All posts tagged: Nafir

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.13.15

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.13.15

brooklyn-street-art-strok-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

BSA-Images-Week-Jan2015

This Sunday’s Images Of The Week seems to have an overriding theme which wasn’t really planned. It just happened.

A preponderance of stencils, many of them miniature and most placed without permission are here for your consideration. Some of the pieces have been on the walls for years while others are fairly new. After a few days admiring large murals in Norway and Sweden, these little missives are sweet.

Futura also came back to New York from Norway just in time to hit the hallowed Houston Wall yesterday and Martha Cooper is hanging there as well, so you will want to check that out! Martha and John Ahearn just opened  their new dual show Thursday called “Kids” at Dorian Gray on the LES, which we thought was dope.

Also in town are Ernest Zacharevic, who will be working on a special project, David Walker has been seen poking his head into things, and Vermibus is popping up here and there on bus shelters with his dissolved portraits. A number of artists and fans are in NYC for the Brotherhood show at Jonathan Levine curated by Yasha Young, and of course Shepard Fairey has his first New York show in five years coming up this week with all new work on exhibition at Jacob Lewis Gallery called “On Our Hands”. As in blood, yo.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring APosse, Dolk, DotDotDot, Dotmasters, Ella & Pitr, Hama Woods, Isaac Cordal, JPS, MIR, Nafir, the Outings Project, Strok, Martin Whatson and TREF.

Top image above >>> Strok in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-dotmasters-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

Dotmasters in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-outings-project-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

Outings Project in Stavanger, Norway for NUART 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-jps-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web-1

JPS in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-jps-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web-2

JPS in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-jps-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web-3

JPS in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-tref-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

TREF in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-isaac-cordal-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web-2

Isaac Cordal in Stavanger, Norway for NUART 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-isaac-cordal-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web-1

Isaac Cordal in Stavanger, Norway for NUART 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-aposse-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

APOSSE in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-artist-unknown-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

Artist Unknown in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-dolk-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

Looks like a rather explosive romance. DOLK in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-ella-pitr-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web-2

Ella & Pitr in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-ella-pitr-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web-1

Ella & Pitr in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-mir-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

MIR* in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-nafir-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

NAFIR in Stavanger, Norway for NUART 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-hamma-woods-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web-2

Hama Woods welcomes all the rats to the big show in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-hamma-woods-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web-1

Martin Whatson in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-dotdotdot-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

Dotdotdot in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-jaime-rojo-09-13-15-web

Untitled. L Train, NYC. August 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Read more
NUART 2015 Roundup : A Laboratory on the Street

NUART 2015 Roundup : A Laboratory on the Street

A roundup today for the Nuart street art/ mural festival in Norway with images of the final walls by this years artists. Now celebrating its 15th year, the mid-sized fjord-facing city of Stavanger has played host to a selection of international and local artists directly or indirectly related to the evolving scene we know as Street Art.

brooklyn-street-ella-pitr-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-6

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Again this year the selection of invited participants is varied, potent, and occasionally a smack upside the head – with punk rock graphic designer Jamie Reid leading the way in spirit and on walls. Reid’s inspiration dates to the radical hippie politics and Situationist practices of the 1950s and 60s but he is best known for formation of the Sex Pistols anti-monarchial slash and burn visual identity and for penning their pivotal recording “Anarchy in the UK” – a history discussed in Carlo McCormick’s presentation during the Nuart Plus program.

In tandem with his paste-ups around town and installation at the formal gallery show was the lesser-known street photography of very-well-known graffiti photographer and ethnographer Martha Cooper, who displayed a selection of five decades of children playing on the streets with improvised toys and games – via an automated slide show – as well as an additional one she narrated during our panel on this year’s theme “Play” at Nuart Plus.

brooklyn-street-ella-pitr-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-5

Ella & Pitr. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

While neither Reid nor Cooper are thought of as Street Artists per se, their choice as participants gave grounding to the proceedings and is emblematic of director Martyn Reed’s holistic approach to an eclectic programming that mixes up the tributaries and the river in such a way that observers may better have tools to measure the creative flow that we are all witnessing on city walls across the globe today.

