All posts tagged: Bordallo II

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.06.19 – Selections From Wynwood Walls Miami

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.06.19 – Selections From Wynwood Walls Miami

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Tomokazu Matsuyama and Deih killed it this year in Wynwood, no doubt and curator Alan Ket slayed with the solo show by Vhils at the primary gallery on the compound. Art Basel brings the crowds to Miami traditionally but there is no doubt that the magnet of Wynwood’s kid-friendly murals and Street Art as selfie backgrounds wins the day. Everywhere you look you see the families, influencers-in-training, tour guides and gobsmacked gaggles of teens creating pedestrian traffic jams inside Wynwood Walls. These artists and this art may have risen from an outsider marginalised and criminalised culture of illegal vandalism but these crowds are simply enjoying the art and each other.

That foot traffic inside replicates the car and heavy truck traffic jams throughout the neighborhood as new multi-story construction continues apace and the gentrification cycle rapidly courses through the real estate / street culture corpus. Right now this romance between development and art-in-the-streets is still in the heavy petting stage, and there is a lot of star gazing. How long can this tryst continue, you ask? It’s impossible to say what benchmark to measure, but watch for the moment when the sales of mezcal slushies and Moscow Mules are eclipsed by Acai bowls and kale smoothies.

So here’s our first weekly interview with the street, this time directly from Miami, featuring AShop Crew, Audrey Kawasaki, Bordallo II, Deih, Joe Iurato, JonOne, Martin Watson, Tavar Zawacki, Tomokazu Matsuyama, and Vhils.

AShop Crew. Wynwood Walls Miami 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

AShop Crew. Wynwood Walls Miami 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Whatson. Wynwood Walls Miami 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vhils. Wynwood Walls Miami 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vhils. Wynwood Walls Miami 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bordalo II. Wynwood Walls Miami 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Audrey Kawasaki. Wynwood Walls Miami 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Joe Iurato. Wynwood Walls Miami 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Joe Iurato. Wynwood Walls Miami 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Deih. Wynwood Walls Miami 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Deih. Wynwood Walls Miami 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tavar Zawacki. Wynwood Walls Miami 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JonOne. Wynwood Walls Miami 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tomokazu Matsuyama. Wynwood Walls Miami 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tomokazu Matsuyama . Wynwood Walls Miami 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. December 2018 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Converting Gold From Our Waste: “Bordalo II / 2011 – 2017”

Converting Gold From Our Waste: “Bordalo II / 2011 – 2017”

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Are those Ai Weiwei bicycles clustered and suspended in the air overhead? Rather they are stored here like a 3 layer spoke, wheel, and frame cake, pressed to the side of this bricked wall tin-roof warehouse along with rolling office chairs waving their legs in the air like little lady bugs stuck on their backs.

Everything here has been pressed into position by the small mountains of white garbage bags filled with something soft, like dollops of whipped cream. The entire confection is sprinkled across the top with lanterns and light fixtures plucked from decades of the last half-century.

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

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 in placed 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.

Bordalo II, so-named after his watercolor master grandfather Real Bordalo who passed last year at 91, has in six or seven short years made a name for himself with your garbage, refusing to allow it to go to the junkyard or to float in the ocean just yet.

“After surveying the variety of offerings that included industrial, commercial, and consumer detritus, he speedily chose what appear to me to be a random bunch of junk,” writes five-decade photographer of urban art and artists, Martha Cooper about how he captured her interest.

“It was a genuine pleasure to watch an animal evolve before everyone’s eyes. As I watched him create the sculptural mural I was amazed to see how he utilized the shapes, textures, and aesthetic qualities of the found items to recreate the octopus in such a true-to-life manner.”

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Hers and others’ observations and essays are collected in “Bordalo II, 2011-2017” released in concert with his massive solo show “Attero” this November in Lisbon. A graffiti writer as a youth with his crew R315 Dream Team, the artist credits the three years at the Fine Arts Faculty in his city for allowing him to discover sculpture and to experiment with different materials, seducing him away from strictly painting. With it he is creating critique of our love of “things” and the excesses of consumerism, especially those excesses that are endangering wildlife.

“Bordalo is a master of our refuse,” says writer and critic Carlo McCormick, “what we throw way in our endless glut of consumption, the ideas, sensibilities and dreams we discard in the name of progress and all that accumulates unwanted, ignored, and even reviled by society’s voracious appetite for something disposable.” McCormick looks carefully at the implications of such an art practice and praises Bordalo II for the sharp tongue he brings to a sometimes superficial conversation occurring in the Street Art scene.

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

No hero is he, nor does he pretend to be. Rather Bordalo II uses his work to remind us of our integral part of a cycle that includes everyone and everything. João Pedro Matos Fernandes, the Portuguese Minister of Environment adds his voice to those in this unassuming but powerful tome after laying out the treacherous story of our trash.

Speaking of Bordalo’s work, Mr. Fernandes writes,” It calls to our attention the choices we make in our everyday life, and to the consequences of our actions. And he does so in a scathing fashion, which I thoroughly enjoy, by using trash to represent some of the more emblematic species which our behavior puts at risk.”

