A scintillating selection of images this week as we travel to a Jersey boardwalk and the erupting Brooklyn scene called Bushwick Collective. The trio of foxes by Bordalo is still rocking after a year, and the small flood of international and local talent has once again transformed walls in the formerly industrial, still gritty Brooklyn neighborhood that has welcomed about 400 artists to paint here since 2011.
We had the great honor of hosting a panel discussion with 5 Taiwanese street artists this Thursday as part of the first Artist Talk ever for Bushwick Collective’s 15th Anniversary. All week, those five plus one other OG from Taipei all painted walls here – ALLO, Vasstar, Candy Kuo, Colasa, Mr. OGay, and BLACK ZAO brought high technical skills and Taiwan flavor to the already international scene here. The long weekend events included roof parties, DJ sets, and a roiling, joyful open stage with hotly spit missives that pose and bear witness to life from some of our best rap and hip-hop artists who know the streets and rightly celebrate them. As usual, it’s so local, and so international here in Brooklyn.
Stylistically, the vertical rappellers have taken over NYC these last three years or so, and overnight Thursday, one of the highest focal points was taken over by a wildly striped crew of current visual kings with aesthetic and cultural currency – taking everyone by surprise with a rapid fire battle of styles side by side – see below.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Allo, Ashley Hodder, Black Zao, Bordallo II, Chris Haven, Dad Father Son, Dae Law, Degrupo, Dzel, EXR, H Kubed, Mad Vaillan, Mendoza, Nick Sweetman, Optimo, Psylent Mushroom, Robert Vargas, Shane, Smoe, Stuo Backup, Werds, and Zach Curtis.
Welcome to BSA’s Images of the Week – our selection of art on the streets that collectively document the evolution of the scene from our perspective.
It’s a rainy Memorial Day weekend in New York and many picnics, war memorial events, camping trips, hikes in the Catskills, shares on Long Island, and strolls to the park are impacted, with the dreary cold weather canceling many plans. We start our collection of photos by Jaime Rojo with a series of heroes and villains on the street – if only real life decoded the world so simply. Commemorations on Memorial Day often present a narrowed definition of loss – focusing primarily on people who fought wars in the military in defense of liberty, god, country, laudable ideals, or a mix of these. We also think of the so-called civilians who get killed during war, including those who are defenseless.
Here is our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Anna Frants, DARA, EXR, Frankie Botz, Fumero, Georgi Collagi, H Kubed, Ian Cinco, INFOE, Iris Van Harpen, Jeff Beler, Joseph Iroshi, Kams S Art, Katya Goltseva, Laser Cats, Lenna Art, Loretoh, Man in the Box, Manuel Alejandro, Nandos Art, Natural Eyes, Pressto, Sebastion Campnario, Trades Only Bro, and Zimer NYC.
It’s our first snowy December day with swirling clouds of the white snowflakes swirling around you with cigarette butts and potato chip bags and pine snippings from the Christmas tree salesman name Pierre on you block. The First night of Hanukkah is tonight — best wishes to our Jewish friends and families across the city. Menorah lightings and Festival of Lights gatherings are popping off in Brooklyn at Grand Army Plaza, down at the South Street Seaport, and over on Pier 17, where a LEGO menorah is doing what LEGO does best: being quietly indestructible. Expect music, food, treats, face painting — the whole megillah.
The holiday hum (and humbug) carries through the month with holiday markets at Union Square, Columbus Circle, and Bryant Park. For all your ice capades, New York offers Bryant Park (Midtown), Wollman Rink (Central Park South), LeFrak Center at Lakeside (Prospect Park), World Ice Arena (Flushing Meadows–Corona Park), and the FDR Drive (Lower East Side) after it floods, weather permitting. Yes, that tree is lit and doing its annual job of reminding everyone they live in New York, not wherever they came from. Add in these amazing periodic Fifth Avenue street closures when you can literally run on the streets — these rare moments when pedestrians get the upper hand — and the city briefly becomes what it’s always threatening to be: festive, walkable, and almost humane.
Of course, depending on which headline you read, all joy is apparently set to expire on January 1. Certain tabloids would have you believe the city is one Mamdani mayoral term away from collapse, chaos, and moral freefall. That’s one way to welcome the new guy. But if you’ve lived here longer than five minutes, you already know the script — New York absorbs the panic, shrugs off the noise, adapts, and keeps moving. Ideally on foot. Preferably with a hot chocolate.
