All posts tagged: Exhibitions

James Marshall DALEK “The Redistribution of Destruction”

James Marshall DALEK “The Redistribution of Destruction”

A quick look at new works by James Marshall aka Dalek for his show, “The Redistribution of Destruction”. His bright colors and geometric op art is bent through the lens of Murakami and yet glows occasionally with the hallucinatory play of light that Turrel can emanate.

These new pieces are more minimal than we are used to seeing from Dalek and perhaps indicate a comfort with minimalism, and all the courage that implies.

Impeccable, precise geometry, crisply rendered forms, all radiating energy. Please step into the light.

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Dalek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dalek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dalek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dalek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dalek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dalek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dalek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

James Marshall DALEK “The Redistribution Of Destruction” is currently on view at Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Click HERE for more information.

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Interesni Kazki Pull You in With “Sacred Gravitation”

Interesni Kazki Pull You in With “Sacred Gravitation”

Ukrainian duo Interesni Kazki are as understated in person as they are fantastic in their illustrative paintings. Aleksei Bordusov and Vladimir Manzhos may offer insight into their process and thematic development when prodded, but they prefer that you travel within the stories they have created unencumbered by their perceptions.

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Interesni Kazki “The Last Day of Babylon” (AEC) Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Their new show, “Sacred Gravitation” at Manhattan’s Jonathan Levine Gallery plunges viewers into an open window of gods and monsters using a pungent and crisp graphic neo-psychedelia style that recalls rock double album covers of the 1970s and fully rendered computer animation worlds in the early 2000s. On the other side of these large looking glasses are tales told with allegory and metaphor, of blindness and revelation, politics and corruption, eternity and memory, suffering and transformation, conflict and guile, the natural world and the spiritual one.

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Interesni Kazki “Spark Of Life” (WAONE) Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Not fully mythic nor folkloric, theirs is a unique contemporary style that welcomes and escorts the viewer instantly to enter, much like their large scale murals on city walls in Eastern Europe, the US, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere over the last decade and a half. Showing a genuine evolution and mastery of technique, this paintings in person create such a sense of dimension that you may long for your arms to be transformed into wings to more fully explore.

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Interesni Kazki “The Great Colonizer” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Interesni Kazki. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Interesni Kazki “The Genesis” Detail. (AEC) Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Interesni Kazki “Temple of Time” Detail. (AEC) Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Interesni Kazki. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Interesni Kazki “Sacred Gravitations” is currently on view at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Manhattan. Click HERE for further information.

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A Visit With ROA Readying for “Metazoa”

A Visit With ROA Readying for “Metazoa”

It’s unusual to capture a ROA inside. He is usually running free outdoors with the wildlife, climbing walls over multiple continents, perched within the industrialized margins of cities and rustling around the overgrown brush of rural regions.

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

By his own account ROA favors the hard to cover pockmarked and scarred surfaces, preferably outside and large in scale when possible. But once in a while you will find his animal kingdom in the more rarified environs of the whitebox, if only briefly before he hops a plane to Denmark to paint a tower.

For his first solo show with New York’s Jonathan Levine Gallery, ROA has managed to domesticate himself for a few weeks to restrict his activities in a New Jersey studio with discarded cabinets, doors, metal shelves, and a stack of vinyl platters. The platters of course are for spinning on his improvised temporary sound station, newly discovered and freed from crates at music stores in New York.

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I have filled a lot of holes in my collection,” he says as he scans this sudden new trove of vintage records that span genres across the last 50 years or so. They keep him great company. Of course he knows he’ll have to ship them home to Belgium, and they aren’t quite as light as mp3 files. At the base of the turntable he has them arranged in groupings: Rock, Blues and Jazz, Hip Hop and Reggae. Somehow it feels good to know that these new metazoan have come into existence while The Velvet Underground or Nina Simone or Screaming Jay Hawkins or Easy-E were laying down the soundtrack.

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This studio at Mana Contemporary has been a godsend and refuge during these freezing cold weeks – made more shocking since he had been in Honolulu just before flying here. But needless to say the lack of outdoor distractions has assisted the artist to focus on these new installations – 15 or more – that go on display at JLG.

With the help of a couple of fellow Street Artists ROA has been scouring Jersey City for discarded cabinets and scraps of wood to use as canvasses, or sculptures. The most successful find, he says, happened the first night where he ran across a cache of old office wooden cabinets that were all in a pile and ready to be trashed.

