All posts tagged: NYC

Kara Walker and Her Sugar Sphinx at the Old Domino Factory

May 7, 2014 Artists

Refining, as Creative Time’s Chief Curator Nato Thompson reminds us inside this 30,000 square foot former Domino Sugar facility, is a process whereby coarse cane is decolorized, and brown is turned powdery and crystalline white.

Kara Walker. The artist portrait in profile with her sugary sphinx in the background. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

Armed with such loaded symbolism, internationally renowned artist Kara E. Walker unveils her Subtlety installation this week, completely commanding this steel girded chamber of the industrial north and jolting you from your sugar haze. Towering over our heads is the resolute and silent face of a kneeling nude polystyrene white woman with African features, posed to resemble a 35 foot sphinx encrusted with sugar and to receive your questions. Subtlety indeed.

Kara Walker (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

“I’m grateful to Creative Time for inviting me to create work in a place like this that is so loaded with histories and questions,” says Ms. Walker of the nonprofit organization that commissions and presents public arts projects like this one. She describes the turbulent process of creating her new mammoth piece, and all of them really. She says that her work often makes even her uncomfortable, which is somehow comforting.

The left hand gesture of the mysterious sugary Sphinx captures the eye of artist Mike Ming who asks Ms. Walker what it signifies. The artist fingers her necklace and displays the charm hanging from it – a forearm and a hand forming the same fist-like pose.

“It means many things, depending on the source,” she explains, and she lists fertility as one and a protective amulet as another. Our ears perk up when she says that in some cultures it is a signal akin to “fuck you” and she has also heard that it can mean a derogatory four-letter term for a part of the female anatomy. And what does this thumb protruding between the index and middle finger mean here? “You’ll have to ask her,” she says smiling and nodding her head upward to the bandana crowned silent one.

Kara Walker. Detail. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

Speaking of female anatomy, Ms. Walker deliberately and remarkably screams silently in the face of sexual stereotypes that prevailed and dehumanized women of African descent for the majority of North American history with this exaggerated caricature and her arching back quarters hoisted to the heavens. We only use past tense in that sentence to reassure ourselves that those stereotypes are distant and not at all connected to us today, but this may require a healthy helping of sunny denial to maintain the perception as we travel throughout the land.

Kara Walker. Detail. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

The spectacle here is pushed by the extended pelvis, the protruding nether regions, the amply plump breasts rather pressed together. The presentation may summon pleasant perturbations in some viewers, while setting off murderous riots of horror in others, but we’ll all keep our associations to ourselves, thank you.

This is the giant white sphinx in the living room, sparkling white and sweet. Congratulations to “Subtlety” for at least partially hushing a PC crowd of normally chatty New Yorkers who struggle to make cocktail talk in the shadows of our heritage, and for that matter, our present. We feel lucky that this sphinx does not speak, for she would likely slaughter much with her tongue.

Kara Walker. Detail. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

Accompanying the sphinx are more human scale children of molasses coloring, “Sugar Babies” standing before craggled industrial walls that are coated with the thick, dark brown syrup obtained from raw sugar during the refining process. She says the five foot tall figures are based on the trinkets of porcelain once sold widely, featuring adorably cherubic slaves carrying baskets into which you may place colorful hard candies for special guests of some refinement.

On a technical note, she offers special thanks to the fabricating sculptors who struggled with the amber candy material as it reacted to changes in temperature and humidity. The floor itself had to be power-washed to loosen and dispel an inch of thick goo, and as we spoke she pointed to the dripping of a molasses type of liquid from the ceiling onto the sculpture. Asked by the CT team if the sphinx should be whitened each time there was a drip, the artist decided that she likes the dripping effect so they will leave it as is and watch how the piece ages with the history of the building.

Kara Walker. Detail. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

For those who will be drawn like bees to honey to this unprecedented monument of site specificity in a place directly welded to Brooklyn’s maritime history, America’s industrialization and its slave economy, Ms. Walker now transforms into a stomping giant before our eyes. To those who prefer the truly subtle, this show will be overlooked as too obvious.

Kudos to Creative Time, its director Anne Pasternak, and Ms. Walker for putting our face in it, even as we bemoan the loss of this soon-to-be demolished building and its connection to our history.

