All posts tagged: Jaime Rojo

GLEO Paints “The Original Dream” in Kansas

January 28, 2019 Artists

A blended composition of communities in a somewhat theatrical and warmly surreal rendering with personal features and cross-cultural decorative finesse, these folks painted across 17 silos in Witchita are not just going for special effects.

With a meditation on otherness and inclusiveness, Colombian muralist Gleo has brought the all the neighbors to this wall, intermingling social justice themes with characters and human nature – all passed through her mystical subconscious, her appreciation for ancestral cultures, and layered visual vocabulary.

GLEO *“The Original Dream”* Horizontes Project. Wichita, Kansas (photo courtesy of Horizontes)

Organized by multi-disciplinary artist Armando Minjarez the new composition is part of a public painting program and community engagement project called Horizontes that is meant to give visibility to two underrepresented neighborhoods in north Wichita, the predominantly Latino NorthEnd neighborhood and the historically African American Northeast neighborhood.

It looks like a stunningly effective and positive project that draws attention to groups of people who can be rendered invisible by industrial strength systemic blindness.

Aside from its size (4,500 sm), its 650 gallons of paint, and its time and cost overruns with 5 assistants over 11 weeks, the new community mural keeps the conversation fresh, and gives a pretty modern face to the city.

Public art initiatives like this can be a powerful key to fostering community – these Witchita neighborhoods are both physically and psychologically separated by these large grain elevators. The concept of community mural continues to evolve and this one shows promise for engaging modern ways to address social issues while honoring people and traditions.

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.27.19

January 27, 2019 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

The turning point may have occurred Friday when Trump capitulated to the two other branches of government, released his hostages (federal workers), and allowed the US government to fully open – and planes to land at airports. This continuous attack on institutions is wearing down the wall between the wolves and the chickens. Guess which one we are?

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring Antennae, Art Dog NYC, City Kitty, Diva Dogla, Ken Hiratsuka, Pop Artoons, PostMan Art, Resa, Skewville.

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We know how this movie ended…certainly it wasn’t a cliffhanger…artist unidentified. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mural Kings Tats Cru At The Houston/Bowery Wall

January 26, 2019 Artists

Boogie Down bombers the Tats Cru representing New York in its classic flava, the Houston Wall is now blessed by some of the original mural kings, and all seems right with the world for a moment.

Tats Cru. Houston / Bowery Wall. January 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With a legion of fans on the sidewalk and on social media saying that Bio, Nicer, and BG183 were finally bringing New York back to this New York wall, the trio was joined by a who’s who of peers and fans over a cold 4-day installation in a way that reminds this town of its proud roots in graffiti and the myriad styles it spawned.

In the end, this is a love letter to New York on many levels. It’s a memorial to Tony Goldman, who captured the zeitgeist of the early graffiti/Street Art movement and provided opportunities for artists.

There is a black and white VIP section that reinvents a Tseng Kwong Chi of Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf standing infront of the wall – a meta experience to see NY graff royalty stopping by to tag the image of the Houston Wall that showed people tagging the Houston Wall. New aerosol contributors included people like Zepher, Terror 161, Duster, and Dez and many others.

Among other pop imagery and classic fonts and letter styles sits a stylized heart from the famous Milton Glaser design of I (heart) NY at the very center. Additional work was contributed by Daze and Crash and a special tribute is made for local activist Liz Christy who began the First Community Garden in New York City in 1973 nearby.

“’Bout time we got some real NY graff writers to rock that wall,” said Da Kid Tac on Instagram, a possible reference to the number of Street Artists who have been invited to paint here over the last few years. Based on the responses and happy reunions of writers and fans we saw over many visits to the wall during its production, Tats Cru has again created an instant classic.

Original image of Haring in front of the Houston Wall reprised by Tats crew. Tseng Kwong Chi © Muna Tseng Dance Projects, Inc.

