All posts tagged: Jaime Rojo

Streets at the Table for Artists Ball at Brooklyn Museum

April 15, 2015 Artists

Five years into it, The Brooklyn Artists Ball has become a glittering spectacle that speaks to the traditional, the contemporary, and the beat on the street. This years greatest hits collection not only features new elaborate installations by three of Brooklyn’s celebrated Street Artists of this century, Swoon, Olek, and Faile, the custom created environments from equally charged modern thinkers like Jennifer Catron & Paul Outlaw, Fernando Mastrangelo, Duke Riley, SITU Studio, Dustin Yellin and Pioneer Works all speak to the undeniable emergence of the Brooklyn influence on the contemporary art scene.

Man of the hour amidst an explosion of color; This Dr. Arnold Lehman cut-out from the museum’s photo archive will be displayed in multiples and will probably be the visual element that generates the highest number of selfies. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The sky-lit Beaux-Arts Court hosts the dinner that serves as fundraiser, exhibition, and aesthetic theme park, with each artist or collective given tables to adorn and transform. With the guests touring the tables, meeting the artists, watching the awards ceremony and placing bids on the live auction, some guests may forget to eat. This crescendo of course is a celebratory tribute to the museums’ retiring director Arnold Lehman, who effectively has opened the doors to wider audiences and welcomed participation and collaboration during his nearly 20-year tenure – boldly taking risks and diplomatically shepherding the enormous institution into a contemporary relevance envied by some and which now routinely makes guests and patrons enthusiastic, engaged, and dare we say it, proud.

Here are some behind the scenes preparations for the dinner that will honor Lehman and artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Takashi Murakami, and Kiki Smith. In addition to the dinner there is a temporary exhibition of 125 exceptional works of art collected during Lehman’s tenure and a full-on dance party with more installations and which is curated by Fool’s Gold, the independent record label based in Brooklyn. We visited the museum early in the week to catch up with the artists as they were creating their tables – below are shots of the works in progress. None of the tables were completed yet so the images reflect the tables in process.

Swoon’s display includes the original models used for many of her projects, including these two for her Submerged Motherlands exhibit last year at The Brooklyn Museum (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

People dining at this Swoon table will see maquettes of the three boats she sailed with merry Brooklyn anarchists across the Adriatic to triumphantly arrive at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A view of the Braddock Tiles model from Swoon and her project in Braddock, PA. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn’s Olek is transforming two tables with her signature crochet vocabulary to incorporate elements paying homage to honorees Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kiki Smith and Takashi Murakami.

Olek and Basquiat, whose notebooks are currently on exhibit here. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek and Murakami (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Oh, they’re calling that a soul now? Olek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crochet Goddess Olek at work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn’s Faile illuminate: Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller have a concept for their tables that includes turning them into giant light boxes where patrons are going to dine while looking at iconic film from their silk screen work. Street art followers will recognize many of these images from their work on the street.

Patrick and Patrick constructing their light table (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Z Behl (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Z Behl’s table is a multi-part female trickster and her chariot – is one of three tables being presented by Pioneer Works/Dustin Yellin.

Z Behl (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn’s Duke Riley, whose waterborne performance projects around New York have frequently landed him in trouble with the authorities, will send some guests out to sea. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Duke Riley (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A surrealistic “collaboration” between a reflective Arnold and the gilded Olek. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tickets for the Ball are sold out. There are still tickets available for the Dance Party.

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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Skount Paints an Inner World Outside in Kuwait City

April 14, 2015 Artists

Kuwait is upping its game by encouraging more Street Art and artists to come and create – like this new one by Skount completed as part of the Alwan Art Festival.

In his typical cosmological and spiritual manner, Skount invokes the planets as experienced by figurative vessels in folkloric inspired attire. Here “In/Out Inner World Projection”, the title of the mural, you have an idea of the artist is bringing to the wall after he says he had a few days experience learning about the Kuwaiti people and the culture.

