All posts tagged: Jaime Rojo

BSA Film Friday 07.17.15

July 17, 2015 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. Roma Street Art Tribes as Captured by Dioniso Punk

BSA Special Feature: Roma Street Art Tribes as Captured by Dioniso Punk

Gwen Stacy Parts I and II

Disorderly, discordant, and richly chaotic, these two videos are centered around the Italian street art paintings and artists whom you will recognize from our earlier postings on community/gallery organized urban art programming – but within the context of historical art publicly displayed, peoples movements, patronage, fascism, the classics.

Dioniso Punk allows everyone to talk – neighbors, artists, organizers, curators, public philosophers, elected officials, psychologists, sociologists, entrepreneurs, posers, professors, historians, students, an opera singer, the petite bourgeoisie, international visitors and hapless puzzled opinionated locals.

Discussions at panels cut into impassioned discussions by senior women in the courtyard or didactic examinations in the street – some for illustration, others for whimsy, none to be ignored. More of a fact finding mission than cogent analysis, you may find it difficult to follow the narrative and so it is better to let go and allow yourself be battered by the insights and observations delivered with the jumpy cuts and uncompleted thoughts and discussions, preferring instead to sink into the tribe of the humans, here selectively displayed for your pleasure and hopefully, edification.

(turn on the CC (closed captioning) if you do not speak Italian)

Featuring interviews with Solo, Gaia, Diamond 0707, Maupal, Best Ever, Bol23, Jerico, Guerrilla Spam Sen One, Sabrina, Dan, Stefano Antonelli (999 Contemporary,) Marta Ugolini (Galleria Ca’ D’Oro), Agathe Jaubourg (Pasolini Pigneto), Alìn Costache (YUT!), Edoardo Martino (Villaggio Globale), and Eleonora Zaccagnino (Acid Drop).

Special Guests: Mp5, Alice Pasquini, Mr. Thoms, Jessica Stewart, Sandro Fiorentini (La Bottega del Marmoraro).

Murals by Blu, Roa, Borondo, Etam Cru, Space Invaders, C215, Hogre, Herbert Baglione, Sten & Lex, JB Rock, Ernest, Pignon-Ernest, Etnik, Axel, Avoid, Sbagliato, Jim Avignon, Fin DAC, Jef Aerosol, Seth, Zed1, Ericailcane, Clemens Behr, Caratoes, Momo, Derek, Bruno, Kid Acne, Mto, Alexey Luka, Tellas, Moby Dick, Philippe Baudelocque, Mr. Klevra, Lucamaleonte, Diavù Kocore, Agostino Iacurci, Danilo Bucchi, Jaz, Desx, Reka, Lek & Sowat, Hopnn, Matteo, Basilé Alberonero, Ex Voto, Andreco, Moneyless, Nicola, Verlato, Ludo, L’Atlas, Escif, and Pepsy Zerocalcare.

9 Year Old Interviews Faile in the Deluxx Fluxx Arcade

July 16, 2015 Artists

Summer interns are younger than ever this year in NYC!

Thought you would like to see this video that Huffpost made last week as the FAILE show was about to open. Literally it was the day before the opening and behind the scenes people were running around like cats at a rocking chair convention. But you wouldn’t know it by the calm and friendly demeanor of Patrick and Patrick as they show 9 year old interviewer Ada Donnelly how to play the games and make sure she gets the inside story on the Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. The concept is genius! Read the full story HERE:

And here’s a pretty complete run-down of the show we did for the opening o f ‘Savage/Sacred Young Minds’

“Face Time” with Various & Gould in Berlin

July 15, 2015 Artists

80 meters from the former Berlin Wall in an area still straddling “former east” and “former west” in Berliners’ minds, Street Art duo Various and Gould have just spent 12 days on “Face Time”, a patchwork faced mural that mimics the increasing diversity of the city. Suitably for this new view of the city, it is on a new building.

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Hans Friedrich)

A greatly enlarged version of a collage they made from 20 or so different faces, the 250 square meter piece is their first in the city and as is the case of much of their work, contains questions about our sense of identity and exactly what defines it.

“One guy asked us, ‘What’s the name of the man?’” says Various they talk about the various comments they got from various people on various occasions. “He said, ‘That face reminds me a bit of a young Obama.’

