French Street Artist and fine artist Ludo can go big and these days he usually does but even with his largest pieces the devil is always in the details, hidden just inside your subconcious.
Ludo. Still Image from the Video.
In the new mini video released by the artist, a gauzy haze envelopes the installation of a floral orgy of S&M strapped cluster of blossoms with erect pistols pointing proudly through the center of their petulant petals.
Ludo. Still Image from the Video.
No one on the street is perturbed as they rush by and he pumps up and down the walls with his hydraulic lift. Ludo’s been working on a solo show in Amsterdam opening end of this month, but “This is the big one that killed my back,” says the artist.
This week we take you to the scene of a brand new eye-opening JR installation in Manhattan – Seen from the outside and inside.
Street Artist JR continues to plaster parts of New York City with over-sized black and white portraits of Native Americans from North Dakota for his Inside Out Project. The images were taking by photographers in North Dakota and sent to the IOP to be printed and installed in Manhattan.
This newest installation took place this week over two days on four window panels in an empty retail space of a corner building in Chelsea. On the first day JR was on site lending a hand to the half dozen interns who came to help and to learn how to wheat paste in this cool little spot across from the High Line Park on 10 Ave and 19th Street.
A second installation went up on the windows on the 19th Street side of the building, providing a second pair of eyes to surveil the area. The wind was gusting like a mad mother-in-law and the cold was almost bitter – but that didn’t put a dent in the enthusiasm of the team made up of Natalie, Paola, Moira, Will, Nina, Nastasia, Rosie, Austin, Hillary, Gina and Rhiannon; Each have interned at either JR’s studio or with the Inside Out Project. It was cool to see teamwork and good spirits intact promptly at 9:00 am as they set to unroll panels, fight the wind and slap up gallons of gooey wheat paste on the windows. Marc, from JR’s New York Studio was there to give a quick lesson wheat pasting and to oversee the installation.
A New Project to Preserve the Additional Footage – Please Support the Kickstarter Fundraiser
Directed by Tony Silver and produced by Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant, STYLE WARS is an indispensable documentary that captured NYC Street culture in the beginning of the 1980s. Anyone who values the contribution of this examination of a moment near the birth of hip hop and graffiti culture will be familiar with the players that Chalfant and Silver profiled and the electricity that fueled a cultural movement that eventually went global.
“There is a lot of amazing and historically significant material there which never made it into the finished film”, says Chalfant today as he describes his new project to recover and restore the hours of remaining recordings and to create an outtakes reel from that 1981-82 project.
New footage of Case (above right) and Seen is expected to be preserved and presented in STYLE WARS Outtakes.
Spread the word! BSA would like to encourage you to donate to this Kickstarter campaign to make this project happen and to post this on Facebook and Tweet it. Write to your friends to ask them to throw a buck at this project that promises to deliver many new shots of trains not seen since ’81 and some surprising masterpieces rescued from oblivion.
New trainyard images and adventures like this still for STYLE WARS Outtakes.
They have cool stuff for various pledges – we’re hoping to score the “Art is Not a Crime” poster designed by Mare139.
But even if your stocks of green are low right now, you can forward this to one of your buddies. Style Wars is for everybody, and this history is yours.
Rock Steady Crew and friends at Shafrazi Gallery in Soho – a still from the new footage to be restored.
Here’s the brand new video, less than an hour old, of Gregory Siff pouncing on an LA wall to prepare for his big solo opening tonight in LA. Big Ups to Carlos Gonzalez for slamming together an action packed video, timed perfectly to it’s musical score.
I think I missed the morning rush today because I hit the street earlier than usual… and got a seat on the subway (!) because I woke up at 5 a.m. thinking about Papandreou, Berlusconi, Merkel, Obama, and the 3 ring circus shaping up as the 2012 election. The great thing about worldwide impending calamity is, political hypocrisy and economic depression makes artists dig deeper for ways to portray both. That’s why we’re starting today’s Fun Friday with hi-larious satire by the number 16 puncher of all time, Mike Tyson. Always look at the sunny side peepul!
1. CAIN! Mike Tyson for Herman Cain 2012
2. K-Guy’s solo show “Iconic Irrigation”
3. TEEBS at Pawn Works (Chicago)
4. Gregory Siff’s solo “G” at The Site Unscene (LA)
5. Poster Boy in Brooklyn at Might Tanaka Saturday
6. Augustin Kofie “Circulatory System” at White Walls (SF)
7. “Art As A Weapon” (VIDEO)
8. “Luck Be A Lady” – a Frank Sinatra 1965 performance
CAIN! Mike Tyson for Herman Cain 2012
Give it up for Mike Ya’ll! He don’t know karate but he knows KaRazy… just like in the Matrix!