Zohran Mamdani is a New Yorker, part of the long line of immigrants and children of immigrants who built this city and, frankly, the country. While we’re at it — love to our Muslim friends and families across the five boroughs. New York works best when everybody’s in the room. Happy Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, Kwanzaa — and to everyone else, good luck making it to January.
This week, our interview with the streets has a Miami hangover and a New York winter cold snap (slap), with new murals, graffiti pieces, and street art conversing with you as you march to the subway, laundromat, or ice-skating rink. Artists and writers and street scholars this week include: Atomik, Clown Soldier, Cruze Oner, Daniel Lloyd, Dreamscape, EXR, Hiero Veiga, INFOE, Kams Art, Lexi Bella, Mesper, Mr. June, Mucky, Shepard Fairey, Tati, Tesoe, Werds, Zoot, and Zwon.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Photographer Jaime Rojo hit the ground running upon getting back to dirty old Brooklyn this week from a Berlin/Prague tour. Lots to report from there on the walls, in the gallery, and in the museum spaces – and more to come for you to enjoy. In the meantime, here’s what he found on the streets of NYC; a mash-up of handstyles, graphics, pop cues, fine-art chops, humor, sarcasm, reverence, and straight-up rebellion — cultures colliding and talking back.
We begin the show with a new portrait of the much-loved graffiti and street art photographer Martha Cooper, based on a photo by Corey Nickols and painted by Swed Oner (Mathieu Taupenas) in Bushwick with Joe Ficalora and the Bushwick Collective by his side. Born in the south of France in the 80s, a graffiti writer in the late 90s, Swed Oner is now known for his hyper-realistic, monochrome portraits of people transformed into religious icons – featuring a “halo” motif for framing.
Featuring Dzel, EAZV, EXR, Gloom, Homesick, IMK, ISB, Jodi Da Real, KAMZ, Mike King, Notice, RIP Money, Shwan McArt, Silent, Smaer, Two Five, VENG, Warios, Werds, and ZOZS.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week, LIVE from New York! Gorgeous weather for the NYC Marathon today, where more than 50,000 runners will go through all five boroughs. Still that doesn’t beat the number of costumed freaks, monsters, fairies and K-Pop Demon Hunters at the Village Halloween Parade, where over 80,000 costumed participants (and around 2 million spectators) flooded the streets Friday Night.
On the street and on the subway, in corporate and boutique offices, in the library, and in the frozen food aisle of your grocery store, Friday was full of children and adults in costumes prancing and preening, looking for goodies, posing for pictures, and battling the autumn winds that feel like they could lift and carry some small children and dogs that were not tied down. Shout out to the hot babe in fangs and clever cleavage leaning out the window of her Escalade at the stop light on Delancy Street yesterday afternoon. Despite all of these jubilant and tempestuous personalities parading across the city, there is only one Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, the New York punk rock band that gave a free concert at Tomkins Square Park leading up to Halloween.
In other number news, reinforcing the growing disconnect between festivity and hardship across the city, nearly 3 million New Yorkers receive food aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the federal government shutdown is cutting off their food, as of yesterday. The New York State Governor Kathy Hochul declared a food state of emergency. It makes us all wonder who the true monsters are.
Speaking of politics, roughly 370,000 New Yorkers have already cast early ballots in this new mayoral race. As the country leadership leans hard right, it looks like New York City is going left, like the Netherlands did this week.
For a few more days this week, BlankMagBooks (17 Eldridge Street, Chinatown) — run and curated by Jun Ohki — is featuring photos by Sonny Gall from her newly launched book 99 of New York, with texts by Mila Tenaglia. The streetwise romance of this photographer’s eye draws the viewer into often overlooked streets and scenes of New York with acute observation, adoration, and a sense of possibility. With texts that contextualize and accentuate the images throughout the slim and ample hardcover, the reader comes to see everyday scenes anew. If you’ve spent any time amid the post-industrial rubble of Brooklyn and Queens—graffiti, clouds, pigeons, basketball courts, and construction cranes—you’ll recognize that Gall has captured them precisely as they are lived.
Here is our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring AKUD, BornOner, ENT, EXR, Frodrik, Humble, Never Satisfied, OPE TFP, One Mizer, SOULS, Tess, VENA, Vers 718, Zero Productivity, and Zooter.
