All posts tagged: Jaime Rojo

BSA Film Friday: 12.06.19

BSA Film Friday: 12.06.19

f

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

Now screening :
1. “Realm: Shanghai” Vhils directed by Jose Pando Lucas
2. ARTRIUM, Moscow. (part 1)
3. Faith XVLII x Philadelphia, ‘The Silent Watcher’.

BSA Special Feature: “Realm: Shanghai” Vhils directed by Jose Pando Lucas

Like other fashion and luxury brands, certain contemporary art galleries are commissioning higher-end film quality videos to put muscle behind the marketing. Naturally, some artwork is camera-ready, infused with the potential for storytelling that creates the “rich content” that social media thrives on, and aids sales teams in the gallery space and at art fairs. Portuguese Street Artist Vhils has director Jose Pando Lucas along as sophisticated seer; The artist once again bringing a storyline into savvy focus, capturing your imagination with his.

“I remember the story I was told,” intones the mystical modern while staring into the camera. “That in time I would know my place in this world.”

The tone is perhaps meant to reassure an unsteady heart in a chaotic modern world, to center oneself in a dislocating environment. Viewed as an appealing sales tool, it also skillfully fortifies a self-image of the entitled powerful class who are pre-ordained or chosen to dominate and to lead. Anonymous and existential mournful stares through city windows and at bus stops, the artworks under construction are born of destruction; mottled, rough-hewn, defiant in the city’s margins.

Tradition struggles for its place amidst amazing new technology and rapidly growing infrastructure. The artist posits himself as working man pounding on walls, without airs of class. With this art in your home you are keeping in touch with the common, the everyday insecurities, for you are citizen. You can afford it because, after all, you are also a ruler.

“Nobody really got the answers they longed for.”

“Do we live as we dream?”

“Who else can hear me right now?”

Youthful, fashionable, under constraint, free of constraint, traditional and unconventional power players laying plans quietly, focusing a pent-up hunger for more. This is the ocean of wealth and capacity that will define epochs, not decades.

It ends sweetly, a bon mot that suggests a sense of human camaraderie among competitors of this race. But it is an uncertain connection, born more of wistful desire for a pleasant resolution than actual brotherhood or sisterhood.

“Yesterday is gone. This moment has ended.”

VHILS – REALM (Shanghai, 2019) A film by Jose Pando Lucas

ARTRIUM, Moscow. (part 1)

An educational insight into the people and the place.

Unusual in the Russian Federation, if not the commercialized western cultures which have willfully merged graffiti and Street Art culture to the point of quotidian, The Artrium combines a shopping mall with murals by Street Artists. What is remarkable is the list of names who regale this city skin with new pieces inside and outside, bringing to life an otherwise normal grey and beige block.

Astounding to discover in the center of Moscow, the outdoor gallery boasts artists such as Shepard Fairey, Felipe Pantone, Tristan Eaton, Ben Eine, PichiAvo, Okuda San Miguel, Pokras Lampas, Faith47, WK Interact, Faust, and Haculla. Average visitors may not grasp the remarkable collection of talents, but if you are shopping in this capital city, you wouldn’t want to miss this opportunity that captures a stunning moment in the rotation of the Street Art universe.

Faith XVLII x Philadelphia, ‘The Silent Watcher’. By Chop ’em Down Films

In the words of Faith XLVII;
‘I come from a country that is seething with the frustration of uncontrollable violence and woman abuse, xenophobia , class and racial divide.
And have moved to a country where there seems to be a fundamental crisis in the very soul of the nation.

We know this ache of our lands.
And we all know personal ache.
Everybody has their struggle to bear.

And with the weight of the world on our shoulders,
we must still be able to live with empathy
We must somehow keep our hearts open.

The words on this wall are a reference to the City Seal of Philadelphia with calls out for brotherly love.
This is no small commitment.

It also references a quote ‘Optimism is a strategy for a Better Future.’
Paying tribute to Noam Chomsky who was born in Philadelphia and is 91 years old this year. .

