All posts tagged: Jaime Rojo

Specter With Local Artists In Tashkent, Uzbekistan

May 13, 2013

Street Artist, teacher, and cultural emissary Specter just returned from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan where he was working with local artists in a project called  Global Art Lab to try their hand at painting walls, including these inside a crumbling theater building. The under-utilized Tashkent space is spare and open and analogous to the abandoned and neglected places that many Street Artists and graffiti writers are attracted to around the world, not to mention its storied past that adds to the somewhat haunting quality of the roughened interior.

Specter (photo © Specter)

The top two floors of the Ilkhom Theater (Ильхом Театр Марка Вайля) were destroyed in a fire two decades ago and its founder Mark Weil was murdered at its entrance  the day before a performance in 2007. Today performances and rehearsals take place in the spaces that remain usable – but the roof still gives them problems.

Working through the organization CEC ArtsLink, the Brooklyn artist feels like his teaching style was perfect for the environment and was happy to have bright minds engaged to activate the walls here. “The artists were extremely talented,” he says.  “They worked hard and I think we created a really special exhibition.” The organization also has featured others from the street art/public arts scene including Mark Jenkins and  Evan Roth of Graffiti Research Lab.

Included in the largely monochromatic program are three large walls he painted himself that he says were inspired by local traditional patterns. Here are his new walls and many of the walls created by the students, many who pose here with their work at a reception that was held at the end of the project.

Specter (photo © Specter)

Specter (photo © Specter)

A piece by a local artist who participated in the exhibition. (photo © Specter)

A local artist working on his piece that appears to form the logo for Facebook. (photo © Specter)

A local artist posing in front of her piece. (photo © Specter)

Selective plugging of holes in this serrated concrete facade creates a digitized piece by a local artist who participated in the exhibition. (photo © Specter)

A local artist walking in front of his piece. (photo © Specter)

A painter at work. (photo © Specter)

Apple as religious iconography. A piece by a local artist who participated in the exhibition. (photo © Specter)

Birds on a wire in this piece by an artist in the program. (photo © Specter)

Two participants pose in front of their piece. (photo © Specter)

A local artist working on portrait of musician Jimi Hendrix. (photo © Specter)

A local artist posing in front of her piece, a collection of cassette tapes and a player. (photo © Specter)

A local artist working on her piece. (photo © Specter)

A group shot of all the participating artists, mentors and organizers. (photo © Specter)

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Images of the Week: 05.12.13

May 12, 2013

Here’s our weekly interview of the street, this week featuring B.D. White, Col Wallnuts, Dan Witz, Greg LaMarche, Jon Hall, Josef Kristofoletti, JR, Mr. Penfold, Mr. Toll, and W.

The inaugural wall from a new program called “The Big Brush” by commercial outdoor advertising company Colossal went up this week in Brooklyn featuring a work by 1980s/90s New York graffiti writer SP One,  who is now better known as collage fine artist Greg LaMarche. The company figures at least tangentially into the street art scene by virtue of the sheer amount of work they provide for a large number of painting artists who create about 300 walls per year, all hand-painted. They even have an apprenticeship program for painters who would like to learn how to do this work. “Big Brush” will be unleashing a slew of new art on walls that are not zoned to be commercial, so they’re actually inching a little closer to Street Art than before.

For his part, LaMarche told us he was pretty blown away as he watched his original small collage go up over the course of a couple of days, painstakingly recreated on this same wall that had the D*Face piece not too long ago – with the view of the Williamsburg Bridge to the right. We can’t wait to see the video that was created, as we hear that some interesting techniques were employed in the shooting.

“Basically it’s a re-creation of a collage I made last year – it was on the cover of a magazine from Paris called Graffiti Art magazine,” said LaMarche as he guided himself up and down in a cherry picker to get shots of his work. “So it’s crazy that it was on the cover of that magazine this spring and now it’s on the side of a building in Brooklyn. The last year or two has been pretty amazing. I’ve painted some large murals myself but to have some of my smaller work, the collage work, realized in this larger format is really incredible.

Greg Lamarche. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: The original work was made with all hand-cut small pieces that are glued to canvas, right?
Greg LaMarche: Onto a board, yeah. It’s funny because when we did the ratio calculations – the actual piece is 15″ wide by 20″ tall and the way they set this up the width was actually perfect. These guys are professional and they know what they are doing. And artists like this are a dying breed – it seems like there’s no challenge that they can’t handle.