As we mark the halfway point of this decade and see the institutional discussions of Street Art taking form while academics try to place it in the canon of art-making and decide upon the nature of its impact, they do it with the knowledge that gallery shows, museum exhibitions, high-profile auctions, individual collecting, lifestyle marketers, and public festivals of many configurations and aspirations are already embracing its relevance. No one can possibly gauge this story in all of its complexity but some will capture its spirit. Being on the street helps.

brooklyn-street-ella-pitr-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-7

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

One way to get a pulse on the present is to attend shows like Nuart and witness the diverse stratagems that artists are using to engage their audiences and judge if they are successful at realizing their intentions. With a deliberately mixed bag of thinkers, feelers, documentors, aesthetes, and pranksters culled together for your edification, this show stokes the discussions.

Others may say that the headliners of this year’s Nuart were the French couple Ella & Pitr, whose record-setting 21,000 square meter mural of a young woman in running shorts lying in a semi-fetal position could only be viewed by helicopter across the roofs of a large construction company complex.

brooklyn-street-ella-pitr-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-2

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

You could say that Stavanger streets were commanded with greater effect by the simple addition of Spain’s Isaac Cordal and his handmade concrete (or resin) bald businessmen, fifty or so of which he glued into crevices and upon ledges and structural fissures on buildings throughout town. Their sad existential conundrums are ours, even though we are guilting them with all the corrupt actions we are at least a little complicit in.

Arguably the greatest metamorphosis took place with the collection and assembly of local detritus – broken car pieces, old bicycles, tires, even ship buoys. Before you roll your eyes and think of homey craft-inspired planters on front lawns, the likenesses of animals that Bordalo II can evoke with his sculptures is uncanny and a little spooky.

His “stag” deer is meant as a commentary on the loss of natural habitat of the animals at the hands of what we call “development”. The companion piece of a whale overwhelmed by environmental poisoning in the Tou Scene gallery installation proves equally compelling and tragic.

brooklyn-street-ella-pitr-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-1

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Harmen de Hoop invited a top economist to perform his installation purely with chalk and a 30-minute lecture on the streets of Stavanger on the subject of option pricing, Dolk bravely experimented with a new abstractionist, reductivist approach that ran counter to the style he is known for, and brothers Icy & Sot were the most currently topical with their portrait of a girl whose distorted visage is that of a refugee boat crammed with people. If Nuart at times feels like a laboratory it may be the perfect analogy for the street experience in cities everywhere.

Have a look at many of the finished walls at Nuart this year. See our essay marking their 15th anniversary HERE.

brooklyn-street-ella-pitr-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-3

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-ella-pitr-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-8

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-isaac-cordal-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-1

Isaac Cordal. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-isaac-cordal-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-3

Isaac Cordal. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-isaac-cordal-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-2

Isaac Cordal. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-dotdotdot-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web

Dotdotdot. Portrait of Sex Pistol’s Johnnie Rotten/John Lydon. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-martin-whatson-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-2

Martin Whatson. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-martin-whatson-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-3

Martin Whatson. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-martin-whatson-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-4

Martin Whatson. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-martin-whatson-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-1

Martin Whatson. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-pejac-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web

Pejac did a reinterpretation of “The Scream” by the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch, using a toy truck tire on a paint roller. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-futura-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-1

Futura. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. See his indoor installation video here. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-futura-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-2

Futura. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-sandra-chevrier-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-1

Sandra Chevrier. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-sandra-chevrier-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-2

Sandra Chevrier. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-sandra-chevrier-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-3

Sandra Chevrier. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-nafir-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web

Nafir. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-the-outings-project-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-2

The Outings Project. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-the-outings-project-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-1

The Outings Project. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-ernest-zacharevic-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-1

Ernest Zacharevic. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-ernest-zacharevic-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-3

Ernest Zacharevic. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-ernest-zacharevic-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-2

Ernest Zacharevic. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-dolk-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web

Dolk. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-icy-sot-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-1

Icy & Sot. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-icy-sot-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-2

Icy & Sot. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-icy-sot-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-3

Icy & Sot. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-icy-sot-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-4

Icy & Sot. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-bortusk-leer-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web

Bortusk Leer. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-bortusk-leer-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-1

Bortusk Leer. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-bordalo-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-1

Bordalo II. The artist preps the wall in the background. Trash collected from near by empty lots sits in the foreground to serve as the raw material for his work. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-bordalo-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web-2

The completed wall by Bordalo II. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-harmen-de-hoop-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-15-web

Harmen de Hoop. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Harmen De Hoop “Permanent Education” from NUART

 

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA
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!
<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Brooklyn-Street-Art-Nuart-2015-wrapup-Sept-13-740-Screen-Shot-2015-09-12-at-12.56

Read more
Technology, Festivals, and Murals: 15 Years on the Street Art Scene

Technology, Festivals, and Murals: 15 Years on the Street Art Scene

It’s good to be asked to write an essay once in a while as it makes us take a step back and more fully examine a topic and appreciate it. On the occasion of Nuart’s 15th anniversary and it’s accompanying print publication last week Martyn Reed asked us to look at the street art / urban art / graffiti scene and to give an analysis about how it has changed in the time that the festival has been running. The essay is a long one, so grab a cup of joe and we hope you enjoy. Included are a number of images in and around Stavanger from Jaime Rojo, not all of them part of the festival, including legal and illegal work.