Skount. Alwan, Kuwait. (photo © Skount)

“Each individual comes from a determined inner ‘universe’ that is made of a story, culture, ideology, beliefs, norms, religions and different perceptions,” he says. He would like the mural to talk about “how we share and receive information from other individuals from another different inner “universe”, and how these experiences and perceptions “can make the individual psychologically project a world or inner universe that combines both peoples.”

The project is organized by Visual therapy and we are pleased to share these new images with BSA readers.

Skount. Alwan, Kuwait. (photo © Skount)

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Etnik’s Geometric Forms Popping Off in Rome

April 13, 2015 Artists

Furthering his examination of geometric forms interacting in a multi-dimensional field, Etnik creates this new mural in a Roman neighborhood in full view from your terrace. The cube forms emanate forward from a central gravity mass toward the viewer, popping off the enormous sky-blue canvas.

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Etnik. Street Heart. Rome. April 2015. (photo © Blind Eye Factory)

The wall is part of a project sponsored by the 5th Municipality of Rome Capital, on a building at Via Bartolomeo Perestrello. Initiated by a gallery in Tor Pignattara, be sure to check out the video of Etni in action at the end of the post.The “Street Heart” project is curated by Marta Gargiulo and Varsi gallery along with Massimo Scrocca and Marco Gallotta.

Etnik. Street Heart. Rome. April 2015. (photo © Blind Eye Factory)

Etnik in Rome from Blindeye Factory

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BSA Images Of The Week: 04.12.15

April 12, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

This Sunday’s collection of images of the week presents a fair number of unknown artists alongside better known names such as Dennis McNett and Stikman expressing fantasies, fears, politics, geopolitics, economics, and existential matters… such is the nature of the street.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Clint Mario, Dennis McNett, Observer Obscura, Sean 9 Lugo, Sobr, Stikman, Taousuz, and Tona.

Dennis McNett. Detail. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dennis McNett. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dennis McNett. Detail. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dennis McNett. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Taosuz message about Capitalism’s “side effects” collides with the upbeat tone of SOBR in Berlin. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Word. Observer Obscura (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. All revolutionaries of the world please drop your pants and fight! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. The caption reads: “My heart is at the east, and I’m at the end of the west”. Quote from 11th Century Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi expressing his longings for Jerusalem. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stikman. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

TONA in Berlin gets playful. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

TONA. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Clint Mario takes over the coppertone and gets surprised by that frisky cocker spaniel. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sean 9 Lugo takes advantage of a Shepard Fairey’s old vandalized mural in Philadelphia to use as background. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Google all those names…then you’ll know.

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. A Grandfather and his Grandson practicing the chametz in preparation for Passover. Brooklyn, NY. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Opiemme: Poetry and Vortexes in Argentina and Uruguay

April 11, 2015 Artists

Opiemme continues on the search for suitable locations for his Vortexes – a circular shape that contains text and words and poetic dispatches. He likens them to a swirl, a whirlpool, a spiralling symbol of life which mirrors the shape of our galaxy, the Milky Way. He recently travelled to some spots in South America and shares with BSA readers some of his adventures in Argentina and Uruguay.

Gualicho + Opiemme +Florencia Mayra Gargiulo, Isla Maciel per Pintò La Isla, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

You may recall that BSA featured the Argentinian Gualicho in this very modest barrio for a small festival called Pintò la Isla and here we have Opiemme’s collaboration with both he and Florencia Mayra Gargiulo. In it you see the separation and the reformation of letters into fertile soil. “The grey wall suggested to me the idea of a “broken” planet with letters coming out of it, collecting together and going to recreate life somewhere else,” says Opiemme. In this case you see the letters collecting into a new black circle, giving birth to a Gualicho plant.

Gualicho + Opiemme +Florencia Mayra Gargiulo, Isla Maciel per Pintò La Isla, Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

Gualicho + Opiemme +Florencia Mayra Gargiulo. Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

Opiemme. Mar Del Plata, Argentina. 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

The phrase says: If you can’t make it / Do it with a smile / And not just for yourself.

