During the cold winter months, many of us Northerners in the US flock to Florida if we can – to relax in the sun, run on the beach, commune with the ever-present heron.
Emblematic of the “Sunshine State” and of Fort Lauderdale in particular, this pretty bird looks like it standing on one skinny leg most of the time, a clumpy cloud of white feathers hovering about the ground as it roosts. Some call it majestic, this commonplace unassuming neighbor will happily land on top of of bush near you as you present yourself on a chaise lounge to the sun god.
Here in Port Everglades the Italian street artist Peeta creates his ode to this down to earth yet soaring symbol, selecting “representative colors, shapes and subjects in order to create a harmonious relationship with the surrounding environment,” says Iryna Kanishcheva, who produced the project with the Broward County Cultural Division. In the composition you see echoes of the ocean, ground, sky, the sun… and you notice that the artist has engulfed the corner of the building, effectively hiding it if you stand at the right vantage point.
“Through the use of anamorphism, he creates a surreal space where selected symbolic elements live side by side,” says the organizer, and you can see that the sophistication of the presentation supercedes the typical fare offered by a municipally funded public mural. Undoubtedly it is largely due to the precise eye and cunning mind of Peeta, who has constructed exquisite optical illusions on walls all around the world.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Banksy – A t-shirt sold to help the Colston 4 in Bristol. 2. Don Rimx en Dorado Puerto Rico via Tost Films 3. Murals For The Movement DUMBO 4. Open Arms x Montana Colors
BSA Special Feature: Banksy – A t-shirt sold to help the Colston 4 in Bristol.
“Who the hell was Edward Colston?”
“Edward Colston was a slave trader from Bristol who supervised the kidnap of over 80,000 people. Up to 20,000 of them died in transit and were thrown overboard. This isn’t about erasing history — it’s about confronting it.”
Banksy – A t-shirt sold to help the Colston 4 in Bristol.
Don Rimx en Dorado Puerto Rico via Tost Films
Beautiful brother and street artist/muralist Don Rimx shares his newest mural celebrating Homenaje a Jose “Chico” Lind, a Puerto Rican former Major League Baseball second baseman, and former manager of the Atlantic League’s Bridgeport Bluefish. The new piece is regaled with celebration and song in Dorado, Puerto Rico.
Murals For The Movement DUMBO via Tost Films
Curated by Liza Quiñonez of Street Theory Gallery, artists Cey Adams, Sophia Dawson, and Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez, celebrate African American and Latinx heritages in a city and a social climate that is always on the move. Nationally and internationally renowned Brooklyn artists with histories and talents for miles, the three painted new works in DUMBO that combine elements of fine art, hip hop, and pop culture – with a background of deeply needed conversations about racial and social justice in this city, and this country.
Open Arms x Montana Colors
“Open Arms protects the lives of the most vulnerable people in international waters,” says Laura Lannuza, communications director for the group, “where adminstrations are allowing people to die.” The paint company Montana has created a program raising awareness about the activities of this group and the greater problem of refugees chased from their homes due to economic, geographic reasons as well as those in the international war industry that profits from human suffering.
The culmination of a decade-long photography and painting project by artist AKUT (one half of Herakut) brings many of your street art heroes a new level of super-hero status in Heidelberg, Germany, right now until February 25th.
AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. MadC (photo courtesy of AKUT)
Asking friends and colleagues to sit for a photograph, AKUT (Falk Lehman) projected images of their own artworks across their closed eyes, leaving them gleaming under the imprint of their own distinctive motifs, their skin soaking in the patterns, colors, wildstyles of their own works.
AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. Obey. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
Now that the Insight project has gathered more than 70 photographs of his cherished circle, AKUT brings the unique program, curated by Metropolink, to the old commissary at Patrick-Henry-Village. Some faces you’ll recognize, others are rarely on public display. All of them keep their eyes closed and their secrets to themselves, preferring introspection to opening their windows to the soul.
“The projection of an artwork onto the face creates a mask-like, archaic expression,” he says, and one wonders if these masks are more obscuring or revealing.
AKUT. “Insight”. Photo series. Kryptik. (photo courtesy of AKUT)
In addition to the photography show, AKUT invited four artists to collaborate on canvasses with him, including KKADE, MADC, STOHEAD, and JULIA BENZ. Additionally he collaborated with the artist KKADE on “the street” for an inaugural mural to celebrate the project in the giant hall of the commissary. The images are stunning, even stirring, in their mystery.