Kara Walker. Detail. (photo via iPhone © Jaime Rojo)

At the behest of Creative Time Kara E. Walker has confected:
Kara Walker – A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant.

The exhibition will be open on May 10 – July 6, 2014. Free and open to the public – check here for more details.

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BSAPlease 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 article is also published on The Huffington Post

New Swoon in Bushwick

May 5, 2014 Artists

During our talk at the Brooklyn Museum the Street Artist Swoon was asked by someone from the audience if she ever felt nervous putting art on the streets. She responded that she did experience a surge of nervous feelings whenever putting work up in public. Swoon added that she felt that she had been neglecting the Borough of Brooklyn…well it looks like she’s has made up for that.

Swoon. The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With six new installations for The Bushwick Collective she has been leaving her offerings on the streets of Brooklyn again. Don’t forget that the Brooklyn Museum is running a competition – just record a little Instagram video of your discovery and send it to the them to enter it. Even if you don’t see these new installations you could still record an Instagram video about the first time you saw a Swoon piece on the street and submit your video for the chance to win a mystery, special guest. Click HERE for more details for your submission.

Swoon. The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon. Detail. The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon. The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon. Detail. The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon. The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Images Of The Week: 05.04.14

May 4, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Cabaio, Cern, Chris Stain, Crummy Gummy, Damon, Dylan Egon, Ebaycs, Ellis G., Hot Boys, Hot Tea, Ives One, JB, Jerk Face, Nathan Sawaya, QRST, Rambo, Serban Ionescu, Tec, and Zimer.

Top Image >> Chris Stain for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

QRST brings the family outside now that the weather is getting nice. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JB and Hot Boys collaboration in Rome, Italy. (photo © JB)

Rambo gives a shout out to Julian Schnabel (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nathan Sawaya does an installation with multi-colored childrens’ toy blocks for Earth Day in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

TEC strums your wayward spring heartstrings (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zimer is feeling fierce and futuristic (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Serban Ionescu and Ebaycs do a collaboration in the LES. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ives One’s new mural in Amsterdam gets a special glowing treatment in this image. (photo © Tim van Vliet)

Ellis G has a new wall with his relatively new character Dript Dropt (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nice to know! Crummy Gummy in Las Vegas. (photo © Crummy Gummy)

Jerk Face likes Jerry and also cheese (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hot Tea mimics the language of the construction walls (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A simpler Cern (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Garrett Wasserman has the guys behaving as furniture in the LES. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dylan Egon combines religious icons with modern firearms for St. America. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cabaio (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Manhattan. May 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Hellbent, Rubin, and Aakash Nihalani In Progress on Domino Walls in BK

May 3, 2014 Artists

Williamsburg once ran heavy with renegade Street Art; names like Faile, Swoon, Bast, Shepard Fairey, Gaia, NohJColey, Judith Supine, Momo, Elbowtoe, Dain, DarkClouds, Matt Siren, Armsrock, Dennis McNett… well you get the point. Add about 40 more names and you can begin to re-construct the explosion that happened here mostly because industry had died and artists in the 80s and 90s and early 00s flocked to the previously industrial maritime neighborhood for space to create art, mount exhibitions, and have lots of free sex. Just checking to see if you were paying attention.

Hellbent at work on his portion of the wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Now almost 10 years into a North Brooklyn rezoning and construction boom (with a small break for the Great Recession) some of those same street artists are actually invited to paint walls in the same neighborhood – by landlords, advertisers, developers, and businesses. The Domino Sugar Factory, long an employer and symbol of industry on the river is now beginning a humungous decade-long renovation with new buildings planned while retaining the old refinery building on the site. Before buildings started coming down last summer these mammoth green construction walls went up, creating this sort of municipal/industrial sealed green monotony for five blocks on Kent Avenue.

Hellbent at work on his portion of the wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Today Hellbent, Rubin, and Aakash Nihalani, three artists who have been doing work in the streets for much of this time (and who have each made inroads into the gallery system), are each taking on their largest projects ever and culling more friends and buckets and cans and courage than ever to knock out these prodigious paintings. We’re calling it “Domino Walls” because we’re clever at naming things and we’re acting as “curatorial advisors” because hey, that’s what we do. BSA has a history of working with community and arts institutions, small and large, to give a variety of street artists a voice and to introduce them to greater audiences. This project provides a showcase to some of the strong voices who are familiar with working on the streets and who are pushing that language in new directions.