The harsh experiences of life can easily make us fall into a negative world view,
or inner psychological depression.
But we each have the ability to transform this base metal of knowing suffering,
into the gold of higher aspiration.

The name of this mural is ‘The Silent Watcher’
We can be the silent watcher, who knows, who loves and who endures.’

Read more
Icy & Sot: Studio Visit and New Faces of Humanity

Icy & Sot: Studio Visit and New Faces of Humanity

An in-studio visit today on BSA with Street Artists Icy & Sot. We were happy to check in with them and talk about new techniques they are discovering and creating to make art recently. Remembering the astounding sculpture they created during our curation of the opening exhibition at the Urban Nation museum a couple of years ago, where they created an eerie steel immigrant family silhouette; people who were harrowingly trying to pass through a steel wall. Recalling the power of that piece we were interested to see the evolution of this 2-D method of conveying the features of an individual yet representing the aspirations of humanity in a much broader way.

Icy & Sot. Studio Visit. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In the seven years since we first met them, having just arrived from Iran in Brooklyn, we have witnessed such a rigorous, considered set of ethical guidelines in their choices of subjects and techniques, even as we could see their personal and professional evolution. Minimalist, even spartan, they hue to a simple line that is personal and yet universal.

These new profiles in steel are an example of new tools they have personally crafted from discarded items.  

“We used to walk like every day around here,” says Icy as he motions out of the grimy factory window of their Brooklyn studio to the industrial truck traffic below on the street.

Icy & Sot. Studio Visit. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We found this rusty shovel and we said, ‘What are we going to do with this?’” he says as he twirls the wooden shaft in revolutions, the profile of a man cut out of the shovel’s blade. Once they collected a number of the discarded diggers and developed a way to saw them into shapes and smooth their rough edges, they decided to make a number of them.

“Then we did this series about working-class people,” Sot says. Lined up and leaning forward on the wall, the sculptures seem like they might talk in gruff and frank voices, might tell you about their toil, or speak of the soil.

“We wanted to cut them out like ‘workers’ profiles,” says Icy.

Icy & Sot. Studio Visit. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

They tell us about a grouping of the shovels shown this spring in Lisbon at Underdogs Gallery, owned and operated by Street Artist Alexandre Farko aka Vhils. The exhibition, named “Faces of Society” expanded the new cutting technique to include other materials like the brush of a hand-broom, the brass plates of the scales of justice, a sawed briefcase full of money, a pair of leather gloves smashed one upon the other. For followers of the artists, these new works all recalled the people-shaped holes in chain link fences that they have been cutting in recent years as well.

Icy & Sot. Studio Visit. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aside from this reductionist approach to art-making, they have also been developing a unique process for applying paint with the inner core of a cutout. By specifically smearing paint directly to the metal shape, pressing it on canvas or parchment, and pulling away, the remaining paint gives the impression of movement and action. One series called “Dreams” features the guys singular focus on color, and on metal to create streaming portraits in red, green, blue, yellow, bronze, copper, gold and silver.

The artists then showed us their technique for creating these new paintings, a simple and possibly profound revelatory form of portraiture that infers stories in its streaks, suggests individual character in each rhythmic pulling back of the painted blade. When on display at Underdogs, they called this series “What is Love?”. A good question, as usual.

Icy & Sot. Studio Visit. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Icy & Sot. Studio Visit. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Icy & Sot. Studio Visit. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Icy and Sot’s piece for “Faces of Society” at Underdogs Gallery in Lisbon entitled “What is Love II”
Read more
56 Years in the Game, ZLOTY Goes Big in Paris

56 Years in the Game, ZLOTY Goes Big in Paris

Ernest Pignon-Ernest, Jacques Villegle, Blek le Rat, Miss Tic, Jef Aerosol. Each of these important French Street Artists can rightly claim their mantel in the history of this movement. The one who is more often associated as being one of the first, if not the first Street Artist is Gérard Zlotykamien (Zloty).