JR. The culmination of the “Inside Out” project that drew to a close Friday in Times Square, NYC. Congratulations to all the volunteers. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

B.D. White (photo © Jaime Rojo)

W (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Toll (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Penfold (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Josef Kristofoletti. Panama City. (photo © Josef Kristofoletti)

Jon Hall (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Col Wallnuts (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. New York City. May 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Top image > Greg Lamarche (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

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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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Street Artist XAM Has First Solo and Flies High With IDEAS CITY

May 11, 2013

Flying high with his Urban Habitat project for IDEAS CITY and the New Museum, Street Artist XAM has been creating site specific eco-friendly aviary homes in lower Manhattan on the street out where birds are most likely to see them, and use them for food and shelter. If you have the opportunity to speak with this trained architect and serious student of art, graffiti, design, materials, urban planning, and bird life, you cannot help but be drawn in by the enthusiastically detailed descriptions regarding  methodology and processes that he follows to complete projects like this. BSA has documented his work extensively since he began on the street with his dwellings and it is a pleasure to see an wider audience now having the opportunity to interact with his pieces and to see his aesthetic loosening up to be a bit more playful as well.

A XAM bird dwelling is well placed next to a painted bird from Street Artist ROA from a couple of years earlier. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Along with offering selected pieces through the New Museum store, XAM now has his first solo show, “Migration-NYC”, at Dorian Grey gallery in the East Village. On opening day last Saturday during the IDEAS CITYs Streetfest, visitors were also invited to scan a QR code and follow a mapped path of his installations, complete with photos and descriptions of the pieces, through the streets directly to the gallery. There you find a variety of domiciles and sheltering structures that are alternately utilitarian and whimsical, but all with a clear sense of purpose. Included among the Bauhaus inspired architectural pieces are corollary street campaigns such as the miniature sign-mounted billboards that give commentary about the corporatization of resources and technology, as well as his more recent mobiles that balances a laser cut wooden “XAM” tag with a wingspread and soaring bird.

XAM is expanding his architectural design explorations in sustainability while also employing humor along the way.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Many of the models offer satellite TV, although no flatscreen was evident from peering into the windows. XAM (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A modern corollary to the urban practice of sneakers over the wire, with a nod to Street Artist duo Skewville’s flat wooden sneakers on same during the last decade, this new mobile tag by XAM is instantly recognizable from a distance. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

XAM (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Multiple dwellings for the city bird. XAM (photo © Jaime Rojo)

These homes are a commentary on the ongoing housing crises among humans and the banks that rule them. As you can see, entry into the more traditionally designed bird houses is blocked. XAM (photo © Jaime Rojo)

XAM (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A XAM piece placed in situ.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

XAM (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

XAM (photo © Jaime Rojo)

XAM (photo © Jaime Rojo)

XAM Solo Exhibition “Migration-NYC” is currently on view at the Dorian Grey Gallery in Manhattan. Click here for further information.

 

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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: 05.10.13

May 10, 2013

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

Now screening: Narcélio Grud Food Painting, Beerens Snail Work, El Mac’s promo for “Sangre Nueva”, and Doug Aldrich and Sam Octigan create a canvas.

BSA Special Feature:
“Tropical Hungry” food painting with Narcélio Grud

You are what you eat, son, so stay away from cow tongue!  “Tropical Hungry” follows Street Artist Narcélio Grud into the market in the city of Fortaleza, Brazil and watches him pick up the discarded fruits and vegetables. What he does with them is delicious and takes art as “Food for Thought”.   Also, it opens the conversation about what we do with the food that is not eaten, and reminds us not to waste.

A Snail Goes To Work: Michael Beerens

Set to a soundtrack of slow-jam reverie, the pacing of this video from the French Street Artist tells you that someone is in love with painting and is willing to take his time to get it right. Chill, Mr. Snail.

El Mac “Sangre Nueva”

For his new show that opened Wednesday in Denmark, this promo for El Mac presents evocative vignettes of motels, windshield wipers and pulp fiction. The mini movie rolls like the credits for a story that glides slowly through the desperation of the street in search of romance, escapism, and a little soul.

Four stars to Medvin Sobio.