Hellbent. Process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A lot of urban art academics and critics have been talking about this new hybrid of art on the street that is sometimes called ‘graffuturism’ and we are very gratified to present a few of the new practitioners on the street who reflect it. Employing geometric shapes, deconstruction, abstraction, minimalism, even Op Art techniques, this quickly shifting movement unites graffiti, street art, and contemporary; at once futuristic while paying tribute to art movements more than a hundred years old. With MOMA’s “Inventing Abstraction” show last year and the Guggenheim’s “Italian Futurists” show right now, we feel like our 2012 show “Geometricks” right here in Brooklyn was actually just ahead of the curve. Putting Hellbent, Aakash, and Rubin together on massive walls in Williamsburg feels like this is right on time for this decade.

So we’ll tell you more about the project and each artist a little later but we wanted to show you the progress thus far so you know what is going on on these giant walls. If you are planning to see the astounding Kara Walker show that opens this week on the site and features more sugar than you can consume during a month of Halloweens – you’ll also definitely be seeing some rockin’ eye candy in progress right on the street here as well.

Hellbent. Detail of one of the stencils. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We all work in different ways but in a similar abstract nature and that is kind of why we are here together. It shows a little of the arc of abstraction and the different sort of forms you can go with. We’re all pretty geometric at the same time – using the power of the clean line and using optical tricks,” says Hellbent as he and his team are on their 9th day knocking out a nearly 500 foot long piece called We Walk (REM).

“I like the way Jaime (Rojo) described this wall when he said I was changing the shape of the wall through color and pattern and repetitions and that the visual effect pushes you forward. I think that more or less describes the movement for me at this moment and it is what I have been doing.”

Aakash Nihalani at work on his portion of the wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash doesn’t typically work with paint and stencils, preferring his trademark bright masking tape method of revealing geometry in public spaces but he is going huge here for his piece tentatively titled Spaced. “I don’t have a lot of roots in graffiti, I mean, we share the same territory and spaces. But I don’t liken myself to a graffiti artist per se. I mean it does make sense that after a certain amount of time in a period of an art movement that it is bound to start deconstructing and abstracting, concentrating more on the form instead of the content. So I guess that kind of makes sense and I guess my work sort of fits in with that evolution, so its definitely part of that, but it is not intentional.”

Askash Nihalani letting the sky bust through on this work in progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash and his assistant at work on the wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aakash Nihalani. Process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin at work on his portion of the wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

One of the most active graffiti writers in Sweden in the 1990s, Rubin has been deconstructing his earlier work and uncovering his Finnish/Swedish DNA. For his block long Resistance V. Acceptance, he says “I’m busy looking forward – I’m very much influenced by the Futurist movement , the Bauhaus. It’s also really natural for me growing up in Scandinavia – I grew up with the streamline and the IKEA – so it is like a parallel with the minimalism of Scandinavia so when I discovered the whole Futurist movement it made perfect sense,” he explains.

“Moving to working more large scale I had to adapt my work so that I can still work fast. It suits me so well. It is also is about balance – it can’t be too geometric so its’ always a struggle so that is why I try to keep my work free hand – so I don’t use projectors and stencils. I started using the chalk line more because it’s a time saver, but also I try to keep it analog and organic and physical. It can’t be too sharp – there has to be a more human element”

Rubin and one of his assistants at work on the wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rubin’s detail of his sketch for the project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Read Part II of this project here:

“Done!” Murals from Rubin, Aakash, & Hellbent : Domino Walls Part II

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Jaime Rojo and His Glimmering Series “The Last Picture”

April 30, 2014 Artists

The fog rolls in and your city gently disappears into it.

A young man tenderly clings to his lover under a bridge, or is he strangling her?

You are studying the secret and slow language of moving construction cranes traversing and bobbing backward and forward when suddenly a passenger plane cuts silently across the geometry in motion.

These are moments to witness, here and now gone.

Untitled. Williamsburg Bridge and the stately Empire. Brooklyn, NY. January, 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Capricious.
Magical.
Flowing.