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Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

“The truth is that it is more of a patchwork identity,” offers Gould. “The result isn’t a real person with a name. We can’t even say whether it’s a man since the single face parts vary in gender.”

An unusually large size for the two, at some point the work involved was perhaps more than they realized. Luckily, some friends came by to help paint – and some strangers did too. “Twice we had the situation that very friendly – but total strangers – spontaneously climbed onto the scaffolding to offer their help!” says the wide-eyed Various incredulously.

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

In New York this sort of random generosity means they will be a.) trying to steal your paint, b.) asking you for some cash for drugs. In Berlin apparently, it is just the random kindness of strangers. “Both times they worked with us for a couple of hours!” says Gould.

Mural work is more grueling than most people realize, including most artists, and at some point you may lose your mind painting these dots that emulate the screen printing process that V&G fell in love with years ago.

Lunch time for the workers Various & Gould . Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Gould explains, “It was a lot lot lot of work, painting these halftone dots … But we really needed to do it this way. We are crazy about these dots. We are passionate silkscreen printers!”

The design is actually taken from a silkscreen print collage they wheatpasted versions of on the street in Paris earlier this year. The two even used a typical silkscreen method to painting – first by painting the areas of color underneath, then carefully applying the halftone layer (all the dots) on top.

Now that its done the two say they want their work to put into question our accepted ideas about beauty as well as identity with their Dadaistic “Face Time” series. “Our aim is to create characters, not to portray actual people,” says Various. Gould agrees, “But in the end, our fictional faces seem far more real to us than many of the faces shown in the media every day.”

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” This is the original poster that inspired the big mural being wheat pasted in Paris in the Spring. (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Hans Friedrich)

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LOLA, Atomic Sheep Dog Drinking from the Uranium Mine Per Jetsonorama

July 14, 2015 Artists

A shepherd needs a good sheep dog on the reservation in Arizona, that much is clear. One that’s been drinking radioactive water at a uranium mine? That is less clear.

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Jetsonorama. Lola The Atomic Sheep Dog. Cow Springs, Arizona. July 2015. (photo © Jetsonorama)

But so far Lola has exceeded her charge and performed beyond other sheep dogs here in Cow Springs, says artist Jetsonorama – so much so that she’s become a bit of an artistic muse for him lately. “She is revered here,” says the photographer and street artist, who prefers to spell her name with an exclamation point at the end (Lola!). “Coyotes don’t bother trying to steal any sheep from her flock,” he says, “whereas most flocks of sheep have 3 or 4 sheep dogs per flock, Lola herds several hundred sheep solo.”

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Jetsonorama. Lola The Atomic Sheep Dog. Cow Springs, Arizona. July 2015. (photo © Jetsonorama)

Radioactive dust and contaminated water is scattered across a large expanse of the Navajo nation, say locals, with many of the 500 or more of these sites estimated to be open and unprotected – or rather protected from people and animals breathing in the air and drinking the water there.

In 2012 the journalist Leslie MacMillan reported in the New York Times about many of these open sites emitting dangerous levels of radiation and folks like Jetsonorama and neighbor ranchers were given a little hope that something would come of it.

Jetsonorama. Lola’s herd. The Atomic Sheep Dog. Cow Springs, Arizona. July 2015. (photo © Jetsonorama)

For now, Lola is Jetsonorama’s emissary of spreading this radioactive message – and she is going strong and rather purple-ish in this desert wall campaign. He’s calling her an atomic sheep dog.

“I first pasted Lola in January of 2014 at cow springs. I used a wall where I paste regularly and local members of Bloods and Crips go over my work – and then I go back over them. When I paste Lola I tint the background with a graffiti-patterned magenta, then I cut her out of the photo.”

Jetsonorama. Lola The Atomic Sheep Dog. She does have some canine friends. Cow Springs, Arizona. July 2015. (photo © Jetsonorama)

It’s unclear whether the presumed radioactive water that Lola laps up has contributed to her performance on the range, or if Jetsonorama has found an effective PR spokes-dog for his campaign to raise awareness of these unprotected uranium mines, but Lola seems like she is owning it.