Tats Cru. Famed photographer Martha Cooper helps to fill in the VIP Tags section of the wall. Houston / Bowery Wall. January 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tats Cru. Graffiti writer Duster was also on hand to tag the VIP section of the wall. Houston / Bowery Wall. January 2019. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Film Friday: 01.25.19

January 25, 2019 Artists

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

Now screening :
1. 10 Year Challenge : Doug Gillen Takes It
2. Tavar Zawacki: Mixing Colors In A Parking Garage in Wynwood.
3. NUART 2018 / RE-CAP: Space is The Place

BSA Special Feature: Doug Gillen of FWTV takes the 10 Year Challenge:

Inspired by a meme (what else could be more 2019) Doug Gillen decides to to an inexact comparison of where selected Street Artists have changed and remained the same since 10 years ago. The big ones apparently are staying ahead by going bigger and perhaps developing entire marketing divisions, possibly in danger of being bloated. Elsewhere we see true evolution.

Tavar Zawacki: Mixing Colors In A Parking Garage in Wynwood. Video by Chop ’em Down Films.

Perhaps in a continued effort to bare it all, Tavar Zawacki (formerly Above) takes off his shirt in Miami and tells us about the importance of color to him.

NUART 2018 / RE-CAP: Space is The Place

“You can view it in a museum and it still feels like Street Art, but is the place of the museum the same as the space of the street,” Professor Alison Young from the University of Melbourne poses the question on the docks of Stavanger, Norway. In face, says Nuart, space is the place that determines the ultimate impact an artistic intervention can have.

“Few Moments Ago I Was Here” says Klone

January 24, 2019 Artists, Monograph, Street Art Book Review

Stateless.

Klone is prowling between states, transitory and without volume, beams of light and color washes and flickers of memory, or false memory. The Ukrainian born, Israel bound Street Artist is as good with the unforgiving street as the undefined gallery, muting features from common characters and tracing shadows, summoning foxes, crows, cats as guardians and confidants.

Klone “Few Moments Ago I Was Here”. Hell No. Publication and Distribution. Tel-Aviv 2018.

A mark-maker on the streets of Tel-Aviv since the 90s, his practice is by necessity within a hidden realm, and if you stay there long enough, it becomes yours; carefully and boldly speaking, summoning folklore and mythology, mastering the art of masked meaning and inference.

Tagging and graffiti gave way to other urban traditions he has been eager to author, organic in his methods for discovery. His expanding practice of multiple disciplines has led him to the street and into the gallery and back to the street in Europe, the Middle East, the US, back to Kiev. This collection of excursions appears natural, rendered and even intimately warm even when mimicking, forgetful, fragmented.

Even his “Movement” chapter, a section of selected works laid out in stop motion frames, stays safely within an imaginary place, fables of connection, disconnection, alienation. Perhaps most powerful are his ‘digital interventions’ imaginary hybrids of photography, illustration, aspiration. Hulking eyesores of uninspired architecture or remote land masses are embraced, supported, frolicked within, rested upon.

Here I am, even though you do not see me.

Mr. Toll On The Streets

January 22, 2019 Artists, Brooklyn, NYC, On the Street

Williamsburg streetwalkers have recently discovered a new cluster of Mr. Toll’s hand-painted clay sculptures on the streets of Brooklyn after a prolonged absence. His style has evolved a little, adding more detail and fluidity perhaps, and so have his subjects and interests. Prolific when he’s producing, he’s known to touch on difficult and topical issues such as immigration, environmental degradation, and systemic racism. His work sometimes has the punch of a political cartoon; direct and to the point but with a sense of humor.

Quality, craftsmanship, and a DIY ethos ; its all here with Mr. Toll.

Martin Luther King Jr. : A Day To Reflect

January 21, 2019 Artists

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Martin Luther King Jr. is celebrated today in the US, and undoubtedly not by everyone. With his words and his bravery and sacrifice as a guide, may we continue to stand up against injustice and the forces of tyranny to build and preserve a just society for everyone everywhere.

