All posts tagged: Brooklyn Museum

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.14.14

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.14.14

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The street appears in the living room when you visit some artists homes or those of hard core collectors. “Brooklyn is in da house!” suddenly takes on additional meaning. So imagine rolling through a heavily graffitied section of Bushwick this week to find someone’s living room is on display on the street. It’s like a set for a TV show, or a theater stage; The couch, the coffee table, a lamp, paneling, even a hard wood floor comprised of, well, not really hard wood.  A hunter’s lodge maybe? A cabin in the Adirondacks? Without a back story, this looked like a stage had been built but you couldn’t be sure what for. Just as our intrepid photographer raised his camera to his eye, the woody indoor scene became exactly that – a stage.

“As I was taking the above photo a fast and furious dude came like a flash out of nowhere on his bike, stopped abruptly, and threw his bike on the floor,” says Jaime. “I didn’t know what to expect and watched him fish a spray can from a plastic shopping bag and step up on the sofa and write his tag upon the living room wall. The actor muttered something I couldn’t hear as he sprayed over another’s tag and then stepped down, leaving just as quickly as he has appeared. It was as if the fourth wall really did exist and he didn’t see me, the audience. I did want to ask him about the tag and about his very fashionable French chignon.  But really, I wasn’t even visible.”

See him in action in the photo below.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring C215, Dain, Damon, Dope, Dotmasters, Jamie Paul Scanlon (JPS), Marilyn Minter, NRG US Crew, Pøbel, Richard Best, Stefan Ways, Wolfe Work, You Go Girl!, and Østrem.

Top Image >> The living room set in the street. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A stage set in the street with an impromptu live tagging performance. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Pøbel and Østrem in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

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Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Artist Unknown. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

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Artist Unknown. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

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Wolfe Work (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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C215. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

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You Go Girl (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Jamie Paul Scanlon AKA JPS. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

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NRG US Crew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Artist Unknown. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

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Dotmasters. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

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Damon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A fox by an artist from Chile. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

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DOPE (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Stefan Ways in front of his Warner Mural in Baltimore. Detail. (photo © David Muse)

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Richard Best. Warner Mural in Baltimore (photo © David Muse)

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Untitled. I took this photo from a Marilyn Minter video commissioned by the Brooklyn Museum for the current exhibition “Killer Heels” curated by Lisa Small. Brooklyn, NYC 2104. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
 
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Swoon Across a Red Corrugated Wall in Red Hook

Swoon Across a Red Corrugated Wall in Red Hook

If you have been in New York this spring or summer we hope you have had the opportunity to see Swoon’s site specific installation “Submerged Motherlands” currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum until August 24. She has taken part in a number of programs with the museum during this time including speaking with us in April and inviting all BSA fans to a special viewing of the exhibit afterwards. If you haven’t seen it please do yourselves a favor and go visit the museum before it closes.

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

But of course museums are not the only places where you can enjoy Swoon’s art. She loves the streets of NYC and she has been gifting all New Yorkers with her work free of charge on the streets of the city, including this installation with a long metal wall in Red Hook that she adorned late in the Spring with her unique, hand tinted lino prints. Many of these images will be familiar to her fans and rarely do you have the opportunity to see so many of them together at once on the street.

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
 
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BSA Film Friday: 05.23.14

BSA Film Friday: 05.23.14

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Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. “Free Graffiti” with a Mystery Man by Farewell
2. BSA in Conversation at Brooklyn Museum
3. Talk Of The Sea from POW! WOW! Hawaii
4. Decolonizing Street Art: Teaser for August in Montreal (unceded territory)
5. The Tower, a film by Erik Vestman & Nils Petter
6. Banksy’s Acceptance Speech at Webby Awards
7. JANZ Artist in Time (Trailer)

BSA Special Feature: “Free Graffiti” with a Mystery Man by Farewell

A parody of thousands of graff videos which portray the can-carrying outlaw, this one takes an unexpected turn in a Pink Pantherish sort of way.

BSA in Conversation at Brooklyn Museum

Part II of the Brooklyn Museum: In Conversation with Brooklyn Street Art night. This video features the second part of our talk after the multimedia presentation at the Brooklyn Museum on April 24 where we invited guests onstage for a discussion and Q&A about personal engagement with works on the street and the storytelling that lies behind the work; Swoon, Luna Park and Keith Schweitzer with Sharon Matt Atkins of the Brooklyn Museum as moderator.

Talk Of The Sea from POW! WOW! Hawaii

“It’s about reviving this knowledge and also about passing on this knowledge, keeping the culture alive,” says Kamea Hadar as he describes the mural and the educational training that enables students to become navigators.

“The final installation of POW! WOW!’s three part project with Hokulea and the Polynesian Voyaging Society was a mural created by Kamea Hadar and the young artists of the POW! WOW! School of Art and 808 Urban.

“In order to be a navigator, you have to be fierce.” ~ Papa Mau Pialigug

Decolonizing Street Art: Teaser for August in Montreal (unceded territory)

This August a new gathering will converge to further the street art conversation while putting a focus on activism. It’s goal of turning attention to the decolonization of Turtle Island and reminding people who live in Montreal of the city’s colonial history continues the work of people like Jetsonorama and LMNOPI and others on the street. It will be also interesting to see how the discourse of the current street art movement expands itself to include these voices.