Right now she’s running solo, although Jetsonorama says she does some occasional socializing. “However, since becoming atomic,” he says, “Lola is THE super sheep dog!”

Jetsonorama. Lucy’s trailer. Early morning light. Cow Springs, Arizona. July 2015. (photo © Jetsonorama)

BSA Images Of The Week: 07.12.15

July 12, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring ASVP, Dain, D. Hollier, Dee Dee, Free Humanity, Homo Riot, Hunt, Jorit Agoch, Myth, Old Broads, Philippe Herard, Solus, The Electric Tattoo, Oji and Wing.

Top image above >>> Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain with a later addition of KORN 40. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wing (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Philippe Herard in Paris, France. (photo © Aline Mairet)

Homo Riot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hunt. And who’s watching the watchers as they watch? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Electric Tattoo and Oji for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Old Broads (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Solus for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Free Humanity and Pooh comment on the connection many continue to make between the chemical industry and the collapse of 40% of bee colonies. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jorit Agoch over this barely 2 month old Cyrcle piece (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jorit Agoch (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Positions are being taken on the street politically in the upcoming presidential election. Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D. Hollier and a new portrait of Nelson Mandela, whose birthday is coming up this week. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ASVP knocks out a new one for Sugarlift. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Brooklyn, NYC. July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie “Radiant Madonna” Unites Raphael and Haring in Brooklyn

July 11, 2015 Artists

“Soooooo incredible!” says Owen Dippie about his chance to do some sight-seeing yesterday finally at the Brooklyn Museum, where they are showing the work of people he calls his heroes, including Jean-Michel Basquiat as well as the brand new Faile show that opened Friday and the newly installed KAWS sculpture in the entry hall.

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Not too bad for a New Zealand child of the 1980s who grew up idolizing artists like Biggie Smalls, Tupac Shakur, Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol, Basquiat and Keith Haring. As he became a teenage painter himself Dippie also discovered the painters of the High Renaissance of the 14^th century and pushed himself to emulate with aerosol cans the brush technique and style of those Italian masters.

When you speak with Mr. Dippie and the topic turns to Brooklyn, he is nearly reverential because of its history as part of the graffiti and Street Art movements that inspired one, perhaps two generations of artists on the street. Of course, this being dirty Brooklyn, Dippie also had to confront a scallywag who was stealing his paint this week; a chatty dude who had befriended him with conversation and whom Owen discovered was walking away and getting on his bicycle with a bag of cans while the artist was up on a ladder. Yes Holy Brooklyn can turn into “Holy Shit!” in a New York minute.

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

So it is a measured miracle, a ratherish revelation this week that as a parting tribute to the city Dippie completed a deftly realized mashup of Raphael and Haring, with the Madonna dell Granduca holding Haring’s icon-symbol that is variously referred to as “Radiant Baby”, “Radiant Child”, and “Radiant Christ”. A self-professed Jesus Freak during his adolescence and a member of the Born-Again Christian movement from its halcyon days of the 1970s-80s, Haring would very likely have loved to see his work appropriated in this manner, the newborn messiah supported in the stately embrace of the virgin mother.

“If art is a religion then Keith Haring is a god,” Owen likes to say. He tells us that it is not exactly hyperbole when he makes a statement like that while creating this new mural entitled “The Radiant Madonna”.

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“When I was 13 my teacher introduced me to Keith Haring – and it changed my life,” he explains. “I was young – a troublemaker – and already I was majorly into art. But from that point on I decided to dedicate my life to art and I have been on this crazy journey ever since.” When said in that way we are reminded of the words often used by the Born-Again Christians like Haring when describing the moment of their religious conversion.

Perhaps a Renaissance man in his own way of valuing the humanist, the religious, the classical and the modern, Dippie freely combines images that cross half-millenia to help represent this moment.

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Like his recent merging of the cartoon characters of the Teenage Mutant Turtles with the four painters of the Renaissance whom they are named after (Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello ), here in the “The Radiant Madonna” Owen feels that it is a natural marriage of imagery and influences and one he feels impassioned about.

“I am a child of popular culture and am inspired by my heroes,” he says. “By involving them in my art I pay my upmost respect to them in the best way I know how.”