Within the spoils he found a very old wooden key cabinet with doors and brass hinges. That made him happy. Unfortunately the rest of the scavenging has been a bit tough due to the inclement weather – freezing temperatures and snow. Now that spring is emerging he paints with ease across the wooden assemblages and checks his original sketches as he goes.

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Finally they are ready to go, and ROA says he’s a little anxious as he packs up his new pets to be shipped the eight miles to the Chelsea gallery. Once they are gone he can make no more changes so he wants to make sure they are finished. There is also a slight chance that he may have grown attached to one or two of them as well. When they are carefully packed and picked up by the art handlers, ROA is relieved, glad they are out of his hands, hopefully to migrate into new worlds. Given the number of times we have featured and followed his work over the years, we’re confident that most of these animals will find homes soon.

Here are some shots that capture the moment when some of the larger pieces were getting packed, and only certain details of them. Enjoy.

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

ROA “Metazoa” Opens April 4, 2015 at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Click HERE for details.

 

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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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DRAN Closes “Public Execution” in London, Finally Complete

DRAN Closes “Public Execution” in London, Finally Complete

Either it will have proved to be a master class or an exhibition in hubris, says Pictures on Walls in their framing of the empty-framed show in progress by Dran in London’s Soho. Public Execution is on display and in development before you as the artist continues to work on new illustrations directly on the walls, a gradual culmination of a show that began on February 5 as a reception with cheese and wine and a primarily empty white box gallery, save the hand-painted frames on walls and ceiling serving as place-holders. Even so, the frames are only suggested locations for his cartooning, as he proceeds to paint inside and outside their confines, eventually covering every surface.

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Dran (Photo © Butterfly)

While the concept is new to the gallery setting, it is analogous to the work of street artists creating outside the gallery doors, where any passerby can observe and frequently offer an opinion or pose a question. Here the artist has helpfully painted a suitably sour gallery assistant to stare you down if her eyes happen to divert from her Macbook for a second.

“Ideally located in Soho between a sex shop, a pub and a primary school, the show is evolving on a daily basis,” says photographer and street art culture observer Sandra AKA Butterfly, who brings these exclusive images of the humorous scenes that continue to spout from Dran’s imagination. By the time the show closes today, Public Execution will be complete and the gallery will be filled with new art works. “It’s actually a ‘reversed’ show,” says Butterfly. Along with her images today, we have great shots of the developing show by photographer Julie A.

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Dran (Photo © Butterfly)

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Dran (Photo © Butterfly)

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Dran (Photo © Butterfly)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Butterfly)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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A potential knockout from Dran (Photo © Butterfly)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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The piercing power of words. Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Butterfly)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Okay, are there any questions here? Dran (Photo © Butterfly)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Turn that frown upside down. Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

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Dran (Photo © Julie A)

 

We wish to thank Julie A and Butterfly for sharing their exclusive images and observations with BSA readers.

Read more about this show at Butterfly’s site HERE.

 

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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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This article was also published on The Huffington Post

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Sneak Peek “Concrete to Data” at Steinberg Museum

Sneak Peek “Concrete to Data” at Steinberg Museum

Curator and artist Ryan Seslow has pulled off an overview of art on the streets and the practices employed, minus the drama. So much discussion of graffiti, Street Art, and public art practice can concentrate on lore and turf war, intersections with illegality, the nature of the “scene”, shades of xenophobia and class structures; all crucial for one’s understanding from a sociological/anthropological perspective.

“Concrete to Data”, opening this week at the Steinberg Museum of Art on Long Island, gives more of the spotlight to the historical methods and media that are used to disseminate a message, attempting to forecast about future ways of communicating that may effectively bridge the gap between the physical and the virtual.

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Joe Iurato. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Seslow has assembled an impressive cross section of artists, practitioners, photographers, academics, theorists, and street culture observers over a five-decade span. Rather than overreaching to exhaustion, it can give a representative overview of how each are adding to this conversation, quickly presenting this genre’s complexity by primarily discussing its methods alone.

Here is a sneak peek of the the concrete (now transmitted digitally); a few of the pieces for the group exhibition that have gone up in the last week in the museum as the show is being installed.