Only AKUT’s uncontested mastery of the photorealist technique can enhance the poignancy of these photos; his hyper sensitive application of texture and volume enables another spirit to free itself from the handpainted works in a way that may supercede the original shot.
Considering the Insight theme, it is evident that on display here as well is the potential network of social and personal connections that one may accrue over time in this street art/contemporary art milieu. If you possess additional talent for listening to the stories of others, not to mention the art of documentation, there can be rich friendships forged too.
The “INSIGHT” exhibition will be on view until February 25th, 2022 at Metropolink’s Commissary in the Patrick-Henry-Village in Heidelberg. (in compliance with the current hygiene restrictions)
Ah Florida! So close to heaven, so far from sane. But as New Yorkers, we appreciate this.
We just returned from holidays there after a 48-hour Amtrak ride through a snowstorm and can confirm all those adages about the gorgeous sunsets, storks, sandpipers, beach babes, and whacked-out/ semi-menacing sea-creatures that walk the streets and in the frozen food section at Publix.
Leon Keer. “Equality Diversity” in collaboration with Casscontemporary and WaterStreetTampa. Tampa, Florida. (photo courtesy of the artist)
In Tampa, home of the revered Busch Gardens, the Big Cat Rescue refuge, and the hottest housing market of 2022, a new AR animation by designer Joost Spek allows you to see Dutch pop-surrealist street artist Leon Keer’s new mural blast apart into pieces. Entitled “Equality Diversity”, the artist says that the project focuses on people of all talents and abilities regardless of their background.
Leon Keer. “Equality Diversity” in collaboration with Casscontemporary and WaterStreetTampa. Tampa, Florida. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“The mural depicts the balancing of different colored stones to represent the diversity of the individual,” says Keer of this project where he collaborated with Cass Contemporary and Water Street Tampa.
“Equality comes with recognizing, respecting, and celebrating each other differences. A diverse environment is one with a wide range of backgrounds and mindsets, equality gives us an empowered culture of creativity and innovation.” Where else to enjoy all this diversity, than in Florida?
Leon Keer. “Equality Diversity” in collaboration with Casscontemporary and WaterStreetTampa. Tampa, Florida. (photo courtesy of the artist)Leon Keer. “Equality Diversity” in collaboration with Casscontemporary and WaterStreetTampa. Tampa, Florida. (photo courtesy of the artist)Leon Keer. “Equality Diversity” in collaboration with Casscontemporary and WaterStreetTampa. Tampa, Florida. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Now on view until January 28th at SC Gallery in Bilbao, street artist/contemporary artist Isaac Cordal’s hapless little men are being subsumed into the machinery of our meaningless times, positioned in perpetual fog, adrift and submissive, unable to resist the march to a digital life that is in never-ending production mode. While the electronic prison walls of everyday existence appear to be closing in, perhaps Cordal’s dire scenarios are cautionary, not definitive, for our future.
Isaac Cordal. “24/7” SC Gallery. Bilbao, Spain. (image courtesy of the gallery)
His second solo exhibition here, he calls this collection “24/7”. As work life has implicated itself into every aspect of so-called “leisure” time, these color-drained scenarios present themselves as a series of connections without connectedness, trapped in their own cycles. In his essay that accompanies the exhibition, philosopher, curator and cultural critic Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego describes the insipid trappings of modern life as a disabling process of dumbing-down the everyman.
Isaac Cordal. “24/7” SC Gallery. Bilbao, Spain. (image courtesy of the gallery)
“His mode of existence is none other than stupefaction, a term that comes from the same root as stupidity. It is that of the individual who sees everything, but can no longer do anything.”
As ever, Cordal’s lead-heavy scenarios suggest that this is not a benign truth, but a profoundly catastrophic one. Using animals, machines, and dismally austere architectural forms that recall institutional incarceration, his balding concrete avatars are engaged with allegories that are inescapable. Yet de Samaniego suggests that the artist doesn’t want you to succumb, even as it appears there is no escape.