Gérard ZLOTY Zlotykamien. Paris, 2019. (photo © Galerie Mathgoth)

His silhouettes or “Ephemeres” predate both Philadelphia’s Cornbread and New York’s Taki183 by a couple of years, so the argument goes, but due to the illegal nature of the practice and the fondness for the anonymity of graffiti writers, we may never know the answer. One thing is for sure, very few Street Artists from the 1960s are climbing 20 meters up a wall in Paris today, spray can in hand, to complete a new fresco.

Gérard ZLOTY Zlotykamien. Paris, 2019. (photo © Galerie Mathgoth)

Pushing 80 years old, Mr. Zlotykamien has been active since 1963 – a serious career of whimsical, funny and possibly frightening stick figures rendered with a quivering can and dislocated appendages afloat. Using the negative space as well, the elements gather as cells in a petri dish, scattered with meaning, an inner calculation. It’s childlike, subconscious, surreal, a cousin to Miró, perhaps, now looming above your head on this wall in a cozy neighborhood. We thought it may represent a man strolling with his walking stick.

Gérard ZLOTY Zlotykamien. Paris, 2019. (photo © Galerie Mathgoth)

After standing in the shadows of massive photorealistic and lushly illustrated murals of more recent vintage in cities around the world, the simplicity and purity of Zloty’s new work is frankly refreshing, and it reverberates. He says that he presented three options to members of this community, and this one was the one that was chosen. Now working here with Mathgoth Gallery, Zloty’s legal work is taking a grand scale.

Long Live Zloty!

Gérard ZLOTY Zlotykamien with the team. Paris, 2019. (photo © Galerie Mathgoth)
Gérard ZLOTY Zlotykamien. Paris, 2019. (photo © Galerie Mathgoth)
Gérard ZLOTY Zlotykamien. Paris, 2019. (photo © Galerie Mathgoth)

This project was realized by the Mathgoth gallery, with special thanks for the support of Paris Habitat and APY’ART paintings.

Read more
Ángel Toren & Joan Tarragó in Sant Vicenç des Horts, Spain

Ángel Toren & Joan Tarragó in Sant Vicenç des Horts, Spain

A duo of wall painters show us their very different approaches to graphic design, illustration, and sign painting in these two new pieces completed last week in Sant Vicenç des Horts, Spain.

Joan Tarragó. “fight plastic portal” Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. Barcelona 2019 (photo © Clara Anton)

Joan Tarragó paints his “Fight Plastic Portal” with his “fusion of graphic language, ancient symbolism and surf influences,” he says. The wrapping line-work its pulsating natural energy washes over you in waves of turquoise and curving black lines. If these patterns look familiar you may have seen his work on facades and skating courts in places like Miami, New York, Japan, and Bali.

Joan Tarragó. “fight plastic portal” Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. Barcelona 2019 (photo © Clara Anton)
Joan Tarragó. “fight plastic portal” Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. Barcelona 2019 (photo © Clara Anton)

Ángel Toren elevates the “tag” of traditional graffiti writers as interpreted by theater posters and cinemas by employing optical play, geometric sharpness, crisp layers of color and dimension. The skills are so focused that you forget this is by hand, by can, by brush.

Toren says his work “focuses on the tri-dimensionality of space, depth and perspective as a dance in the composition.” His 2 and 3-D color plays have appeared as abstract and pop-informed graffiti stays true to his roots while pushing the boundaries of the accepted idea of a piece that was first defined by train writers.  

The walls are part of an initiative from Contorno Urbano, a community based public art effort which is beginning a new edition of their 12 + 1 project in Sant Vinceç del Horts, featuring interventions on Rafael Casanova’s street walls. The temporary installations ride two months, to be replaced by a new duo.

