It’s good to have sense of humor in life, helps you get through it actually. Like remember when your dog died and you thought that pretty much that was the end of the world as we know it and you didn’t want to live and you didn’t ever want to see another Collie or even a German Shepherd ever again and you avoided that TV channel that played re-runs of “Lassie”? Then your brother came home and told you a bunch of new fart jokes he learned out behind the school that day while the jocks were practicing football? Those were wicked funny right? That helped a little, right?
Don’t Fret is the name of a Chicago Street Artist who has been putting up comedically human wheat-pastes for a couple of years now and every time you see one you gotta chuckle. He makes inside outside jokes that you can relate to – but doesn’t pander. Tonight if you are in San Francisco you can go see a bunch of new work by Don’t Fret and get a greater appreciation for the scope of internal thoughts and considerations that this creative mind gets sidetracked and entertained with.
Don’t Fret solo show “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Chardonnay” Opens tonight at the Grand Bizzare Gallery in Chicago. Click here for details on this show and make sure to watch the teaser video below:
It’s a BSA Fun Friday and we’re gonna tell you all about some stoopendous Street Art shows this weekend from Brooklyn to Chicago to Paris to Vienna but first….Everybody get up and do some FF dancing like my homeboy PSY in Korea.
This sh*t is Gangnsta, bro.
SEOUL, YOU THINK YOU GOT TALENT…
1. VIDEO “Gangnam Style” Dance Frenzy from Korea
2. Bäst Sells Olive Oil and Opens New Show at Opera Gallery (NYC)
3. “Just Your Type” at Low Brow Artique (BKLN)
4. LUDO “Metal Miltia” at Galerie Itinerrance (PARIS)
5. “All Write You Scumbags” with Reyes and Steel at Klughaus (Chinatown, NYC)
6. “Dominant Species” by ROA at 941 Geary (San Francisco)
7. GAIA, MOMO AND MICHAEL OWEN in “Zim Zum” (Baltimore)
8. Don’t Fret in “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Chardonnay”(Chicago)
9. Tel Aviv: Israeli Street Artist and poet Know Hope “Others’ Truths”
10. The Black River Festival in Vienna, Austria
11. Stephen Powers AKA ESPO “A Love Letter for You”
12. “Permanence at Space 27 Gallery in Montreal, Canada
13. eL Seed in Tunisia (VIDEO)
14. When Lucent Met Herakut (VIDEO)
15. Voice Of Art “Graffiti Against The System” Presents GATS (VIDEO)
Bäst Sells Olive Oil and Opens New Show at Opera Gallery (NYC)
Street Artist Bäst has always mixed a savory chopped image salad. With his dicing, cutting, collaging and stencilling work on the street over the last decade, a lot of his recent stencils are twisted Bodega style signs advertising basic staples for the pantry. But of all the collaborative advertising that Street Artists have been getting into, we never could have predicted this; Olive oil. You can actually go to snooty classist foodery Dean and Deluca and buy a bottle of Bast style olive oil right now. Only 500 were made in this limited edition and the oil smells better than the petroleum-spilled brownfields in industrial Bushwick where you usually see his work, so why not?
This Brooklyn native artist has been amusing, hijacking, and inspiring with his work on the streets of New York for well over a decade and it’s also cool to see his gallery work at his solo show “Germs Tropicana” opened last night at Opera in Manhattan. If the pieces are too pricey, Dean and Deluca is just a couple of blocks away!
For further information regarding this show click here.
“Just Your Type” at Low Brow Artique (BKLN)
Outside is the brand new wall piece by ND’A and Dirty Bandits. Inside this art store/gallery they are joined QRST and Gilf! in this new small show called “Just Your Type”, opening tonight.
For further information regarding this show click here.
LUDO “Metal Miltia” at Galerie Itinerrance (PARIS)
Parisian Street Artist LUDO was in multiple shows around the world and blanketed the Paris Metro and bus shelters with his subvertisements for two years before a gallery in his native city invited him inside. Tonight Galerie Itinerrance will have LUDO’s first solo show entitled “Metal Militia”.
With a truly unique approach to social critique that serves as a cunning indictment of the advertising industry and the military industrial complex, you won’t find anything like the pretty disgust than the work of LUDO.
For further information regarding this show click here.