Opiemme. Mar Del Plata, Argentina. 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

This vortex in Mar Del Plata contains the words of the Mexican poet Enrique González Martínez, specifically his poem “The Seeding of the Stars”.

Y mirarán absortos el claror de tus huellas,
y clamará la jerga de aquel montón humano:
“Es un ladrón de estrellas…” Y tu pródiga mano
seguirá por la vida desparramando estrellas. . . .

Opiemme. Detail. Mar Del Plata, Argentina. 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

Opiemme. David De La Mano. Montevideo, Uruguay. 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

In this quick street piece painted with David de la Mano in the center of Montevideo, , Opiemme wanted to relate the figure and the words to the nearby church of Nuestra Senora de los Dolores Tierra Santa.

Appropriately titled “Asunciòn”, it is based on a poem by Julio Cortàzar, the novelist, short story writer, and essayist. “Oh noche, asiste” is about outer space as well, Opiemme tells us, and he used the portion of the poem that says “Oh night take care of your lonely stars”.

“It’s an evanescent, delicate, light work that seems to play with the nearby church,” he says, “as well as with aliens.”

Opiemme. David De La Mano. Detail. Montevideo, Uruguay. 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

Here is a smaller scene painted by David De La Mano. Montevideo, Uruguay. 2014. (photo © Opiemme)

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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BSA Film Friday 04.10.15

April 10, 2015 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. The Reinvention of Normal: Dominic Wilcox
2. Rallitox: Chicken Murder on Williamsburg Street Corner
3. Abdel Maged Amara: LIES – The Street Walkers
4. Sbagliato in London Creates a False Hallway
5. Hitnes in Rome: Blind Eye Factory

The Reinvention of Normal: Dominic Wilcox

“By doing the ridiculous, something else might come of it,” says Dominic Wilcox, and we couldn’t agree more.

“Just off the wall. And that is what I’ve always encouraged in him.” says Dominic’s dad.

“I had this idea to come up with something creative every day for 30 days,” says the artist.

And this is how we all move forward.

Rallitox: Chicken Murder on Williamsburg Street Corner

Insert joke about hipsters here. Actually, this is Williamsburg – hipsters left a few years ago and only return to reminisce. Nonetheless this installation and the blasé reactions of the passive consumer class to Rallitox’s installation are illuminating. Please take your photo and move on.

Also interesting to note, Rallitox reports that a dead animal is cheaper than aerosol paint or markers for making art.

Abdel Maged Amara: LIES – The Street Walkers

Take a look at how to make a 3D Graffiti sculpture and then suspend it in what appears to be its natural environment.

Sbagliato in London Creates a False Hallway

Optical illusion is featured in this tease for upcoming Sbagliato project. Walk this way.

Hitnes in Rome: Blind Eye Factory

Cash For Your Warhol (CFYW) Says “No Questions Asked” in Philadelphia

April 9, 2015 Artists, Interview

“No Questions Asked” says Hargo of this slyly-named collection of Cash For Your Warhol pieces opening this week at a small gallery in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood. But you may want to ask a few questions of your own.

The large CFYW billboard outside Penn Station in Philadelphia is more than an appeal, and less. Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

That’s the typical response that most viewers have when they see his printed plastic signs on telephone poles in desperate parts of town from Boston to New York to Miami to Los Angeles and many points in between. For six years the foxy Street Artist has been happily perplexing inquisitive and inquiring minds with evolving iterations of the sign he first placed on the lawn of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachussets at the height of the financial crisis.

“So it was in March of 2009, it was the bottom. It was also the time when the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis was having tremendous financial difficulty and they had announced that they were going to be selling their art collection.”

He says these are the sorts of signs that appear in the more desperate parts of town. Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“It is one of the best university art collections in the country, and people went nuts,” Hargo explains in a lumberjacked-cuffed-denim-bearded-flannel-plaid-drip-coffee shop a couple of blocks away from the newly installed show.

