about this book.
Such is the splendid stuff of dreams and discovery for Bordalo II, the Lisbon-based Street Artist and maker of garbage relief animal portraits in cities across the world.
These are the things that when arranged on shelves and placed in relation to a floor plan, within parameters and boundaries of our mundanity, will comprise a perfect environment of domesticity; full of memory, associative emotion, symmetry. Objects, materials melted and poured, carved and plain, screwed and snapped, polished and sprayed, emulsified, inset, extruded, coiled, soldiered, plated, woven. These dimensional collections of matter matter to us. Metal alloy. Plastic polymer. Blown glass. Rubber, copper, steel, bakelite, particle board, glue.
Disarrange. You create chaos, disruption, disunity, discontent. Arrange again and create a muskrat, a buck deer, a petulant parakeet, an undulant octopus.
Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal. Click HERE for more about this book.
“The constant imposition of advertising in front of our eyes is an oppressive, dictatorial and violent act,” posits the artist, activist, and author Hogre in this new collection of works and words called Subvertising : The Piracy of Outdoor Advertising.
It sounds rather extreme when put this way, but perhaps that is the dulling power of advertising’s omnipresence in public space year after year. Each of us can certainly recall a time when there seemed like there was more open public space and fewer images and graphics and text telling us what to do, what to buy, who to hate, how to behave. Artists like Hogre are sounding the warning on our ability to recognize its power over our perceptions.
HOGRE. Subvertising: The Piracy Of Outdoor Advertising. Dog Section Press. London, 2017. Click HERE for more about this book.
Via his own pop-culture interpretation of the interlocking curvilinear, geometric and graphic motifs, the Portuguese artist is firing new pieces daily in the kiln of his studio in Cascais. For a decade or so his interpretations of the tin-glazed ceramic tilework have been appearing on inordinate secondary city skins in the paths of pedestrians: visual illusions meant to appear as layers of urban bark peeling back from surfaces you take for granted to reveal heritage, history, artisanship.
While the interiors and exteriors of churches, palaces, schools and subway stations are covered with azulejos in Lisbon, thanks to Add Fuel (Diogo Machado) they have travelled to other cities and cultures as well. Each time he is attracted to the tile-making traditions locally, and he often incorporates his study of these new histories as well.
Add / Fuel – 1 – Monograph. Published by Diogo Machado. Portugal 2018. Click HERE for more about this book.
A serendipitous meeting somewhere in Berlin set this project in motion, and the results unveil an adrenaline fueled ride that always pushes, often exceeds the boundaries of physical safety and social acceptance while simultaneously thrilling graffiti fans and pissing off some public officials and property owners.
A new book captures the nature of the actions and adds to our conversations about art, vandalism, branding, public/personal space and its radical visual disruption. It’s a story made all the more remarkable during an increasing level of surveillance in a city that has basically embraced the bohemian and rebellious types who have transformed large parts of its cityscape, making Berlin a de facto capital of subculture, especially among the young.
Martha Cooper & Ninja K. One Week With 1UP. (photo courtesy of the team) Click HERE for more about this book.
A steel-wheeled graffiti train with Roger Gastman at the controls roars into LA’s Chinatown for a two-month stay at this station, a 40,000 square foot warehouse that houses “Beyond the Streets.” Originating at the streets and train yards of the 1960s and 70s, this express survey carries with it 100 or so artists and writers from across the last five decades as practitioners of graffiti, Street Art, and mural painting. Somehow, everyone gets represented.
It sounds the same on the street as it does in the gallery space, and for Norwegian Street Artist Anders Gjennestad the two appear nearly identical, aside from context.
Whether he is discovering the neglected urban factory door long after the spirit of industry has roared its last turbine and reaching toward his backpack for a spray can, or he is hoisting a piece out from the pile of collected iron-bound wooded slabs in his Berlin studio, functionally each of these doors is a canvas.
Every urban explorer sees the potential of walls that are long abandoned and spoiled with rot and piss and pushed open by weeds, worn away by rain. The world is a temporary place anyway. I am only here temporarily.
Anders Gjennestad. “Canvas”. Published by Galerie Friedmann – Hahn. Berlin 2018. Click HERE for more about this book.
As you look through this new slim volume about the Street Artist/fine artist FKDL it may strike you how much autobiography is the determinant of an artist’s path as well. It’s the tale of a teenager finding himself, finding his vocation, and eventually finding his voice on the street. When you reach the end you see that it takes a number of years and a lot of experimentation, this journey.