“All Write You Scumbags” with Reyes and Steel at Klughaus (Chinatown, NYC)
Ever the ballsy wiseguy, the Klaughaus Gallery in Manhattan continues to produce and present quality shows that challenge your possibly prejudicial pre-formed perceptions of propriety and pugnacity. This time they invited West Coast natives Reyes and Steel to exhibit at their space with a show titled “All Write You Scumbags”.
From the press release, “The New York debut for both artists and showcases a distinct chemistry cultivated over years working together as friends, creative partners and members of MSK, one of the highest regarded graffiti artist collectives in the world.” To find out what this means go to their show opening tonight.
For further information regarding this show click here.
“Dominant Species” by ROA at 941 Geary (San Francisco)
Street Artist ROA concludes his US Summer Tour 2012 in San Francisco at his own victorious opening Saturday at 941 Geary Gallery. The show is aptly called “Dominant Species” and will feature many of the cast of creatures you have grown to expect.
For further information regarding this show click here.
To read BSA’s feature on ROA this week and to see beautiful images of his work in Mexico, Africa and Cambodia earlier this year click here.
GAIA, MOMO AND MICHAEL OWEN in “Zim Zum” (Baltimore)
GAIA, MOMO AND MICHAEL OWEN are transforming the space at the Creative Alliance Gallery in Baltimore with a collaboration that promises to spill over the street and beyond. If you want to see what the trio is up to put the gameboy down and head out to the gallery for their opening tomorrow night with an exhibition titled Zim Zum.
Don’t Fret in “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Chardonnay”(Chicago)
Chicago based Street Artist Don’t Fret has a new solo show, “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Chardonnay” opening Saturday night at the Bizzare Gallery in Chicago. So if you are planning to arrive naked, BYOB and put your wallet under your armpit. Lo-fi comic book doodling that make most people look like family day at the tractor pull, Don’t Fret drawings are people you know and often dang hilarious.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Also happening this Weekend:
If you are in Tel Aviv: Israeli Street Artist and poet Know Hope is releasing a new zine titled “Others’ Truths” and he’s mounted a small exhibition of the drawings that illustrate it. This exhibition will remain open all day today until 4:00 pm. Click here for more details on this show.
The 2012 Edition of The Black River Festival in Vienna, Austria is now open. The festival has an important selection of Street Artists putting up works throughout an entire week of programs. Roster includes Blu, Evan Roth, Florian Riviere, Isaac Cordal, Mark Jenkins, and ZukClub. Click here for more details on this festival.
The film screening by Stephen Powers AKA ESPO “A Love Letter for You” is being hosted by the Joshua Liner Gallery in conjunction with their current show by the artist “A Word is Worth A Thousand Pictures”. The screening will take place tomorrow at The Tribeca Grand Hotel. The artist will be in attendance along with the director and a Q & A will follow the film. Click here for more details on this event.
“Permanence” is the title of the new group show at Space 27 Gallery in Montreal, Canada. With an ambitious line up international and Canadian artists this show aims to juxtapose the “ephemeral nature of street art with the permanence of collectible art.” From their press release. Click here for more details regarding this show.
In the spirit of Unity, we present Street Artist eL Seed in Tunisia (VIDEO)
This week there has been much news of sadness, discord, and suffering in Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. Street Artist and painter eL Seed gives us a moment to pull back and reflect on the beauty and poignancy that a religious belief system can contribute to the lives of some.
Here he creates ‘Madinati’ Calligraffiti on Jara Mosque in Gabes.
When Lucent Met Herakut by The One Point Eight (VIDEO)
“A short documentary which presents the show involving graffiti duo Herakut and the Lucent Dossier group, detailing both the rehearsal process and the final performance in a unique and different way.”
Voice Of Art “Graffiti Against The System” Presents GATS (VIDEO)
Labrona left Chicago looking a bit less “buffed” than usual – and a lot more colorful after his recent stop as a guest of Nick and Seth of Pawn Works Gallery. Not usually shy about color Labrona is really drenching his modern liturgical portraits and giving them a cubist perspective on outside walls in hidden spots around town. With eyes glancing askance in every direction, you might wonder if they are looking over Labrona’s shoulder as he paints, just keeping an eye out, so to speak.