K-Guy’s solo show “Iconic Irrigation”
Opening today to the public at the London West Bank Gallery, a solo show by Street Artist K-Guy, who’s political and social indictments range from Catholic Church hypocrisy to international banking scams portrayed as “crisis”.
K-Guy’s commentary outside the tent village at Occupy London. (photo courtesy of Graffoto)
There is only one, or maybe there are many, Poster Boy/s. The subterranean subway poster slicing hasn’t been so apparent for a minute, but maybe it’s because PB has been slicing at the old kitchen table in preparation for a proper show. “Not for Prophet” is the title, summoning up the Pharisees, the tax man, and the folks down on Wall Street. Let’s see who and what gets cut.
Image by Poster Boy. For further information regarding this show click here
Augustin Kofie “Circulatory System” at White Walls (SF)
Augustin Kofie solo show “Circulatory System” opens tomorrow at the White Walls Gallery in San Francisco. Graffiti writer and fine artist. Old Skool Bomber. Wildstyle. Mid-Century Abstractionism. American Modernism. Choose One and Stick with it, right? Read our interview with him – Augustine Kofie in Studio
For further information regarding this show click here
“Art As A Weapon” (VIDEO)
Jeff Durkin documentary “Art As A Weapon” explores the intersection of Street Art, Democracy and Buddhisim. View the film’s teaser here.
Jeff’s film is currently in production please help him complete his film with your generous contribution by clicking on the Kickstarter link below:
Teebs learns a new language and cuts himself loose
California based Fine and Street Art artist and musician Teebs is currently in Chicago working on the last details for his solo show at Pawn Works Gallery. On this video he opens up and talks about being more in touch with his own feelings and having his brain spilled over onto the floor. He is experiencing a creative rebirth and inspiration comes to him from the simple things in life.
Teebs. Still from the video shot by Theo Jemison
Teebs. Still from the video shot by Theo Jemison
Teebs. Still from the video shot by Theo Jemison
Teebs’ solo show “Lady Luck” at Pawn Works Gallery opens this Friday. Click here for more information.
Street Artist Talks About the Mexican Mural Tradition and “Simbionte”
Mexico City is plastered with plazas, throbbing with thoroughfares, and well stocked with statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe. It also has an active decentralized street art scene that is informed by it’s muralist history of the last century as well as the emerging international style.
SEGO in video still from “Simbionte”
And while the greater area of the city in the valley holds about 21 million people, you can spend and afternoon unperturbed in a downtown commercial square next to the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC Chapultepec), and wreck a wall with a few cans and a blackbook sketch.
SEGO in Mexico City in video still from “Simbionte”
Street Artist SEGO, an easy going and determined Street Artist, hops up and down the ladder, jogging back a few meters to check his progress and zooms back to the wall to build his image. As is common in work on the street, people stop by to comment, ask questions, and in one case, to sing a tribute to the art and the artist.
An impromptu musical tribute to SEGO in video still from “Simbionte”
In cooperation with Gonzalo Alvarez at MAMUTT and Filmaciones de la Ciudad, SEGO debuts his new piece here on BSA just for you.
London continues to apply mud masks and disappearing creams in anticipation of presenting a sparkling face for the 2012 Olympics, and usually that would mean Street Art gets buffed right? Kind of. It’s a tricky position when Banksy has made your city a worldwide tourist destination for many and the Cans Festival is still talked about three years after it brought hundreds to a tunnel next to Waterloo Station. So Street Art persists for selected engagements in selected venues – with and without permission, as ever, despite the whole of UK being covered by millions of cameras.
Photographer Geoff Hargadon shares some images with BSA readers of his foot tour last month in Shoreditch. Part II will follow soon.
By now it has been very well documented that Monster Island in Williamsburg, Brooklyn has closed its doors after seven years of art exploration and experimentation with murals, art shows and music concerts. The building is set for demolition and it is rumored that it will be replaced by a Whole Foods Store.
During these years we’ve watched the exterior of Monster Island with great interest as it was an every-changing heaven for emerging artists to show their stuff to the public. The environment engendered creativity; With non for profit art galleries and performance spaces, an underground music venue, a surf shop, a screen-print studio, a recording studio, several artists studios and a family of lovely street cats, Monster Island was a symbol of what Williamsburg was all about; artists and community struggling to make cool stuff for each other and sometimes a big audience. Since the early 1990s, ad-hoc love-driven venues like this have opened and closed, along with art parties, loft performances, artist collectives, and a loose association of art galleries. The settlement of writers, dancers, bands, performers, and all sorts of artists helped give the area a decided edge, even if you couldn’t convince your Manhattan friends to come visit the neighborhood at night.