It may be a long time, but we’ll get there, if we all do our part.

Happy MLK Jr. Day!

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.20.19

January 20, 2019 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Brexit deadlock is like a thorn in the side of the UK people this week, Trump is shutting down the US government partially here for almost a month (to celebrate 2 years in the White House?), the ‘Yellow Vests’ are striking through France for the 10th weekend, its going to get very cold tonight in New York, and your cousin Marlene is back from the local Women’s March with fire in her eyes and hope in her heart. As usual, the streets are alive with Street Art and graffiti, and we’re bringing it to you.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring 2501, Add Fuel, BirdCap, BustArt, C3, City Kitty, Cranio, Duster, Edu Danesi, Fafi, Frances Forever, Jaeryaime, Kram, LMNOPI, Mark Jenkins, Neon Savage, Os Boys, Pez, Rx Skulls, Sickid, Tatiana Fazlalizadeh, UFO 907, and Zaira Noir .

Jaeryaime in Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A Mark Jenkins installation in Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Edu Danesi. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LMNOPI x City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Neon Savage x City Kitty x C3 x Rx Skulls (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bird Cap. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Add Fuel. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pez x BustArt x Kram x Zaira Noir. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cranio. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hand painted sign at the NYCLT for #expandtheloftlaw in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sickid with Frances Forever on the right and Tatiana Fazlalizadeh on the left. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Wynwood, Miami. December 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Anna Taratiel and The Maps Inside of You

January 19, 2019 Artists

Geometric and organic compliment one another here in “Perspectivas y Vacíos” (Perspectives and Gaps) in this new public art by Anna Tartiel in the Centre Cívic Cotxeres Borrell in the center of Barcelona.

Part of the program 12 + 1 by Contorno Urbano, this piece of work is part of a public initiative started four years ago that brings “urban art closer to people, breaking with the stereotypes and prejudices that surround this artistic expression.” In fact this kind of work and initiative occupies a rare space in cities; largely untouched by bureaucratic obstacles and corporate lust for invasion of the civic discourse with commercials – mediated by a thoughtful community-based committee of organizers.

Anna Taratiel. “*Perspectivas y vacío*s” Contorno Urbano Foundation. 12 + 1 Project. Barcelona, January 2019. (photo © Clara Anton)

An artist with a street practice as well as a studio practice, Tartiel brings her fascination with internal maps externally, her aesthetic perspective of her own city with its precise lines and imperfections, evoking a Barcelona “full of geometry and movement,” she says. She has also described her work in the past as a sort of internal cartography, a depiction of the maps that we each carry around inside.

Graffiti and Street Art researcher/educator Javier Abarca wrote of her work two years ago for a show she was exhibiting entitled “Antipodas” and his description of the matters at play in her work and practice is helpful to understand how she got here on this wall as well.

“Taratiel says that once she had gone in for geometric painting she started to miss the warmth of the organic and the random, a concern that is common among artists who move from the street to canvas and which stems from an essential difference between these two work spaces,” he writes. “If canvas is a blank, inert space that the artist has to fill from scratch, the street is a motley scenario full of meanings. In the street the artist is limited to proposing, and it is the city that gives shape to that proposal by the accumulated effect of many factors.”

In this case it is a defined canvas on the street, not a raw neglected wall in a marginal sector of the city. It is a challenge of blending these competing impulses and finding where they overlap, perhaps. This may depend on your perspective.

Futura Goes “Full Frame” by Magda Danysz

January 17, 2019 Art Book Review, Artists

One benefit of being ahead of your time is that you can paint your own rules, discover your own voice, set a standard. A drawback is that you may have to push forward on your own before you gain support for what you are pursuing. The key is to keep moving.

Futura 2000 *FULL FRAME* By Magda Danysz. Drago Publisher. Rome, Italy. 2018.