Ángel Toren.“Infinite Space” Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. Barcelona 2019 (photo © Clara Anton)
Ángel Toren.“Infinite Space” Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. Barcelona 2019 (photo © Clara Anton)
Ángel Toren.“Infinite Space” Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. Barcelona 2019 (photo © Clara Anton)
Read more
BSA Film Friday: 11.29.19

BSA Film Friday: 11.29.19

f

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

Now screening :
1. INTI / “PRIMAVERA INSURRECTA”, Spring Insurrection
2. Sofles VS Rasko / Graffiti Kings 2019
3. Adry del Rocio at Berlin Mural Art Festival 2019
4. Between Street And Art: A Documentary About Meeting Of Styles / Germany 2019

BSA Special Feature: INTI / “PRIMAVERA INSURRECTA”, Spring Insurrection

From vandalizing public sculptures to handmade signs to waving banners, banging oil drums and pots and pans, lighting fires, chanting, and dancing in the streets – these are the insistent voices and perspectives coursing through streets in cities around the world, including these scenes from Chile last month. In one of the tales of people’s victory, these marches and mobilizations of citizens pushing for their rights and fighting state overreach actually worked this month and Chile’s protesters have won a path to a new constitution.

During the demonstrations Chilean Street Artist INTI was at work outside in Santiago as well, adding to the public discourse, with his new work entitled “Dignity!” It was a spring insurrection, now culminating in an autumn victory.

“Both the title and the elements that dress the female figure changed according to the pulse of chaos and civil disobedience that we experienced during the first days of mobilization, which was followed by a carnival of social demands that awaited the moment of becoming all one,” he says. You see the belted figure wearing symbols of resistance, destruction, construction; bullets, frying pan, boxing gloves, a hammer, a Chilean doll. The turtleneck holds the galaxy, an acoustic guitar at the back.

“Dignity!” is what people shouted. “A shout that, had it not been accompanied by insurrection, would never have been heard,” INTI says. “A shout represented in fighting tools, and our demands in a utopian vision of the new Chile.”

"PRIMAVERA INSURRECTA"

Santiago de Chile, Octubre 2019@galerialira

Posted by INTI on Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Sofles VS Rasko / Graffiti Kings 2019

Jake Anderson offers this compilation of two current Kings – Sofles and Rasko. “Two of the best graffiti artists i’ve witnessed. Not meant to be a competition, more of a comparison of two artist doing their thing.”

Adry del Rocio at Berlin Mural Art Festival 2019

Mexican muralist Adry del Rocio came to the Berlin Mural Festival this year. Known for her 3-D perspective painting (along with some Magic Realism from her home culture) del Rocio talks to the camera as she paints, relating stories about her childhood and her mother.

“I started very young. From four years old I won my first art contest. My mother always loved art. I admire her because she always has had this vision to push us.”

Even when del Rocio was discouraged by people who advised her to pursue another line of career, her mother’s advice what quite different. “Don’t listen to those people. You want to paint? You paint.”

Between Street And Art: A Documentary About Meeting Of Styles / Germany 2019

“Meeting of Styles is an international graffiti and street art festival that takes place in different parts of the globe. In its core it is a celebration of art, creativity and the spirit of community found in the street art scene. This year we went to the Meeting of Styles in Wiesbaden, Germany and had the opportunity to speak with some great creative minds and artists.” – from Eight Pixel Productions.

Read more
Happy Thanksgiving From BSA

Happy Thanksgiving From BSA

Best wishes to all the BSA Readers today as we celebrate Thanksgiving – filling our hearts with gratitude for your support and our stomachs full of turkey. Except for the vegetarian in the family, who is having veggie field roast! Happy T-Day everyone!

A turkey on a wall in the urban jungle at Urban Spree Berlin by an unidentified artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Read more
Thankful For Immigrants: Manolo Mesa paints Unity, Equality, and Inclusion in  Pennsylvania

Thankful For Immigrants: Manolo Mesa paints Unity, Equality, and Inclusion in Pennsylvania

Tomorrow the US marks the Thanksgiving holiday, our great non-religious gathering of families and friends that most people enjoy precisely because of its non-sectarian foundation. We break bread together and celebrate in a spirit of gratitude our brotherhood, sisterhood, goodwill, and the harvest.