“In true form, GAIA found himself in some of Chicago’s worst neighborhoods during one of the bloodiest summers on record,” says Nick Marzullo, owner of Pawn Works Gallery. According to most news reports the city has suffered the most violence in years, and the summer heat seems to exacerbate the duress. “Homicides are up by 38 percent from a year ago, and shootings have increased as well, even as killings have held steady or dropped in New York, Los Angeles and some other cities,” writes Monica Davey in the New York Times, and while July’s total of 49 murders represented a drop, it is hard to feel safe on many streets.
How a Street Artist decides to put up work in a dangerous neighborhood is not clear, or what motivates the work. Sometimes it is to activate a space, to humanize it. Other times it is merely an opportunity to get up. These pieces somehow feel contextual, especially the large floating head. While the portrait may not be a direct commentary on the violence, we know that many of the dead in these crimes are fathers, brothers, and sons.
Street Artist Gaia visited Chicago last week to hit some walls in his grandly fulsome style with imaginative remixing of classics. Here’s a guy who is perfectly badass about handily switching symbols, metaphors, cultures, belief systems, history, art history. The results are perplexing if you think too hard about it, thrilling if you are willing to detach the forms from their original contexts and appreciate the new associations that their juxtapositions can present.
Hosted by the fellas at Pawn Works Gallery and shot by talented photographer Brock Brake, Gaia created his new pieces as part of their ongoing project “Art in Public Places” in the Pilsen neighborhood and in Chicago’s West Town.
First off is the piece with African masks and a Cuban female figure that references the historical ties of the two regions. “Thanks to the lovely people at Nini’s Cuban Deli,” says Pawn Works Nick Marzullo of this place tucked into Chicago’s West Town. Gaia says the mural depicts the rich alloy that is Santeria. In it the Catholic twin saints Damian and Cosmas flank the African Ibeji masks.
“These are icons which were imported by the Spanish through Catholicism. African slaves sit underneath a woman performing a ceremony as Oshun, an Oshira of love and the river,” Gaia explains on his Flickr page.
Following are images of a considerably longer mural that the Street Artist did while in the Chicago. In a practice that is often his case, this mural is also site-specific. Reflecting the neighborhood of Pilsen, it’s meant as a visual representation of two other cultures merging that have successively defined it. Gaia says that he is exploring the notion of the word “immigrant”.
“It is about the confluence of Polish and Mexican culture, says Gaia, “I just used Michaelangelo figures from the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgement scene primarily because both cultures share Catholicism – and because the bodies are so dynamic.” That explains why some of the figures looks so Michaelangelic – but with animal heads replacing the original figures human/god-like ones.
Gaia did this one in coordination with Pawn Works, the Chicago Urban Art Society and the office of Alderman Danny Solis.
Belgian Street Artist and painter ROA continues his USA Summer 2012 tour and his next stop after New York was Chicago last week. Hosted by the folks at Pawn Works Gallery, ROA was invited to participate in their ongoing outdoor project “Art in Public Places” in the Pilsen neighborhood.
ROA’s unsentimental fascination with animals goes well beyond the wild realm to give the urban fauna spotlight on public walls. He reprised this bit of visual trickery that we first remember him doing in Miami last year – an engaging image goes very wrong when you turn the corner. It demonstrates the duality of nature and one we shouldn’t get freaked out by, but a carcass is still kind of gross, right?
The project continues to bring new artists in conjunction with the Mexican Museum of Fine Art and The Chicago Urban Art Society.
San Francisco painter Reyes 78 must have been exceedingly happy to be in Chicago with many of his fellow Mexican ex-pats and to bring his abstract graffiti-influenced new work to this city to display on a huge wall. The folks at Pawn Works Gallery invited Reyes 78 to participate on their ongoing outdoor project “Art in Public Places” at the Pilsen neighborhood.
The project continues to bring new artists in conjunction with the Mexican Museum of Fine Art and The Chicago Urban Art Society, and this one illustrates the cultural melting pot as well as one of the newer directions that art in the streets is taking where graffiti and Street Art are merging to created something more abstract and geometric.
Climbing up on a roof during the sultry city summer can be liberating, and it turns out to be a prime place for painting too. Away from the cacophony of the sweaty streets, the breeze up here is a little cooler and stronger and aside from the occasional potted tomato plant or sun-tanning waitress, you are on your own. You may not own any personal real estate, but right now this is all yours, this sweeping urban vista of grand, glassy, grimy, gawdy, and gutted.