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Raphael, Madonna dell Granduca, 1505 (public domain)

“Radiantbaby”. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia

BSA Film Friday: 07.10.15

July 10, 2015 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. Joe Caslin and The Castle
2. Luxury Living
3. BISSER in Williamsburg:
4. La Machination: KOLEO

BSA Special Feature: Joe Caslin and The Castle

Appearing on a privately owned castle façade in the days leading up to the referendum in May that made Ireland the first country in the world to vote for same-sex marriage, Joe Caslin’s illustration of two long trestled beauties appeared here as a counterpart to a coupled male version he did in Dublin. Caherkinmonwee Castle in Co Galway (circa 1450) has mottled exterior that transforms the portrait into a monochromatic painting from a distance.

You’ll be happy to know that the adhesive is made with potato starch.

Of course, it’s all in the planning, the 14 hours of pasting, camera work and of course the soundtrack – here longingly, celtically yours from Róisín O. Rather melts your limestone heart, doesn’t it?

Luxury Living

Popular in cultural conversations in cities these days is the vision of the artist as unwitting gentrifier who, upon losing his lease is dismayed by his own effect on a neglected urban neighborhood — now overrun by construction cranes and opportunists with dollars in their eyes. This dramatically scored mini-adventure is the only way that some artists can still afford to visit the neighborhood they once made attractive and hip.

BISSER in Williamsburg:

Speaking of rapidly gentrified artist neighborhoods, here is Bisser visiting Williamsburg, Brooklyn to drop some serious art for the enjoyment of those new bankers and corporate professionals. The new arrivals may take friends to pose for selfies in front of this mural on their way to brunch but would otherwise keep creatives like Bisser perpetually insecure as a 2nd class graphics “freelancer” without sick days, vacation, or health benefits in their corporate offices across the river.

La Machination: KOLEO

A sweet stencillist illustration that suddenly takes additional meaning in this brief recap of a new piece by KOLEO.

According to the descripton: “KOLEO presents “La Machination” (machination: machine / plot), a mural where automatons create organic creatures, treated badly. The creatures get together to become one and fight back. Then, they separate again to infiltrate the machines and destroy them from the inside. Later, a child finds a broken automaton and starts to repair it. The mural can be seen as an allegory of the wrongdoings humans can do to each other, that they end up fighting, before the next generation forgets their history and repeat the same mistakes.”

$Handiedan Sets a Pinup Tone for Wall\Therapy 2015 in Rochester$

Handiedan Sets a Pinup Tone for Wall\Therapy 2015 in Rochester

July 9, 2015 Artists

Rochester, New York is the home of the Wall\Therapy festival and BSA is partnering with the team and Urban Nation (UN) to bring you coverage of the grass-roots mural festival for 2015. It will begin in a few weeks but the Amsterdam-based Handiedan got into town early due to being in New York for her show with Jonathan Levine Gallery.

Handiedan in progress. (photo © Jenn Poggi)

Her curvaceous pin-up girls and orientally adorned femme fatales from noir films and rockabilly imaginations intricately layered with patterns and designs from currency – sometimes it is all about getting that paper.

In this case the paper in use is covering the facade of a beautiful brick building dating back to 1890 that was originally a church and later became a machine shop and home to the Rochester Community Players theater group for a half century or so. After a fire a few years back the building has sat vacant for a while. At least, that is what most people from the area can remember.

Handiedan. Taking in the action from inside the building. (photo © Jason Wilder)

Here Handiedan’s specially treated custom designed paperwork brings added dimension while stunningly emulating the template shape and color palette. In many ways it is bringing the building back to life – perhaps in anticipation of its new use as another playhouse to open at the end of the summer.

Handiedan in progress. (photo © Jason Wilder)

Wall\Therapy 2015 has released its line up of artists curated in collaboration with Yasha Young, director of Urban Nation (UN) Berlin. This years theme of surrealism and the fantastic is off to a rather spectacular start obviously and in addition to bringing you daily updates BSA will be in the house on Friday July 24th for a special live edition of BSA Film Friday at the Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester. We are really looking forward to meeting you in person.