Manolo Masa. “About The Community”. For SSJ Neighborhood Network. Erie, Pensylvania. November 2019. (photo © Iryna Kanishkeva)

For us at BSA, we’ll probably be thinking about this new wall in Pennsylvania that openly celebrates the many nationalities who live together here in relative harmony day after day, somehow building a sense of community despite our cultural differences.

Manolo Masa. “About The Community”. For SSJ Neighborhood Network. Erie, Pensylvania. November 2019. (photo © Iryna Kanishkeva)

Says the mural organizer Iryna Kanishcheva, “We managed to bring together a wonderful group of neighborhood residents, portraying a huge hug made up of all their ethnicities and ages.”

Initially drawn to the Rust Belt for jobs in industry and to escape famine, war, and economic disaster, the immigrants who first established the neighborhoods in this town of Erie were German, Polish and Irish. Later, some Greek and Russian. Today the new residents have been arriving from Bhutan, Syria, Iraq, the Congo, Somalia, Bosnia, Ukraine, Eritrea, and Liberia. Each immigrant story is uniquely theirs, and each uniquely American as it weaves with the stories of neighbors.

Manolo Masa. “About The Community”. For SSJ Neighborhood Network. Erie, Pensylvania. November 2019. (photo © Iryna Kanishkeva)

The question you may ask is “How do you say ‘Thanksgiving’ in all these new dialects in this town; The most common now are Nepali, Arabic, Swahili, French, Somali, Bosnian, Ukrainian, Russian, Tigrinya, and French- along with the existing vestiges of  German and Polish from earlier waves of immigrants.

Spanish Street Artist Manolo Mesa took his new photographic mural project quite seriously under the guidance of the folks at The Sisters of St. Joseph Neighborhood Network and asked for the most inclusive group of locals to gather to represent the current character of the city.”We gathered a group of neighbors, he took some pictures, and within a few days, the mural emerged.”   

Manolo Masa. “About The Community”. For SSJ Neighborhood Network. Erie, Pensylvania. November 2019. (photo © Iryna Kanishkeva)

“Each of these people feel proud of where they come from, live together and belong to their neighborhood,” the artist says on his Instagram page. “This Mural would not have been possible without you. A big hug.”

Manolo Masa. “About The Community”. For SSJ Neighborhood Network. Erie, Pensylvania. November 2019. (photo © Iryna Kanishkeva)
Manolo Masa. “About The Community”. For SSJ Neighborhood Network. Erie, Pensylvania. November 2019. (photo © Iryna Kanishkeva)
Manolo Masa. “About The Community”. For SSJ Neighborhood Network. Erie, Pensylvania. November 2019. (photo © Iryna Kanishkeva)
Manolo Masa. “About The Community”. For SSJ Neighborhood Network. Erie, Pensylvania. November 2019. (photo © Manolo Masa)
Manolo Masa. “About The Community”. For SSJ Neighborhood Network. Erie, Pensylvania. November 2019. (photo © Iryna Kanishkeva)

Artist: Manolo Mesa @manolo_mesaMural title:  About the Community  
Curator: Iryna Kanishcheva
Photographs: Iryna Kanishcheva 
Commissioned by SSJ Neighborhood Network

Read more
“New Orleans: Murals, Street Art and Graffiti” by Kady Yellow

“New Orleans: Murals, Street Art and Graffiti” by Kady Yellow

With extensive biographies, careful detailed analysis and research, and generous page real estate dedicated to art, artist, and process, “New Orleans: Murals, Street Art, and Graffiti Volume 1” by Kady Yellow is a thorough look at a street scene in one of the US’s most storied cities.

