All posts tagged: Contorno Urbano

BSA Film Friday: 06.16.17

BSA Film Friday: 06.16.17

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

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

Now screening :
1. PASSAGE / From Wall to Wall
2. Occupied in Bethlehem – from Fifth Wall TV
3. BYG //12 + 1 //  Contorno Urbano // Barcelona
4. 2KM3 Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc Contemporary Art Platform

bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: PASSAGE / From Wall to Wall By Theodore Berg Boy and Aymeric Colletta

Louis Bourgeois, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Ernest Pignon Ernest; Iconic artists of late 20th century shot in black and white portraits and clothes-pinned to a wire in an austere white box salon. Aside from their colorful personalities and histories, these images are not rewarding enough for the pursed-lipped gallery owner, she of great taste and refined posture.

So we are relieved to see the action of the cans on the street through the display windows of the gallery and the countenance of the gallerist. Later we are enchanted when the entire gallery becomes a colorful projection through which the scene sneaks in the pinhole in the grating – a camera obscura of “street” into the gallery.

“Passage” is quite literal, yet poetic, in the telling of this movement of Street Art and graffiti into the gallery setting, with the formal space painted as beneficiary of the life-giving, oxygenated aerosol blood from a sub-culture that isn’t.

To be fair, this is a muralist we witness, not a Street Artist per se, and there is nothing particularly transgressive in the work on the street but we understand the broader message. The video is a production for something called Urban Art Fair and the paint company manages to plant its logo many times into the story, so you know this is a budgeted production. Premiered this year at the occasion of the Paris edition of the fair, this one will be presented in New York at the first edition of the fair here over July 4th weekend.

It is interesting to see the parallels that are drawn in “Passages” – and with admirable dexterity and seamless segue by co-directors Théodore Berg Boy and Aymeric Colletta.

“ ‘Passage’ is a fiction film,” says Berg Boy, “which relates the meeting of two persons: a young artist and a gallery owner. Those two people bonding could be a metaphor of what occurs when a street artist – with his codes and his culture – finds himself thrown in a more institutional way of life: the life of the art market and museums.”

 

 

Occupied in Bethlehem – from Fifth Wall TV

“It’s almost become a playground for people to come to,” says your host Doug Gille as he looks at the section of the Separation Wall that the Banksy “Walled Off” Hotel is installed upon. “I think it is so crucial for people not to just come to see the wall or to paint on the wall,” he says.

“50 years under military control makes it the longest occupation in history,” is a quote that Gillen brandishes across the screen from the United Nations. The fact that Banksy is using his art star power to keep this on the front burner says a lot about the man.

“I think a lot of these people feel like we are forgetting about them and we have to remind them that we’re not,” says Gillen as he soul searches next to the Dead Sea.

BYG //12 + 1 //  Contorno Urbano // Barcelona

You may have seen our piece on this wall a few weeks back called “GO GO GO” BYG in Spain for 12+1 Project. Here are a few scenes illustrating how they made it.

Elian at 2KM3 Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc Contemporary Art Platform

At the beginning of June this parking garage in Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc inaugurated this “alternative museum” in the heart of the city that is free and open. All eleven floors (200 square meters each) and the façade were painted in May by international artists as part of the Lasco Project of the Palais de Tokyo. Here is Argentinian muralist Elian Chali’s floor as he imagined it. Also included were Etienne de Fleurieu of France, Felipe Pantone of Argentina, Jaw of France, Roids of Great Britain, SatOne Sobekcis of Serbia, Sten of Italy, Swiz of France, Zoer & Velvet of France and Spain.

2KM3 Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc Contemporary Art Platform

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“ONCE” Deconstructs and Reconstructs His Tag for 12 + 1 Project In Barcelona

“ONCE” Deconstructs and Reconstructs His Tag for 12 + 1 Project In Barcelona

Abstraction is something we spoke recently with French graffiti writer Jeroen Erosie about in Berlin, and here in Barcelona we find that ONCE is interested in deconstruction of the revered letter form as well. Even hardcore lovers of letters like to blow them up, explode them, inflate them, deflate them, stream line and distill them to an essence.

ONCE. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

Influenced by Bauhaus and Russian propaganda posters during the revolution, Catalonia born ONCE says he doesn’t really think that he is using abstract methods of manipulating his text into something unrecognizable. “Although for the general public,” he says, “these are only geometric shapes and they are more likely to think that I am painting with abstraction.” His control of aspects of fine art lettercraft reflects some of that heralded industrial society that was lauded a hundred years ago and it is somehow quite modern as well.