Check out their Indiegogo link below:

 

Please click on their indiegogo page to help with their crowdfunding campaing: http://www.igg.me/at/decolonizingstreetart

The Tower, a film by Erik Vestman & Nils Petter

The Tower, a film by Swedens Erik Vestman & Nils Petter  is now showing at Moderna Museet Malmö’s entrance hall between May 20 and June 1. With this project, the film makers take a large advertising sign from the noisy city environment and position it in an idyllic setting in the country side. The structure then undergoes a transformation and becomes a… The two have created a number of projects receiving critical acclaim that question public space and who has the right to use it. This film draws the contrasts effectively by throwing the acceptance of commercial messages in our built spaces into a new context.

 

Banksy’s Acceptance Speech at Webby Awards

Not really an acceptance speech and not really an award, this self-produced overview of his one month installation last October in New York also features a shot of the Deitch Gallery when referring to street art galleries who were visited by the police. Since that gallery closed three years earlier, perhaps they taped their “card” to the metal grating? You’ll recognize the narrating voice over as one from his answering machine, and you’ll die when you see the dead animals in the meat market, but mostly you’ll just be happy that you were here and blessed to be in the loving glow and embrace of Ban-sky.

JANZ Artist in Time (Trailer)

“Everything is transient, period. Everything.”

Follow Street artist Robert Janz as he goes through the street and his studio, narrating his experience and philosophy. If someone knows, its probably Mr. Janz.

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Join BSA @Brooklynmuseum with SWOON April 24th (Open Late!)

Join BSA @Brooklynmuseum with SWOON April 24th (Open Late!)

| #BSAatBKM | @BKStreetArt | @Brooklynmuseum |

In Conversation: Brooklyn Street Art

Hello BSA Readers!

We’d like to invite you to join us at the Brooklyn Museum for “Street Art Stories”,
a presentation and conversation with Swoon on April 24th.
It’s going to be a scintillating, entertaining and fun night
and the museum is staying open late for us so you can see
the brand new Swoon: Submerged Motherlands installation
in person with other BSA friends and fans.

We look forward to meeting you there!

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Along with Swoon we are excited to welcome as our guests photographer and graffiti/street art enthusiast Luna Park and curator Keith Schweitzer, who will lend us some of their expertise and insights for our “Street Art Stories” theme.  We are honored that our event will be moderated by none other than Sharon Matt Atkins, the Managing Curator of Exhibitions at The Brooklyn Museum and the curator of Swoon: Submerged Motherlands.

The reception will be regaled with the eclectically funky musical stylings of DJ Sleptember!

In Conversation: Brooklyn Street Art, April 24th

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Brooklyn Street ARt
Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington,
Brooklyn Street Art Founders

On Thursday, April 24 at 7 p.m. the Brooklyn Museum presents

In Conversation: Brooklyn Street Art. Brooklyn Street Art founders Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo lead a dynamic, multimedia conversation that explores the evolution of street art stories as told by the earliest graffiti writers to today’s D.I.Y. artists. They’ll reveal secret backgrounds, show what stylistic themes are recurring today, and hint at the future of street art in New York.
They are joined in conversation by artists Swoon and Luna Park, and curator Keith Schweitzer.
A reception with a DJ, cash bar, and a guest-inclusive art-making project will follow. Presented in conjunction with the site-specific installation Swoon: Submerged Motherlands, on view from April 11 to August 24 in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery on the 5th Floor.

Tickets are $12; include Museum general admission and can be purchased at www.museumtix.com. Free for Museum Members; to reserve please email membership@brooklynmuseum.org.

About the participants

Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo are the Founders of the influential art blog BrooklynStreetArt.com. Proud New Yorkers, artists, and cultural workers for more than twenty-five years, both are experts on the evolving street art scene in New York as well as globally. With daily postings on Brooklyn Street Art (BSA), over 175 articles on The Huffington Post, and tens of thousands of followers on social media, the two have shown and discussed street art, graffiti, murals, and public art in more than 100 cities over the last few years.

Swoon, born Caledonia Dance Curry, currently has an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, Swoon: Submerged Motherlands. Swoon studied at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn before bringing her art to the streets in 1999, wheat pasting her large linoleum and woodcuts on the sides of industrial buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Her art is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art, and Tate Modern, among others.

Katherine Lorimer (aka Luna Park) is a Brooklyn-based graffiti and street art enthusiast, photographer, curator, librarian, and co-founder and regular contributor to The Street Spot blog. Her photographs have been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago and have appeared in leading street art books and magazines.

Keith Schweitzer is the Co-Founder/Director of MaNY Project (Murals Around New York) and the Co-Founder/Director of The Lodge Gallery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He is also Director of Public Art for Fourth Arts Block, the non-profit leadership organization for Manhattan’s officially designated Cultural District in the East Village.