Kady Yellow – New Orleans: Murals, Street Art & Graffiti. Volume One. Self-published. 2019

The author tirelessly documents with a sense of the history while drawing out stories that illustrate the present in a scholarly way. A blend of left and right brained appreciation and analysis, this first project by the young author gives a sense of environment and community as it contributes to the practices of graffiti and art in the streets.

“It became clear that New Orleans has a remarkable new story to tell, a story of its street art scene,” says the author. “In telling that story, I sought to respectfully and delicately collect the history of the art in two neighborhoods of New Orleans by way of research and interviews with the artists themselves.”

With anthropologically framed storytelling applied to a very eclectic selection of art practices and styles, Perry includes personal accounts of aspiration, pragmatic descriptions of craft, and a frank examination technique – all presented within the context of a local story informed by the international one.

Interspersed in the book are school primer features like an urban art terminology glossary, a New Orleans timeline tracing benchmarks in its graffiti/Street Art history, a street mural map, and a number of small essays and media article quotations – each providing one more perspective for examining the nature of this organic people’s art movement. If a city’s graffiti/Street Art scene can be fairly captured in a moment, this book has clearly made it a priority and has more than succeeded.

Read more
Paradox & CPT.OLF @ Urban Spree Gallery Berlin

Paradox & CPT.OLF @ Urban Spree Gallery Berlin

Hidden in plain sight. Fucking one system and embracing another. Seeking the limelight as he hides in the darkness of Berlin’s night. This is paradox. This is Paradox.

Detail shot of the blown-up photograph greeting the exhibition. PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin.

A Berlin Kidz alumni who has been catching tags and surfing trains with photographer CPT.OLF for a handful of years, these two have created a simple exhibition to Urban Spree gallery this month. Bringing masks, video, a new photography book, prints, and a hooded figure cuffed an on his stomach, the gallery effect is spare, crisp, ill-boding, and entertaining. One may say that this presentation looks like a graffiti star is born.

PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Blending parkour with graffiti, he lowers himself south on a rope, spraying vertically cryptic symbols in primary colors down the side of a building, or steeple of a church, his aerosol style inspired by writers in places like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In many ways, this man is now claiming a mantle while in his physical prime, modeling one of his multiple horror batik masks atop a speeding yellow U-Bahn – tempting fate, testing limits, testing the viewers’ tolerance.

PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo ©Steven P. Harrington)

This is more than urban exploring: This is punching it down and signing its praise simultaneously, the pulsing testosterone deafening, relentless, defiant. This is anti-hero heroicism as performance without a net below – and quite possibly it is the adrenaline rush that claims your life. Looking at these images, following the video, for one thrilling moment, you want to be there as well.

Paradoxes abound.

PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
PARADOX x CPT.OLF Urban Spree Gallery, Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Read more
BSA Images Of The Week: 11.24.19

BSA Images Of The Week: 11.24.19

What is more consequential to you today as we head into Thanksgiving week?  Social justice? Economic justice? Environmental justice? If we’re looking at Street Artists who are making new stuff for the passerby these days, it looks like themes nature and animals and endangered humans pop up a lot.

Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, according to a report cited in The Gaurdian this week. Great job, people! If the steady build-up of environmental themes in Street Art is an indicator, we know that killing off the worlds’ animal species will kill us off too.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week from Berlin, and this time featuring AJ LaVilla, Bisco Smith, Blek le Rat, Damon, Tito Ferrara, Key Detail, Lee Quinones, Surface of Beauty, Jeremy Novy, 7DC and LMNOPI.