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Chris Stain. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Cake. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Lady Pink at work on her mural. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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John Fekner. Detail of his stencils in place and ready to be sprayed on. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Henry Chalfant. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Billy Mode. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Oyama Enrico. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Col Wallnuts. Detail. Concrete To Data. Steinberg Museum of Art. LIU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

CONCRETE to DATA will be exhibited at the Steinberg Museum of Art, Brookville, NY January 26th 2015 – March 21st 2015.

Opening Reception – Friday, February 6th  2015 6PM -9 PM 

Follow the news and events via – http://concretetodata.com

Follow @concretetodata on Instagram – #concretetodata

Curated by Ryan Seslow@ryanseslow

Museum Director – Barbara Appelgate

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50 Ways to Map The City, Per Street and Graffiti Artists

D.I.Y. Cartography in the Rawest Section of Somerset

Street Art is intrinsically bound with its neighborhood and location in a city. Context and placement are key, establishing its relation to a place. So when a Street Artist is asked to create art about mapping a place, it is fascinating to see how they perceive it and with what manner and medium they present it.

In a new exhibition opening in London this month, the time honored study and practice of cartography ventures into the conceptual as well as the physical, and we find that for many artists the street is as much about poetry and perception as it is about aerosol and wheat-pasted paper.

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Petro’s sculpture on the left with Gasisus sculpture on the right.  Aryz, Ron English, Malarko, Augustine Kofie, on the background wall. Filippo Minelli on the right wall. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

“Mapping the City”, now going up at the Somerset House presents the work of 50 artists whose roots lie in creating work for the urban space, one defined by paved streets configured by planners and traversed by citizenry. More than this the artists here broaden the job description of cartographer to one who captures energy, movement, emotion, imagined storylines and life paths.

With ubiquitous smart phones at the ready we increasingly find that mapping the world has become a given, removing some of its mystery. The tracking of GPS is joined by the physically surveying Google machine and countless public/private war/profit apparatus that have been loosed across and above the skin of the globe to trace all roads and streets, quantify topography, measure depths – even gauge the volume of rivers and density of forests.

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Installation process shot. Gasius sculpture on the foreground. Installers working on Petros’ sculpture. Aryz, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Malarko, Augustine Kofie, Shantell Martin, Husk MitNavn on the background wall. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

And then there are the people. “The city is a living entity,” says Rafael Schacter, curator of the show from the arts organization A(by)P, who sees the city as something far more than a clever configuration of lines. “The city changes every day, every hour of the day. It is constantly modifying itself. And it is fully alive in the way it reacts and responds to our actions. It is endlessly fascinating in the same way humans are. They can be exhausting, they can be destructive. But they contain endless possibilities too.”

It’s this same immersion into street life that draws artists to create in public, and knowing how to accept and embrace its evolution is what brings the veterans back. MOMO literally painted many streets in one continuous line that formed the letters of his nom de la rue in a 2006 tag that spread across the bottom of New York’s central island and it is presented as a map in this show.

Brooklyn Street Art: One of the artists in your show, MOMO, created an enormous tag in Manhattan – although it was only legible when the route was retraced upon a map. Is he crazy?
Rafael Schacter: He is crazy. A crazy genius. Although you still can see the marks he made on the streets of Manhattan years after he painted it! He recently re-walked the route and re-mapped the existing line. As I said; Crazy. Genius.

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MOMO “Tag Manhattan” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

“Retracing the tag line was cool,” MOMO tells us. “What I noticed is how much new sidewalk cement has gone in a lot of the line was eaten up by that,” he says, observing that a city is anything but static and often regenerative. “It is interesting how quickly a city replaces all of its cells,” he remarks about the ongoing repaving that characterizes the city. Were there more changes MOMO noticed in the 7 years between tagging? Yes. “Other stuff, like all the shiny new developments that are making Manhattan look like a mall.”

While there are some commonalities among the selected artists who are participating in this project, there is quite a variety of approaches to the street, as Schacter invited Street Artists, graffiti artists, public artists, designers, painters, illustrators, and billboard jammers. He says the multiplicity of interpretation was an intentional decision.

“For us, the most important thing was to have the whole range of artists we love and who are producing work in the public sphere included in the exhibition. As such, and as you say, it really is a very wide variety of artists, from graffiti bombers to conceptual artists, from muralists to urban explorers. With all of them, however, the crucial element within their practice is the public sphere, the richness of the city and urban space. This is the line that goes through all of their work, even if they may at first seem widely different.”