Doug Aldrich and Sam Octigan: “Crossing Lines”

Here’s a recap of the recently exhibited show “Crossing Lines” featuring the collaboration of an Aussie and a New Yorky. Not specific to Street Art, although it’s possible there is some familiarity with the scene here, this video is a snapshot of how Bushwick continues to change and evolve into an arts district with the huge influx of new people over the last 5 years.

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NohJColey Talks About The Deception of Independence

NohJColey Talks About The Deception of Independence

May 9, 2013 ,

Artist Talks About His New 4 Panels Across from Woodward Gallery

Today we’re checking in with artist NohJColey, whose work we’ve featured many times and who continues to surprise viewers on the street with his distinctive style, well considered narratives and somewhat cryptic symbolism. It is great to watch an artist grow, and NohJ gets better because he’s continuously stretching his mind and practicing his skills. He tells us this new gig  crept up on him so he worked faster than usual, and the results are a looser flow, and a confident one. We asked him to talk about this newly finished piece on the street in the Lower East Side, what he’s been up to, and what are those ducks doing?

Brooklyn Street Art: We haven’t been seeing a lot of new work on the street from you. What have you been working on?
NohJColey: After my solo show I began working a job to pay bills and just didn’t really have time to produce work for the street. These days I’m a tattoo apprentice among other things. But I actually put up new work in the street on a daily basis. It may be a different pseudonym, but it’s happening everyday.

NohJColey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Is this the first time you have been asked to do the four panels for Woodward?
NohJColey: Yeah, this is the first time Woodward gallery approached me to do the four panels. I’ve always wanted to do them and it finally came to fruition.

Brooklyn Street Art: What is the name of the piece?
NohJColey: The piece is entitled “Oh, The Deception of Independence”

 

NohJColey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you tell us the back story of this new painted collage?
NohJColey: The piece is essential about the illusion of being self-sufficient. The main figure is married to the woman who he must ask for permission to go skydiving. To me, the act of skydiving enables an individual to feel as “free” as one can. The fact that the main figure has to have permission to feel “free” is an illusion inside of an illusion. The ducks in the piece are owned by the married couple. They roam around a one acre back yard, but they are not permitted to leave the property. Oh, The Deception of Independence…

 

NohJColey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: The male figure is arched and seemingly swimming or flying. Did you have a live model for it?
NohJColey: No, I didn’t use a live model. Live models don’t always do a great job. Sometimes I’ll spend hours perusing through magazines until I get a pose or a hand gesture that I then manipulate.

Brooklyn Street Art: In much the same way as pieces you have pasted on boards on construction sites, the character of this wood really adds to the overall character of the piece. Did you like the result?
NohJColey: The aged wood effect looked okay though I’d rather use found materials any day of week. There is just something about an object that has genuine history as opposed to some store bought item that was altered to look like the actual thing.

NohJColey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Often in your sculptures there is motion and movement – here too you are indicating the movement of the woman’s arm through replicating and pivoting the limb. Have you ever done a video piece, or wanted to?
NohJColey: I did some video pieces in college and started one about two years ago, but that stuff is so time consuming that I had to put it aside to complete other projects.

Brooklyn Street Art: Are those mallard ducks?
NohJColey: The flying duck is. The second duck was a goose that I turned into a mallard duck.

 

NohJColey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: If you were to symbolize yourself in one of your pieces as an animal, which one would you chose?
NohJColey: Most likely a liger because they’re a hybrid and I love the idea of mixing multiple things up to form one figure. And they never really stop growing.

Brooklyn Street Art: Which is harder for you when creating a piece. Starting it or finishing it?
NohJColey: Starting a piece is usually extremely difficult for me because I’m constantly attempting to create something that has never been seen before. I over think things and can spend a couple of days gathering reference material without having a clue how exactly to use it.

NohJColey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NohJColey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NohJColey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NohJColey’s “Oh, Deception of Independence” is currently on view at the Woodward Gallery Project Space. Click here for more information.

 

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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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Exclusive: London Police Use Child Labor (VIDEO)

May 8, 2013

This brand new behind-the-scenes video of the Street Artists called The London Police proves how wrongly named they are! See exactly what they have been doing to innocent children as they prepare for their new show that opens in East London Thursday night.

We fully expect that once people are made aware of the extreme lengths they’ve gone to (or depths they have lowered themselves to) there will be quite a crowd in the streets outside the gallery, possibly with pitchforks and torches!