Jaime Rojo describes his photography in the city with those adjectives that evoke movement and something more ethereal than concrete, steel, and glass.

Untitled. Midtown, Manhattan from the L Train on the Williamsburg Bridge. Brooklyn, NY. January, 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Known for his images of art in the streets, his photos of Street Art appear once a week in a parade on BSA called ‘Images of the Week’. But he always tacks one more at the end – one last picture.

It is always something unrelated to street art. That is, unless you think the city itself is art.

“NYC is compelling whether you are approaching from an airplane or driving in from the outer boroughs or on the train crossing a bridge. It’s just amazing how much industry, how much invention and design has gone into building this city,” explains Rojo about an environment continuously in flux.

Untitled. Manhattan, NYC. February 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“At the same time it is surrounded by water that provides it with an amazing atmosphere that keeps evolving, depending on the climate. Even though the buildings don’t move it feels like the buildings are constantly changing because of the light, the season, or even the intense fog – it’s like a dream sequence in a movie because you know the buildings aren’t moving but it seems like they are,” he says.

Siting photographers like Wolfgang Tillmans and Richard Avedon as artists whose work inspires him, Rojo hopes to capture a singular poignant moment in a moving scene. “New York is very dense – It’s kind of magical for me to be able to capture an individual in the middle of the street in a city that is so crowded that invariably we are smelling the breath of each other at some juncture. So when I see the opportunity of an individual who is standing or doing something by himself or herself, I have to capture it as one New York minute.”

Untitled. Times Square, NYC. February, 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“This is a busy intersection in Times Square. People are always going by. It is a cold night. People are hyped up with the Super Bowl. They are wearing, for the most part, monochromatic dark colors. And there is this guy who is trying to make a dollar playing Spiderman. And no one is paying attention to him. He’s doing every single thing possible to get attention and no one cares. I have a series of frames of this but this is the one I wanted to capture. There he is in the middle of this crowd in the intersection with that bright outfit and no one is paying attention.”

Untitled. SOHO, NYC. February, 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Manhattan, NYC. January, 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Lower East Side, NYC. October, 2012. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Union Square, NYC. July, 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. DUMBO, Brooklyn. August, 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Greenpoint, Brooklyn. October, 2012. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Houston Street, NYC. July, 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn. March, 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. East River from Brooklyn, NYC. March, 2014. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Manhattan sky landscape. January, 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. February, 2012. (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 article is also on The Huffington Post.

Images Of The Week: 04.27.14

April 27, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Billy Mode, Cabaio, CB23, City Kitty, Damon, Dylan Egon, JB, Li Hill, Nychos, Olek, Roma411, Tec, Un Pez Verde, and Zola.

Top Image >> Zola (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dylan Egon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

CB23 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos new piece in Oakland, CA (photo © Steven Ballinger)

TEC for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Li Hill (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Un Pez Verde (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Roma 411 for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek does a special installation for Earth Day this week. That’s Mother Earth to you. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Balu. We are always happy to see Frida Khalo on the streets. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Balu. The same artist talking about war. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Adam Fujita for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JB strikes a “Balance” in Rome, Italy. (photo © JB)

Cabaio. Detail. The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Caballo for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Billy Mode for The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Manhattan, NYC. Spring 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper and Elle and a Fire “Unextinguished”

April 26, 2014 Artists

Two women, two distinct generations. The same fight for recognition, let alone to determine the direction and manner of discourse.

Martha Cooper and Elle “Unextinguished” Installation in progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper in the 1970s newspaper world found herself as the only woman photographer in a huge room full of men at the New York Post – and she was often pushed into doing “weather” related or “soft journalism” photographs because only men could be presumed to handle the important hard news like politics and crime. Luckily for us, she didn’t accept those limitations and blasted her own path into the streets and shot what she wanted – but she had to fight for it.

In 2014 a certain kind of man still has a hard time finding space for the women to be in the game, so Elle gets hit with the vitriol often out on the street from some of the graff and Street Art dudes. Sometimes its just the banter of a beef-loving competitive spirit. Other times it takes on the undertones of gender related models of patriarchy.

Sorry Judy Chicago, the work isn’t done yet; that “feminist artist” who coined the term in the 1970s celebrates her own 75^th birthday tonight in Prospect Park by spraying her pyrotechnics across the sky, but she also is under no illusion that women have reached parity in the art world, or almost any other.