 

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 Chu. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Chu, an Argentine Street Artist and muralist whose colorfully painted four paneled abstraction remixes and jumbles the lines and shapes and removes all text, his map is meant to communicate the kinetic nature of street life. “I tried to create a map of Buenos Aires marking my usual movements around the city. I am used to moving around it a lot, from one side to other, and sometimes it is really chaotic and stressful. However it is also really where I get a lot of inspiration.”

A viewer of Chu’s graphic representation may be reminded of map making software and apps – possibly because of his graphic design training and his work as an animation director and illustrator in the digital sphere. He says that his digital art experience has grafted onto his vision of the physical street, “especially because I am working with layers and some of my choices of shapes come from that experience.”

Even as a painter, you can see the influence of the digital design world in Chu’s map. He says that when he thinks of city streets, he does see in his mind an aerial view of them from up above, but there is much more.

“My artwork for the exhibition is a kind of aerial abstract view of the city,” says Chu, “When trying to understand the city street more mentally, I believe today, it is something more complex than it was before. It is like some kind of constellation or hypertext thing that grows up in all directions, with axis and tons of layers.”

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CHU “Buenos Aires” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Housed in a section of Somerset House that has been closed off from the public for 150 years, the new exhibit is also its first and most visitors will never have hiked through the still unpolished space. It seems like the perfectly shabby cream-colored raw environment that graff writers and Street Artists might feel comfortable making art for. “It’s in the process of happening,” says Schacter as the team moves around him and up ladders to place the maps and straddle patches of exposed wall. According to Rafael, even the ceilings of the 18th century rooms are being restored to their original splendor, “with Yak Hair in the plaster!”

Brooklyn Street Art: Will people need to follow a map to find this show in the new wing of the Somerset House?
Rafael Schacter: Ha! Kind of. Our space hasn’t currently even got a name as it’s so new – and so old at the same time. We’re going to make big wooden arrows to make it clear but we kind of hope people get lost too, and then eventually find us!

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Detail of Gasius sculpture on the foreground. LA artist Cali Thornhill De Witt displays his flag pieces in the background. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

Brooklyn Street Art: Not all participants strictly adhered to the realm of cartography in the conception or execution of their map. Brad Downey appears to have drawn a face. Imagine what you would have gotten if this was a show about clouds.
Rafael Schacter: You’re right – the responses to our call for work has been super super varied. But that’s exactly what we wanted – that variety of work. We didn’t want just one understanding of the call, which was simply “map your space”.  Brad’s work is about finding visuals within maps, whilst others have tried to find maps within visuals! It is all simply about a different appreciation of space from the one we see in the top down, topographic, scientific standard.

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Brad Downey. Face (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

The Brooklyn Street Artist Swoon contributed one of her iconic images of a woman whose entire form is filled with what appears to be kutis and stilt houses along winding streets from top to bottom. Based on the Thai capital Bangkok, it is an example of the inner world Swoon is known for creating, reflective of a character’s history.

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Installation process shot. Swoon. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Brooklyn Street Art: It is always interesting to see a Swoon portrait that contains the city and the streets within the body of the subject, isn’t it?
Rafael Schacter: There’s a great quote from Swoon about her work being about the desire to more carefully examine the “relationship of people to their built environment”. Her work here is a prime example of this, a work in which the body and the city become inexorably intertwined – the experience, as she says, “of becoming part of the fabric of the city” visually mapped out.

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Installation process shot. Chu, Isaurao Huizar, Swoon and Mike Ballard. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about the film/s you have discovered and will be showing that fall in with the theme of map-making?
Rafael Schacter: The films we’re going to be showing are by a filmmaker named Marc Isaacs. They’re both set in London, both exploring the lives of “ordinary” Londoners. It is a very bottom-up, grass roots understanding of people’s lives.  That is exactly what we’re looking to do in the show – to explore the subjective and the hidden nature of the city.

Brooklyn Street Art: Who will be doing an artist talk about the project?
Rafael Schacter: We’re really excited about this. Our artist talk will be featuring Eltono, Filippo Minelli and Caleb Neelon. Again, a real diversity of artists and a diversity of backgrounds. Each of them have a great understanding of the public sphere and we’re excited to see what they will present.