For his wall with the 12 + 1 project in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, we can see his fearless dedication to form, to classical graffiti and his dexterity for incorporating them into the evolving contemporary mural.

ONCE. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

ONCE. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

ONCE. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

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Laura Llaneli “OUR ACTIONS BECOMING THE POLICY”

Laura Llaneli “OUR ACTIONS BECOMING THE POLICY”

A New Wall Translates a Rockers Lecturing Tirade to His Audience


Aural. Visual. Two modes of exchange and experiencing the world that interest artist Laura Llaneli, the Grenada born painter of this months’ 12+1 project wall in in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat in Barcelona.

Laura Llaneli. Our Actions Become The Policy. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

Having produced works as varied as using dot matrix printers as orchestra, “live” texting the visuals behind a performing band, and recording a “telephone game” experiment of 37 people individually interpreting a melody – and passing it to the next one.

Since she doesn’t mind studying jazz, folklore or even current pop to dissect the relationship between sound-music experience, it is not a surprise that today’s wall is inspired by a rant from a hardcore band singer delivered to his audience. Text based, but more from a taggers aesthetic than a painters, the words are a translation of singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s speech mid-concert with his band “At The Drive-In”.

Laura Llaneli. Our Actions Become The Policy. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

He is berating the audience for slam-dancing, a fully corporeal, often rageful and cathartic dance activity of forceful interaction where multiple people clear a circular area on the floor and audience members repeatedly careen and throw themselves at another person, bouncing off of them and being bounced off of. It’s chaotic, often physically dangerous, and produces feelings of elation or more rage, or both. From his perspective at that 2001 concert, it was unacceptable and he used a shaming, belittling device to lecture the audience, by saying they were only imitating actions they witnessed elsewhere, were unthinking, and followers instead of leaders.

“I think it’s a very very sad day, when the only way that you can express yourself is through slam-dancing. Are you all typically white people? Y’all look like it to me. Look at that. You learned that from the TV, you didn’t learn that from your best friend. You’re a robot, you’re a sheep! Baaaah. Baaaah. Baaaah. I have a microphone and you don’t, you’re a sheep. You watch TV way too much. Baaaah. Baaaah.”

Laura Llaneli. Our Actions Become The Policy. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

It’s actually sort of confusing what the racial reference was, and what it meant. But in the context of his other accusatory and bullying language, it seems like he was chiding them as behaving in a way that was unlike their race, or his image of how white people are supposed to behave.

Laura likes the text because she thinks that they were trying to control violence, or horde the right to it. “This meant keeping a certain ‘monopoly of violence’ for themselves.”

Laura Llaneli. Our Actions Become The Policy. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

In the final flip of this script, Laura says that eventually event promoters borrowed the bands technique of stopping the performance to make people stop slam dancing – now actually insisting that bands do it. Thus the name “Our Actions Become the Policy”

“So they were astonished to find out that the security of Australia’s ‘Big Day’ festival had taken on their idea,” and  now it feels like Big Brother is controlling the crowd… which of course pisses people off.

Regardless how you feel about slam-dancing, this mocking, goading text-based screed is a notable departure from the more graphic and aesthetically pleasing murals that are marking this current era as well as the 12 + 1 project.

Laura Llaneli. Our Actions Become The Policy. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

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Elisa Capdevila & Ivan Floro Paint “Carmencita” Tilted at 90 Degrees

Elisa Capdevila & Ivan Floro Paint “Carmencita” Tilted at 90 Degrees

The tea brand. The nightclub. The paella.

The dancer known as the “Pearl of Seville.”

Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

Carmencita is a name synonymous with the florid, proud and fanciful folklore of Spain expressed through the image of a colorful dancer. Castenets please! Flowers tossed at her feet, swirling skirt dizzying and brilliant.

While the famous dancer named Carmecita whom most Spaniards are familiar with was born in 1868 and was painted by John Singer Sargent (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and William Merrit Chase (The Met, New York) among other notable painters, her image is less that of a person than of an archetype for mural painters Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro, who were both born in the mid 1990s.

Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

Their new collaboration on a long wall in Sant Feliú is an opportunity to paint an image on the street that is impressionist and classical, and then to almost turn it on its head.

“Neither of us know the figure in the foreground, and it does not really matter except to know that she was connected to the world of entertainment and that the public admired her,” they tell us.

Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

The image is compelling, ebullient and a bit of a mystery – even more so as it has been rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise along the sidewalk of this busy street.

“We decided to represent the figure horizontally because it is a perspective to which we are not accustomed and it is shocking,” they say.

Clearly it is an unusual presentation and interpretation of the image of Carmencita and perhaps it is a furtherance of the concept of a street “intervention”.

Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

Elisa Capdevila and Iván Floro created this painting in conjunction with Contorno Urbano, 12+1 of Sant Feliú, organized in part with Kaligrafics.

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AXE Colours – Two Graffiti Friends, Now Creative Partners

AXE Colours – Two Graffiti Friends, Now Creative Partners

Sometimes you can parlay your graffiti and Street Art practice into a career that sustains you, and many artists work hard to find opportunities that assure that they can continue to be creative. Friends since childhood and painting graffiti and murals together since 1999 in Barcelona, Adrià (Smaug) and Oriol (Gúma) together call themselves AXE Colours.

AXE Colours at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

Both are interested in architecture and design and plastic arts and have done a number of commercial projects together including recently a long tunnel inside the stadium complex for the footballers del Camp Nou del Futbol Club in the city.

While Oriol practices as an architect in London and Hong Kong, Adrià is fully dedicated to AXE COLORS personally and commercially and he is currently painting a series of portraits of TV personalities and sports figures. Here’s a recent painting of TV horse racing jockey Tommy Shelby and his horse for the 12 + 1 Project – with photos by Fernando Alcalá Losa.

AXE Colours at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

AXE Colours at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

AXE Colours at Kaligrafics. Contorno Urbano. 12 + 1 Project. May 2017, Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

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BSA Film Friday: 05.12.17

BSA Film Friday: 05.12.17

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

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

Now screening :
1. Calligraphy, Layers and Screen Play; Said Dokins / Ugly Food House
2. Paolo Troilo: The London Afternoon
3. Elisa Capdevila & Ivan Floro for 12 + 1.
4. Jason Woodside and Ian Ross at Nashville Walls Project.
5.  The Infinite Now – Armand Dijcks

bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: Calligraphy, Layers and Screen Play; Said Dokins / Ugly Food House

Happy Friday. Time for fun in the studio together.

A snappy glitch-flecked soundtrack lifts and carries this black and white series of brushstrokes, screen sprays, and inky dance steps as layers of calligraphy, automatic pens, Luthis pens, Japanese brushes and a nattering of nibs stack up and slide. Street Artist/fine artist Said Dokins is with the Master Printer of Ugly Food House, Ivonne Adel-Buereos, and the sunset is the theme that inspires all of this activity.

With the world in motion, it is an atmosphere that we desperately try to capture, to somehow document that inspirational moment. Perhaps its not in the activity, but the shared sense of possibility unleashed through play and collaboration.

 

Paolo Troilo: The London Afternoon

Let your multiple brushes at home? No worries, you can use your fingers. Return to your senses, your ability to create gestural motion upon a canvas, the tactile interaction with the world you first learned. Paolo Troilo is clearly inspired by the same beauty and makes a performance of it through the front window.

 

Elisa Capdevila & Ivan Floro for 12 + 1. Contorno Urbano

For the 12 + 1 Project Elisa Capdevilla + Ivan Floro turn this grande dame to the side in Barcelona, an introduction of classical into everyday, for everyone.

 

Jason Woodside and Ian Ross at Nashville Walls Project.

Tough to draw the correlation stylistically between Jason Woodside and Ian Ross but Those Drones/Brian Siskind places them in a series of adoring sweeps of Nashville and it’s real estate, backed by a glowing modern reassuring nostalgia.

 

 

…And a quickie of Jason Woodside’s completed piece via Nashville Walls Project

A focused and glad review of the explosion of color and pattern that Jason Woodside plays for the business improvement district in Nashville.

 

The Infinite Now – Armand Dijcks

Not so much palette cleansing as mind-blowing, awe-inspiring oceanscapes created as cinemagraphs that basically leave you speechless.

Armand Dijcks worked with Australian photographer Ray Collins to set these into infinite motion, surrounded and regaled with music by André Heuvelman from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra along with pianist Jeroen van Vliet.

May we all be inspired and run out to the world to create the positive change we need to have.

The Infinite Now from Armand Dijcks on Vimeo.

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“GO GO GO” BYG in Spain for 12+1 Project

“GO GO GO” BYG in Spain for 12+1 Project

Maybe it’s because we just saw Mark Mothersbaugh interviewed live onstage at NYU by Carlo McCormick, but when we saw this mechanically growing text it reminded us of DEVO and Kraftwerk and possibly Dadaist collage. And Russian Constructivists and the Bauhaus.