GENERAL INFORMATION
Admission:
Contribution $12; students with valid I.D. and seniors $8. Free to members and children under 12 accompanied by an adult. Group tours or visits must be arranged in advance by calling extension 234.
Directions:
Subway: Seventh Avenue express (2 or 3) to Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum stop; Lexington Avenue express (4 or 5) to Nevins Street, cross platform and transfer to the 2 or 3. Bus: B41, B69, B48.
On-site parking available.
Museum Hours:
Wednesday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; first Saturday of each month, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.
200 Eastern Pkwy, New York, NY 11238

From BSA: “Swoon: Submerged Motherlands”, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Museum

 

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Images of the Week: 04.13.14

Images of the Week: 04.13.14

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Street Artists have been exhibited in museums before so Swoon’s “Submerged Motherlands” doesn’t break ground because of its presence inside a grand institution, even if said institution also holds one of the largest collections of Egyptian art, and is also hosting the largest US exhibition of Ai Weiwei next week, for example.

What surprised us most this week as the Brooklyn Museum threw open its doors to a seven story installation that includes a tree, a gazebo, and two boats that sailed the Adriatic was the rapid rate that this artist has gone from running the streets under cover of night of Brooklyn plastering her linotypes to being invited inside to spray the walls of the Brooklyn Museum with a fire extinguisher. The total time elapsed between her first hand cut paper wheat paste on tattered walls and Friday’s opening was a decade and a half. That is noteworthy in itself, and worthy of someone’s exhaustive examination, but suffice to say that you have to have vision and commitment to pull this off.

Here are new images from the exhibit along with our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Cost, Elbow-Toe, London Kaye, Myth, Nick Walker, Paul Richard, Swoon, and Tava.

Top Image >> Swoon “Submerged Motherlands” exhibition now open to the public at the Brooklyn Museum. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon “Submerged Motherlands” exhibition now open to the public at the Brooklyn Museum. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon “Submerged Motherlands” exhibition now open to the public at the Brooklyn Museum. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Swoon “Submerged Motherlands” exhibition now open to the public at the Brooklyn Museum. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Read our interview with the artist this week – “Swoon: Submerged Motherlands”, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Museum.

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Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Elbow Toe goes over himself and he feels a bit nostalgic. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Nick Walker. Dona Isabel is a member of the undead. She is coming home after a night of blood hunting on the LES.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Artist Unknown. A new tribute to SAMO and Andy Warhol. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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London Kaye calling it right. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Have You Seen Me? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Paul Richard. Discuss (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Tava (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Her face carried some unseen burden as she swallowed down her shot and our eyes connected from across the room,” Eduardo Jones (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Lord have mercy. COST (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Artist Unknown. Save the bees peeps! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Untitled.  NYC Winter 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

 

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands”, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Museum

“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands”, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Museum

Six years ago these boats of salvaged materials were floating down the Hudson, teaming with twenty-something sea-worthy souls and bohemian performers in costume aiming for the dock at Deitch Studios. This week they are beached up against the base of a massive seven story soft sculpture tree for the opening of Swoon: Submerged Motherlands at the Brooklyn Museum. In between these events each vessel has travelled down the Mississippi River and also crossed the Adriatic Sea from Slovenia to ceremoniously crash the Venice Biennale.

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The view of the top at “Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Newly arrived through U.S. Customs on New York shores from Italy, the seaworthy works of art have returned “home” to Brooklyn as Swoon, the Florida native who came to New York as an art school student, has called it for seventeen years. A singular Street Artist who once wheat-pasted her hand cut portraits anonymously in hidden city doorways, she is also known for her fervently collaborative projects that have carried her to galleries, museums and socially-rooted arts activism in places like Kenya, Haiti, London, Oaxaca, New Orleans, Miami, Braddock (Pennsylvania), Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

No matter where Caledonia Dance Curry goes, there is usually a cadre of handsome and delightful crafters and co-creators in tow; talented friends and valued confidants who help bring her ideas and vision to fruition. While she is clearly at the helm, this dynamic exceeds the typical artist and her studio paradigm; hers is rooted in a regard for collaboration, community, experimentation, and discovery. Oh, and a bit of theater.

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Fire extinguishers in the foreground and rear during the multi-layered preparation of the exhibition for “Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We are pouring so much into this show and for me I think part of the reason I’m willing to do it is because it is my home. The museum has been awesome and they have given me as much as they can and I have just thrown everything at it because I’m like ‘I’m home, this is my place.’ For me this show is different from installations I have done in other museums and other places,” Swoon explains.

Managing Curator of Exhibitions at the museum, Sharon Matt Atkins, talks about the command of the space and its transformational effect. “Swoon did not hold back in fully utilizing our grand rotunda gallery. She has been working for three and a half weeks at the museum with a large team to get the installation ready. Much of the work involved assembling parts made in the studio, but then bringing it all together with the finishing details onsite,” she says.

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail of the top of the tree. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Sharon brought me in here and said, “What is interesting to you in the building?” and I really love that because the thing about working on the street is that you are always thinking site-specifically. And so that thinking has to translate into your work in all places. For me if I make something in a museum I want it to be very site-specific and this is probably one of the most site-specific pieces I’ve ever done,” explains Swoon.