Brooklyn Street Art: Given worldwide mapping and its ubiquity on devices we must ask this: In the future, will it be possible to get lost?
Rafael Schacter: I hope so! As the artist Itso said, and I paraphrase, true places can never be mapped.

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Installation process shot. El Tono working on his sculpture. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

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El Tono. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

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Installation process shot. Herbert Baglione on the right. El Tono on the left with EGS on the background room. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

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Installation process shot. Remed. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

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Installation process shot. Sixe Paredes on the left. Filippo Minelli on Center. Remed and OX on the right background room. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

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Installation process shot. Detail of Filippo Minelli’s map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

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Sixe Paredes with Detail of Filippo Minelli’s map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

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Detail of Cleo Peterson map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

 

“Mapping The City” Opens tomorrow for the general public at Somerset House in London, UK. Click HERE for schedule of events, hours, directions and other details.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

108 (Italy) Aryz (Spain)
Augustine Kofie (USA) Boris Tellegen (The Netherlands)
Caleb Neelon (USA) Cali Thornhill Dewitt (USA)
Chu (Argentina) Cleon Peterson (USA)
Daniel K. Sparkes (UK) Egs (Finland)
Ekta [Daniel Götesson] (Sweden) Eltono (France)
Erosie (The Netherlands) Filippo Minelli (Italy)
Gold Peg (UK) Graphic Surgery (The Netherlands)
Herbert Baglione (Brazil) Honet (France)
Horfee (France) HuskMitNavn (Denmark)
Ian Strange [Kid Zoom] (Australia) Interesni Kazki (Ukraine)
Isauro Huizar (Mexico) Isaac Tin Wei Lin (USA)
James Jarvis (UK) Jurne (USA)
Ken Sortais [Cony] (France) Les Frères Ripoulain (France)
Lucas Cantu (Mexico) Lush (Australia)
Malarko (UK) Martin Tibabuzo (Argentina)
Mike Ballard (UK) MOMO (USA)
Nano4814 (Spain) Nug (Sweden)
OX (France) Pablo Limon (Spain)
Petro (UK) Remed (France)
Remio (USA) Roids (UK)
Ron English (USA) Russell Maurice (UK
Shantell Martin (UK) Shepard Fairey (USA)
Sixe Paredes (Spain) Susumu Mukai (Japan)
Swoon (USA) Tim Head (UK)
Vova Vorotniov (Ukraine) Will Sweeney (UK)

 

Mapping the City
22 January – 15 February 2015
Somerset House, New Wing
Admission: Free

Contemporary cartographic art by international street and graffiti artists to be the first exhibition in Somerset House’s recently opened New Wing

 

 

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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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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

 
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A Preview Of “Mapping The City” at Somerset House (LONDON)

A Preview Of “Mapping The City” at Somerset House (LONDON)

Until you get lost in a city, you really do not know its true nature. And possibly your own.

Only at the moment of realization that you really have lost your way, your bearings, your inner compass, however temporarily, do you get a genuine sense of a place and your place in it.  What are these buildings, who are these people, what is that smell, why is that horn honking, is there a bathroom nearby, do I have any money, what do I do? Perhaps even “who am I?”.  No, you’re too confident and self assured for that.

 

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MOMO “Tag Manhattan” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

We’ve trekked through New York City thousands of miles by now, worn out many shoes, taken countless wrong turns, and been lost numerous times. It’s part of the adventure really. Especially in the 80s when it was all new to us; cacophonic and crazy and perplexing, unnerving, and seemingly neverending. Now, even with GPS on the phone it is completely possible to get lost.  And if you are not lost, you know it is your responsibility to keep your eyes open for someone who is.  It’ll happen.

This week we’re excited for London folks who get to look at a map, fifty of them actually. Curated by Rafael Schacter and his collaborative arts organization named A(by)P, Mapping the City is an ingenious little bit of inspiration and conceptualizing of our sense of place.

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Augustine Kofie “Overcast Angeles” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Who are these maps created by? Street Artists of course, as well as others from the graffiti art scene.

And these wildcats have taken many liberties with the assignment of “please make a map”. So many in fact that some of these maps would get you lost even further if you were to consult them. But there is plenty to be learned from them nonetheless. These maps may provide valuable insights into the highways and byways of some of these artist’s brains, now that you think of it, you beguiling detective.