“We have to proceed from the astonished helplessness with which, like the man on the balcony of Isaac Cordal’s premises, we often contemplate and witness daily life,” he says, suggesting there is something more transformative at its root. “Each scene is a moment of crisis and describes the imminence of a tragedy, a catastrophe, a denouement – a catharsis, perhaps.”
Isaac Cordal. “24/7” SC Gallery. Bilbao, Spain. (image courtesy of the gallery)Isaac Cordal. “24/7” SC Gallery. Bilbao, Spain. (image courtesy of the gallery)Isaac Cordal. “24/7” SC Gallery. Bilbao, Spain. (image courtesy of the gallery)Isaac Cordal. “24/7” SC Gallery. Bilbao, Spain. (image courtesy of the gallery)
Isaac Cordal’s “24/7” at SC Gallery in Bilbao will be open from December 17 to January 28 2022. Click HERE for more details.
It is hard to pinpoint the precise moment a star becomes beloved currency in culture but perhaps one of the flashpoints is the day they become street art.
For us the realization that Betty White had transcended the realm of popular comedy actress to a scale bordering on icon when then-new street artist GILF appropriated her visage for a simple one-color stencil sometime in the late 2000s.
Not avid television watchers, we were of course aware of her roles in the sitcoms of the 70s and 80s, and that over time The Golden Girls program was taking on a cult-like glow among certain campy sectors.
But when we first saw a GILF! tag in Bushwick, Brooklyn, sprayed on the street, we knew Betty had crossed over into a beloved pop culture family member. Maybe she reminded you of your aunt, or the Home Economics teacher in junior high, or a sales representative at the jewelry counter at a department store, or behind the glass at the movie theater, or the nice lady setting out a pleasant picnic on the grass near the fountain in Central Park, or the grandmother you might like to have – even if for one afternoon.
Everyone knew someone like Betty White who was raised in a different era, who smelled nice, had a teased cotton-candy cloud of a hairdo and wore a smart blouse and a smart mouth with equal panache. Sweet, but sharp, her delivery featured an innate polished sixth sense of comic timing – making you spit your soda out through your nose – a sudden pokerfaced barb that was almost blue, delivered without sullying anyone in the room
She made it 99.9 years, which is more than any of us have, and she kept her style and her sharp wit, and many across the culture grew to love her in one way or another – a link to a time, or a part of the past, that we appreciated. Of the thousands of tributes pouring in on social media since she passed away on December 31, one sentiment sticks with us. While we’re sad to see her go, at least many people got to tell Betty White that they loved her while she was still alive.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
Norwegian street artist Dot Dot Dot charmed the street with this NFT pirate this fall, and we predict that both will be in full effect in ’22: especially pirates.
NFTs have captured the imagination of the street art world this year finally, and cryptocurrencies are being introduced more widely as a means for exchange gradually through the economies of the world. But it will be the digital currencies introduced by banks and nations that we’ll be watching, especially digital dollars, as the paper version gets more useless by the hour.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
An earliest New York street artist – socio/political commentator, John Fekner has battled through many wars and storms in this city over the last four decades. Despite the hardships we’re enduring with Covid and economic near-collapse, we trust Fekner when he reassures us simply in his forthright unadorned stencil style.
New York is OK.
Then again, maybe the sentiment is less than a dazzling opinion of the city. Perhaps its a shrug of the shoulders and an underwhelming assessment of the city that sounds like it was sighed by a bored teenager. New York is OK.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
The third eye of many of City Kitty’s hand-rendered characters on the street undoubtedly helps him divine the right place to be on the street.
This one seems to represent the fullness of his realized vocabulary, completely confident, and all-seeing. This is the artist’s interpretation of Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix’s “Portrait of Woman in Blue Turban”.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
Consider the city pigeon. As a civil servant, he is here year after year, taking care of the streets and the city, no matter who is the mayor or whether the Yankees are winning. As we change our top leader from Bill Deblasio to Eric Adams in a couple of days, be assured that this stylish and tenacious New Yorker will continue nonetheless.
We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2021. We have selected some of our favorite shots from the year by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo, and are sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street.
Street artist JPS took his game up a notch this year and we were pleased to see the level of complexity of craft on display during a trip to Berlin in the fall.
Here we see the long-suffering, misunderstood, and persecuted artist bearing his burden. Not that artists have a Christ complex or anything, we would never say that!
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