“So the first sign that I installed was actually on their lawn,” he says with a certain glint in his eye. “That sign got taken down and it is currently in the Rose Museum in the employee lunchroom I’m told. ”

Image © Hargo

He knows his signs are collected directly off the street by all types of people – including a board member of the Warhol Foundation. Once the message catches the eye, certain people also feel compelled to call the number, which he eventually changed and connected to an answering machine. Listen to the messages on the phone installed at “No Questions Asked” and you’ll hear a randomized collection of the hundreds he’s collected so far. Sometimes they are simply confused, other times irate, or self aggrandizing. They warn him about vandalism or insult him for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes they inquire about selling art.

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I think the Cash For Your Warhol thing is funny, and I think it’s okay for art to be funny. Sometimes people think that it has to be all serious and intellectual,” he says as he discusses the more surface emotional aspects of turning the low cost sales medium on its head – a continuous source of entertainment and education for the artist and those who follow his work. He doesn’t mind if people don’t get it or if they literally take the signs for themselves. He has amassed a collection of similar signs himself, and some of their designs are mashed together in a handful of one-of-a-kind pieces in the show as well.

BSA: What kind of signs do you collect and how many do you have?
Hargo: I have a couple hundred – I only want the ones that are plastic signs that are printed – and only those that have a phone number.

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: So even with those narrow parameters, it comes out to be 200 signs. That’s crazy.
Hargo: So wherever I travel – like I was in Florida and I collected a dozen of them. Before I go home I go to a UPS store and I mail them to myself. So I have “Cash for Your House’, “Cash for Your Junk Car”, um, but also “Tattoo Removal” is prominent. I have “Divorce $299”, “Insurance For Diabetics”, signs for Karate lessons, sports camps, dancing lessons.

BSA: Do the dancing lessons signs have a silhouette of a couple in a romantic embrace?
Hargo: Yeah, they’re like doing the tango or something.

BSA: So it is good that you are using these different signs to mash together in your own work.
Hargo: Yeah I think the last thing the people who made these signs expected was that someone would take this sign deliberately and blend it into one of these works.

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Part conceptual, part culture jamming, sociology and anthropology, many iterations of his signage is on display in this brief but tightly packed overview of the entire short career of CFYW – including the special new one in Spanish that features green and red ink referencing the Mexican flag.

“It’s sort of the full collection,” he says, “and I made the new Spanish sign, which is larger format than previously but two sided. Each side is slightly different because when you pull the screens the ink is slightly different.”

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I think a lot of people in Philly are not familiar with his work but they are getting excited about this show,” says LMNL Gallery curator RJ Rushmore, who tells about a further irony where a deli in Fishtown saw one his signs on the street and sent out a tweet about it. Hargo saw the tweet and sent them a sign as a gift – which they promptly put in the front window.

“I just find it so surreal,” says Rushmore, “that an actual store is displaying it in their window display – an artwork that is an advertisement for an art show about a guy looking to buy art.”

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The longer he continues with the CFYW project, the greater the layers of irony and commentary, and the more fulsome is the tribute to the projects namesake Warhol, who became famous by appropriating and elevating the mundane for consideration as art.

“There are numerous ways in which the viewer could relate to CFYW,” he explains, “and I don’t want my views to narrow or shift that experience. It’s part prank, yes, but also part outsider art, part art as commodity, part commentary on the 1%, part performance, part interaction with the viewer, part parody, and, as you pointed out, part Warhol homage. It can be light and funny, or complex and serious – take your pick. I want the viewer’s experience to be open-ended.

“It’s a street art project in the literal sense, because it often goes on the street, but I deliberately don’t abide by traditional street art ‘rules’ because some of those are kinda silly, and I don’t feel I need to follow them in order for the project to succeed. Ideas around permission, fabrication, acceptable media, a gallery presence, hanging off a building with a roller – I feel that sorta stuff doesn’t apply to me because I’m not actually trying to be a street artist.”

Okay, if you say so. No questions asked.