First, some housekeeping: over the past few weeks, you’ve probably noticed we’ve been publishing less—and the site’s been buggier than Mayor Adam’s re-election campaign, the MTA’s subway announcement system, or a 2025 White House policy rollout. You’re right. BSA is in the middle of major technical upgrades, and it’s been a lift. Thanks for your patience. We’re entering our 18th year—more than 7,000 articles, 60,000 images, thousands of artists across six continents—and we’re focused on making our next chapter faster, cleaner, and steadier.
Keeping street art’s genesis years in view as we look at today’s evolving scene, the New York Times arts section declares the ’80s are back!—although a mostly privileged, mostly white version of the ’80s. “Downtown/Uptown: New York in the Eighties,” staged in a Beaux-Arts townhouse at 19 East 64th Street, packages art-school cool, downtown interdisciplinarity, and a confident graffiti-adjacent chic for polite Upper East Side viewing. It wasn’t thoroughly subversive at that time; the scene was perpetually status-signaling, and getting your name on the list at the door was paramount. Yet that mid/late-Boomer, budding cappuccino crowd could still be transgressive and forward-leaning, incorporating new tech and future-minded theory. The labels arrived in a rush: Neo-Expressionism, Appropriation, Neo-Pop/Commodity art, Simulationism (Neo-Geo), photo-conceptual work, street-adjacent practice, and graffiti, – or would that be neo-graffiti?
Someone once said of the ’60s, ‘If you remember them, you weren’t there’—and everyone laughed. Bowie said he barely remembered recording Station to Stationin the 70s, and a similar collective bemusement winked at the excesses of that time as well. So as we wind up the wooden banister on the Upper East side we wonder how many memories of the cocaine-ecstasy-fueled Downtown 80s club scenes still remain. With a lot of elbow room, you are welcome to gaze upon these paintings, sculpture, photos, and works on paper by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ross Bleckner, Francesco Clemente, Eric Fischl, Guerrilla Girls, Peter Halley, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cady Noland, Ricky Powell, Richard Prince, David Salle, Kenny Scharf, Julian Schnabel, Andres Serrano, Cindy Sherman, Haim Steinbach, Tseng Kwong Chi, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, and Christopher Wool. Also, another question, if we may: Where were Uptown and Downtown specifically located at this time?
This new show shares a zip code with a collector base, a certain moneyed nostalgia, but little DNA with the scrappy, cross-pollinated Times Square Show of 1980, which actually mixed uptown and downtown with gusto, drawing from born-and-bred New Yorkers and informed by the street. A few artists, such as Haring and Basquiat, were also featured in that show, but the selected significance of the decade is presented with a different focus here. Fittingly, the paper of record just ran a valentine for the new show titled “New York’s Art Stars of the ’80s, Curated by One of Their Own.”
Ever clubby, and somehow, always away with friends this weekend.
As a related corollary, it was a pleasure to hear this week a panel led by one of the original ‘Downtown’ art critics, Carlo McCormick, in what was once SoHo—the late-’80s/’90s crucible where clubs bled into galleries, DIY shows met the street, and performance tangled with protest. Sorry, it is still Soho. At Great Jones Distilling Co., a short walk from the old Tower Records, and smack in the middle of a ghostly cloud of SAMO poetic missives, McCormick underlined that “street art” is a broad field with many lineages and methods, usually without permission or gallery contacts. His guests traced that arc: Ron English, an early subvertising billboard hijacker; Lady Aiko, a later-generation artist working stencils and character-driven iconography; and DAZE, an original NYC train writer from the late ’70s/early ’80s who carried yard energy into studios and the city. The talk acknowledged a period of collaboration and volatility—experimentation, AIDs related grief, fear and rage, thumping hedonism, hip-hop and punk, a rebirthed bohemia—and a city that has drifted steadily over decades toward finance-first priorities, even as artists kept testing the edges of public space and fought to stay here.
Here is our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring A Presidential Parody, Adam Dare, Bunny M., Captain Eyeliner, DZEL, EXR, Fer Suniga, HekTad, HOMESICK, MACK, Mario P, MR KING15, NO MORE WARS, RATCHI, SPAR, VES & Friends, and ZWONE.
The sidewalks sizzle and the city purrs with heat and hustle. It’s your daily movie out here.