Artists included for this years Wall\Therapy include: Andreas Englund, Onur, Wes21, Never Crew, Vexta, Li Hill, Handiedan, Daze, Jeff Soto, Maxx242, Eder Muniz, Brittany Williams, Matthew Roberts and Joe Guy Allard.

Handiedan in progress. (photo © Mark Deff)

Handiedan (photo © Mark Deff)

To learn more about Wall Therapy and more details, schedules, program and dates click HERE

Holy Faile ! “Savage/Sacred Young Minds” at Brooklyn Museum

July 8, 2015 Artists, Interview

FAILE may be a religious experience this summer at the Brooklyn Museum, but only one of the hallowed installations is called Temple. The seedier, more dimly lit venue will surely have the larger number of congregants by far, bless their sacred hearts.

Celebrating the duality and appropriation of words, slogans, and images has been the baliwick of the duo since they first began hitting Brooklyn streets at the turn of the century with their stencils and wheat-pastes on illegal spots and neglected spaces. In FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds, their new attention commanding/refracting exhibit organized by Sharon Matt Atkins at the Brooklyn Museum, these guys pour it on, compelling you into a complex panoply of possible re-imaginings of meaning that reference pop, pulp, myth, art history, 50s sci-fi, 60s advertising, comics, punk zines, consumer culture and their own pure artistic and branded fiction.

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For fans of this collaboration between artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, Savage/Sacred is a joyride swerving through the visual vocabulary and terminology they’ve been emblazoning across walls, doorways, canvasses, stickers, sculptures, prayer wheels, wood blocks, paintings, prints, toys, and a museum façade in their steady ascendance from anonymous art school students and Street Artists to a highly collected top tier name in contemporary art.

Offering you a full immersion and opportunity for titillating interaction, this show provides an unambiguous sense of the industry that is backing the Faile fantasy. Throughout their work and your imagination and assumed role, you may be villain, distressed damsel, wolfman, fairey, vandal, wrestler, hot-rodder, madonna, whore, supplicant, avenger, surfing horse or simply an arcade hero who is whiling away windowless hours punching buttons, popping flippers and pumping Faile tokens into tantalizing art machines.

FAILE. FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Central to the formative Faile story is an image of the teenage Patricks piecing together clues about the world in these dark dens of possibility and teenage angst, awash in fantasy, aggression, testosterone and communal alienation.

Miller talks about the arcade atmosphere with a certain reverence, “All through Middle School, especially on the weekends, you’d just get dropped off at the mall and be there all day. There is something about the idea of this being a somewhat sacred space as a teenager in arcades. They are sort of a “Candyland” – a magical space mixed with a little seediness. You had kind of a large age range in there. You could get in trouble if you wanted but through the video games you could live out these crazy fantasy experiences. Historically arcades have been like that – very much with the Times Square notion. They’ve always had that connection to an underbelly of things.”

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Do you think New York is still seedy?
Patrick Miller: It seems like it is getting harder to find, in a way.
BSA: So really you might say that this is a public service, this installation.
Patrick Miller: There are so many young people who have never had this experience today. Not only are we trying to share what that was like, it is something that shaped the way we are inspired as artists and the way we make imagery, the way we make icons. The roots of video-game culture are there and now that has sort of bled out today – but also we’re interested in the shared experience because so much of the video game experience is now mobile or is just had on your couch, I think people have forgotten that there used to be these places were you congregated to do this.

For the 5^th public offering of FAILE BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade and the first in a museum setting, Faile extends the scope and adds a handful of new NYC-centric scenarios to the mix and again partners with fellow Brooklyn street artist and spin-cycle collage mutator-in-chief BÄST, whose stylistic counterplay alerts undercurrents of tension with a punk-naïve primal hand painting and humoristic Dada collaging.