Under the advice and guidance of an engineer, the artist also modified her design process to allow for foundational considerations like truss sections and lift points. “I showed him an initial model and he showed me an engineered system and then I built another model based on the system that he engineered.”

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It is probably unusual for a grand museum to be so amenable to the requests of an artist for a site specific piece that literally inhabits the furthest reaches of a space, and Swoon says she recognizes the leeway she received. “You know, they have been really adventurous in letting us create this. We’ve been sort of pushing a lot with the creation of this piece.”

For Matt Atkins, the opportunity to bring an internationally known street artist and neighbor into the museum has been the result of just over two years of planning. “It’s been so wonderful working with Swoon to realize her vision for this project. This is the first time we’ve really used the full height of the 72-foot dome, so it’s quite spectacular. I am thrilled to see her boats back in New York and for them to have this new life. The underlying ideas about climate change in the installation also make this project an appropriate tie in to the Museum’s focus on activism with our other exhibitions and collections,” she says.

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Guests who walk into the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery on the fifth floor will need to crane their gaze upward to see the full expanse of the tree that reaches to the cupola, now embroidered across the sky’s light with her lace patterning. Softly gnarled limbs are clustered with outsized and filigreed leaves that cast shadows on the maritime layers of sprayed blue washes streaming to the floor.

Looking up at the multi-textured and tinted bark that skillfully, if playfully, emulates the trunk of a tree, Swoon talks about the demands of production. “We worked it all out in the studio and then we just spent weeks tearing and shredding and dying the fabric, cutting out paper leaves, and building up these kind of “roots”, crocheting pieces, putting dyed fabric on them, sewing sleeves for the rings to put dyed fabric on – It’s just been immense! It’s one of those things where I’ve never built something on this scale so I really don’t realize how much energy it absorbs when it is that size.”

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” The fabrics used to build the bark of the tree trunk were custom dyed and are shown here at the studio drying. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

To contemplate the rotunda installation and the finer details of the rough rafts Swoon provides an equally festooned gazebo to rest on and nearby linotype images of caretaking and motherhood to see — including a more recent portrait of the artists’ own mother that has also been spotted wheat-pasted in the street.

“So I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘home’ and this installation is about home and the loss of home in a lot of ways. When I decided on ‘Submerged Motherlands’ I was thinking about climate change and thinking about “Sandy”. Also my own mother passed away while I was in the ideation stage for the installation so I was thinking about the loss of my own mother and that relationship and it all just kind of merged together,” she says.

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail of the bottom part of the gazebo. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: When you speak of your mother passing during the ideation and the title of the show I look at your work and I think of it as a kind of maternal act, of caretaking, of providing shelter. I wonder if there is any relationship between this concept of motherhood and caretaking that feels true to you.
Swoon: I guess the thing that I think of is almost an impulse to build a safe space in the world for myself and my community; some place to be a little bit different from the norm. Then also that same impulse kind of extended outward to projects like working in Haiti after the earthquake and trying to create literal shelter.

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Thinking about site-specificity and its importance in your work, many of your installations on the street are in the unpolished, eroded areas of town. Contrast that with a museum environment like this where everything is clean and crisp – it occurred to me that you created that same unpolished environment by taking the fire extinguishers and blasting them across the walls.
Swoon: Oh my god the funnest tool ever!

Brooklyn Street Art: Have you used fire extinguishers before?
Swoon: You know what? I never have. Honestly it was just one of those things where I was just like, “How do I get a lot of paint up quickly?” – and I just thought about the fire extinguishers. I mean people use those – it is such an amazing tool. Big props to Craig (Costello), to Krink, who is such a pioneer with that. I never had used it before. I usually take care not to simulate the street environment but maybe that kind of just happened.

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: And when it comes to your work and this installation, you don’t like to talk about metaphors.
Swoon: Well, its not that I don’t want to talk about them – its that I think you can get too literal. I think that part of the strength of the arts is that you try to leave a little openness for the parts of our minds that are a little bit less rational and that don’t have this strict linear codex of how you interpret something. Like in the way that the Motherlands theme has so many different kinds of interpretations and layering – I think it is important to keep that kind of richness.

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The artist Swoon at work on the installation. “Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail of one of the boats. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail of one of the boats. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail shot of the interior wall of one of the boats. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” View through one of the boats. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail of the gazebo ceiling. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A portrait of the artist at the base of the tree for “Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Swoon: Submerged Motherlands runs April 11–August 24, 2014 at The Brooklyn Museum. For more information visit the museum website HERE.

Join BSA and Swoon on April 24th
In Conversation: Brooklyn Street Art
Thursday, April 24, 2014 at 7 p.m.
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd Floor
For more information go HERE.

 

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This article was also published on The Huffington Post

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Fun Friday 09.07.12

Happy Friday! Not much to do this weekend, sorry – Aside from these eighteen possibilities.