BYG. GO, GO, GO. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

Ding Ding Ding! We knew if we kept guessing we were bound to get it right, right? Patricia and Luis, of the art collective BYG, tell us that their new piece for the 12 + 1 project ”is a tribute that BYG wants to do to Rodchenko and Russian Constructivism.” Made with paper and plastic paint on a wall in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, the renowned illustrators are passionate about collage and have done a number of street interventions using the technique, as well as legally in spanish art festivals like Asalto in Zaragoza, Open Walls in Barcelona or Poliniza in Valencia.

The constructed environment becomes the norm through repetition, so it is refreshing, sometimes jarringly so, to see deconstruction. Says BYG about their new wall,”Collage is what unites and what separates, it is the encounter, the surprise, it is to subvert and decontextualize, it is discovery.” Go Go Go!

BYG. GO, GO, GO. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

BYG. GO, GO, GO. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

BYG. GO, GO, GO. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

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BSA Film Friday: 05.05.17

BSA Film Friday: 05.05.17

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

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

Now screening :
1. Stick to It, Episode 1 : Sticky Community
2. Ella & Pitr / Frappés Pinpins
3.  Herakut. Nuart Aberdeen.
4. 12 + 1 Oriol Vlat.

bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: Stick to It, Episode 1 : Sticky Community via Juxtapoz

“People had the same idea I had; ‘I wanna make stickers,’ I wanna put characters on stickers, not necessarily all graffiti, and we’re just gonna trade and we’re gonna put your stickers up in my city and you’re gonna put my stickers up in your city,” says artist El Toro.

“Right now it’s just like a storm.”

Running concurrently while graffiti and Street Art get most of the attention, the sticker slap game may turn out to be the portable protest that may get the most mileage in the end. Once a sly critique of the methodology of brainwashing that advertisers use, in the case of Shepard Fairey’s initial OBEY campaigns, today advertisers mix their messages in with the organic scene as a way to market to fans of it and to burnish their “street” bonafides.

As it turns out, we’ve learned that graffiti and Street Artists use the same methods of repetition and branding to get their name out and the ease and mobility of the sticker practice also means that small voices get into the mix quickly. Keeping it up depends on your industry – and many times your resources. This video highlights the organic artist culture that gave birth to and continues to grows around the stickering practice with guys like Roycer and Chris from Robots Will Kill, and naturally it slips in clothing and lifestyle brands seamlessly to sell you their products and strengthen their name.

 

Ella & Pitr / Frappés Pinpins

The French duo Ella + Pitr here revel in the simplicity of the gestural act of a full-body full-bucket splash of black paint.

Carnal, visceral, overlaid with psychographical information, the motion of splashing inky pigment across a white quadrilateral is an act of defiance and a release of the inner chaos – instantly recognizable as chaos elsewhere in the world.

The uncontrollable quality, especially when purveyed within an atmosphere of prim control, provokes amplified emotions in some. Fear, liberation, rage, release. Which ones will you experience?

 

Herakut. Nuart Aberdeen. Via Fifth Wall TV

“Don’t hide, because you are that light,” a quick summary of Herakut’s singular message in their mural at Nuart Aberdeen. Be a lighthouse bro.

12 + 1 Oriol Vlat.

A simple and clean presentation of Oriol Vlat’s new wall for the 12 + 1 project in Barcelona by video director Alex Miró.

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Anna Maga for “12 + 1” Project In Barcelona

Anna Maga for “12 + 1” Project In Barcelona

Saturday is a good day to get into your own creative projects and try stuff that you don’t have time to do usually. We always like to walk past the local walls to see what people are creating. Checking in on this community wall in Sant Feliu de Llobregat to see what’s going up in the neighborhood, we find this is the new intervention from Anna Maga at Kaligrafics.

Anna Maga at Kaligrafics. La Noche. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

A fan of graffiti jams, roller skating and figurative painting, Maga Anna is a local illustrator, mural painter, children’s educator, and commercial designer. The project is a part of a community wall initiative by Contorno Urbano in Barcelona called “12 x 1”. Have a look. Where are your paints?

Anna Maga at Kaligrafics. La Noche. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

Anna Maga at Kaligrafics. La Noche. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

Anna Maga at Kaligrafics. La Noche. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

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Grandpa Gives Thumbs Down : EDJINN for 12 + 1 Project In Barcelona

Grandpa Gives Thumbs Down : EDJINN for 12 + 1 Project In Barcelona

Grandpa is giving you the thumbs down.

Street Artist EDJINN from Barcelona just created this wall that clearly expresses it’s dislike for so-called Social media and “community engagement”.