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cash For Your Warhol AKA CFYW “No Questions Asked” will open on April 10 at the LMNL Gallery in Philadelphia. Click HERE for further details.

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Dain and El Sol 25 on the Street in Berlin

April 7, 2015 Artists

When some of the artists were with us in Berlin for the BSA show “Persons of Interest” at Urban Nation, they also managed to hit up a few walls in the city. Not only did they plaster these in broad daylight, neither DAIN nor El Sol 25 even looked over their shoulder; folks welcome the new art work – often posing for selfies in front of it.

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain busts three in a row. See another full body version below. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain sidebusts a piece by Alessio B (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Solito Jibaro inside the future UN museum, currently referred to as the UN haus. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Dont Fret : Spring Break In NYC

April 6, 2015 Artists

The talented comedic Chicago Street Artist is back! Ladies and germs, Dont Fret!

You may not have heard from Dont Fret in a little while probably because he’s been working on his sausage.

Literally.

Poking at the banality of everyday life and smacking you about the face with it till you laugh – that’s what keeps this Czech sausage fresh and savory. Not only did he design signage, packaging and related wheat-pasted illustrations for his collaboration with Publican Quality Meats (“Dont Fret Quality Meats”) he also managed a trip back east to hit the streets with some new humorous characters who look familiar to you.

Most notable of the new works is the large recreation of a typical NYC Sports Ball magazine/mint candy/hot chips/pork rinds street salesman at the ready to make a sale or chew the fat. “For all your commuting needs there is a friendly DF magazine kiosk near you,” he says on his Instagram. Many of the pieces were found in Greenpoint, Williamsburg, and the evolving-gentrifying-contested artist neighborhood of Bushwick – “where the prices are high and the standards are low,” he riffs.

Oddly, even though he was launching his sausage back in Chicago many of his works on NY streets reference veganism, so it’s sort of confusing but maybe he goes both ways. Whatever the case, most likely he has made you crack a smile recently.

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BSA Images Of The Week: 04.05.15

April 5, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

ECB was back on the streets in Bushwick this week doing his portrait of a Moroccan street barber from his series of portraits in Morocco of traders whose trade is in danger of extinction. That is what BSA Images of the Week starts off with.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Caroatoes, ECB, Hendrick Beikirch, Icy & Sot, Jaye Moon, London Kaye, ROA, Scott Lickstein, SOBR, Ten Hundred, Trice, Wing, and X-O.

Jaye Moon may have gone to see the On Kawarwa exhibition at the Guggenheim before hitting the street with this date. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sketches from ROA’s cabinet of curiosities as he prepared this week for his new show at Jonathan Levine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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A Visit With ROA Readying for “Metazoa”

April 4, 2015 Artists, Interview

It’s unusual to capture a ROA inside. He is usually running free outdoors with the wildlife, climbing walls over multiple continents, perched within the industrialized margins of cities and rustling around the overgrown brush of rural regions.

By his own account ROA favors the hard to cover pockmarked and scarred surfaces, preferably outside and large in scale when possible. But once in a while you will find his animal kingdom in the more rarified environs of the whitebox, if only briefly before he hops a plane to Denmark to paint a tower.

For his first solo show with New York’s Jonathan Levine Gallery, ROA has managed to domesticate himself for a few weeks to restrict his activities in a New Jersey studio with discarded cabinets, doors, metal shelves, and a stack of vinyl platters. The platters of course are for spinning on his improvised temporary sound station, newly discovered and freed from crates at music stores in New York.

“I have filled a lot of holes in my collection,” he says as he scans this sudden new trove of vintage records that span genres across the last 50 years or so. They keep him great company. Of course he knows he’ll have to ship them home to Belgium, and they aren’t quite as light as mp3 files. At the base of the turntable he has them arranged in groupings: Rock, Blues and Jazz, Hip Hop and Reggae. Somehow it feels good to know that these new metazoan have come into existence while The Velvet Underground or Nina Simone or Screaming Jay Hawkins or Easy-E were laying down the soundtrack.