1. Maya Hayuk at Cooper Cole (Toronto)
2. NohJColey “In the Midst of Living” Friday (BKLN)
3. Judith Supine at Jonathan Levine Saturday (Manhattan)
4. Swoon Opens Pearly’s Beauty Shop Sat (Long Island City, Queens)
5. Brooklyn Busts Open Studio Doors for “GO” Courtesy Brooklyn Museum
6. “Epilogue” at Hold Up (LA)
7. “Disamiguation” at Carmichael (LA)
8. Mind Trip with ETAM at Inoperable (Vienna)
9. Bien Urbain Festival (Besancon, France)
10. Graffitimundo “Walls of Buenos Aires” at Newcastle Project Space
11. ESPO “A Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures” at Joshua Liner (NYC)
12. TRXTR “Lucked Up” at Get Up Gallery (Vegas)
13. Group show “This Art is So Street” (Philadelphia)
14. “Public Display” at Agnes b. (NYC)
15. “100 Story House” with Leon Reid IV at JJ Byrne Park
16. RERO Image Not Available at Fabien Castanier in Studio City, CA
17. RONE at White Walls (SF)
18. Ben Frost at Shooting Gallery (SF)

Maya Hayuk at Cooper Cole (Toronto)

Street Artist, Fine Artist and Brooklyn resident Maya Hayuk has a solo show at the Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto, Canada is now open to the general public. Ms. Hayuk paintings are saturated with color, catching the prism from the crystal and permuting it into a multitude of geometrically inspired patterns and shapes, realize on canvas and walls across the land. Crisply precise, or improvised and free wheeling, Hayuk let’s her mind and her palette run with enthusiasm for the raw creative spirit.

Maya Hayuk on the streets of Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this show click here.

Maya Hayuk will also be featured in GEOMETRICKS September 22nd in Brooklyn, curated by Hellbent and presented by BSA.

NohJColey “In the Midst of Living” Friday (BKLN)

NohJColey first solo show “In The Midst of Living” opens tonight at Weldon Arts Gallery in Brooklyn. Come and see in person NohJ characters and stare at their eyes. See who blinks first.

NohJColey. Detail (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this show click here.

To read our preview and for more images click here.

Judith Supine at Jonathan Levine Saturday (Manhattan)

Judith takes over the project room at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in Manhattan for a triple header with Audrey Kawasaki and Jeff Soto sharing the bill. Get there early because the line will be long so you can see them all and appreciate this opportunity to see why Judith Supine is “Too Much for One Man”.

Judith Supine. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding this show click here.

To read our interview and studio visit with JS as he prepared for this show click here.

Swoon Opens Pearly’s Beauty Shop Sat (Long Island City, Queens)

Nails done by a painter? Hair diorama by a sculptor? Makeup by a conceptual artist? When was the last time that at the SPA you got pampered by a bevy of talented, happy, fun, funny and not shy fine artists? Never?

A fundraiser for the Braddock project, Street Artist and fine artist Swoon has dreamed a perfect SPA party for you, inviting and recruiting many of her close artists friends to make you feel special and to look glorious. “DJ’s Roofeeo, Dirtyfinger, Manhate, and 3 Kings International Sound will make your body move and your fresh coat of glam shine while you explore indoor and outdoor dance parties, music, installations and performances by Lady Circus’ Anya Sapozhnikova, Marshall LaCount, Shenandoah Davis, Audra Pace, and Yea, Well, Whatever all situated in a stunning visual landscape.” This Saturday pick your outfit and be prepared to have the experience of a lifetime.

For further information regarding this event click here.

Brooklyn Busts Open Studio Doors for “GO” Courtesy Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum continues to plug into community and show love for the blossomed artists neighborhoods that are transforming Brooklyn into the true creative powerhouse rivaling Manhattan, which is looking so “last century” across the river. BAM is a loved museum that regularly gets “it” by bringing community in, thanks to the efforts of many, including the talented curatorial team headed by Sharon Matt Atkins who opens the conversation and knows how to listen to the beat on the street and make a huge institution relevant to a new generation.

This time Ms. Atkins and the museum’s Chief of Technology, Shelley Bernstein are taking  inspiration from the thousands of artists who work and live in Brooklyn, creating the largest open studios event we’ve heard of in DUMBO, Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint, Gowanus, and Red Hook this weekend. You can vote for your favorites by nominating three artists for inclusion in an exhibition at the museum. The museum’s curators then will visit the ten artists who received the most nominations and they will select two or more artists to have their work shown at the Brooklyn Museum for and Exhibition opening on December 1.

1735 artists have responded to this call. How many can you visit? You have this Saturday and Sunday to GO AND SEE ART.

For further information regarding this project click here.

“Epilogue” at Hold Up (LA)

“Epilogue” is a trio exhibition opening this Saturday in Los Angeles at Hold Up Art Gallery with Street Artists Eddie Colla, Hugh Leeman and V Young D have combining talents to explore themes of their vision of a coming collapse of society. Fun times!

“Epilogue” (photo © Taylor Morgan)

For further information regarding this show click here.

To read our preview for this show and to see a video click here.

