You are invited Thursday to join BSA Founders Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo for a very special BSA TALKS program with the conscience-raising and conscious Street Artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh as we look at her work and talk about her campaigns addressing catcalling and marginalization, invisibility and intersectionality, “America is Black” and “Stop Telling Women to Smile”.
We know it will be a lively and LIVE talk at this summer’s blockbuster exhibition Beyond the Streets in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Curated by Roger Gastman, Evan Pricco, David “Chino” Villorente, and Sacha Jenkins, this massive 150 artist, 100,000 square foot exhibition traces the graffiti/Street Art scene from the last 5 decades as wells as the Kings and Queens who claim the mantels of many titles in this global grassroots D.I.Y. arts scene in the streets.
Please
join us Thursday as we welcome one more!
BSA TALKS with Tatyana Fazlalizadeh at BTS July 25th
A limited number of free tickets are available to BSA TALKS with Street Artist and activist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh at BEYOND THE STREETS this Thursday 7/25 at 7 pm in Brooklyn.
1. Go to Beyond the Streets website (button below) 2. Enter “1” General Admission ticket 3. Click “Get Tickets” 4. Scroll down to “Have a coupon?” section 5. Enter this code BSATF to get your free ticket
Dog days of summer
be damned, the Street Art in all of its fabulous illegal varieties, the true Vox
Populi (and self-advertisment) persists and insists through the streets this
July.
On the topic of illegal, we’ll state it again for the many persons who have an incorrect impression – Street Art, by definition, is illegal. If it is not illegal, please do not call it Street Art. That work you are looking at is probably a mural. Unfortunately we’ve seen some recent flagrant misuses of the term by some folks who probably should know better.
Good to see “Hysterical Men” here in New York, after
admiring the campaign from Philly. The artwork reminds us of Robbie Conal as
well, who is reliably skewering public officials with his wilting depictions of
them on posters on the street. This week we also were reminded of Chicago’s Dont
Fret when we saw the work of Matt Starr, with his textual witticisms. Don’t get
us wrong, its not a criticism to have similar work – it’s just an observation.
Finally, considering the treatment of immigrants, the mounting
fascism, racism, misogyny, and rageful ignorance being modelled and engendered
from the highest offices in the land, we’re shocked that, with a few notable
exceptions, Street Artists are not taking those messages to the streets. So
much for its reputation for being activist. Not so much.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Benjamin’s Brother, Bones, Cammix Vx, Captain Eyeliner, Diva Dolga, Domingo Zapata, Dr. Nothing, Hysterical Men, Invisible Essence, Little Ricky, Matt Siren, Matt Starr, Mattew Wythe, Mr. Djoul, Obey, Praxis, Raddington Falls, Rammellzee, Sara Lynne Leo, Sinclair, Sunflower Soulz, The Postman Art, and You Go Girl!
Bringing their unique blend of old-world European white classical sculpture and the bright side of modern urban vandalism to Barcelona, the artistic duo PichiAvo paints the Greek goddess Athena engulfed in bubble tags. Freshly finished this week across 125 square meters, the mural depicts a particular version of the Pallas Athena’s sculpture in the Austrian Parliament that is in Vienna.
The Great Mother Goddess of wisdom, useful arts, and prudent warfare here emerges from a layered cloud of tags drawn from the artists’ friends and peers, local tributes, and a wide range of styles from modern graffiti practice. Here in Esplugues de Llobregat the multi-story mural graces a student residence designed by the Portuguese architect José Quintela da Fonseca.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. WK Interact in NYC by Fifth Wall 2. Rub Kandy & Biancoshock: “All the Lights” 3. Not Rented To Humans: Grip Face 4. Elrow’art: Kaos Garden with Okuda San Miguel and Paco Osuna
BSA Special Feature: WK Interact in NYC by Fifth Wall
“It was some sort of freedom,” says WK in this retrospective of NYC locations that he tries to recall with original photo in hand overlaying the original city spot. For some of us, the memories of all of these spots are sufficient, as the city was different then – perhaps more wild and dirty. For WK, the stories and the memories continue to evolve.
Well shot and edited, its a mature way to let the artist speak and evocative of his current manner.