July is in full swing, and the summer nights are a little looser around the edges between important holidays and commitments. At MoMA, the Friday crowds are drifting through galleries to the low thump of downtown DJs tucked into corners of the atrium—spinning ambient loops, soulful edits, and the occasional dance-floor memory into the marble echo chamber. Outside, the sculpture garden murmurs with art talk… and a sort of slow-motion flirtation.
The NYC mayoral race is, in its way, a kind of performance art—though less conceptual than cynical – with people from every crevice finding fault and stirring fear about the presumptive winner, Mandami. With prices everywhere still climbing, the city’s rhetoric is starting to sound like an old podcast that you thought was deleted. Yak yak yak. On the national stage, the Trump saga soldiers on—ever orbiting a surreal mix of court filings, celebrity fallout, international threats, hatchet budget cuts, and the ever-present Epstein shadows. With this constant drone of chaos, much of this is no longer shocking, just strangely ambient, a screensaver cycle. Ignore these proceedings at your peril.
On the walls and rooftops, there’s a different story unfolding. Some have observed that graffiti writers whose names once seemed fossilized in memory or confined to old flicks and zines—have been spotted again, dropping clean throwies and sharp tags on buffed surfaces from Bushwick to the Bowery. You’ll be biking past an auto-body shop or abandoned roll gate and do a double-take: Was that fresh?
The sun bounces off chrome and scaffolding, and somewhere near Broadway and Broome, you catch yourself squinting up at a cast-iron cornice—gargoyles crouched in cool shadows. Is that a cherub? Is it… flipping you off? Perhaps it’s just the heat, or the cumulative effect of too many hateful headlines. Don’t stop. Rooftops beckon, turntables whirl, community gardens bustle. It’s not utopia. But it’s yours.
Here’s a glimpse of NYC graffiti, street art, and murals captured in Red Hook, Gowanus, Bushwick…in this week’s survey, including Chris RWK, DeGrupo, Espo, EXR, Humble, Ian Cinco, John Echo, Manuel Alejandro, Mdot, MSK Kings, Qzar, Red Rum, Rime, Sharpy, Tess, and Zimer.
Here in Brooklyn we move through a lush delirium—a rhapsody in blue and green, thick with summer and song, strident prose, a bit of jazz. In certain pockets of creativity the aerosol fumes from many a graff writer and mural painter are landing like a cloud on your sweaty skin and sliding off into the sewer below. The echos of Saturday night stereo is pounding in our memories with the adorable Atlanta hedonism of Bunna Summa and the swooning Puerto Rican charms of suavicito Bad Bunny. Vices and voices lilt through the neighborhood at night; a humidity induced dream that confirms we are all “New Yol” now.
Yes, the world feels upside down—truths twisted, systems slipping, war drums on many fronts—but for now it’s summer in Brooklyn, and we’re still in love. So let’s take our time… dance in the streets, drift across rooftops, wander the train tracks. Let the city hold us a little longer.
Here’s a glimpse of NYC graffiti, street art, and murals captured in this week’s survey, including Below Key, Ed Roth, EXR, Fumero, ICU463, Klepo One, Luch, Never Satisfied, Nick Walker, Sonni, TQRY, and Wizard Skull.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Eid Mubarak to all observing today. Happy Puerto Rican Parade to todos nuestras hermanos y hermanas. We’re grateful to live in a city that celebrates many traditions with such heart. That’s why it’s always perplexing to see Ken and Barbie-types on the national stage vociferating about DEI as if it were a mold on the back wall of your refrigerator. Equality has always been the point.
Banksy’s recent mural in Marseille, France, continues the Bristol artist’s tradition of indirect yet emotionally charged communication. Painted on Rue Félix Frégier, the black-and-white stencil depicts a lighthouse, accompanied by the phrase “I want to be what you saw in me.” Cleverly integrated into its environment, the mural uses the shadow of a nearby street bollard to serve as the lighthouse’s beam—an understated but remarkable visual device.
Interpretations vary, but we’ll venture one: it reads as an oblique critique of nations or institutions once seen as guiding lights—sources of moral or cultural leadership—that now appear directionless or diminished. The lighthouse, in this reading, becomes a symbol of lost purpose. Aware that no one looks to it for guidance anymore, it expresses a quiet resignation, perhaps even grief. Poor lighthouse. The Smithsonian magazine says its just a straightforward plea for attention from the artist. The view may seem surprising, but more astonishing is that the Smithsonian weighed in at all.