Technology, Festivals, and Murals as Nuart Turns 15

Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo

Nuart is turning 15 this year and like most brilliant teenagers it is alternately asking you challenging questions, finding you somewhat uncool, or is on your tablet ordering a new skateboard with your credit card. Nuart started with mainly music and is now mainly murals; an internationally well-regarded venue for thoughtfully curated urban art programs and erudite academic examination – with an undercurrent of troublemaking at all times. Today Nuart can be relied upon to initiate new conversations that you weren’t expecting and set a standard for thoughtful analysis of Street Art and its discontents.

brooklyn-street-art-dface-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Pøbel (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We are in the thick of it, as it were, this great expansion of a first global grassroots people’s art movement. Give it any title you like, the flood of art in the streets that knocks on BSA’s door daily is unabated. We admit that we often get caught up in the moment and forget to study our forebears, Street Art’s progenitors and contributors – and that we sometimes are unable to appreciate the significance of this incredible time. So we are happy when the Nuart team asked us to take a long view of the last fifteen years and to tell them what we see.

As we mark Nuart’s milestone, we see three important developments on the Street Art scene while it evolves: Technology, Festivals, and Murals.

And just before we discuss these three developments in Street Art we emphasize what has stayed the same; our own sense of wonder and thrill at the creative spirit, however it is expressed; we marvel to see how it can seize someone and flow amidst their innermost, take hold of them, convulse through them, rip them apart and occasionally make them whole.

What has changed is that the practice and acceptance of Street Art, the collecting of the work, it’s move into contemporary art, have each evolved our perceptions of this free-range autonomous descendant of the graffiti practice that took hold of imaginations in the 2000s. At the least it hasn’t stopped gaining converts. At this arbitrary precipice on the timeline we look back and forward to identify three impactful themes that drive what we are seeing today and that will continue to evolve our experience with this shape-shifting public art practice.

 

brooklyn-street-art-ben-eine-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Ben Eine (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Technology

Hands down, a primary genesis for the far flung modern embrace of Street Art/Urban Art/Graffiti/public art lies in the booster rocket that propelled it into nearly everyone’s hands; digital communication and all its sundry technologies. From the early Internet websites and chat rooms accessed from your desktop to digital cameras and photo sharing platforms like Flickr in the early-mid 2000s to ever more sophisticated search technology and its accompanying algorithms, to blogs, micro blogs, and social media platforms, to the first generations of laptops and tablets, iPhones and Android devices; the amazing and democratizing advance of these communicative technologies have allowed more of us to access and share images, videos, experiences and opinion on a scale never before imagined – entirely altering the practice of art in the streets.

Where once there had been insular localized clans of aerosol graffiti writers who followed arcane codes of behavior and physical territoriality known primarily to only them in cities around the world, now new tribes coalesced around hubs of digital image sharing, enabling new shared experiences, sets of rules, and hierarchies of influence – while completely dissolving others.

 

brooklyn-street-art-tilt-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Tilt (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As old guards re-invented a place for themselves or disappeared altogether, a new order was being remixed in front our eyes. There were a lot of strangers in the room – but somehow we got used to it. Rather than making street art pieces for your local peers, artists began making new compositions for somebody’s phone screen in London or Honolulu or Shanghai.

Cut free from soil and social station, now garden variety hoodlums and brilliant aesthetes were commingling with opportuning art collectors, curious gallerists, unctuous opinionators, punctilious photographers and fans… along with product makers, promoters, art-school students, trend watchers, brand managers, lifestyle marketers, criminologists, sociologists, journalists, muckrakers, academics, philosophers, housewives, and makers of public policy. By virtue of climbing onto the Net everyone was caught in it, now experiencing the great leveling forces of early era digital communications that decimated old systems of privilege and gate keeping or demarcations of geography.