Also happening this weekend:

  • The Carmichael Gallery in Culver City, CA is hosting Carlos Mare, Rae Martini, Remi/Rough, Sixeart in a group show titled “Disambiguation” opening tomorrow. Click here for more details on this show.
  • ETAM, the Polish duo open a new show, “Mind Trip” at Inoperable Gallery in Vienna, Austria is now open to the general public. Click here for more details on this show.
  • BIEN URBAIN the Art Festival being held in Besançon, France has begun and it will continue until early October. With a great inclusion of Street Art in its abundant program this year they invited Mark jENKINs et sandra FERNANDEz (USA), hYURO (Argentine), MOMO (USA), ElTONO (France), EsCIF (Espagne), sAM3 (Espagne), Agostino IACURCI (Italie), Guillaume BERTRAND (France), pascal RUEFF (France), Graffiti Research lab (France), pascal RUEFF (France), jIEM (France), Caroline AMOROs & Co (France) to paint murals. Click here for more details on this festival.
  • The walls of Buenos Aires have moved to London with Graffitimundo show “The Talking Walls of Buenos Aires”. Interested to hear what they have to say? Head over to the Newcastle Project Space and put your ear to the walls and your eyes on the art. This show is now open. Click here for more details.
  • “A Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures” is the title of the new show by Stephen Powers AKA ESPO now open at the Joshua Liner Gallery in Manhattan. Click here for more details on this show.
  • TRXTR is in Vegas, with a new show titled “Lucked Up” at the Get Up Gallery. Now open, click here for more details on this show.
  • Curly’s curatorial debut takes place in Philadelphia with a group show titled “This Art is So Street” opening tonight at the Stupid Easy Gallery. With the inclusion of a certain Mr. Brainwash is in the line up of artists with talent and skills, Curly might be sending a secret message. Let us know if you decode it. The artists are: LNY, NoseGo, Don Pablo Pedro, Darkclouds, The Yok and Sheryo. Click here for more details .
  • The fashion label and store(s) Agnès b is on “Public Display” with a group show curated by ASVP opening Saturday at their store on Howard Street in Manhattan. The participating artists include: D*Face (London, UK), Faile (Brooklyn), Gaia (Baltimore), Hellbent (Brooklyn), Invader (Paris, FR), Miss Bugs (Bristol, UK), ND’A (Brooklyn), QRST (Brooklyn), and ASVP (New York). Click here for more details on this show.
  • Artists Leon Reid IV and Julia Marchesi‘s new public art project “100 Story House” will be open to the public on Saturday at the JJ Byrne Park, 5th Avenue btwn 3rd & 4th St. Park Slope, Brooklyn. Bring Books if you go! Click here for more details on this exhibition.
  • French artists RERO is a wordsmith with an extensive experience as a graffiti artist. His new solo show titled “RERO: Image Not Available” opens on Saturday at the Fabien Castanier Gallery in Studio City, CA. Click here for more details on this show.
  • Australian Street Artist RONE new show “Darkest Before The Dawn” at the White Walls Gallery in San Francisco opens on Saturday. Click here for more details on this show.
  • Ben Frost is in San Francisco at the Shooting Gallery with his new show “See Inside the Box for Details“. Click here for more details on this show.

 

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Brooklyn Museum Presents: GO See Art in Brooklyn: A Community – Curated Open Studio Project (Brooklyn, NYC)

GO

BROOKLYN-BASED ARTISTS OPEN THEIR STUDIOS TO THE COMMUNITY SEPT 8-9

FOR “GO See Art In Brooklyn,” sponsored by Brooklyn Museum

Vote for Your Favorite Artist & Two or More Artists will be included in BROOKLYN MUSEUM Exhibition

Put on your walking shoes and come visit the studios of Brooklyn’s vast array of artists over the weekend of September 8-9, 2012 from 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM.   Come meet the artists and watch them work in their medium, from sculpting and painting to photography, textile arts, print making and illustration, among others.

“GO See Art IN Brooklyn” is sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum.  During the open studio weekend, voters will visit artists’ studios and check in using text messaging, the GO mobile app, or the GO mobile website.  After votes have checked in, they will be eligible to nominate three artists from their visits for inclusion in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.

The ten artists with the most nominations will receive studio visits from Brooklyn Museum curators. Two or more nominated artists will be chosen by the curators to have their work displayed as part of a Brooklyn Museum group exhibition opening at TARGET FIRST SATURDAY on December 1, 2012.

Brooklyn Museum Invites Brooklyn Artists to Open Their Studios for Community Members and Curators to Collaborate on an Exhibition

The Brooklyn Museum is launching a borough-wide initiative in which Brooklyn- based artists will be invited to open their studios, allowing community members to visit and nominate artists for inclusion in a group exhibition to be held at the Museum. Brooklyn Museum curators will visit the studios of top nominated artists to select works for the exhibition. The open studio weekend for GO: a community- curated open studio project will be held September 8 and 9. The exhibition will open during Target First Saturday on December 1, 2012, and will be on view through February 24, 2013.

Web and mobile technology will be a central component bringing artists and community together to share information and perspectives on art. All participants (artists, voters, and volunteers) will be able to create a personal online profile at the project’s website, www.gobrooklynart.org. Artist profiles will include photos of each artist and their studio, along with images and descriptions of their work. Volunteers will be connected with their respective neighborhoods online, and voters will have profiles that track their activity during the open studio weekend and provide a platform on which to share their perspectives.