Even the most fundamental expectation of mutual respect on the New York streets cannot be assumed as harassment by men is still prevalent. Obviously if women were respected on the street we wouldn’t see Tatyana Fazilazadeh creating her postering campaign with New York women called “Stop Telling Women to Smile”.

Martha Cooper and Elle “Unextinguished” Installation in progress. Elle made these dresses from printed photos of Martha Cooper’s work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

That’s a long intro – and a sad one to have to write but the context somehow gives more power to the dual show by Cooper and Elle tonight. A combining of their skills, “Unextinguished” unites a flame of a mutual determination to take over a space and to define it.

Who knew that a Boomer and a Millenial would enjoin in the epic battle to extinguish the bullshit and make room for experimenting with new ideas while accommodating the old ones? For the viewers tonight it’s a juxtaposition of styles that merges into a collaboration of spirit.

Martha Cooper and Elle “Unextinguished” Installation in progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We thought this had to do with a sense of history, through different generations. My pictures are all from 1978, so we are using some old school pictures but re-invigorating them with some new school techniques – like splattering them with a fire extinguisher with a sort of abandon,” says Cooper as she scans the gallery of plastered blown-up images she took thirty five years ago now newly splashed with color.

The view of her shots shown this way is an adjustment for Cooper’s eye too, but one she’s willing to go with for the spirit of collaboration.

“I wouldn’t want to see it every day – but in the context of this rough-and-ready kind of gallery, I think its kind of cool.”

Here are some shots of the show in preparation.

Martha Cooper and Elle “Unextinguished” Installation in progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elle (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A completely extinguished extinguisher outside of the Martha Cooper and Elle “Unextinguished” Installation in progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper and Elle “Unextinguished” opens today at Mecka Gallery. Click HERE for more details.

Check out this cool video interview just released on AnimalNY.

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“The Wack Donald’s Project” and Mr OneTeas

April 23, 2014 Artists

The actual street and the digital version of it are now intrinsically linked and often if you see new occurrences of street art it takes just a bit of searching online to find out more about the artist and what they are up to. This week we were surprised to find these posters that incorporate Ronald McDonald into their messaging, and to find out how they appear to be marketed just as thoroughly through social media online.

It’s all about the subtleties of course, and many street artists leave a breadcrumb of clues digitally to lead you to their work on the street or in the gallery or on a t-shirt. And everyone is familiar with large “urban” brands that traverse the transgressive vibe through adroit social messaging that invariably leads to a product you may purchase. Nonetheless, sometimes it gets very confusing.

Mr. OneTeas (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A French illustrator/painter/graphic designer from Nice who also has had shows in galleries in Monaco, Mr OneTeas is known to some as a graffiti artist who samples pop culture on his canvasses and appropriates commonly recognizable images of Hollywood names like Liz Taylor, Princess Grace, and Alfred Hitchcock. He also presents 80s television culture ironically (spotlighting Gary Coleman, Alf, Mr. T), inverts meanings with global brand logos, critiques consumerist culture, and interprets his subjects using the visual language of street art and the commercial finesse of artists such as Mr. Brainwash, for example.

Mr. OneTeas (photo © Jaime Rojo)

That said, some people on the street here have been intrigued by these posters with the Mr OneTeas name on them which have popped up on street walls around Brooklyn appearing to skewer the fast food giant and consumerism – both because it has been a little while since we’ve seen a satirical bashing of a world brand on the street and because mroneteas appears to be so publicly documenting it on his Instagram and Facebook page.

If you consider the artist name as a brand (for the sake of argument), this is culture-jamming that is being re-jammed; a guerilla-advertising campaign-style series of postering that attacks a huge brand and is critical of consumerism which then employs common social media advertising techniques of promotion to get its message out. Is this still détournement?

In a brief email interview with the artist we learned that “The Wack Donald’s Project” began in 2011 when he first merged the Mona Lisa with Ronald McDonald. Influenced by the documentary “Supersize Me,” Mr OneTeas says that his illustrations began to equate the ubiquity of the friendly clown in the minds of children as something far more sinister than he originally thought.