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Can you describe the working dynamic with Faile and BÄST?
Patrick Miller: We’ve always been really inspired by BÄSTs work because we start from a similar place but we end up totally differently.
BSA: Yeah the end result is very different
Patrick Miller: Ours are probably more structured and narrative.
Patrick McNeil: I think over time we have tried not to step on each others’ toes. He generally controls the half-tone territory and we control the line-drawing territory.
BSA: So his are more photography-based and yours tend more toward the illustration.
Patrick McNeil: Yep
Patrick Miller: I think the work comes from the same place but his is just turned up to “11”.
Patrick McNeil: Yeah his is more put into a blender.
Patrick Miller: But that has always been what makes us work well together, the styles mix and marry really well and they kind of bring the best out of both.
BSA: And he has become even more abstract recently – more lo-fi outsider artish…., although you guys have delved into children’s coloring books for inspiration as well
McNeil: I think BÄST would like to call it more “outsider art”.
BSA: Why has it been important to keep Deluxx Fluxx a Faile-BÄST collaboration over the last five years thoughout its various iterations?
McNeil: We started this project as a collaboration and we’ve been collaborating with BÄST for fifteen years. We’ve always enjoyed working with him because we just love the friendship and we love the product of our collaborations. I think having the opportunity to be at the Brooklyn Museum and to do it together with him is really special.

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Twenty-two in all, the custom designed variations on arcade video and pinball games from the 1970s and 80s alert competitive urges and quests for domination alongside more mundane tasks like alternate side of the street parking and completing atypical digital art-making sessions where “winning” is defined entirely differently.

Social, sexual, comical, criminal, and environmental concerns all pop and parry while you nearly mindlessly and repetitively punch buttons and fire guns at herky-jerky 2-D motion graphics that transport you to the hi-charged arcade experience rumbling in malls and sketchier parts of town before the Internet. Get a taste for those darkened caves where you racked up points while quarters were sucked from your pockets; you are the favored hero at home in this seductive lair, surrounded by an ear pounding audio-musical triumphalist barrage of hypnotic hormonal victory and id-shattering explosions.

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The adjoining cavernous black-light illuminated fluorescent foosball room is papered with mind-popping illustrations derived and sutured from comics, pulp and smarmy back-pages advertising that once stirred secret desires. Walking in on this teen temple you may feel like looking for dirty magazines sandwiched between mattresses; surely a hyped up juvenile would choose these alternating graphic “floor tiles” in radiation yellow, sugar coated pink and neon orange, giving your footsteps a spongey depth perception test on your way to a round of table football.

The floor-to-ceiling hand painted posters took four people six months to complete, both Patricks tell us, and they all compete for your attention, each a narrative re-configured and augmenting secret storylines, myths, and plenty of white lies.

FAILE’s Patrick Miller demonstrates an art experience where you rip posters off the wall to reveal yet more Faile posters underneath, which you can rip further. FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Somehow it is here in the day-glo madness that we see the closest approximation to the original Street Art experience passersby had in the early 2000s with Faile’s work when they were still a trio that included artist AIKO and in those years just after her departure. These are the bold, familiar graphic punches thrown in a direction you weren’t expecting and can make you laugh.

FAILE’s Patrick McNeil demonstrates how to tag subway walls before the “Bast Ghosts” come after you. FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In a media- and advertising-saturated society our tools of discernment and reason are compromised, deliberately so. Faile is recognizing some symptoms of this compromise and is examining the stories and the narratives that are told, crafting their own dramatic nomenclature from the pile. You might say that their stories are melding with an idealized simplification of North American white dude history, a heroic paranoid absolutism that lays bare the prejudices behind it.

A simple survey of words illustrates the perspective: prayer, bitch, horse, rainbow, sinful, Jesus, warriors, forbidden, Indian, hero, poison, brave, strong, boy, guilty, pleasure, bedtime, cowboys, hotrods, savage, gun, trust, stiletto, tender, hotel, confessions, fight, wolf, saved, girls, lies, vanity, inexperience, restless virgin, innocent, willing, heartbreak, torment, stories.

These are Faile stories, reconfigured with a slicing knife down the middle of the belly, an idiosyncratic collaged pop/pulp style that owes as much to the Dadaist Hannah Höch and pop collage originator Richard Hamilton as it does to Lichtenstein’s sense of storybook romance and Warhol’s repetitive emotional distance.

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In the book accompanying the exhibit, Sharon Matt Atkins, Vice Director for Exhibitions and Collections Management, who organized the exhibition, says the presentation of the arcade in a museum setting “highlights how the present work relates to the art of the past and expands our expectations of the use of public spaces dedicated to art.” Here, she says, “Deluxx Fluxx’s arcade machines, which are simultaneously sculptures and functioning games, may call to mind Surrealism, Dada, and Fluxus, as well as the enigmatic boxed assemblages of Joseph Cornell.”