Rub Kandy & Biancoshock: “All the Lights”
In the face of sexy new machine-learning and Artificial Intelligence
– and the auxiliary tales related to art-making, perhaps this video is a way of
preserving the authentic feeling of human discovery in its unglamorous
basicness. Not to overplay this, but this conceptual piece is a meditation on
the underwhelming mechanized aspects of industry, a blatant taunt of banality
in the midst of high gloss unrealness.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conceptual mundanity of the
Italian urban artists Rub Kandy and Biancoshock,
who here demonstrate how to create electricity with a generator in an abandoned
industrial space. It’s a marvelously underwhelming demonstration of the means
of production. To “jazz” things up they throw in intermittent blasts of pop-star
banality as well, sprinkled with blinky graphics.
…Turn up the lights in here baby Extra bright, I want y’all to see this Turn up the lights in here, baby You know what I need Want you to see everything
Not Rented To Humans: Grip Face
First, they look like run down sheds, these new wooden
structures in high weeds – possibly stopped mid-construction, perhaps during
the last economic downturn. Here the missed opportunity of housing, suddenly
coupled with the found opportunity of art exhibition!
“There’s
something both bizarre and magical in abandoned places,” writes Grip Face in
the description of this video. “The course of time invades them, colonizes
them, makes it into its own. The invisible imprints impregnate the walls and
the experiential trace of past inhabitants slips through the cracks like winter
would through a badly insulated window.”
Elrow’art: Kaos Garden with Okuda San Miguel and Paco Osuna
A warmup video for
multi-disciplinary artist Okuda San Miguel and dj/producer Paco Osuna and their
creative intermingling of avant-garde aesthetics with electronic music to
create their vision of ‘The Garden of Delights’. The premiere of the artistic
partnership of Ink and Movement and elrow will be on September 28 at Amnesia
Ibiza. Here’s a taste of things to come!
Moscovite graffiti artist/muralist Konstantin Danilov, aka ZMOGK, is our third in a row from the French “Wall Street Art Festival” this summer. A late 90s graffiti artist working primarily with the letter form, ZMOGK has deconstructed it and pushed it through a prism or two, now nearly entirely abstract. Look closely at the finished walls below and you may see why he has titled this one, “Butterflies”
One of the few Russian graffiti/Street Artists that you hear of outside of his mother country, he has participated in a number of Street Art festivals and jams in the last few years. On this commercially owned housing complex in this relatively small town of 13,000 named Lieusaint, the artist channeled his emotions, organizers say, bringing vibrant dynamic colors in a rather chaotic composition.
A press release says that his “first approach is based on intuition and the subconscious mind. This corresponds to the initial phase of working on a radically free canvas, when he closes the logical and rational mind and lets his hand draw the lines while focusing on his feelings.”
People chased from their homes by wars in places like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are now part of a larger conversation in Europe as countries struggle to accept the massive numbers of refugees in the last decade. On the Greek island of Lesbos, the overcrowding of a camp named Moria has produced Olive Grove, a temporary place full of tents, but little nature.
With a goal of softening the hardship for people living here, Icy and Sot raised money through a print sale online and with the proceeds purchased fresh flowering plants to give away. “It was wonderful to see that actually put a smile on peoples’ faces for a moment,” they say in a press release.
While they have traveled around many international cities in the last five years creating site-specific interventions that contemplate issues of immigration, environmental degradation, and endangered species, the artists felt that the gravity of this place merited something more than just an art installation.
Working with a group calledMovement on the Ground and with Doug Gillen of Fifth Wall TV in tow, the two helped build raised gardens and planted vegetables, in addition to handing out many potted plants. Today we have images of persons in the camp from Icy & Sot along with the new video, one of Doug’s best.
It’s a simple act full of symbolism and invokes the power of the natural world in healing our many wounds. “We know this project didn’t really change anything for those people,” the say, “They come to Europe to be far from the dangers of war, far from hearing bomb explosions, for a better future for their kids. They have had an exhausting journey and they deserve better. They deserve our support.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. “Melania”, Directed by Brad Downey 2. Said Dokins. “Runaway Writings” Solo Show 3. “Who’s the Daddy?” A film by Wong Ping
BSA Special Feature: “Melania”, Directed by Brad Downey
Street Artist/Interventionist Brad Downey widens his oeuvre with a
documentary, and his exquisite critiques of hypocrisy – and his appreciation of
life’s beautiful ironies are still fully intact.