 

To complain please contact Stolen Space Gallery

 

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Hellbent, Abstractions and “The Mixtape Series” in NYC

Hellbent, Abstractions and “The Mixtape Series” in NYC

May 8, 2013 ,

In-Studio Visit With the Guy Who Took His Street Name from Richard Hell

“Even Romantics Love Violence”, Hellbent’s first solo gallery show unveils the graffiti / Street Artist doing a new collection  in abstraction, “The Mix Tape Series”.  With each piece named after a song he was listening to while creating it, the series testifies to his intense love of music (from punk to country to big band and indie rock) and the practice of making custom collections for friends and lovers on blank cassettes.

“Violence” alludes to the concomitant firestorm of emotions, thoughts and ideas that the perfect mixed tape collection can convey, especially when you are 15, or 25, or 35, or ever. While “Mix Tape” is his own nostalgic homage to his high school years in Georgia in the 1990s, for Hellbent this new sharply eye-popping collection is one more refinement to a body of work he’s developed on New York streets over the last 10 years.

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Mix Tape” also refers to his cyclical process; Recording, erasing, recording – he literally saves the tape he uses to create pieces, and creates some more.  Here is the thick and sticky masking tape that’s covered in overspray and patterning, now newly arranged and layered and edited into finished abstract compositions, to be used later as a sketch for larger painted pieces.

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Included in the show are the “Demos”, the actual tape pieces or sketches now encased in liquid glass.

“The first time I tried to make something with them was when I was in LA doing a big mural and I thought I could try it out on a sketchbook. So at first I started off layering them, building them. I gave myself parameters, you can’t just be all willy-nilly,” he explains. Once marginal, here center-stage, these new vividly patterned pieces vibrate with the same rage and charm one associates with his bared-tooth dogs, hissing snakes and signature Freud jawbone as they lie gently cloaked in delicate lace floral patterns you last saw covering grandma’s end-table, topped with a bowl of plastic fruit.

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In studio you can see the violent beauty of a hellish production process as he chops and slices through the distortion and guitars and drums and vocals pounding and vibrating through his thoughts. “The Mix Tape Series” celebrates Hellbents ever-more discordant color palette, the re-aligning and openly opposing shards and shapes that he keeps pushing to reach a level of punk rock splendor. Even so, he says, “I’ve never really studied color theory.  I never really think about it.”

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Some of the color combinations – the seafoam green next to hot pink – they vibrate and I can’t get them to stop.
Hellbent : So some of them, because of the clashing of colors, some of them want to come up and some of them want to drop back. So I’ve been trying to add depth. I’m trying to create depth through flatness. Everything is super flat but they are layered on top of one another. And the colors create optical effects.

Like an uninhibited and pissing fire extinguisher slicing across complacent suburban vinyl siding, Hellbent forces dark colonial blue death and blaring orange fluorescence to lie uncomfortably next to one another, making the eye push and pull the shapes to the fore- and back ground, an optical effect caused purely by their nearness to one another.

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent on the street in Queens for Welling Court (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbents’ pattern play has gotten sophisticated too; trompe l’oeil evokes printed wallpaper even when achieved with aerosol. As he rocks through new printed motifs and razor sharp shapes he likes to alternately calm and jolt, forcing the painting to pop for a fraction of a second, the snapping life of an impulse. With this new sharpened geometry and these comforting patterns and these challenging color choices the pieces rise above the canvas as they lay upon, slam against, and step on top of one another.

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Music is the ultimate teacher,” prophesied Vasily Kandinsky, and the blank cassette tape onto which the Russian painter and art theorist would have recorded his mix would probably have included Richard Wagner, assisting his movement from landscape or portraiture to embrace pure abstraction. The music stories told of sound poems and Stravinsky at the MoMA show this spring, Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925, has inspired Hellbent as well, furthering his own fascination with this abstract route on the street, even as he curated the Geometricks show with Brooklyn Street Art last fall.

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A classic Hellbent snake on the street in Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

His own recent mural and street works mirror a direction found in other movements popping up on streets in Europe and on America’s coasts and Hellbent happily name checks San Francisco’s Poesia (and his blog Graffuturism), Agents of Change in London, and a growing list of alternate abstract avenues for street based art now sometimes described as post-graffiti. No longer reliant on text or tags or even imagery, Hellbent continues to mix his favorites in search of something new.