This studio at Mana Contemporary has been a godsend and refuge during these freezing cold weeks – made more shocking since he had been in Honolulu just before flying here. But needless to say the lack of outdoor distractions has assisted the artist to focus on these new installations – 15 or more – that go on display at JLG.

With the help of a couple of fellow Street Artists ROA has been scouring Jersey City for discarded cabinets and scraps of wood to use as canvasses, or sculptures. The most successful find, he says, happened the first night where he ran across a cache of old office wooden cabinets that were all in a pile and ready to be trashed.

Within the spoils he found a very old wooden key cabinet with doors and brass hinges. That made him happy. Unfortunately the rest of the scavenging has been a bit tough due to the inclement weather – freezing temperatures and snow. Now that spring is emerging he paints with ease across the wooden assemblages and checks his original sketches as he goes.

Finally they are ready to go, and ROA says he’s a little anxious as he packs up his new pets to be shipped the eight miles to the Chelsea gallery. Once they are gone he can make no more changes so he wants to make sure they are finished. There is also a slight chance that he may have grown attached to one or two of them as well. When they are carefully packed and picked up by the art handlers, ROA is relieved, glad they are out of his hands, hopefully to migrate into new worlds. Given the number of times we have featured and followed his work over the years, we’re confident that most of these animals will find homes soon.

Here are some shots that capture the moment when some of the larger pieces were getting packed, and only certain details of them. Enjoy.

ROA “Metazoa” Opens April 4, 2015 at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Click HERE for details.

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BSA Film Friday 04.03.15 – SPECIAL “Persons of Interest” Videos Debut

April 3, 2015 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. BSA PM/7 “Persons Of Interest” Documentation by Dario Jurilli, Urban Nation, Berlin.

SONG:
“Pipedream“ feat. Tok Tok by PARASITE SINGLE

2. Urban Nation Berlin and BSA: PM/7 “Persons Of Interest” by Talking Projects

Today we debut two videos on BSA Film Friday that have just been released in support of PERSONS OF INTEREST, our curated program for Urban Nation last month in Berlin. The Project M/7 was all about honoring the practice of cultural exchange between the borough of Brooklyn and the City of Berlin.

Artists from both cities have been collaborating and influencing each other for years and we were honored to work with such a talented and varied group of Brooklyn-based artists who each came at the project from very different perspectives. We follow a philosophy that says “honor the creative spirit in each person” first and great amazing things will follow.

While it is challenging the structures that have codified art through centuries, we deeply regard the art that took root on the streets as democratic and idiosyncratic and as something that is given to all of us. This movement doesn’t necessarily require or benefit from gatekeepers and exclusivity to prove its value to a culture – we see it every day.

And speaking of talent, our hats off to the driving forces behind these two videos which tell different stories about the same program. Our partners at Urban Nation augmented the program with ideas of their own and grew the scope of our original ideas further. We admire the point of view taken by the documentary style video that appears first because it captures the message and the atmosphere we had hoped to engender – one of mutual support and respect. PERSONS OF INTEREST honors the artist and the muse. As artists and directors we know that this kind of thinking actually goes a long way – and art can save lives and hearts and minds – we’ve been lucky to see it.

The second video is styled more as a music video, an atmospheric pastiche that plays on the second meaning associated with the words “Persons of Interest” – one where graffiti and Street Art overlap with the darker aspects of a subculture that is transgressive. Carefully not dipping into cliché territory, the stories woven here give a serious nod to the graffiti/skater/tattoo/BMX cultures – which among many other influencers are in the DNA of, have given birth to today’s art in the streets. Its a cool concept and it produces a few surprises.

We hope you dig both of these works.

Our sincerest thanks to the videographers, musicians, stylists, performers, technical experts, participants, administrators, artists, marketers, directors, poets, captains and dreamers who make this stuff happen.