Here in a grassy area between a dirt service road and the Sava
River Mr. Maxi Z
creates his ode to Melania, a girl born in the same hospital and year as he.
Using his chainsaw to coax the immigrant/model/First Lady Melania from this
tree whose roots go deep into her Slovenian homeland, the sculptor creates a
painted tribute and a direct connection between art and life for all to see
publicly. Hearing him describe his work is important, as is appreciating the
struggle and sacrifice he speaks of. Hearing a traditional song and reading its
lyrics, well crafted with nostalgia and heartache, buttresses the storytelling
with context.
For us Mr. Downey’s brilliance is his examination of the assumed, his
breakdown of folly, his ability to see. Here he shares his view with us, with
warmth and satire. Among his targets, implied at least, may be the art world,
the Street Art world, social anachronisms, international power structures, craven
corruption. Among his tributes are the creative spirit, individual ingenuity,
and the will to overcome. Long live Melania.
“Melania” 2019, Sevenica, Slovenia A film by Brad Downey Featuring Maxi Z. Production Miha Erjavec Camera Aljaž Celarc Editing Eva Pavlič Seifert Song pevskizbor Bunkarji Sound Editing Simon Kavsek Translation Ana Bohte Assitance Jaka Erjavec Thanks to Son of Maxi Z, wife Jožica, Graveks d.o.o
Said Dokins. “Runaway Writings” Solo Show
Graffiti
artist, contemporary artist, calligrapher and curator Said Dokins organizes
images, objects and personal questions in his new exhibition at Centro Nacional
de las Artes in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
With works on paper, on canvas, video, light, and photograph,
the show speaks of conflict, community, the empire to the north, and his
expansive practice with calligraphy. With each letter, each word, Said Dokins’
strokes free the steps of those who lived between these walls.
“Who’s the Daddy?” A film by Wong Ping
Hong Kong film director/animator/artist Wong Ping creates with the excesses and superficiality of non-stop consumer culture – humorously mixed and mingled with a young man’s insecurities, search for identity, and desire to get laid. His social, racial, cultural, political observations resonate beneath the eye candy. His sense of humor makes the formerly difficult easier to contemplate, the questions now tempered with the colorful absurdity of the world. Consider here, his ruminations on the length and curvature of the penis, among other things one might write in an online public diary.
West Coast graffiti superstar RISK, bomber of freeway overpasses, designer of graffiti-inspired clothing, regaler of rap and rock videos; a self-aware sage-like lion-maned merging of Rick Rubins, Greg Allman, and a Norse Yggdrasil, now brings you the psychedelic slaughter of a Cleveland façade.
“We had crowds come every day to watch us paint,” he says of the technicolor splashfest he did along with Nashville artist Chris Zidek. The mural wraps the entire venue, a nonprofit that raises money to provide educational scholarships to youth who can use them – among other missions. With his distinctive style of saturated striped washes flooding the entire block Risk foregoes the letterform on the outside, but ventured in to catch a wild styled tag.
About this new full-spectrum piece that ties together his nearly forty years of graffiti practice along with his contemporary art practice, the muralist says, “I call it beautifully destroyed.”
UK based Irish painter and muralist Conor Harrington was in New York City for the last month with stirring new works inside the gallery space and outside on the street. His signature forms and flying garments were there: indistinctly heroic, Bacon-blurred men in an epic struggle, each wearing richly hued militaristic finery. His dramatic heroes and saboteurs race now across two canvasses on display at the massive Beyond The Streets exhibition in Brooklyn as well as across one daunting five-story walkup on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Set aside the mercurial, blasting sun and drenching rains and otherwise sticky conditions in Gotham’s gritty summer, Harrington may not have realized that the wall was so huge. Done in concert with the L.I.S.A. Project NYC and the BTS exhibition, Conor crushed it with so much color and dramatic action across the surface (his first mural in NYC in a decade or so) that observers will be stultified by its scale and the mysterious storyline that animates it for a long time to come. The subject of the painting might be of an officer with the British army during the American Revolutionary War. If one were to imagine the piece of art differently by changing the garments and closing our eyes the figure as it is in action could very well be of a matador in a bullring confronting and taunting the bull with his cape. With a background in graffiti and a truly painterly command of the cans, you can imagine the feeling of revelation observers felt as Conor daily revealed this gripping piece in this city of immigrants, of struggle, of dreams.