Now it’s your turn to be the armchair psychologist or social analyst.
This week in break-up news, the U.S. President and the Twitter tycoon who would be king took their grievances public, trading jabs on social media in a battle to tarnish each other’s image. Each was presumably trying to damage the other’s perception in the public eye, although that hardly seemed necessary. As George Clooney’s Edward R. Murrow put it last night, live on Broadway and live broadcasted on network television: ‘Good night, and good luck.’ As ever, it’s more about control and good money than anything else. It makes you wonder if either one of these guys could be sworn in as president in January ’29. Has a certain ring to it, no?
And here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 2DX, Adam Fu, Atomiko, Below Key, Chris Haven, EXR, HEFS, Jason Haaf, Quaker Pirate, Scoote LaForge, Tom Bob, and Werds.
Spring 2025: Growth creeps in — leaf by leaf, blade by blade, decree by decree. You barely notice the buildup, but gradually it gathers, until suddenly, you’re surrounded.
On New York walls right now, you’ll spot a mix of collage-style cut-and-paste work, aerosol rendered full fantasy – and a surge in vertical graffiti done while hanging from ropes. This high-risk approach echoes Brazil’s Pixação scene, where writers have been scaling buildings since the ’80s to get their monikers out there running north to south; a technique later amplified by crews like 1UP and Berlin Kidz in Europe. Now, numbers of New York graffiti writers are embracing this daring vertical style — a radical shift that some see clearly, while others barely register. Across styles and mediums, there often appears a recurring presence of scarlet, crimson, rose, magenta, purple, pink, and fuchsia. These grab attention an resonate at deeper undercurrents — power, sacrifice, passion, and perhaps even the stirrings of revolution.
Here are some images from this week’s visual conversation from the street, including works from Werds, Humble, EXR, Great Boxers, Dzel, Meres One, Go, Man in the Box, DK, Luch, 1440, Fridge, El Souls, Natural Eyes, Lisart, Ilato, YOSE, Miki Yamato, HypaArtCombo, Senator Toadius Maximus, HOH22, Hound, Mr. Must Art, Lucia Dutazaka, and Tess.
This week, St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue was suddenly flooded with pealing bells and congregants. In a historic moment for the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV, born in Chicago, was chosen, following in the footsteps of his predecessor Francis and his namesake Leo XIII, who was widely admired for his steadfast advocacy for migrants and laborers at the turn of the 20th century. Many observers have noted that the selection of an American pope may reflect a conscious decision by the College of Cardinals to offer a moral counterbalance to the growing tide of authoritarianism and exclusionary politics seen in some of today’s global leadership. With roots in a city shaped by immigration, industry, and social struggle, Leo XIV arrives at a time when such grounding may prove especially relevant. Best wishes to all of us.
So here’s some of this week’s visual conversation from the street, including works from Homesick, Gabriel Specter, Clint Mario, Werds, IMK, EXR, Jorit, Wild West, JEMZ, Ribs, Diva, Ellena Lourens, APE, NOEVE, ENEKKO, Rene, Happy, Disoh, Peuf, and Off Key.
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. Congratulations to our Muslim neighbors in NYC on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, and we wish them peace, joy, and blessings as they mark the end of Ramadan.
The popping rumble of customized mufflers is back on the streets, a rite of spring as familiar as purple crocuses and snowdrops pushing through browned grass, old 40 bottles, crumpled chip bags, and cigarette butts. The warming weather softens the ground and lets loose the mingled scents of hydrangea and dog pee. And once again, Saturday night Romeos are rolling down their windows, cruising slow, and blasting tracks like Jack Harlow and Doja Cat’s new banger “Just Us”—hoping someone’s paying attention.
On the street art tip, you’ll see Faile has come back with some of their new and old icons remixed, Trump and Elon are widely critiqued in caricature, and vertical graffiti is the new horizontal.
We continue with our interviews with the street, this week including Faile, John Ahearn, CRKSHNK, Modomatic, Qzar, EXR, Ollin, Sto, REW X, Want Pear, Batola, Ooh Baby, Thug Life, and Jayo.
“Water…..is a human right” We have grown accustomed to headlines about billionaires, agribusiness empires, and multinational corporations treating water as …Read More »
A Jahru portrait rarely stops at resemblance; it searches for character, purpose, and presence. His reputation for revealing the character …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