The inaugural exhibition opens the New Wing of Somerset House – a wing that has been closed to the public for a century and a half, or roughly the time you have to wait for a cable repair person to come to your apartment. Rafael and his team are busy installing maps right now for the January 22nd opening, and we will have great “install” images and an interview with him next week for you to enjoy. But for right now, have a look at these examples of cartographic excellence from an international array of established and emerging artists for Mapping the City.

(full list of artists at the end of this posting)

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CHU “Buenos Aires” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

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Will Sweeney “Cabott Square” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

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Brad Downey. Face (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

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Caleb Neelon “Pickerville” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

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Shepard Fairey “Berlin Tower” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

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Jurne “Covalence” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

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Mike Ballard “The Ultra Poet” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

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Goldpeg “London is Burning” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

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Cleon Peterson “The Return” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

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Aryz “Map” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

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OX “Paris” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

108 (Italy) Aryz (Spain)
Augustine Kofie (USA) Boris Tellegen (The Netherlands)
Caleb Neelon (USA) Cali Thornhill Dewitt (USA)
Chu (Argentina) Cleon Peterson (USA)
Daniel K. Sparkes (UK) Egs (Finland)
Ekta [Daniel Götesson] (Sweden) Eltono (France)
Erosie (The Netherlands) Filippo Minelli (Italy)
Gold Peg (UK) Graphic Surgery (The Netherlands)
Herbert Baglione (Brazil) Honet (France)
Horfee (France) HuskMitNavn (Denmark)
Ian Strange [Kid Zoom] (Australia) Interesni Kazki (Ukraine)
Isauro Huizar (Mexico) Isaac Tin Wei Lin (USA)
James Jarvis (UK) Jurne (USA)
Ken Sortais [Cony] (France) Les Frères Ripoulain (France)
Lucas Cantu (Mexico) Lush (Australia)
Malarko (UK) Martin Tibabuzo (Argentina)
Mike Ballard (UK) MOMO (USA)
Nano4814 (Spain) Nug (Sweden)
OX (France) Pablo Limon (Spain)
Petro (UK) Remed (France)
Remio (USA) Roids (UK)
Ron English (USA) Russell Maurice (UK
Shantell Martin (UK) Shepard Fairey (USA)
Sixe Paredes (Spain) Susumu Mukai (Japan)
Swoon (USA) Tim Head (UK)
Vova Vorotniov (Ukraine) Will Sweeney (UK)

 

Mapping the City
22 January – 15 February 2015
Somerset House, New Wing
Admission: Free

Contemporary cartographic art by international street and graffiti artists to be the first exhibition in Somerset House’s recently opened New Wing

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Happy New Year 2015 – BSA Readers Choice Top 10

Happy New Year 2015 – BSA Readers Choice Top 10

Happy New Year to All! Thank you for inspiring us to do our best and to those of you who continue to support our personal art project / cultural examination, we extend our gratitude more than ever.

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Begun as an enthusiastic discovery of what was happening in a few neighborhoods in New York, we continued to expand our view into more cities around the world last year and into the history and future of the scene. We also aimed to provide you with a critical platform for examination of the street art/ graffiti / public art/ contemporary art continuum with interviews with artists, curators, collectors, organizers, observers and thinkers in the street, studio, gallery, and museum – trouble makers and taste makers alike.

In the end, it’s your observations and the conversations on the street that are most important. As we begin the year with over 300K fans, friends, and followers on social media platforms and 225 articles on the Huffington Post (thanks HuffPost team!), we feel like we get a valuable good survey of current opinions heading our way daily.

With in-depth interviews, investigative articles, opinion infused examinations, plain celebratory reverie, occasionally silly non-sequitors, and public appearances where we get to meet you, we get a good analytical look at an ever-evolving movement, glittery polish and warts and all.

As the new year begins we take a look back at the top stories chosen by BSA Readers in the last 12 months. Among them are two takeover pop-up shows in soon-to-be demolished buildings, a story about commercial abuse of artist copyrights and the effort to fight back, a street art community’s response to the sudden death of an activist street artist, a Street Art tourist trip, and a few inspirational women, men, and Mexican muralists.  Even though we published at least once a day for the last 365 days, these are the most popular pieces, as chosen by you, Dear BSA Reader.