It’s the fourth edition of “Without Frontiers”, a festival of urban art in Mantova Italy, organized by Simona Gavioli and Giulia Giliberti. This is the first mural we’ve seen from the 2019 edition, a hail of man-made products falling from the sky called “Plastic Rain” by Street Artist Mr. Fijodor. Here Mr. Fijodor is helping to continue a recently begun public painting tradition in this city with his illustrative scene of humans repairing a robot amid destruction, a storm of plastic bottles falling all around them.
Since 2016 the festival has tried to balance the new muralism of the moment with the history of Mantova (or Mantua in Emilian dialect) sometimes referred to as “the cradle of Renaissance culture”. Truthfully it’s a city known perhaps more for its Gonzaga tapestries than it’s Street Art culture but since 2016 “Without Frontiers” has hosted artists including Bianco-Valente, Boogie Ead, Corn79, Elbi Elem, Ericailcane and Bastardilla, Etnik, Fabio Petani, Mach505, Made514, Molis, Panem and Circenses, Perino and Vele, Peeta, Sebas Velasco, Vesod, Zedz, Joan Aguilò and Joys.
Many Street Artists and graffiti writers create a new character to inhabit – as actor or director. New on NYC streets, illustrator Sara Lynne Leo seeks to capture your attention with little hand rendered characters making cleverly sideways critiques and observations – but only if you are good at noticing the small details of the street. These emotional mites and monsters are suffering the absurdities and insecurities of daily life, providing possibly a mirror to the everyday pedestrian as they wait at the crosswalk or stand in a doorway.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. VHILS “Debris” Sets Macau in Golden Nostalgia 2. OKUDA: The International Church Of Cannabis 3. Mr. Sis. and #SoloUnBeso 4. Parees International Mural Festival. Oviedo, Spain. Edition 2018.
BSA Special Feature: VHILS “Debris” Sets Macau in Golden Nostalgia
Is
anybody listening?
Last year Vhils published this film about communication – personal, intimate, and global. We waited a year to see if it felt equally timeless as the first time we viewed it and indeed it is. Some stories like these have an additional element that secures their status. Surrounding the portraits created by the Portuguese Street Artist in Macau, this collage of images, interactions, flashes of expression and sequences of behavior is accompanied by a linear/circular narration that attempts to reconnect to a personal history while chiding the narrators own behavior.
It’s a winsome recounting of memories that are shared globally; a communal and personal experience at once told with clarity and emotional nostalgia, written and directed by José Pando Lucas.
OKUDA: The International Church Of Cannabis
One would hope that the International Church of Cannibis would look like this! Owing perhaps to psychedelic art of 1960s counterculture, liquid light art, concert posters, murals, underground newspapers, and of course kaleidoscoping the world with new eyes, the Spanish Street Artists Okuda San Miguel transformed this internal architecture into a truly holy space. Denver is one of those American cities that still has a good economy thanks to Colorado’s low taxes, growing marijuana industry and soaring real estate market. It seems like the whole city has invited many Street Artists to transform street space over the last decade and with a good collector’s base, the art galleries are busy and special projects are popping up everywhere to show off the skillz.
With a new church that uses pot as a sacrament, this project is spearheaded by Steve Berke, who’s Wikipedia posting lists him as “two-time candidate for mayor of Miami Beach, cannabis activist, rapper, YouTuber, entrepreneur, and former All-American tennis player.” Dude, just gaze at the ceilings here and you realize that the possibilities are awesome.
Mr. Sis. and #SoloUnBeso
“Artist Mr. Sis is in Barcelona painting this pair of full figured females going in for the kiss on this billboard for Contorno Urbano,” we wrote a few weeks ago in a posting about this wall. Today we have the finished video.
Parees International Mural Festival. Oviedo, Spain. Edition 2018.
A new mini-doc from the
Parees Festival in Oviedo, Spain has just been released about the 2018 edition.
It features on-screen interviews with many of the artists who were involved,
including Colectivo Licuado, Roc BlackBlock, Taquen, Xav, Andrea Ravo Mattoni,
Kruella d’Enfer, Alfalfa y Twee Muizen.
Street art welcomes all manner of materials and methods, typically deployed without permission and without apology. This hand-formed wire piece …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