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Here is a short list of some of the songs and titles of Hellbents’ new pieces for “The Mixtape Series”. In addition to sighting everybody from Lollapalooza 1, 2, and 3, his references can include early British shoe gaze, 90s indie rock, early and contemporary rock n roll, country music and Bob Dylan.

“Vapor Trail” by Ride http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygGw_zo_W8A

“No God, Only Religion” by Spirtualized http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE0lBbBNR1Q

“Benediction” by Thurston Moore  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEe9H6fa7uM

“My Ways” by The Concretes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaePFbCPWzE

“Start Choppin” by Dinosaur Jr. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrRPQqvwjFE

“Youth Against Fascism” by Sonic Youth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot_w3LAPH3s

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Even Romantics Love Violence”

Hellbent Solo at Brooklyn’s Mighty Tanaka Gallery

Friday, May 10, 2013 at 6 pm – 9pm

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Other references

BSA Presents GEOMETRICKS, Curated by Hellbent

Color, Geometry and Pattern on the Streets by Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo on The Huffington Post and BSA

Sneak Peeks from Geometricks

 

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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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Museums Go Outside to Play With the Kids

May 7, 2013

Shots from “Ideas City”

As museums continue to look for ways to bring in the kids, they are finding that one way to do it is to go outside and play with them.

Last year The Brooklyn Museum had a really successful GO at engaging people with community-curated programming that put people in touch with the young artist scene that has transformed the BK in the last decade or so. Similarly the New Museum Ideas City is making extensive outreach to connect the disconnected phone-poking Millenials and X’ers to the brilliant and quirky creative community that makes Manhattan the live breathing beautiful beast that it is. This is the kind of meaningful museum programming that can make the city feel inclusive, asking you to participate with your own snapping synapses and probing inquiries about the nature of things.

Inside and Outside. Raumlabor, Spacebuster. New Museum. Ideas City 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

When it comes to encouraging personal participation in the public sphere, nothing is more democratizing for an event than to bring it directly into the street.  This is an exhibition that is not roped off, doesn’t charge an admission fee, has no dress code, has no gate keepers. It actually invites you to engage, to converse, to consider, question, and decide merit on your own. – Not to mention the transformative affect it all has on public space and our perception of our place in it.

Raumlabor, Spacebuster. New Museum. Ideas City 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For us the second installment of the Ideas City really hit its peak this weekend as the culmination of more than a hundred independent projects and public events spilled into the street and onto walls.  For the sunny Saturday Streetfest set along the sidewalks and in nearby park space in the refreshingly dirty, loud, and un-tony Bowery section of Manhattans Lower East Side, people celebrated the public aspect of citizenry and interacted with projects and tested the ideas of artists, architects, poets, technologists, historians, community activists entrepreneurs, and ecologists. And there were some street artists around too.

Here are some of the scenes that caught the eye of our favorite BSA photographer, Jaime Rojo, who was feeling pretty inspired by the events.

Children playing bball with the Spacebuster in the background. Ideas City 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist Hellbent took a spin on the box truck idea with his new “Mix Tape” Series. New Museum. Ideas City 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist XAM installed on the street a number of his custom architected homes for the urban bird. The Urban Habitat Project. New Museum. Ideas City 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Todd Lester. Trust Art Installation. New Museum. Ideascity 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Draw Something. Yes, it’s an ad for an app, but at least people are encouraged to participate by drawing, so that’s good. On the side walk for Ideas City 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

eL Seed and Jaye did their calligraffiti/graffiti installation as part of World Nomads Tunisia. New Museum. Ideas City 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist ND’A installed a new piece on the Influx In Flux/Centre-fuge project. New Museum. Ideas City 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yuri Velez painting live for Influx In Flux/Centre-fuge. New Museum. Ideas City 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

CRUZ.  Influx In Flux/Centre-fuge. New Museum. Ideas City 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Detail of an installation sprayed by stencillist MOR.  Influx In Flux/Centre-fuge. New Museum. Ideas City 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cram Concepts in motion.  Influx In Flux/Centre-fuge. New Museum. Ideas City 2013 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DEMER.  Influx In Flux/Centre-fuge. New Museum. Ideascity 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sofia Maldonado & Ray Smith. Detail. Influx In Flux First Street Green Park. New Museum. Ideas City 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sheryo and Yok. Detail. Influx In Flux First Street Green Park. New Museum. Ideas City 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The student group Cre8tive YouTH*ink. Centre-fuge. First Street Green Park. New Museum. Ideas City 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cre8tive YouTH*ink. Centre-fuge. First Street Green Park. New Museum. Ideas City 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DARK. A random stencil along the Street Fest route. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