10. Exploring Lisbon as a Street Art Tourist

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Os Gemeos / Blu (photo © Stephen Kelley)

9. Kara Walker and Her Sugar Sphinx at the Old Domino Factory

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Kara Walker. The artist portrait in profile with her sugary sphinx in the background. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

8. Women Rock Wynwood Walls at Miami Art Basel 2013

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Fafi (photo © Martha Cooper for Wynwood Walls)

7. A Sudden Secret Street Art House Party in Manhattan

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Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

6. Niels Shoe Meulman Balancing “Unearthly” Paintings

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Niels “Shoe” Meulman. Process shot. (photo © Adele Renault)

5. It’s All the Rage, Street Artists Filing Lawsuits Left and Right

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4. Shok-1 Street Art X-Rays Reveal a Unique Hand at the Can

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Shok-1 (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

3. 12 Mexican Street Artists Stray Far from Muralism Tradition In NYC

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Sego (photo © Jaime Rojo)

2. Army Of One, Inspiration To Many : Jef Campion

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Army Of One AKA JC2 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

1. Graffiti and Street Art Lock Up “21st Precinct” in New York

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Pixote in action. (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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12 Mexican Street Artists Stray Far from Muralism Tradition In NYC

12 Mexican Street Artists Stray Far from Muralism Tradition In NYC

Name Checking Rivera, Following Fairey

A new show of gallery work by Mexican street artists currently running in Manhattan’s Lower East Side questions the assumption that the nationalistic, social and political messages championed by that country’s famed muralism movement retain the impact and relevancy to artists a hundred years after the revolution.

To hear the story told by some, you may think that this is a generation following in the footsteps of the great syndicate of technical workers, painters, and sculptors who were funded by government programs in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s to promote a vast array of social and educational messages to a newly federalized citizenry. However people born in the last decades of that century comprise a much wider spectrum of individualists and self directed visual authors who are redefining narratives on streets in cities and their position as inheritors of that lineage may not have as much relevance to them as you thought.

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Sego (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“12 Mexican Street Artists” features a few of the names you recognize from that scene and leaves perhaps a couple of them out, but the scope is a sufficient sampling to give you an idea of the current moment of art on the streets. Included in the show are Saner, Bebo, Dhear, Fusca, Meca, Meiz, MilAmores, Minoz, Sego, Seher, Smithe and Undo. Photographer Christophe von Hohenberg, who organized the gallery show, draws your attention with portraits of this loosely connected group and there are a variety of works on paper by these  street artists, graffiti artists, muralists, and public artists who come from a multiplicity of backgrounds and disciplines.

While some in the group refer to themselves as “La Linea” and they may honor the  heritage associated with their countrymen Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueros, these world citizens are equally eager to differentiate themselves from those great muralists of the previous century.  Walking along the collection of mostly small works you’ll see folk influences here, sure, and so are traditional and sociological consideration. But don’t forget the surreal, the pop, the modernist.

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Sego in Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Never mind borders – we now are becoming accustomed to the staccato race across a boundary free digital fountain of inspiration. Seen through a Mexican filter, these are the same Internet fueled romances currently exploding on the Street Art scene globally; illustration, graphic design, cartoon, tattoo, skater culture, painting, stencil, the conceptual, even the sculptural.

Suffice to say this show of 12 Mexican muralists is an important inclusion in the story telling as the global street art explosion is re-defining how we look at public aesthetic discourse and public art making. A clear break has been made from the heralded lineage of Mexican muralism and this small show may be the first concentrated collection that demonstrates how far the new kids are wandering.

Speaking to a handful of them last week while they hit up walls in Manhattan and Brooklyn, we learned that these artists are as influenced by Fairey as they are Tamayo.

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Sego’s first trip to New York. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mexico City’s Sego began transferring his illustrations of animals and insects from his notebook to the street about 10 years ago when hanging with graffiti-writers on the street. A designer who has worked with corporate brands, he says the symbiosis of the natural and the man-made world is something he wants to engender with his creatures whether he is in a moneyed neighborhood or a poor and dangerous one.

If you ask him about his connection to the famed Mexican mural tradition, he honors it and then emphatically distances the work of his generation from it. “I was very inspired by them but not influenced by them. I respect their work and we have to learn from their monumental production but we have to be conscious of the fact that we live now in a different time and we have to really propose new things for today’s realities,” he says.