Similarly, the signature Temple project has not been presented in its entirety in museum settings previously, and it feels like it is a bit of inspired genius when you are standing in its shadow beneath the soaring sky light at the Brooklyn Museum. The full scale church in ruins was presented out of doors in Praça dos Restauradores Square in Lisbon in conjunction with Portugal Arte in 2010. Echoing its surroundings in Lisbon, the Temple here is also a willful remix of the epic and the rather lesser so.

Culture-jamming at its height, it’s a punk subversion in ceramic, marble and iron that simultaneously genuflects and gives the finger to antiquity and to our soulless consumer culture. By casting reliefs of stylized font-work, romance novelette themes, and ads for call girls in puzzling non-sequitors, the Temple ridicules vapidity while honoring connections to age-old themes, sort of humbling all involved. Here again Faile is questioning the received wisdom of art history, religious customs, and tales of great societies we’ve learned to be reverent of, or maybe just questioning our true knowledge of history altogether.

During the last months while it was being unpacked and assembled we heard the Temple also called a tomb, a mausoleum, a chapel – the differences shared by their ties to the architecture and sculpture and tiled mosaics and ceramic under one roof. The roof in this case is destroyed – possibly because it caved in or because it was ripped off by an angry god who said, “You have missed my point entirely!”

In any case it is a formidable structure allowing meditation, reflection, confusion. In an act of ultimate bait and switch, Faile has deliberately played with what you are supposed to be paying attention to, substituting the associated original intended and inferred meanings of a religious institution and its power. You approach with reverence, looking perhaps for an allegorical means to access the transcendental, but expected symbols have been supplanted by the shallow relics of a culture you may have intended to escape.

Ultimately Faile is not unlike a lot of the world’s great religions; Comforting, reassuring, challenging, mysterious, inpenetrable. Sometimes you have the feeling that there are other people who understand it much better than you. Oh, ye of little Faile. Lean not upon your own understanding. Failes ways are not necessarily our ways. Whether these words and narratives are written by man or handed down from a higher power, why sweat it? It’s a holy good show.

With FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds the Brooklyn museum is once again meaningfully invested in the present and jumped ahead in the examination of what clearly is the first global grassroots art movement, giving the stage to the current century’s voices of the street – perhaps because it has engaged with the city’s artists and communities.

With an enormous new Kaws sculpture in the lobby, Basquiat’s notebooks and Kehinde Wiley’s exhibition in the same year, Faile adds an important voice to the local/global narrative and to the dialogue about the appropriate role of art in the public sphere and major institutions in the cultural life of the community they a part of.

“Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” at the Brooklyn Museum will open Friday, July 10th. Click HERE for further information.

This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Oakland Murals from Zio Ziegler, Meggs, Ryan Montana and Ernest Doty

July 7, 2015 Artists

Athens seems like its on the brink of disaster but Athen B is having amazing success. With apologies for the lame name comparison today we bring you shots of new grand scale murals in Oakland done as part of the grand opening of Athen B Gallery with Zio Ziegler, Meggs, Ryan Montana and Ernest Doty.

Ziegler’s 13 story mural actually was part of ceremonies marking the UN’s 70^th Anniversary and a ribbon cutting with Mayor Libby Schaaff the President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation Kathy Calvin. This mural and the others are part of an initiative with VSCO Artist Initiative that Athen B. Gallery is curating in Oakland and upcoming artists will include Cannon Dill and Brett Flanigan.

Conratulations to Athen B’s three co-owners Brock Brake, Sorell Raino-Tsui, and Kriselle.

Click HERE for more details, hours of operations and exhibitions regarding Athen B Gallery

100Taur, St Dominic, and Friars All Friends in France

July 6, 2015 Artists

Street Artist 100Taur (pronounced centaur) is following in the steps of many artists historically who have used their talent in service of religion – with this new image of Saint Dominic on the entrance of a monastery in France.

A Spanish priest and the founder of the Dominican order, Saint Dominic is the patron saint of astronomers as well as those falsely accused, goes back in Toulouse history to the year 1215 where he first established his order with 6 followers.