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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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eL Seed and Jaye in New York Nomadically

eL Seed and Jaye in New York Nomadically

May 6, 2013 ,

Tunisian-French Street Artist eL Seed is in New York right now to showcase his unique hand at calligraffiti, a genre of graffiti that has steadily grown in the last few years as traditional graffiti writers have tried their hand at differently stylized executions of lettering. Together with Jaye, a more traditional graffiti writer from Tunisia, the country that began the Arab Spring two years ago, eL Seed is spraying a number of messages in his own adaptation of Arabic on walls in New York for just over a week.

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Born in Tunisia in the early 1980s and raised in Paris, the quick witted and thoughtful eL Seed calls well known calligraffiti artist Niels Shoe Meulman “a legend” and looks forward like a true fan to meeting Retna, even as his own painting exploits in the last couple of years include an enormous script on Tunisia’s tallest minaret, a high profile design gig with luxury brand Louis Vuitton, and a just completed 52 mural project on Salwa Road that features his own graffiti inspired calligraphy honoring Qatari culture and life.

“I spent nearly four months there, and painted almost one kilometer of wall,” he says of the project that traced his progress with a blog and enabled him to teach eager art college students how to use an aerosol can.

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As a culturally bi-national artist who travels increasingly often, it is fair to say eL Seed is one of the new Street Art nomads who now regularly travel from city to city across the globe hitting walls. Maybe that’s why New York feels normal to him.

“I feel like everybody is a nomad in New York. You come, stay, and you leave, you know?” he says while we stand across the street from the still-wet wall he is completing on the Lower East Side with Jaye. What does this hot pink curvilinear script edged in red with the dropped shadow say? “Yeah in Arabic it says ‘We should all be nomads. We should cross ideas the same way we cross streets and cities.’ ”  He sites the Cuban painter and poet Francis Picabia fro inspiring the text. The installation, and another one at 5 Pointz with Meres in Queens next weekend, are both part of “The World Nomads Tunisia” festival organized for the fifth time by the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF).

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I like a lot of pink and black,” he says as he surveys the new wall, which combines his stylized calligraphic lettering with the bubbled aesthetic of Jaye’s early graffiti style that many associate with NYC trains in the 70s. The new collaboration is just the sort of fusion that a multicultural city like New York is accustomed to, and one that it thrives on. “It is a good mix because we both represent a tradition of sorts. What I do is more related to very old traditions, what Jaye does is more relevant to our time, more modern. But the mix is a good combination, you know?”

Brooklyn Street Art: Have you experienced any negative reactions or attitudes while you have been painting?
eL Seed: I was a bit scared to come here and paint some Arabic after what happened in Boston, and actually people have been coming and treating me very well. They are totally open-minded and they accept it in a positive way. That is how we can break stereotypes. Some guys even said, “Yeah, we need more of that”. You know when a white American man comes to you and says, “I would like to see more of that”, you know, I say “Oh that’s cool”.

Brooklyn Street Art: Yeah it’s a good sign, right?
eL Seed: Yeah, it’s pretty good.

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This weekend you can check out a new wall eL Seed and Jaye will be doing in Long Island City at 5Pointz in collaboration with Meres One, one of New York’s well known graffiti writers and founder of the revered graffiti holy place. On Sunday May 12th you will have the opportunity to view their new work during a celebratory reception from 6-8pm at 5Pointz as well.

In the meantime they hope to hit a wall with the Bushwick Collective and maybe a couple of other walls this week before eL Seed heads back to Paris for two more walls waiting for him, including a project that’s already featured Shepard Fairey and most recently, C215. Also a nine story building by the river.

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I’m glad that in Paris they are finally accepting my work,” he says as he recalls his first attempts to get permission to paint walls in the city that prizes it’s unique culture and heritage. “Last year they said ‘We cannot have Arabic script in Paris,’ ” he recalls as he remembers having a hard time getting people to agree to his calligraffiti.

Why the seemingly sudden change in political winds, he cannot say for sure. One might guess that it has something to do with word getting around about his collaboration with Luis Vuitton, the French luxury brand that has collaborated recently with Street Art names like Aiko, Retna and Os Gemeos and has more on the roster for future projects.