Looking forward we are about to be shaken again by technology that makes life even weirder in the Internet of Everything. Drone cams capture art and create art, body cams will surveil our activity and interactions, and augmented reality is merging with GPS location mapping. You may expect new forms of anonymous art bombing done from your basement, guerilla image projecting, electronic sign jamming, and perhaps you’ll be attending virtual reality tours of street art with 30 other people who are also sitting on their couches with Oculus Rifts on. Just watch.

brooklyn-street-art-swoon-david-choe-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Swoon and David Choe (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Festivals

Thanks to the success of festivals like Nuart, myriad imitators and approximaters have mushroomed in cities everywhere. Conceived of philosophically as a series of stages for the exhibition of artistic chops with the proviso that a cultural dialogue is enriched and moved forward, not all festivals reach those goals.

In fact, we have no reason to expect that there is one set of goals whatsoever and the results are predictably variable; ranging from focused, coherent and resonant contributions to a city to dispersed, unmanageable parades of muddy mediocrity slammed with corporate logos and problematic patronage.

brooklyn-street-art-mcity-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

MCity (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Some festivals are truly grassroots and managed by volunteers like Living Walls in Atlanta or MAUI in Fanzara, Spain. Others are privately funded by real estate interests like Miami’s Wynwood Walls or business improvement district initiatives like the L.I.S.A. Project and LoMan Festival in Manhattan, or are the vision of one man who has an interest in Street Artists, like the now-discontinued FAME festival in the small town of Grottaglie, Italy and the 140 artist takeover of a town in Tunisia called Djerbahood that is organized by an art dealer.

In some ways these examples are supplanting the work of public art committees and city planners who historically determined what kind of art would be beneficial to community and a public space. Detractors advance an opinion that festivals and personal initiatives like this are clever ways of circumventing the vox populi or that they are the deliberate/ accidental tools of gentrification.

We’ve written previously about the charges of cultural imperialism that these festivals sometimes bring as well where a presumed gratitude for new works by international painting superstars actually devolves into charges of hubris and disconnection with the local population who will live with the artwork for months and years after the artist catches a plane home.

brooklyn-street-art-dot-masters-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Dotmasters (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nonetheless, far from Street Arts transgressive and vandalous roots, the sheer number of Street Art/Urban Art/Mural Art festivals that have popped up – either freestanding or as adjuncts to multi-discipline “arts” festivals – is having the effect of creating a wider dialogue for art in the public sphere.

As artists are invited and hosted and scissor lifts are rented and art-making materials are purchased, one quickly realizes that there are real costs associated with these big shows and the need for funding is equally genuine. Depending on the festival this funding may be private, public, institutional, corporate, or an equation that includes them all.

brooklyn-street-art-faith47-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Faith47 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As you may expect, the encroachment of commercial interests is nearly exhaustive in some of these newer festivals, so eager are the merchants to harvest a scene they had little or no hand in planting. Conceived of as vehicles for corporate messaging, they custom-build responsive websites, interactive Apps, clouds of clever #hashtags, company logos, Instagram handles, branded events and viral lifestyle videos with logos sprinkled throughout the “content”.

You may recognize these to be the leeching from an organic subculture, but in the case of this amorphous and still growing “Street Art Scene” no one yet knows what lasting scars this lifestyle packaging will leave on the Body Artistic, let alone civic life.

 

brooklyn-street-art-icy-sot-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stylistically these festivals can be a grab bag as well with curatorial rigor often taking a back seat to availability, accessibility, and the number of interested parties making nominations. While some festivals are clearly leaning toward more traditional graffiti schools, others are a hodgepodge of every discernable style from the past fifty years, sometimes producing an unpleasant sense of nausea or even tears over regrettable missed opportunity.

Clearly the quality is often uneven but, at the danger of sounding flip or callous, it’s nothing that is not easily remedied by a few coats of paint in the months afterward, and you’ll see plenty of that. Most art critics understand that the metrics used for measuring festival art are not meant to be the same as for a gallery or museum show. Perhaps because of the entirely un-curated nature of the organic Street Art scene from which these festivals evolved in some part, where no one asks for permission (and none is actually granted), we are at ease with a sense of happenstance and an uneven or lackluster presentation but are thrilled when concept, composition, and execution are seated firmly in a brilliant context.

 

brooklyn-street-art-tuk-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

TUK (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Murals

Finally, murals have become big not just in size but popularity. Every week a street artist is exclaiming that this mural is the biggest they have every made. It is a newfound love, a heady honeymoon, a true resurgence of muralism. Even though you can’t rightly call this legal and sanctioned work true Street Art, many former and current Street Artists are making murals.