The project organizers are Sharon Matt Atkins, Managing Curator of Exhibitions, and Shelley Bernstein, Chief of Technology. GO: a community-curated open studio project is inspired by two predecessors: ArtPrize, an annual publicly juried art competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the long tradition of open studio events that take place each year throughout Brooklyn.

GO is sponsored by Deutsche Bank.

The L Magazine is media sponsor.

“GO is a wide-ranging and unique project that will transform how Brooklyn communities engage in the arts by providing everyone with the chance to discover artistic talent and to be involved in the exhibition process on a grassroots level. Through the use of innovative technology, GO provides every Brooklyn resident with an extraordinary opportunity to participate in the visual arts in an unprecedented way,” says Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman.

The Brooklyn Museum is located at 200 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, NY. For more information go to: https://www.gobrooklynart.org/participate

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Images of the Week: 03.18.12

Our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Buttless, Curly, Don’t Fret, Droid, ENO, Enzo & Nio, ENO, Eras, Keith Haring, Memo, ND’A, Nev1, Never, Pakpoom Silaphan, Radical!, Read, Sheepman, and Skewville.

Skewville IS NOT ON SALE but you could make him an offer he can’t refuse. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Curly wants to know how much longer he has to toil…any answers? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Radical and ND’A making a connection.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Punk wheat paste. Who is the artist? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Never . Eras (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sheepman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sheepman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nev 1 with girl in her panties. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Enzo & Nio (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Droid . Read (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Buttless helped out Supreme with their ubiquitous yearly banal postering campaign, in much the same way that Faile assisted in 2009 with tiger heads over Lou Reeds’ face. Their big Kate Moss repetition irked a number of Street Artists again this time by mindlessly papering over the individual with the mass message. By the way, is smoking cigarettes the new heroin chic? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

MEMO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

MEMO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don’t Fret in Chicago (photo © Don’t Fret)

Pakpoom Silaphan did this portrait of Keith Haring on a vintage Pepsi sign spotted at one of the art fairs last weekend. Might this have been a calculated effort to ride on the success of the Keith Haring retrospective currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum? Maybe it is simply another expression of the well worn practice of re-appropriating pop culture, with Haring clearly now in icon territory. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We listened for some ambient synthesizer music when this was discovered. ENO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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The Brooklyn Museum Presents: Keith Haring: 1978-1982 (Brooklyn, NY)

Keith Haring

Keith Haring. Courtesy of Keith Haring Foundation. ©Keith Haring Foundation. The Brooklyn Museum (photo © Jaime Rojo)

March 16–July 8, 2012

Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 5th Floor

Keith Haring: 1978–1982 is the first large-scale exhibition to explore the early career of one of the best-known American artists of the twentieth century. Tracing the development of Haring’s extraordinary visual vocabulary, the exhibition includes 155 works on paper, numerous experimental videos, and over 150 archival objects, including rarely seen sketchbooks, journals, exhibition flyers, posters, subway drawings, and documentary photographs.

The exhibition chronicles the period in Haring’s career from his arrival in New York City through the years when he started his studio practice and began making public and political art on the city streets. Immersing himself in New York’s downtown culture, he quickly became a fixture on the artistic scene, befriending other artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Kenny Scharf, as well as many of the most innovative cultural figures of the period. The critical role that these relationships played in Haring’s development as a public artist and facilitator of group exhibitions and performances is also explored. Pieces on view include a number of very early works never before seen in public; seven video pieces, including Painting Myself into a Corner (his first video piece) and Tribute to Gloria Vanderbilt; and collages created from cut-up fragments of his own writing, history textbooks, and newspapers.

Keith Haring: 1978–1982 is curated by Raphaela Platow. The exhibition is co-organized by the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, and the Kunsthalle Wien. The Brooklyn presentation is organized by Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Project Curator, and Patrick Amsellem, former Associate Curator of Photography, Brooklyn Museum.

This exhibition is made possible by Lisa and Dick Cashin with additional support provided by the Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia Contemporary Art Exhibition Fund.

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Keith Haring 1978-1982 : Early Keith at The Brooklyn Museum

1978 and 2012 seem closer to one another than ever right now when we look at the blossomed Street Art scene in cities around the world. More than 30 years after Keith Haring moved to New York as an art school kid at the School of Visual Arts, a new generation of art school kids consider it almost a birthright to take their work directly to the street. Right now feels like an excellent time for Brooklyn to spotlight this study of his first four years in the city that blew his mind and inspired him to alter the whole system of how an artist reaches the public.

Keith Haring. Untitled, 1982. Courtesy of  and © Keith Haring Foundation. The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo

Keith Haring: 1978-1982, a traveling exhibition first shown in Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna and The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, introduces a period of his work not often examined, taking you up to the edge of the seemingly sudden international fame he experienced as artist, activist and public figure through the rest of the 1980s.