Whatever the reason, he wants to take his game up a notch. “Now I have two big walls, so that is good.” How would he challenge himself? “Maybe I can develop a new alphabet,” he smiles.

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

eL Seed and Jaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The project is sponsored by The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) and offers opportunities for an exchange of ideas about urban revolutions.
To learn more about World Nomads Tunisia 2013, please click here.

 

A video from eL Seeds’ recently completed project in Doha in Qatar.

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Images of the Week: 05.05.13

May 5, 2013

 

 

Feliz Cinco De Mayo to all the Mexicanos/Mexicanas in the NYC today! Actually it’s more of a beer company sponsored holiday for los gringos but What the Infierno, it’s a big Spanglish Sunday in our multicultural city. Yo, speaking of spanish, check out José Parlá above rocking the installation he did with JR on a wall in Chelsea.  And speaking of JR, the Times Square excitement continues till Friday so head on over to tourist central and be a part of it and a volunteer will help you get your mug turned into a piece of street art. Also keep your eyes open for news of his trip this week to Rikers Island. Bro, we weren’t there, we’re too scared to even think of it.  But we did get to hang out with visiting Tunisian/Parisian calligraphic Street Artist El Seed this week while he was hitting up a wall and we’ll show you that action soon.

Anyway, here’s our weekly interview of the street, this week featuring Billi Kid, Bishop 203, Classic, Duke A. Barnstable, Earth Chronicles, Fink NY, Foxx Face, Fumero, Gilf!, Havan, Jon Hall, José Parlá, JR, Mr. Toll, ND’A, Rene Gagnon, Sno, Stikman, and Wishbe .

Top image > JR and José Parlá. “The Wrinkles of The City, Havana, Cuba” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

HUSH.  “Hush revisited this old piece in Newcastle, UK on Friday. The original piece in the same place was damaged by a huge rain storm,” says his studio manager, who described how he incorporated the damaged piece into the new one. Now it looks like the damage is going to influence his new show in LA. It turns out to be an interesting study in how work on the street can affect work in the studio.  (photo © HUSH)

Um, could you post this? Gilf! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Toll seems appropriate for 5 de Mayo. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jon Hall “In Name and Blood” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rene Gagnon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stikman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Foxx Face (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Big expansive walls are cool, but its always very nice to see well rendered small pieces on the streets too.

ND’A is King (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Chelsea Magnet Wall is featuring Fumero, WishBe, Absolut Insulin and the always high-charged Duke A. Barnstable. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yeah, I hear you sister. It’s rough out here. Earth Chronicles and Fink NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Oh man, this is a Classic (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bishop203 pumping up the volume on both his Street Art side and graffiti side, and it’s got a lot of harmony. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

I’m thinking Herakles, how about you? Courage, endurance and nobility from Billi Kid. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Well, at least some things are getting done around here. Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. SOHO, NYC. 2011 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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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: 05.03.13

May 3, 2013

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

Now screening: Gorey & PAL Crew at Klughaus, Crack & Shine – PAL Crew Profiled, Jilly Ballistic: Wild in The Streets, and JR: INSIDE OUT

BSA Special Double Feature: About Spraying Buildings
Feature 1. Gorey & PAL Crew at Klughaus

We highlight these two videos as possible polar opposites on a spectrum that includes genuine practice, personal and public perceptions of the graffiti artist / fine artist – a dichotomy that may produce cognitive dissonance and swirling emotion, an uncomfortable grey area for one to see the wielder of the can as artist, installationist, situationist, expressionist, intellectual, political theorist, social alien and open law breaker with a mission, or not. Okay, maybe it isn’t all that grand, but we got out the dictionary this morning.

First, here is a departure from the more common depiction of the lone aerosol artist as nihilistic defacer of property to now lone painter creating on a studio wall; a splattery line illustration of buildings that hug one another, forming a closely knit imaginary community, overlaid by an intimate serenade for an appreciative audience. When you look at this promo for the new pop-up show by Klughaus called PALINGENESIS by a series of graff artists, it seems sort of romantic, mon amor.