Un-civically minded urban art rebels have inferred that Street Art has softened, perhaps capitulated to more mainstream tastes. As Dan Witz recently observed, “Murals are not a schism with Street Art as much as a natural outgrowth from it.” We agree and add that these cheek-by-jowl displays of one mural after another are emulating the graffiti jams that have been taking place for years in large cities both organic and organized.

brooklyn-street-art-jps-mizo-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

JPS . Mizo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

From illustration to abstraction to figurative to surreal and even letter-based, this eclectic injection of styles won’t bring to mind what one may typically associate with the homegrown community mural. Aside from the aforementioned festivals that are festooning neighborhoods, the growth in mural-making may be attributable to a trend of appreciation for Do It Yourself ( D.I.Y.) approaches and the ‘makers’ movements, or a desire to add a personal aspect to an urban environment that feels unresponsive and disconnected.

Philadelphia has dedicated 30 years to their Mural Arts Program and relies on a time-tested method of community involvement for finalization of designs and most municipal murals have a certain tameness that pleases so many constituencies that no one particularly cares for them.

brooklyn-street-art-herakut-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Herakut (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The New Muralism, as we have been calling it, that is popping up is often more autonomous and spirited in nature than community mural initiatives of the past with their ties to the socio-political or to historical figures and events. Here there are few middlemen and fewer debates. Artists and their advocates approach building owners directly, a conversation happens, and a mural goes up.

In the case of upstart community programs like the Bushwick Collective in Brooklyn, one trusted local person is ambassador to a neighborhood, insuring that community norms about nudity or politics are respected but otherwise acts purely as facilitator and remains hands-off about the content.

brooklyn-street-art-jps-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web-1

JPS (photo © Jaime Rojo)

On that topic, effectively a form of censoring often takes place with murals – another distinguishing characteristic from Street Art. Given the opportunity to fully realize an elaborate composition, normally wild-eyed and ornery aerosol rebels bend their vision to not offend. Sometimes an artist can have more latitude and you may find a mural may clearly advocate a political or social point of view, as in recent murals addressing police brutality, racism, and inequality in many US cities, anti-corruption sentiments in Mexico, and pro-marriage equality in France and Ireland.

This new romance with the mural is undoubtedly helping artists who would like to further explore their abilities in more labor-intensive, time absorbing works without having to look over their shoulder for an approaching officer of the law. It is a given that what they gain in polished presentation they may sacrifice as confrontational, radical, contraventional, even experimental. The resulting images are at times stunning and even revelatory, consistent with the work of highly skilled visionaries, as if a new generation of painters is maturing before our eyes in public space where we are all witness.

brooklyn-street-art-artist-unknown-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Moving Forward

Despite the rise in festivals and mural programs and the growing volume and sophistication of technology for sharing of the images, Street Art is still found in unexpected places and the decay of neglected spaces. As before and well into the future these self ordained ministers of mayhem will be showing their stuff in the margins, sometimes identified, sometimes anonymous, communicating with the individual who just happens to walk by and witness the work. The works will impart political or social messages, other times a simple declaration that says, “I’m here.”

Whatever its form, we will be looking for it.

brooklyn-street-art-isaac-cordal-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Isaac Cordal (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-Niels-Shoe-Meulman-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Niels Show Meulman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-nafir-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Nafir (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-john-fekner-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

John Fekner (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-blek-le-rat-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Blek le Rat (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-dan-witz-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Dan Witz (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-blu-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Site of an old piece by BLU (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-dieche-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Dieche (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-hush-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

HUSH (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-dolk-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Dolk (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-strok-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

Strok (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-roa-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

ROA (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-art-pleghm-jaime-rojo-nuart-stavanger-norway-09-15-web

The remnants of a Phlegm piece from a previous edition of Nuart. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA
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!
<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA<<>>><><<>BSA<<>>><<<>><><BSA

 

 

 

Read more
Nuart Day 3 : Picking Up Pace and Sandra Chevrier’s Dramatic Eyes

Nuart Day 3 : Picking Up Pace and Sandra Chevrier’s Dramatic Eyes

Brooklyn-Street-Art-Nuart-Day-3-banner-2015-Day-1-image-Steven_p-harrington

A fever pitch is possibly overstating the tempo but not by much as Day 3 at Nuart continued to be wet and gray and at times a little windy (not typically good for stencil work by the way). A couple of people have gotten a cold – possibly due to painting in the rain for hours on end, possible due to drinking back at the hotel late into the evening, one cannot be quick to surmise. Regardless, the artists are full of industry and the results are appearing right here before your dramatic and alluring eyes.