Says photographer and Street Art observer Butterfly, “The artist studied the iconography of St. Dominic and incorporated many symbols including a lily flower for purity, the Toulouse cross, as well as his signature ‘Slug ‘character, symbol of resilience.”

She tells us that the new mural was officially blessed during a ceremony in the district of Toulouse Rangueil before an audience of church folk and graffiti and Street Art fans.

“It was a quite surreal experience and a lesson in open mindedness,” says Butterfly.

BSA Images Of The Week: 07.05.15

July 5, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

This 4th of July holiday weekend in New York is alive with art on the streets, on roofs, on stoops, in parks, on piers. And run down back lots, tunnels, abandoned spots. Check your local listings.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring ARC, BAST, Bibbito, Bifido, Cash4, Clint Mario, Don John, Entes y Pesimo, Faith47, JR, Keely, Smells, The Yok, and WK Interact.

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BSA Special Feature: Roma Street Art Tribes as Captured by Dioniso Punk

Gwen Stacy Parts I and II

Summer interns are younger than ever this year in NYC!

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Hans Friedrich)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Lunch time for the workers Various & Gould . Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” This is the original poster that inspired the big mural being wheat pasted in Paris in the Spring. (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Various & Gould)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Hans Friedrich)

Various & Gould “Face Time” Berlin. July 2015 (photo © Hans Friedrich)

Jetsonorama. Lola The Atomic Sheep Dog. Cow Springs, Arizona. July 2015. (photo © Jetsonorama)

Jetsonorama. Lola The Atomic Sheep Dog. Cow Springs, Arizona. July 2015. (photo © Jetsonorama)

Jetsonorama. Lola’s herd. The Atomic Sheep Dog. Cow Springs, Arizona. July 2015. (photo © Jetsonorama)

Jetsonorama. Lola The Atomic Sheep Dog. She does have some canine friends. Cow Springs, Arizona. July 2015. (photo © Jetsonorama)

Jetsonorama. Lucy’s trailer. Early morning light. Cow Springs, Arizona. July 2015. (photo © Jetsonorama)

Top image above >>> Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain with a later addition of KORN 40. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wing (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Philippe Herard in Paris, France. (photo © Aline Mairet)

Philippe Herard in Paris, France. (photo © Aline Mairet)

Philippe Herard in Paris, France. (photo © Aline Mairet)

Homo Riot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hunt. And who’s watching the watchers as they watch? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Electric Tattoo and Oji for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Electric Tattoo and Oji for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Old Broads (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Solus for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Solus for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Free Humanity and Pooh comment on the connection many continue to make between the chemical industry and the collapse of 40% of bee colonies. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jorit Agoch over this barely 2 month old Cyrcle piece (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jorit Agoch (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Positions are being taken on the street politically in the upcoming presidential election. Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D. Hollier and a new portrait of Nelson Mandela, whose birthday is coming up this week. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ASVP knocks out a new one for Sugarlift. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Brooklyn, NYC. July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Owen Dippie. Radiant Madonna. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Raphael, Madonna dell Granduca, 1505 (public domain)

“Radiantbaby”. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia

BSA Special Feature: Joe Caslin and The Castle

You’ll be happy to know that the adhesive is made with potato starch.

Of course, it’s all in the planning, the 14 hours of pasting, camera work and of course the soundtrack – here longingly, celtically yours from Róisín O. Rather melts your limestone heart, doesn’t it?

Luxury Living

BISSER in Williamsburg:

La Machination: KOLEO

Handiedan in progress. (photo © Jenn Poggi)

Handiedan. Taking in the action from inside the building. (photo © Jason Wilder)

Handiedan in progress. (photo © Jason Wilder)

Handiedan in progress. (photo © Mark Deff)

Handiedan (photo © Mark Deff)

Handiedan (photo © Mark Deff)

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FAILE. FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FAILE’s Patrick Miller demonstrates an art experience where you rip posters off the wall to reveal yet more Faile posters underneath, which you can rip further. FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FAILE’s Patrick McNeil demonstrates how to tag subway walls before the “Bast Ghosts” come after you. FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FAILE. Temple. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FAILE. Temple. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)