For years graffiti writers and Street Artists have sought these undiscovered spots as a kind of refuge, an urban backyard for hanging out and going big, often collaboratively. You could say that rooftop spots even have a certain lore, a place to tell stories about and revel in. In a hard-knock nasty city that sometimes seems to swallow people whole, on this rooftop with a view you can do a huge piece and feel like you are holding it all down. Not to mention the bragging rights you can claim for hitting a high profile location that grabs eyeballs and raises the stakes. As for the city dweller, the work, as ever, is subjectively reviled, ignored, or celebrated. No one can truthfully deny its affect on the character of the cityscape.
Here are some choice roof shots by photographer Jaime Rojo across New York, LA, Chicago, and Boston to give you a birds eye view of some art from on high.
1. Haters Gonna Hate (Video)
2. Logan Hicks “Structural Integrity” (London)
3. OLEK in 40 under 40: Craft Futures @ Smithsonian (Washington)
4. OLEK’s 40 Under 40 (Video)
5. Jon Burgerman at Pawn Works (Chicago)
6. BKC East Coast Stickershow (BKLN)
7. XCIA Artists Edition of New Book
8. TOOFLY from Jay Maldonado (VIDEO)
9. Aaron De La Cruz in West Oakland, CA (VIDEO)
It’s a great weekend in New Yawk so do your thing, baby! Like the artist duo UR New York say,”Be Who You Are”. You can be as positive or weird or normal or dull or talented or smelly or handsome or street or inarticulate or clever as you want. Just ignore the haters because as we all know, no matter what you do..
Haters Gonna Hate (Video)
Logan Hicks “Structural Integrity” (London)
Brooklyn’s own Logan Hicks has a new solo show “Structural Integrity” that’s open to the public at The Outsiders Gallery in London. Logan’s treatment of light and shadow along with his intensely detailed multi-layered stencil technique is expanded on in this new body of work at The Outsiders. In a moment of pre-show jitters before the opening last night he writes on his Facebook, “As I sit here thinking about the artwork that I made, the photos I took and the road that I took to having this show, it’s hard not to think of the people who helped me get here.”
For further information regarding this show click here.
OLEK in 40 under 40: Craft Futures @ Smithsonian (Washington)
Opening Today! The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s contemporary craft and decorative arts program started 40 years ago so they’re hosting 40 under 40: Craft Futures. Street Artist OLEK is one of the forty artists born since 1972 who are on display at the Renwick Gallery in an exhibition that investigates evolving notions of craft within traditional media such as ceramics and metalwork, as well as in fields as varied as sculpture, industrial design, installation art, fashion design, sustainable manufacturing, and mathematics.
Show opens Friday July 20th at Smithson American Art Museum
1st floor, Renwick Gallery (Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street N.W.)
July 20, 2012 – February 3, 2013
For further information regarding this exhibition click HERE.
OLEK’s 40 Under 40 (Video)
Jon Burgerman at Pawn Works (Chicago)
The always good natured fellows that run the Pawn Works Gallery in Chicago had the wits to invite the rascal from England Jon Burgerman to show his “Hungry Games”. Inspired by the movie and predicated on Jon’s unwavering support for food and fun, this show opens on Saturday with actual GAMES!
For further information regarding this show click here.
BKC East Coast Stickershow (BKLN)
King Rid and Jice and their friends have been working for months to pull together this gigantic sticker show that features slaps from all over the world. From mass produced to handmade one-offs, this massive collection is a freeze frame of this moment in 2012. Brass Knuckle Crew, Jice and King Rio will be hosting the BKC East Coast Sticker Show 2 Saturday at the Ivy House Studio in Brooklyn.
For further information regarding this event click here.
Also happening this weekend:
The Hendershot Gallery on The Lower East Side of Manhattan hosted photographer XCIA’s launch of the special ARTIST Edition of his book XCIA Street Art Project last night. Army Of One/JC2, Fumero, Chris Stain and ENX were part of the handful on hand who created customized covers for the book to be shown last night. The show is a continuation of the gallery’s Summer series of prints and walls. If you go, ask to be taken to the gallery’s basement to see a few kool walls. This show is now open to the public. Click here for more details.