It’s a brief snapshot of the artist in motion, with surely more evolutions to come. Ever the delicious quipster with the poetic tongue, McCormick lauds the street trash wizard.

“And in this world where we choke the planet with out incessant rubbish, let us celebrate those alchemical artists like Bordalo II who have that rare gift of being able to turn shit into gold.”

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

Bordalo II 2011 – 2017. Editor & Publisher Bordalo II. In conjunction with ATTERO and exhibition by Bordalo II held in Lisbon. November, 2017. Lisbon, Portugal.

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Urban Nation Museum. Art Mile: Installations In Progress. Dispatch 5

Urban Nation Museum. Art Mile: Installations In Progress. Dispatch 5

Today some progress shots – these projects were not completed while we were shooting so you’ll want to go to the Museum Mile today along Bülowstraße (Berlin U-Bahn). The Urban Nation Art Mile (Artmeile) is in full effect this weekend day and night and it will be difficult to pass up on this funhouse performance-packed interactive exhibition that includes single installations in pop-up spaces along the street and in one large car-free area beneath the trains, which roar appropriately over your head.

Icy & Sot at work at their installation for the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Also overhead for those who are observant, Isaac Cordal’s small concrete businessmen watch over the proceedings below with guilt, ennui and existential worries . You have to check out Faith XLVII’s multi-disciplinary piece in a pop-up space with powerful video imagery of the sexy uniformity of marching soldiers and the panicked distraught migratory movements of people created in its wake – with fierce and expressive dance performer Manthe Ribane and sound/set direction by Inka Kendzia with Faith. Migration, or immigration, is also directly addressed by an unbending and heavy steel sculpture of a family who are just like yours, and different from yours, facing a wall topped by razorwire.

Sheryo at work at her installation for the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Evan Pricco and Juxtapoz bring the famous newsstand that has been displayed in 6 locations, including Times Square, now moving into the UN collection. Make sure to look at the independent zines and tags from its many travels. HOTTEA has a splendidly sharp and effervescent takeover of a corner first floor space that illuminates the white box, here comprised of hundreds of hanging yarns in a multiverse of color.

Sheryo. Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This series of outdoor components feels more like a fair than a museum show, a cross section of works that you may associate with post-graffiti/graffiti/Street Art or any number of related influences without a timeline – cobbling together a hodgepodge illustration of the wide range of influences at play on the street today – attempting to channel the asymmetric energy that it generates.

It is possible that this collection represents a catalyzing of interest in sculpture, as a number of interpreters including Cranio, Ben Frost, and Anthony Lister, are blurring lines with these 3 dimensional expressions of work they’ve done in 2D. How will a general community audience interactive with these – the possibilities seem limitless. Considering the sheer number of authors and performers and documentors and artists and academics and critics on the street right now, you are garunteed to find some intellectual and/or visual stimulation.

Isaac Cordal at work at his installation for the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Isaac Cordal. Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Isaac Cordal. Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek. Getting ready for her Art Mile performance on Sunday. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Herakut moment of levity and humor while at work on their installation for the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bordalo II work in progress for his installation at the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Evan Pricco fastidiously arranges the magazines at the Juxtapoz Newsstand for the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Juxtapoz Newsstand for the Art Mile is almost completed. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Seth Globetrotter work in progress for the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zezao work in progress for the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Women Power: A group of strong individuals who capture, enable dialogue and work, some daily, on the street art/graffiti scenes. From left to right. Nika Kramer, Karolina Pajak, Olek, Martha Cooper and Selina Miles. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Feel Free at Urban Spree: Berlin

Feel Free at Urban Spree: Berlin

Long live Urban Spree!

This hippie/punk/skater/poets/artists haven of graffiti, street, urban and postmodern all splayed across a complex of buildings that are seemingly abandoned but teaming with life, food, music, and free thought. Also, a sense of community.

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Bordalo II, Two One and 1UP Crew at Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

There are opportunities for rock climbing, biergartening, dancing, tattoo shops, outdoor mix sessions, a furniture restoration shop, a mini- beach, the famed outstanding art gallery with a solid array of graffiti and urban art books, and if you know where the switch is, you can blow 6 foot torches of fire into the night sky from atop a tiki bar.

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Icy & Sot. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

On the day we were there recently there was even a wedding party in one of the secreted outdoor spaces with two spinning turntables, a basement bar, a bonfire, and, naturally, cake.

Also, naturally, you can go and paint, wheatpaste, slap stickers, spray a stencil, or in the case of Bordalo II, collect together enough local garbage to create a sculptural installation of a long-billed aviary friend.

Scenes like these are always transitory so visit Berlin-Friedrichshain and Urban Spree before the moment passes.

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Two One. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Low Bros. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Low Bros . Mr. Penfold. Iggy . Billy . Berlin Bandits. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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1UP Crew. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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1UP Crew . Viva La Resolucion. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Zero Cents. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ZOLA. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Rallitox. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Unidentified Artist. Bader . Blate, Maoro, Komt. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Unidentified Artist. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Unidentified Artist. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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OBEY. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Unidentified Artist. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Cranio. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Unidentified Artist. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Iron Chola. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Christiaan Nagel. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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E. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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KA feeling a certain kind of blue. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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E. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Aloha. Urban Spree Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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