Feature 2. Crack & Shine – PAL Crew Profiled on Streets and Roofs of Paris

Here, the buildings are the canvas, and the community is alarmed and in opposition to the painter. In strict contrast with the video above, this one features some of the Peace and Love Crew (PAL) appearing to actively deface property in Paris.  And by their self descriptions, there is still this romantic view of what they do. Here they are members of a crew – in a gallery they might be called a collective. Switch the signifier or situation and you are celebrated or vilified (as Jaime adroitly observed yesterday). And there you have it – the flood of emotions/thoughts that are evoked by two entirely different expressions that involve the spray can.

Spoiler alert, there is no tidy answer to tie it all together.

Jilly Ballistic: Wild in The Streets

And on another note, Dega Films, a young and earnest start-up in Williamburg, Brooklyn is taking on a new project to document 10 Street Artists on the scene in a series from the streets of New York City while it’s happening. This is worthwhile endeavor for two reasons; 1. Documenting Street Art and artists is important for the greater culture to understand what is happening and to place it in the evolutionary timeline as this global scene continues to expand, contract, and mutate, and 2. This project is not sponsored by a brand, it is sponsored by you, so you are ensuring a bit more of intellectual freedom in the storytelling.

And on that tip, this episode looks at Street Artist/Culture Jammer Jilly Ballistic, who focuses her work predominantly in the subway with messages calling into question any variety of core assumptions pedaled daily by commercial messages that commuters must encounter as they travel, and consumer culture in general.  Among other things.

To learn more about the Kickstarter for Wild in The Streets click here.

JR: INSIDE OUT: The People’s Art Project. A Documentary

Inside Out is the new documentary traces the phenomenon of Street Artist and photographer JR as he engages everyday people around the globe and helps them tell at least one small part of his story. Aided by the muscle of an army of committed volunteers and assistants, he is able to provide a forum for the individual to express themselves in ways that are celebrational, idiosyncratic, sometimes heart breaking, always human. Results may vary, and the reception locally is not always laudatory. Clearly JR is the name on the marquee but he makes sure that in many ways the stars are the people who get him there.

Top images are screenshots, copyright of Klughaus and OffTheWall.TV.

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FKDL and His Vintage Glamour Women

May 2, 2013

New Wall Celebrates Audrey Hepburn for her May 4 birthday in the Brussells district she was born in. Liz Taylor is her special guest.

There are many references to pop culture, movies, fashion, and celebrity that have appeared in Street Art in the last decade or so, thanks to our full immersion in the National Entertainment State. We always say that the street reflects us back to ourselves, and apparently we are fixated on poised prettitude, at least in some cities. From Street Artists like DAIN to Judith Supine to Faile to The Dude Company, Tian, Aiko, TooFly and myriad anonymous stencillists, you are bound to see depictions of glamorous women and in a variety of archetypes popping up on walls and doorways no matter the year.

FKDL “Breakfast at Ixelles”. Brussels, Beligium. (photo © FKDL)

Parisian Street Artist FKDL reliably returns to his wheelhouse of the 1950s and 60s when he looks for images of idealized females.  Even his silhouettes of graceful and lithe dancing figures will remind you of the 2-D animations of opening credits of Hollywood movies from the golden age, the hip early years of television, beatniks in tight turtleneck sweaters reading poems, and swinging chicks on the cover art from long-playing jazz albums.  As a “fill” to his forms, he often pastes in an actual collage of vintage commercial illustrations that he cut from magazines and dress making pattern envelopes.  Clearly his is a romance with an image of female beauty from an earlier time and he reliably visits it again and again in his work on the streets of Europe and New York.

FKDL “Breakfast at Ixelles”. Brussels, Beligium. (photo © FKDL)

So it is no surprise that last week when FKDL was in the Ixelles district in Brussels he found a lone façade wall on an empty lot that faces the street and was compelled to paint a tribute to the cinema icon Audrey Hepburn, born there 84 years ago this Saturday. “Breakfast at Ixelles” refers to the location and her most famous movie, set in New York, Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  While doing the wall he decided to also pay tribute to another screen grand dame Elizabeth Taylor. The 30 foot wall uses his distinctive collage style and the paint colors are associated with the flag of Belgium.

FKDL “Breakfast at Ixelles”. Brussels, Beligium. (photo © FKDL)

FKDL “Breakfast at Ixelles”. Brussels, Beligium. (photo © FKDL)

FKDL in New York (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FKDL (detail) in Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FKDL next to DAIN in Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FKDL in Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

 

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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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This posting is also on Huffington Post Arts & Culture.

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