The new group show opening today at the Egg Gallery in Melbourne, Australia, titled “Paperápe” features seven Melbourne artists showcasing their different styles but united for their love of making art on paper. This show opens tomorrow. Click here for more details.
TOOFLY from Jay Maldonado (VIDEO)
“I’m trying to get, I guess, what’s inside, my feeling, into my work,” says the painter. Graffiti artist TOOFLY has been cooking the streets of New York with a personal blending of the hip-hop flavored girl-powered designs she’s known for since the early nineties. A founder of the Younity initiative, TOOFLY and a large group of other graffiti/atreet art women regularly sponsor events and opportunities for young women to hold their own and champion their creativity. Here’s a new shorty from TOOFLY and Jay Maldonado.
Street Artist Rae from the BK tied a knot in the busted fanbelt of his heavily rusted ’83 Camaro with no A/C and made a long hot trip to Chicago last week to visit Nick and Seth at Pawnworks – and to hit up some walls. Whether it’s a scrapyard sculpture or multicolored mural, Rae’s stiff and speckled street dudes are often animated and gesticulating about something very important – but you might not know exactly what. Dapper, direct, and a bit childlike, you have to show them respect because they remind you of your Uncle Eugene who always starts out normal at the family reunion but ends up sitting at a picnic table under an oak tree by himself putting egg salad in his hair and talking about quarter-horse racing or the Republicans or Rupert Murdoch.
“We were very excited to be able to host Rae in Chicago to do some work as part of an on-going mural project in the Historic Pilsen neighborhood on the Southside of Chicago,” says Nick Marzullo.
Pawnworks Gallery have been asked to participate on a neighborhood project working with the local alderman, The Mexican Museum of Art and The Chicago Urban Art Society and other partners to beautify a stretch of wall in the Pilsen neighborhood. And there will be more to see first here on BSA. Says Nick, “Stay tuned for more as there is an array of amazing artists planned to come out to participate in the future”.
U.K. born artist Jon Burgerman has risen to become a prominent figure in the recent boom of practitioners who traverse the disciplines of contemporary art, design, illustration and entrepreneurism. His award winning work can be seen globally from gallery and bedroom walls to cinema and iPhone screens. A sense of British self-deprecation, dry humour and modern-day anxiety imbues his work along with an enthusiasm for salad.
Four years ago Burgerman applied to tender for a job for ‘a large sporting event’ (one which he is not legally allowed to disclose). It involved the devising of a set of mascots. Having designed many variations of mascots, tweaking and adapting them to the feedback of the event organisers after many meetings, presentations and pitches spread over two years, Burgermans work had made it to the final two options. Excited and nervous about the possibility of having his characters chosen for the large sporting event a concern also loomed that the large sporting event would in fact own his work and exploit it for as much financial gain as possible. Whilst away in China, Burgerman received a phone call explaining that his characters had not be chosen.
To soften the blow of not having his art work grace the grand worldwide stage of a large sporting event he has now decided to create his own tiny, localised, sporting event in response, entitled The Hungry Games.
As well as devising a series of artworks, mascots and sundries for the exhibition, Burgerman has invented a collection of sporting activities. Much like the arts, new, young sporting events also need patrons, with sponsorship an integral part of the project. Each event will have its own local sponsor, who will also be represented in the exhibition. The opening night will feature a series of actions that require audience participation, such as The Soda Pop Race, Vegetable Toss Off, Cheese Grating Racing and more.
The artwork surrounding the exhibition will include a series of paintings relating to the events and sponsorships from the likes of The Empty Bottle, Very Best Vintage, Bite Cafe, Color Wheel Studio and more, referencing popular sporting actions and slogans. Also featured will be merchandise, multiple cut outs and medals designed by the artist.
The Hungry Games, aims to satisfy the viewer in their desire for mascots, commercial tie-ins, collective experience and spectacle, whilst leaving them hungry for more.
The Inauguration will be held on Saturday July 21, 2012 at 6pm sharp with the help of our frineds at The Color Wheel Studio in Chicago’s Wicker Park. The Opening Ceremonies will continue until 10:00pm and the show will be on display through August at Pawn Works 1050 N. Damen Ave. Chicago, Illinois.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