EDJINN. Dislike. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

“I want to contrast old people with new technologies, social networks and the new ways to interact that young people use, and the disconnection it might be for older people,” he says of the satiric illustration he’s created for the 12+1 project in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

Who can argue with this? We spend our days looking at phones, not each other – more concerned with the opinions and ideas expressed by total strangers that we call “friends.” Meanwhile the lady standing next to you brought your mother into the world and you are too busy “liking” and emoticon-ing to notice her.

Dislike.

EDJINN. Dislike. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

EDJINN. Dislike. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Antón)

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BSA Film Friday: 03.10.17

BSA Film Friday: 03.10.17

bsa-film-friday-JAN-2015

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

Now screening :
1. Rone: The Alpha Project
2.  FKDL – Petites Chroniques Urbaines
3. Irene Lopez León: 12+1 Contorno Urbano
4. The Batcave, Henry Chalfant, on The New York Times
5. Isaac Cordal “Giza Komedia”

bsa-film-friday-special-feature

BSA Special Feature: Rone: The Alpha Project

In this new revelatory video Street Artist Rone appears to unveil romantic and healthy figures from beneath a veil in isolated patches. The austere minimalist soundtrack contributes to a disorientation, a feeling of suspension while a visual wonder appears before you. The ruins of industrial production are legion in parts of the West as manufacturing is now done in the East, so our artists again have discovered enchanting ways to make something remarkable with the tools at hand, even transcendent.

 

FKDL – Petites Chroniques Urbaines

Mon Film, La Femme Chez Elle.

Only two of hundreds of magazines collected from the fashionable Parisian ladies of the 1950s and 1960s that FKDL flips through. In his studio you find his materials carefully archived and labeled, a well of pleasant and smartly chick ladies to select from and to collage together. A painter before he was a street art, his muses have been many and now he takes his stuff to the street with part illustration, part collage, often upon a bright blue or phosphorescent pink thin synthetic backing. Here he shares openly with you how the process goes, how he first loved these ladies and how he came upon his style for the street, now for a decade or so.

FKDL recalls a moment of epiphany with clarity; “Right. I got it. I’m going to dress up my collage characters with more collages”.

Irene Lopez León: 12+1 Contorno Urbano

See the direct relationship between the studio practice and the mural painting here in this video with Spanish artists Irene Lopez León for the 12+1 wall.

 

The Batcave, a Graffiti Landmark in Brooklyn, Grows Up

The New York Times discovered the Batcave just as it is about to be developed, and invited Henry Chalfant, whom writer Matt A.V. Chaban regards simply as “a graffiti expert” to come along and speak about the rather hallowed site. The experience is multidimensional in this gorgeous video, with an opportunity for you to drag your mouse across the screen to glance around the room and ceilings while Henry talks.

“Though few individual pieces in the Batcave are particularly notable, Henry Chalfant, a graffiti expert, remarked on a recent tour how the totality of the art is what makes it special, a reminder of the “outlaw spaces” that once populated much more of the city.”

We found a few pieces that were notable in 2012 in our piece New York Interiors and Urban Exploring.

Isaac Cordal “Giza Komedia”

Follow Street Artist Isaac Cordal as he stages small scenes outside the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, where he has his current solo show at SC Gallery. The corrugated metal shelters mimic closely the undulating shapes of the Frank Gehry designed architecture of the formal museum across the street. We need to get this guy INTO the museum, instead of being kept outside. We will.

 

ISAAC CORDAL. “GIZA KOMEDIA”. SOLO SHOW. SC GALLERY BILBAO. from SC Gallery + Art Management on Vimeo.

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“Liberate the Child Within” Roc Blackblock for 12 + 1 in Barcelona

“Liberate the Child Within” Roc Blackblock for 12 + 1 in Barcelona

Free your mind, and the rest will follow.

Not only is it a lyric from a 90s pop song, it is a truth that people learn everyday to liberate themselves from attitudes and world views that they’ve accepted but now want to let go of.

Roc Blackblock. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Anton)

Catalan Street Artist Roc Blackblock creates a cage around the head and shoulders of his protagonist for the Project 12+1 in Barcelona. He calls it “Llibera l’infant que portes dins!”, which translates as “Liberate the Child Within”.

It makes sense because many adults stopped being creative or expressing their creativity after childhood – bowing to messages from schools, parents, even religious institutions. At some point we don’t even trust our abilities to be creative anymore.

Roc Blackblock. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Anton)

But Roc says you can get back there.

“It’s an invitation to reconnect with the aspects of ourselves that adult life and social pressures have repressed and dulled; spontaneity, creativity, fantasy, and imagination,” he says.

It’s worth a try, right?

Roc Blackblock. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Fernando Alcalá Losa)

Roc Blackblock. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Clara Anton)

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