URBAN NATION PROJECT M/7
“Persons of interest” curated by Jaime Rojo & Steven P. Harrington of Brooklyn Street Art

ARTISTS:
DAIN
GAIA
DON RIMX
SWOON
SPECTER
ESTEBAN DEL VALLE
CHRIS STAIN
NOHJCOLEY
CAKE
EL SOL 25
ICY&SOT
ONUR DINC
KKADE
NEVERCREW
DOT DOT DOT
ANDREAS ENGLUND

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December 26, 2025
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family …Read More »
Merry Christmas 2025 From BSA
December 25, 2025
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Photos of BSA 2025 # 10
December 24, 2025
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Photos of BSA 2025 # 11
December 23, 2025
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Photos of BSA 2025 # 12
December 22, 2025
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Photos of BSA 2025 # 13
December 21, 2025
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family …Read More »

Man of the hour amidst an explosion of color; This Dr. Arnold Lehman cut-out from the museum’s photo archive will be displayed in multiples and will probably be the visual element that generates the highest number of selfies. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon’s display includes the original models used for many of her projects, including these two for her Submerged Motherlands exhibit last year at The Brooklyn Museum (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A view of the Braddock Tiles model from Swoon and her project in Braddock, PA. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek and Basquiat, whose notebooks are currently on exhibit here. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek and Murakami (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Oh, they’re calling that a soul now? Olek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crochet Goddess Olek at work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Patrick and Patrick constructing their light table (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Z Behl (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Z Behl (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn’s Duke Riley, whose waterborne performance projects around New York have frequently landed him in trouble with the authorities, will send some guests out to sea. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Duke Riley (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Duke Riley (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A surrealistic “collaboration” between a reflective Arnold and the gilded Olek. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skount. Alwan, Kuwait. (photo © Skount)

Skount. Alwan, Kuwait. (photo © Skount)

Skount. Alwan, Kuwait. (photo © Skount)

Skount. Alwan, Kuwait. (photo © Skount)

Etnik. Street Heart. Rome. April 2015. (photo © Blind Eye Factory)

Etnik. Street Heart. Rome. April 2015. (photo © Blind Eye Factory)

Etnik. Street Heart. Rome. April 2015. (photo © Blind Eye Factory)

Etnik. Street Heart. Rome. April 2015. (photo © Blind Eye Factory)

Etnik. Street Heart. Rome. April 2015. (photo © Blind Eye Factory)

Etnik in Rome from Blindeye Factory

Dennis McNett. Detail. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dennis McNett. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dennis McNett. Detail. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dennis McNett. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Taosuz message about Capitalism’s “side effects” collides with the upbeat tone of SOBR in Berlin. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Word. Observer Obscura (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. All revolutionaries of the world please drop your pants and fight! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. The caption reads: “My heart is at the east, and I’m at the end of the west”. Quote from 11th Century Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi expressing his longings for Jerusalem. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stikman. Philadelphia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

TONA in Berlin gets playful. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

TONA. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Clint Mario takes over the coppertone and gets surprised by that frisky cocker spaniel. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sean 9 Lugo takes advantage of a Shepard Fairey’s old vandalized mural in Philadelphia to use as background. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. A Grandfather and his Grandson practicing the chametz in preparation for Passover. Brooklyn, NY. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Reinvention of Normal: Dominic Wilcox

Rallitox: Chicken Murder on Williamsburg Street Corner

Abdel Maged Amara: LIES – The Street Walkers

Sbagliato in London Creates a False Hallway

Hitnes in Rome: Blind Eye Factory

The large CFYW billboard outside Penn Station in Philadelphia is more than an appeal, and less. Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

He says these are the sorts of signs that appear in the more desperate parts of town. Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Image © Hargo

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cash For Your Warhol. Philadelphia, PA. April, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain busts three in a row. See another full body version below. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain sidebusts a piece by Alessio B (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Solito Jibaro inside the future UN museum, currently referred to as the UN haus. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dont Fret (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dont Fret (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dont Fret (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dont Fret (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dont Fret. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dont Fret (photo © Jaime Rojo)