Mr. OneTeas (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“McDonald’s use Ronald the clown and they made him so friendly and attractive for the children customers,” he says. Describing the piece entitled, “Ronald’s Daughter / My Father Is A Terrorist,” the artist says, “Today we all are scared about terrorism, suspecting everybody around us, but no one is suspecting McDonalds to hurt us. We’ve been conditioned by it because we have grown up with it, and now if you’re looking at the Mc D restaurant world map, you will be surprised that they are everywhere.”

He says he started his campaign last month in Prague and this month he was in New York with five more posters. But the New York campaign was just a small one. “100 different Wack Donald’s characters are waiting to pop up, each one chosen for special reasons for different countries.” You can expect the social campaign will also follow the postering campaign closely because Mr OneTeas considers the fast food to be on par with tobacco. “On the cigarette packs in France you can read ‘Smoking Kills’. My thoughts are that I would like to make people realize that eating junk food can kill as well,” he says.

Guess we’ll just have to follow his Instagram to see how the campaign progresses.

Mr. OneTeas (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Check out more on the artists Instagram page, which says “Mr OneTeas (ARTIST) Graffiti, Street Art, Recycler The Wack Donald’s Project… Oneteas@gmail.com http://www.facebook.com/Mr.OneTeas”

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post.

BSA Images Of The Week: 04.20.14

April 20, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

It’s Easter! It’s also 4/20! What kind of grass did that bunny leave in your basket this morning?

While you are chewing the chocolate ears off of your new friend you can have look at some of the springtime gifts that have appeared on the streets this week.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alice Pasquini, Cern, Hamlet, JC, Jerk Face, Lexi Bella, Mika, Myth, Pyramid Oracle, and Tripel.

Top Image >> Jerk Face for The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cernesto painted this mural last year but were patiently waiting for the Spring to arrive to post the photos. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cernesto. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lexi Bella (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mika (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. Modern Hamlet. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. Detail (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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El Sol 25, an Original Mix Master and Street Collagist

April 16, 2014 Artists

Like spinning multiple vinyl platters at 78, 45, and 33 RPMs on old beige school library record players, this is a low-fi mixmaster whose visual style stands singularly, compelling and jarring. You have just bumped into a new El Sol 25 on the street.

Digging through the reference bin of your art history and popular culture signatures, you may want to decode where this compositional collision evolves from. Picking the pieces apart there appears to be little in common with the classical, the folk, the agrarian, the Egyptian tunics, the Greek marble, Sioux head dresses, sports trading cards, Depression Era glass, gilt frames and 50s TV depictions of svelte domesticity.

Perhaps it is the painted technique that lifts them to a common vernacular, creating an amber nostalgia for a time that never existed in the collaged paintings from Street Artist El Sol 25. Like crocuses and tulips they have recently appeared plastered around Brooklyn in a new spring campaign and while you never know when he’s coming, you sure know when he’s arrived.

After wading through stacks of books and magazines, cutting and pasting limbs and feathers and tobacco leaves and intersex torsos together, he then paints enlarged versions of them by hand on butcher paper. He’s said that they speak to him, and so do the walls and doorways where they are pasted, and we have no reason to doubt it.

While we draw up short of saying we are fans to maintain an air of professionalism, he did rather tip the scale this time when we discovered that he painted a tribute to BSA on a popular spot in BK, and we’re sort of embarrassed — but of course we’ve already taken multiple selfies in front of it so clearly not that embarrassed. So there’s that. Even so, if the work had not been so consistently risk-taking and experimental and authentic in a pool of copycats, El Sol 25’s work would not have caught our eye and kept it.

He once told us in an interview that his inspiration comes from a multitude of sources, “I get my inspiration from everything from walking to work or bad music or bad films or great films or good days or bad days. I get my inspiration from everything. I’m dependent on my work spiritually so I really like the idea of incorporating anything and everything into it. I take inspiration not just from what I’ve put on a pedestal – I enjoy everything.”

So for the gluttonous visual omnivores that are continuously pawing through images on your phone looking for a new sugar rush, this is your man. Because these are one-of-a-kind, labor intensive paintings on paper that decay in the wind and rain, catch them while you can. His pieces don’t usually get tagged over but the shelf life is probably a year at most.