As Futura pulls fully into the frame of contemporary artist, its important for upcoming artists to remember that he had a long route – including being a bike messenger on Manhattan’s untamed streets to provide for his family – while he was waiting until the rest of the street and art world caught up with him. Now that Street Art has confirmed that his abstract explorations on subway trains were an early sign of what was coming, brands and gallerists and collectors often call. “Full Frame” helps appreciate the body of work he developed during that time.

Self named Futura 2000 when that sounded futuristic, Lenny Gurr has done more painting on canvas than he realized since the early 80s and his style has continued to evolve and clarify.

“Just for people to finally get a look at my work – I feel like a lot of what is being revealed hasn’t really been seen,” he tells us as he describes the nearly 300 page yellow tome “Full Frame,” published by Drago and organized by Magda Danysz. Among the richly illustrated pages, Danysz presents important benchmarks in Futura’s steadily growing career and personal life that bring the evolution closer to the reader.

In terms of the visual language in these sketches, diagrams and canvasses, there are a wealth of orbs and symbols and sprays and washes and stellar interstellar journeys that you have never seen before. Evolution appears to be natural for Futura, his pores and nerve endings collecting signals, firing synapses, pushing deep into imaginary worlds.

Influences run from expressionists, abstractionists, modernists, punks, the race to the moon and the moonage daydreams of city hippies everywhere. His recurring circle motifs are as much about his internal mind and world as they are about the cosmos.

A sense of balance in the chaos is always present, the palette choices impeccably on point, sharply sweet and frequently daring. Is this fantasy or diary? If Futura hasn’t flown to most of these places, it’s not because he hasn’t tried. But we’re treating these pages and frames of eye-popping other-worlds as evidence that he has.

“I think for the most part people appreciate survivors,” he is quoted in the book. Few survivors could be so freely percolating with ideas and graceful in their delivery.

Blek Le Rat Tours the US South

January 16, 2019 Artists

Tennessee and Texas Sample a Certain Street Savoir Faire

Look out for Le Rat!

He’s getting up in places down south that you wouldn’t normally associate with a French Street Artist, much less the one who started stenciling in a style and manner unusual on Paris walls in ’81 – an antecedent for much of what we later would call ‘Street Art”.

Blek Le Rat. Houston, TX. (photo © Brian Greif)

Thanks to gallerist and collector Brian Greif, Blek Le Rat made a run for it through Texas in cities like Waco, Austin, and Houston – after spending a week teaching students at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville how to create stencils in his distinct style.

It was a unique experience for the artist roughly 40 years after he first began doing these same activities illegally and under cover of night – and Greif tells us that the artist was so moved by the large audiences and appreciation by new fans that he is even encouraged to return.

“I think its time now to go back to the real sources of street art by painting real walls in real cities and not just the major cities around the world,” says Blek in an interview with Greif. “We need to touch people by painting walls in cities that have not experienced this movement.”

Blek Le Rat. Nashville. (photo © Brian Greif)

“So two cats walk into a bar…” Blek Le Rat. Nashville. (photo © Brian Greif)

Blek Le Rat. Austin, TX. (photo © Brian Greif)

Blek Le Rat. Waco, TX. (photo © Brian Greif)

The Postman Art

January 15, 2019 Artists

The Street Artist called The Post Man is delivering celebrities to the city’s streets lately, usually with a cityscape inside of them. The campaign of high saturation portraits are part of one that is often in street art practice: parading, adoring, exulting our pop culture icons, alive or dead. They somehow represent the culture, these reoccurring personas, these musicians, poets, actors, – they have superseded their categories and become part of our common dreams.

Marilyn, Elvis, Amy, Jimi, Nile Rodgers, Philip Seymour Hoffman (as Truman Capote): some of these are part of a golden circle of intermittent images that year after year we all circulate, share, wear, frame, hang on a wall, send in the mail. This time The Post Man is bringing them directly to the streets for your entertainment.

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