brooklyn-street-sandra-chevrier-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-3

Sandra Chevrier. Work in progress. Detail. Aftenblad Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy and Sot moved to smaller figurative works in site-specific locations while arriving artists like Pixel Pancho and Martha Cooper began their prospective projects, his ivy covered mural awaiting a robot of some sort and hers a projection of her child’s play photography from the streets that will be on display at the Tou Scene opening. We’re eager to see what museum quality works will be appearing suddenly on Stavanger walls from Julien de Casabianca of the Outings Project, who’s just arrived with a number of figures who are itching to get outside.

brooklyn-street-sandra-chevrier-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-2

Sandra Chevrier. Work in progress. Detail. Aftenbladet Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevier and her assistant labored with brushes for about 10 hours to complete her new Aftenblad wall despite winds from off the bay – just in time for Thursday’s dedication by the local newspaper, Stavanger’s largest. Bortusk Leer gradually filled his tunnel installation with sculptural and flat childlike/cheerful renderings of people and monsters and Ernest is projecting kids on the walls to begin his similarly juvenile-themed play scene.

brooklyn-street-sandra-chevrier-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-5

Sandra Chevrier. Work in progress. Detail. Aftenblad Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura completed his very large installation and allowed us to shoot some live video of it in process – which we’ll gladly post tomorrow on Film Friday – speaking of which we’re pretty excited about our program tomorrow BSA Film Friday LIVE at the cinema downtown as part of the Nuart PLUS programming where we’ll show video pieces related to this years theme of “Play” under categories of Exploring, Experimenting, and Inventing.

Martin Whatson has been creating a new winged creature and Bodalo II is bringing a horned one to life as the garbage has begun climbing the back walls of the former beer factory and assembling itself into a deer head.

Peering through the garbage bag tree “leaves” is Icy as he attaches the last pieces of green foliage and Isaac Cordal tells us he attached seven new little men on balconies throughout the neighborhood, including a couple on a nearby gas station/carpark overhang – evoking the oil businessmen who are briskly walking through streets here even as the shrinking economy adjusts to lower world oil prices.

brooklyn-street-sandra-chevrier-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-1

Sandra Chevrier… Meanwhile at Tou Scene… Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Thursday starts to really pick up the pace with Nuart Plus programming kicked off by Carlo McCormick, Evan Pricco (Juxtapoz), Harmen de Koop, and Bortusk Leer squaring off for a lively debate (“Should Art Have a Deeper Meaning?”) starting at beer-o’clock sharp (21:30) at a local pub – just after Harmen’s performance/mural “Permanent Education” on the street with Jan Uboe, a Mathematics and Statistics Professor from the Norwegian School of Economics.

After we tally up the numbers we’ll give you a full account.

brooklyn-street-nafir-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-2

Nafir. Work in progress. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-nafir-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-1

Nafir. Work in progress. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-martin-watson-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-1

Martin Watson. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-martin-watson-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-2

Martin Watson. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-pixel-pancho-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-1

Pixel Pancho. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-bordalo-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-1

Bordalo II. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-bordalo-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-2

Bordalo II. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-bordalo-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-3

Bordalo II. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-bordalo-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-5

Bordalo II. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-bortusk-leer-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-2

Bortusk Leer. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-bortusk-leer-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-1

Bortusk Leer. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-ernest-zacharevic-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-1

Ernest Zacharevic. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-ernest-zacharevic-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-2

Ernest Zacharevic. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-ernest-zacharevic-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-5

Ernest Zacharevic. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-ernest-zacharevic-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-6

Ernest Zacharevic. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-ernest-zacharevic-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-4

Ernest Zacharevic has created a work on the wall that mimics a nearby statue “Johanne og Broremann” (Johanne and her little brother) made by Svein Magnus Håvarstein in 1993. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-icy-sot-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-4

Icy & Sot. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-icy-sot-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-5

Icy & Sot. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-icy-sot-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web-1

The light appears as the sun peering through the tree at Icy while he works on the installation he is doing with Sot. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

brooklyn-street-jaime-rojo-nuart2015-09-02-web

A local Stavanger resident watches the action from a secured vantage point. Untitled. Stavanger, Norway. August 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Read more