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Images of the Week: 04.13.14

April 13, 2014 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Street Artists have been exhibited in museums before so Swoon’s “Submerged Motherlands” doesn’t break ground because of its presence inside a grand institution, even if said institution also holds one of the largest collections of Egyptian art, and is also hosting the largest US exhibition of Ai Weiwei next week, for example.

What surprised us most this week as the Brooklyn Museum threw open its doors to a seven story installation that includes a tree, a gazebo, and two boats that sailed the Adriatic was the rapid rate that this artist has gone from running the streets under cover of night of Brooklyn plastering her linotypes to being invited inside to spray the walls of the Brooklyn Museum with a fire extinguisher. The total time elapsed between her first hand cut paper wheat paste on tattered walls and Friday’s opening was a decade and a half. That is noteworthy in itself, and worthy of someone’s exhaustive examination, but suffice to say that you have to have vision and commitment to pull this off.

Here are new images from the exhibit along with our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Cost, Elbow-Toe, London Kaye, Myth, Nick Walker, Paul Richard, Swoon, and Tava.

Top Image >> Swoon “Submerged Motherlands” exhibition now open to the public at the Brooklyn Museum. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Read our interview with the artist this week – “Swoon: Submerged Motherlands”, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Museum.

Nick Walker. Dona Isabel is a member of the undead. She is coming home after a night of blood hunting on the LES. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Her face carried some unseen burden as she swallowed down her shot and our eyes connected from across the room,” Eduardo Jones (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands”, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Museum

April 9, 2014 Artists, Interview

Six years ago these boats of salvaged materials were floating down the Hudson, teaming with twenty-something sea-worthy souls and bohemian performers in costume aiming for the dock at Deitch Studios. This week they are beached up against the base of a massive seven story soft sculpture tree for the opening of Swoon: Submerged Motherlands at the Brooklyn Museum. In between these events each vessel has travelled down the Mississippi River and also crossed the Adriatic Sea from Slovenia to ceremoniously crash the Venice Biennale.

Newly arrived through U.S. Customs on New York shores from Italy, the seaworthy works of art have returned “home” to Brooklyn as Swoon, the Florida native who came to New York as an art school student, has called it for seventeen years. A singular Street Artist who once wheat-pasted her hand cut portraits anonymously in hidden city doorways, she is also known for her fervently collaborative projects that have carried her to galleries, museums and socially-rooted arts activism in places like Kenya, Haiti, London, Oaxaca, New Orleans, Miami, Braddock (Pennsylvania), Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

No matter where Caledonia Dance Curry goes, there is usually a cadre of handsome and delightful crafters and co-creators in tow; talented friends and valued confidants who help bring her ideas and vision to fruition. While she is clearly at the helm, this dynamic exceeds the typical artist and her studio paradigm; hers is rooted in a regard for collaboration, community, experimentation, and discovery. Oh, and a bit of theater.

Fire extinguishers in the foreground and rear during the multi-layered preparation of the exhibition for “Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” Process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“We are pouring so much into this show and for me I think part of the reason I’m willing to do it is because it is my home. The museum has been awesome and they have given me as much as they can and I have just thrown everything at it because I’m like ‘I’m home, this is my place.’ For me this show is different from installations I have done in other museums and other places,” Swoon explains.

Managing Curator of Exhibitions at the museum, Sharon Matt Atkins, talks about the command of the space and its transformational effect. “Swoon did not hold back in fully utilizing our grand rotunda gallery. She has been working for three and a half weeks at the museum with a large team to get the installation ready. Much of the work involved assembling parts made in the studio, but then bringing it all together with the finishing details onsite,” she says.

“Sharon brought me in here and said, “What is interesting to you in the building?” and I really love that because the thing about working on the street is that you are always thinking site-specifically. And so that thinking has to translate into your work in all places. For me if I make something in a museum I want it to be very site-specific and this is probably one of the most site-specific pieces I’ve ever done,” explains Swoon.

Under the advice and guidance of an engineer, the artist also modified her design process to allow for foundational considerations like truss sections and lift points. “I showed him an initial model and he showed me an engineered system and then I built another model based on the system that he engineered.”