Now “The Edge” of course is the name of a corporate looking glass tower on the waterfront and the moderate frightened masses began their march to Williamsburg after the developers re-zoned 30+ blocks in North Brooklyn in 2005, transforming it quickly to a New York suburb with quirky, kooky shopping opportunities. It’s an old story, but we have to tell it; Now the rents are too high and the culture is increasingly inhospitable to artists and the Monster Island landlord has a different plan for the lot and the lease wasn’t renewed. Williamsburg is going upscale just like Manhattan and the rest of the city and for struggling artists and the venues that give them shelter and nurture them this is another reason why we are watching people move to other neighborhoods or out of New York altogether. In a way, this is what NYC is all about; Re-invention and greed.
We have been photographing the ever-changing facade of this building that was offered as a canvas for local and visiting artists all over the world to put their art up. Today we pay homage and say farewell to this iconic institution and to the people that endeavored to make it unique with a photo essay of the numerous murals that went up there since 2004. We have made an effort to identify most of the artists. Please let us know if you know the names of the artists we have tagged as unknown or if we erroneously credited a piece of art.
Brooklyn born artist and actor Gregory Siff continues in a casually deliberate way to be everywhere he can to garner your eyeballs. This weekend Carlos Gonzalez and his camera captured him stretching across a wall in LA as he prepares for his first solo show Friday at La Founderie, a huge raw warehouse in Echo Park with The Site UnScene. Attracted to primary colors and basic geometry, the sometimes Street Artist here explodes the grid, breathing a lot of space into his hand patterned designs. Looks like it was a beautiful sunny California day and thanks to Carlos for letting BSA readers have a look.
Our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Bast, Christian Paine, Jim Avignon, Jon Burgerman, LMNOP, Enzo and Nio, Stikman, Toofly, and WAS.
OTHER Talks About His Process and His New Show, “Thinkers of This”
Found stories on found objects. The Canadian Street Artist named Troy Lovegates AKA Other is just as surprised as anyone by the faces and forms and shapes and patterns that come spilling out onto his wood panels and canvasses. A collector of images and experiences, he has a penchant for travel, a continuous movement, self propelling his eyes past a static world as a way of animating his own streaming movie without much narrative. His bendable figures, pungent geometric patterns, and somber faced old white men all get tumbled together in a clothes dryer with whatever else has collected in his consciousness, or subconscious. A hard wired natural trust of the intuitive sense leads him to his work, or his work to him, he doesn’t really know.
Brooklyn Street Art:You’ve got a lot of stuff that is always spilling out of you in your work. Do these things mill around inside or do you discover them as they are coming out?
Other: I just do patches and chunks. I don’t really know what I’m doing until it is finished. Sometimes I have a basic concept but with this globby gushing stuff, I think it’s just cities and life and travel and all the junk that you go through – all mashed together. I’m a big fan of clutter. Maybe that’s why I travel so much because once you get me stopped, my space gets so full. I like clutter and repetition.
The cities and countries he’s been in over the last couple of years also tumble out while he is showing BSA his new show, a double bill opening tonight at Brooklynite with Colombian Street Artist Stinkfish: he’s been wandering through Germany, Croatia, Romania, France, Spain, Catalonia, Italy, Argentina. – A lot of it by bicycle, a lot of it on foot.
“I’m a walker and a biker and I’ll go out in the morning and I’ll walk till midnight. And I’m usually searching for something I can paint on – one of my next pieces. This work is “storytelling” and the stories happen while I’m searching. It’s my favorite way to produce art. Like you could maybe even find some paint, and an old part of a church, just an amazing old piece of wood. It’s stories that happen along the way, the work just comes to you,” says Other as he describes the process.
The show hangs together with glee, an unusual arrangement of usual things. Other’s work is a blind awareness, a collecting of the faces and handbags and mop buckets and shapes and patterns that he has ingested. Then like the piles of belongings that clump together in after flood waters descend, Other ignores relative value or hierchy in the delivery of heads and plumbers pipes and patterns and alarm clocks. On his daylong explorations through cities and towns and roads and streets he keeps his eyes open, looking into faces and into dark shadows and dilapidated buildings.
Brooklyn Street Art: And what about the heads? Who are these people? Other: I like to collect old magazines. I get these pictures of famous people and then look in the back ground and say “Oh that guy would be great to paint” I was taking a lot of photos.
Brooklyn Street Art:People you meet on the street? Other: I ask them, “Can I take a photo of you?”
Brooklyn Street Art: Do you ask them anything about themselves? Other: No. I usually can see a lot.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