FKDL. Galiote Prenant. Choisy-le-Roi, France. 2017. Click HERE for more about this book.
“These are artists who are thus not slavishly reproducing their exterior practice within an interior realm but who are, rather, taking the essence of graffiti – its visual principles, its spatial structures, its technical methods, its entrenched ethics – and reinterpreting them with the studio domain,” says author Rafael Schacter in his introductory exposition for his book Street to Studio where he offers a unique assessment derived from his 10 years of researching the foundational, conceptual, methodological, and ethical considerations that impact the original graffiti/Street Art scene as well as where it is going.
Rafael Schacter. Street To Studio. Lund Humphries Publishers. London, 2018. Click HERE for more about this book.
Street Artist/fine artist Adele Renault understands our interdependence with the birds and with each other perhaps better than many, and “Feathers and Faces” carries the message powerfully by delivering these works she has done on city streets and galleries in New York, Berlin, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Singapore, Burkina Faso, Helsinki, Moscow…
We share this city with pigeons. We look to the same environment to supply us with what we need, including food, water, shelter – depending on physical factors like as soil, air, a temperate climate, other organisms. Adele studies our feathered friends and brings them full force to the streets, and we know that here only the scrappiest survive and get to display their colors.
Feathers And Faces by Adele Renault was published in 2018 and is distributed in the United States and Canada by SCB Distributors. Click HERE for more about this book.
Prayers of supplication and longing, racing teams of stallions and master felines of fury, the exhausted figure of a dream barely still illuminated, a wistful stage in the plundered urban landscape, or a plundered life.
This is what she does to you. As Faith IXVII leaves her stolen stanza, her massive mural in washed hues, her tributes to a moment lost in a city that would leave you to die if it had its way, she makes you make poetry.
Faith XLVII. “EX ANIMO’ THE WORK OF FAITH FORTY SEVEN/ 2010-2018. Drago Publishing. Rome, Italy, 2018. Click HERE for more about this book.
And el Seed is the first to tell you that in this deeply personal account of his art project across fifty buildings in Mashiyat Naser, a neighborhood of Cairo over two years ago. Born of his personal need to challenge himself and to add more to his career as a respected muralist, his original concept of working in this neighborhood of 70,000 recyclers was informed by his own assumptions, perhaps of helping a community known in the city as Zabbaleen, or “garbage people”.
Over the course of the project he and his team describe through interviews and with his own diary style how their own eyes were opened. It is an incremental revelatory experience that paralleled the quote that he stylized throughout the pattern of his piece, “Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eyes first,” from the writings of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, a fourth century Coptic Bishop.
El Seed PERCEPTION Published by Point à la Ligne. Milan, Italy. 2018. Click HERE for more about this book.
One thing that some Street Artists do when their work enters the white cube is drop the “street” from their official moniker, instead preferring to be known simply as an “artist”. The decision is possibly to rid themselves of any subtle class distinctions or otherwise negative connotations that a potential collector or curator may have with the “street artist” label.
Other artists formerly known as “Street Artists” feel limited by the title because it doesn’t include all of their new interests and their complete practice – or because the term itself has evolved in their mind and the mind of the public to mean something unfavorable that they do not like to be associated with.
When it comes to the internationally renowned Street Artist Invader, its not a consideration – the street is in his DNA. His cryptic tile-made street practice is so proliferate across the world and so much a part of the metropolis like in his hometown of Paris that his art is literally and psychically fused with the city.
Invasion Los Angeles 2.1 / Updated Edition 1999 – 2018. A Book By Invader. Published by Control P. Editions. France 2018. Click HERE for more about this book.
“Russian Urban Art: History and Conflicts”, Igor Ponosov.
An academically sourced opinion-based essay in book form that looks to art, social, economic, and geopolitical movements during the start of the 20th century to better understand the evolution of Urban Art in post-Soviet Russia, Igor Ponosov delivers a welcome reconstruction of the timeline and movements that bring urban art to this day.
With the renewed interest in public art and muralism that has erupted over the last decade in many so-called Western cities it is good to learn how the public space in Russia has been catalyzed not-only by Hip Hop and new graffiti forms from Europe but also the history of Avant-garde art movements and Soviet Muralism in Russian Urban Art: History and Conflicts.
Igor Ponosov. Russian Urban Art: History And Conflicts. Moscow 2018. Published in collaboration with Street Art Museum, St Petersburg, Russia. Click HERE for more about this book.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