It is probably unusual for a grand museum to be so amenable to the requests of an artist for a site specific piece that literally inhabits the furthest reaches of a space, and Swoon says she recognizes the leeway she received. “You know, they have been really adventurous in letting us create this. We’ve been sort of pushing a lot with the creation of this piece.”

For Matt Atkins, the opportunity to bring an internationally known street artist and neighbor into the museum has been the result of just over two years of planning. “It’s been so wonderful working with Swoon to realize her vision for this project. This is the first time we’ve really used the full height of the 72-foot dome, so it’s quite spectacular. I am thrilled to see her boats back in New York and for them to have this new life. The underlying ideas about climate change in the installation also make this project an appropriate tie in to the Museum’s focus on activism with our other exhibitions and collections,” she says.

Guests who walk into the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery on the fifth floor will need to crane their gaze upward to see the full expanse of the tree that reaches to the cupola, now embroidered across the sky’s light with her lace patterning. Softly gnarled limbs are clustered with outsized and filigreed leaves that cast shadows on the maritime layers of sprayed blue washes streaming to the floor.

Looking up at the multi-textured and tinted bark that skillfully, if playfully, emulates the trunk of a tree, Swoon talks about the demands of production. “We worked it all out in the studio and then we just spent weeks tearing and shredding and dying the fabric, cutting out paper leaves, and building up these kind of “roots”, crocheting pieces, putting dyed fabric on them, sewing sleeves for the rings to put dyed fabric on – It’s just been immense! It’s one of those things where I’ve never built something on this scale so I really don’t realize how much energy it absorbs when it is that size.”

“Swoon: Submerged Motherlands” The fabrics used to build the bark of the tree trunk were custom dyed and are shown here at the studio drying. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

To contemplate the rotunda installation and the finer details of the rough rafts Swoon provides an equally festooned gazebo to rest on and nearby linotype images of caretaking and motherhood to see — including a more recent portrait of the artists’ own mother that has also been spotted wheat-pasted in the street.

“So I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘home’ and this installation is about home and the loss of home in a lot of ways. When I decided on ‘Submerged Motherlands’ I was thinking about climate change and thinking about “Sandy”. Also my own mother passed away while I was in the ideation stage for the installation so I was thinking about the loss of my own mother and that relationship and it all just kind of merged together,” she says.

Brooklyn Street Art: When you speak of your mother passing during the ideation and the title of the show I look at your work and I think of it as a kind of maternal act, of caretaking, of providing shelter. I wonder if there is any relationship between this concept of motherhood and caretaking that feels true to you.
Swoon: I guess the thing that I think of is almost an impulse to build a safe space in the world for myself and my community; some place to be a little bit different from the norm. Then also that same impulse kind of extended outward to projects like working in Haiti after the earthquake and trying to create literal shelter.

Brooklyn Street Art: Thinking about site-specificity and its importance in your work, many of your installations on the street are in the unpolished, eroded areas of town. Contrast that with a museum environment like this where everything is clean and crisp – it occurred to me that you created that same unpolished environment by taking the fire extinguishers and blasting them across the walls.
Swoon: Oh my god the funnest tool ever!

Brooklyn Street Art: Have you used fire extinguishers before?
Swoon: You know what? I never have. Honestly it was just one of those things where I was just like, “How do I get a lot of paint up quickly?” – and I just thought about the fire extinguishers. I mean people use those – it is such an amazing tool. Big props to Craig (Costello), to Krink, who is such a pioneer with that. I never had used it before. I usually take care not to simulate the street environment but maybe that kind of just happened.

Brooklyn Street Art: And when it comes to your work and this installation, you don’t like to talk about metaphors.
Swoon: Well, its not that I don’t want to talk about them – its that I think you can get too literal. I think that part of the strength of the arts is that you try to leave a little openness for the parts of our minds that are a little bit less rational and that don’t have this strict linear codex of how you interpret something. Like in the way that the Motherlands theme has so many different kinds of interpretations and layering – I think it is important to keep that kind of richness.

Swoon: Submerged Motherlands runs April 11–August 24, 2014 at The Brooklyn Museum. For more information visit the museum website HERE.

Join BSA and Swoon on April 24th
In Conversation: Brooklyn Street Art
Thursday, April 24, 2014 at 7 p.m.
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd Floor
For more information go HERE.

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This article was also published on The Huffington Post

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