“Raphaela Platow, who was the original curator of this show, went into the archives and pulled out things that had basically just been sitting there, ” explained Tricia Laughlin Bloom, the project curator for the current show as she gave a tour this week before its opening at the Brooklyn Museum Friday.

At a time when the small-town boy was developing his visual vocabulary as an artist, Haring was also discovering himself as a man in the world and in a city that he found endlessly fascinating and worthy of exploration. Capturing his spirit of hands-on experimentation, the show is almost entirely comprised of works on paper with one collaborative piece on plywood with his contemporary Jean Michel Basquiat, paper collage, video, and documentary photos.

Keith Haring. Untitled, 1982. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In these years Disco was on a full force collision course with Punk, New Wave, and Rap, and Haring was embracing the nightlife of a college student sampling the downtown scene, exploring his sexuality, and commandeering entire rooms at SVA to mount shows on paper. Some of those “body involvement” painting sessions are documented well here in video; a sort of full immersion painting baptism. While jamming out to music he covers every white surface with thick black symbols and gestural marking, sometimes painting with both hands in a rhythmic automatic study of both the physicality of the process and his own interaction with space and materials.

Not to be missed in person is the 30 piece collection in the final room of actual subway black papers that Haring adorned with his white line drawings, energetically created symbols and characters throughout stations in New York’s train system. The frames and glass protect them for us to appreciate them today in their disarming simplicity, their collection ironically alleged by some to be why the artist discontinued the subway practice. Equally compelling is the projected large slide show of Haring in photos by Tseng Kwong Chi, whom the artist called to shoot almost every time he did an illegal piece in the subway.

Keith Haring. Matrix, 1983. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Manhattan Penis Drawings for Ken Hicks, 1978. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With almost half of the pieces here never displayed publicly like this before, the show is a welcome revelation for fans hoping to peel back a little of the hype-like gloss that time and opportunism may have shined his legacy with. Whether it’s his hand-collaged flyers for the indie group shows he curated, his home movies of Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias performing in the living room, or the complete re-installation of a wall from his 1980 show at PS 122, you get the idea that this was an audacious observant art student gulping at the faucet of life in a pulsating dirty city that welcomed him.

“He’s such a thoughtful and complicated figure – at the same time with that really pure impulse of not wanting to alienate people but to bring them in,” says Laughlin Bloom as she describes the young artist she discovered en route. “He’s this combination of fun-loving, and life-loving, and intellectual, accessible – a total populist but not in an insincere way.”

Keith Haring. Twenty Polaroid self-portraits with glasses painted by Kenny Scharf and Peter Schuyff, 1979-82. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Still from Lick Fat Boys. April, 1979. Vide0 3 min. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Still from Lick Fat Boys. April, 1979. Vide0 3 min. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Still from Lick Fat Boys. April, 1979. Vide0 3 min. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Still from Lick Fat Boys. April, 1979. Vide0 3 min. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo

After 1982, Haring’s entire visual language of characters and symbols would become iconic, international; his work in dialogue with modern art history and everyday people eventually outlasted him to inspire a diverse generation of artists working on the street from Shepard Fairey and Swoon to Stikman and Specter, among many others.

“Haring saw the subway as the ideal platform for showing work – one of the few places to catch New Yorkers off-guard,” says Poster Boy, a Street Artist/collective who is credited/blamed for re-engineering and culture jamming subway posters with a razor in very recent years. Speaking of Haring’s chiding of corporate commercialism in the culture, Poster Boy observes, “For advertisers it’s the perfect opportunity for a commercial break. Haring saw it as a break from commercials.”

Respected for his early interest in busting down barriers in social activism, street art, and illegal art, it’s likely that many on the Street Art scene today will be checking out the pre-buzz Haring on display at this show. At the moment, it feels like one of New York’s adopted hometown heroes is back in Brooklyn.

Keith Haring. Untitled, 1982. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Art is for everybody. To think that they-the public- do not appreciate art because they don’t understand it, and to continue to make art that they don’t understand and therefore become alienated from, may mean that the artist is the one who doesn’t understand or appreciate art and is thriving in this “self-proclaimed knowledge of art” that is actually bullshit.”  1978

 – Keith Haring Journals

Keith Haring. Cipher chart, 1971-73. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Wall papered with reproductions of hand collaged flyers to advertise shows that Keith Haring curated, 1981. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Detail. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“These are flyers from 1981 – an aspect of his production that maybe people aren’t aware of. He did a lot of organizing shows in alternative spaces and curating 24 hour exhibitions, xerox exhibitions, neon exhibitions, open-calls for artists where they show your work for 24 hours and then it’s taken away. He designed these – the framed works are the originals of the collages and posters that he did for these shows,” Tricia Laughlin Bloom, the project curator for the show.  Keith Haring. Detail. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Thirty untitled subway drawings, 1980-85. Private Collection. The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Thirty untitled subway drawings, 1980-85. Private Collection. The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Thirty untitled subway drawings, 1980-85. Private Collection. The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

With special thanks to Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Sharon Matt Atkins, Sally Williams, Marcus Romero, Matthew Branch, The Brooklyn Museum, and the Keith Haring Foundation.

 

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