Tito Ferrara for East Village Walls. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Key Detail (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Lee Quinones. Lion’s Den Mural, 2018 (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Blek le Rat (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Bisco Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)
We can’t read this piece on a Berlin train…can you? (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Damon for 212 Arts. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Jeremy NOVY (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Surface of Beauty (photo © Jaime Rojo)
AJ Lavilla (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Unidentified artist(s) in Berlin (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Magnet wall in Berlin (photo © Jaime Rojo)
7DC (photo © Jaime Rojo)
LMNOPI (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Read more
Selina Miles Captures Bordallo II, FinDac, Millo and Case Maclaim at ONO’U 2019

Selina Miles Captures Bordallo II, FinDac, Millo and Case Maclaim at ONO’U 2019

There are times when an artist needs to be completely obvious to get their message out into the world, and Bordalo II is setting the tone for this year’s unofficial ONO’U festival in the gorgeous natural wonder called Tahiti. Using refuse he gathered around the islands of French Polynesia the Lisboan trash artist created a colorful replica of the oceans greatest predator, a shark, using the ocean’s greatest predator, trash.

Vandals at ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)

Thanks to filmmaker Selina Miles’ eagle eye we have a brilliant array of scenes today with your from Selina’s trip last month to this uncommon Street Art rendevous in paradise that is organized every year by ONO’U creator Sarah Roopinia.

You may recognize a few of these artists as alumni of previous editions and note the familiar tone that these images relate – like this one with Bordalo II and his co-conspirator modeling fluorescent plastic netting over their heads. It’s funny when you do it to entertain your friends, but not when it gets stuck on your head in the ocean for days or weeks or months and prevents you from eating, like when you are duck, for example.

Bordalo II. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Case Maclaim. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Case Maclaim. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Case Maclaim. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Case Maclaim. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Bordallo II. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Bordallo II. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Bordallo II. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Bordalo II. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Bordalo II. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Millo. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Millo. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Millo. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Millo. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
FinDac. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
FinDac. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
FinDac. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
FinDac. ONO’U 2019 (photo © Selina Miles)
Read more
Know Hope, Icy & Sot, and Eron Produce “The Distance Between” in Berlin

Know Hope, Icy & Sot, and Eron Produce “The Distance Between” in Berlin

Somber and sorrowful, this distance in between. Distance between people geographically, politically, ideologically. Distance between dreams and reality, between what is possible and what we achieve. Yet, we’ve seen that each of these distances can be bridged.

Addam Yekutieli/Know Hope . Icy & Sot . Eron “The Distance Between” BC Gallery. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

That allegory is plain and obvious in the new exhibition curated by Sasha Bogojev at Berlin’s BC gallery called “The Distance Between”.

Addam Yekutieli/Know Hope . Icy & Sot . Eron “The Distance Between” BC Gallery. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Perhaps because of their personal backgrounds, or in spite of it, three Street Art talents of today (one of them a duo) address a series of politically charged and ultimately human crises that play out on an international stage today. Because of their own nationalities, one may surmise their points of view quickly, but in arts’ expression we can find greater complexities, gradations, and subtleties.

Addam Yekutieli/Know Hope . Icy & Sot . Eron “The Distance Between” BC Gallery. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Iranian brothers Icy & Sot, Israeli Addam Yekutieli (aka Know Hope), and Italian aerosol artist Eron each come to the global migration crisis from distinct perspectives, each willing to explore the human cost of war, dislocation, grief, longing.

Addam Yekutieli/Know Hope . Icy & Sot . Eron “The Distance Between” BC Gallery. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unconventional pairings perhaps, these makers of metaphor and poetry and gesture, yet in their nexus lies a certain possible common understanding. In the minds of some these collaborations could be unthinkable, so their work product is charged with socio-politics by its mere existence. The understated presentation in the gallery setting is suitably serious and somewhat cramped, with room for the cracked smile of irony, and disgust.

Addam Yekutieli/Know Hope . Icy & Sot . Eron “The Distance Between” BC Gallery. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Icy & Sot. “The Distance Between” BC Gallery. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Icy & Sot. “The Distance Between” BC Gallery. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Eron “The Distance Between” BC Gallery. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Addam Yekutieli/Know Hope. “The Distance Between” BC Gallery. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“The Distance Between” is currently on view at the BC Gallery located at
Libauerstraße 14
10245 Berlin

Read more