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Sego (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“The irony is that those murals were often created in governmental buildings that the poor and indigenous people didn’t have access to. So in terms of how strong the connections are between the people and the art when comparing what they did and what we do today, I feel like our connections are much stronger,” he explains as he talks about the Street Art that goes into any neighborhood and usually on its own volition.

One last thing – “Those muralists had the government behind them and the financial support so they could have as many assistants as they needed. The merits of what we do also rests on the fact that it is mainly D.I.Y. and has more of an independent spirit since we have to self-finance our work.”

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Sego (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mexico Citys’ UNDO, who considers all his work to be an attempt to reverse deleterious political realities, and Tijuana based Bebo, a philosophy and fine art major who discovered modern street art when he was a student at university, both have distinctly different approaches to their work and to how they label it.

Undo: It’s different for everybody. There are some who don’t feel comfortable with the term “muralist”, you know?
Bebo: And some people who don’t feel comfortable with the word “graffiti” or “street art”, but we all do walls. Everybody paints walls and we love it.
Undo: That’s just the terminology.

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BEBO at Dorian Grey Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Yeah it is, but you know some people do care very much about how their work is described. Particularly because Mexico has this wonderful muralism tradition and it is something you can be very proud to be associated with, so I thought perhaps you would want to say you are muralists, who do not do graffiti.
Undo: It’s not the same for everybody. Some of them started directly as graffiti artists and then they went to murals.
Bebo: It’s the way you grow up. You develop a personality in what you do and how you do it.  If you painted graffiti first, you always say you are a graffiti artist.  They don’t necessarily make the connection with the muralists.

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BEBO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As UNDO describes a recent stencil piece that depicts the Mexican Presidents chair with bloody spikes for legs, he criticizes what he sees as a false appearance of democracy and the onerous burdens that are placed upon the everyday citizens. Now he is studying economics and technology and how our lives are being changed by the intersection of the two.

You may think that this is a rebel who is eager to vandalize, but his social conscience tells him just the opposite when it comes to illegal walls. “It is attractive to think about you know, because of the rush of the adrenaline but the idea of tagging – I like that others do that but I don’t feel comfortable to trespass on other people’s walls,” he explains. Right now he’s trying to lighten his themes with a little hope, so he has cut and sprayed a stencilled dove.

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BEBO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“One day Acamonchi came to visit us and also Shepard Fairey came to our school and I said, ‘Okay, this is very easy for me’, ” says Bebo about how he first began making stencils and wheatpastes and putting them out on the street.

Bebo: You have to make a language and that is the interesting part so when I put something in the street I can say “Ah, that’s mine”.
Brooklyn Street Art: Right, it has to have your signature… and what is your typical subject matter?
Bebo: Foxes. I do all kinds of foxes. It’s a visual thing. I began to use canines like foxes and wolves in my work because I feel like they are designed perfectly in nature. Their symmetry is perfect, like the triangle that is formed with their eyes and their snout.

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BEBO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bebo: When I began researching foxes and wolves I moved beyond the purely graphic concept and I found the foxes to be even more attractive. They have the capacity to be in the here and the now, and it is very impressive. For example if the fox stops to smell a flower, he lingers and inhales it and relishes it. If he lies down to have a nap in the sun he really enjoys sunbathing. They do what they need to do at the time that they need to do it.

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BEBO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

UNDO says Fairey also influenced him.

Undo: Yeah I definitely have to say that I was inspired by OBEY because I didn’t know how to do it and I saw it and I said, “oh I’m going to try to do it”

Did he also see the well known Fairey speaking at a public forum?

“No I saw him on the web,” he says.

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UNDO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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UNDO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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UNDO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Mil Amores at Dorian Grey Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Fusca collab with Kazy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Fusca at Dorian Grey Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Smithe at Dorian Grey Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Meiz at Dorian Grey Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dhear, York CHK at Dorian Grey Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dorian Grey Gallery (photo © Jaime Rojo)

12 Mexican Street Artists is currently on view at the Dorian Grey Gallery. Click HERE for more details.

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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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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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This article was also published on The Huffington Post

HUFPOST-SWOON-BrooklynMuseum-Submerged-Screen Shot 2014-04-09 at 954 AM

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