All posts tagged: NYC

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.28.16

August 28, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

“Back in the USSR” comes to mind as we touched down in Moscow yesterday to see and speak with the 60+ Street Artists who are creating this impressive 2nd Street Art biennale “Artmossphere” just a stone’s throw away from the Kremlin, Red Square and The International Military Music Festival that runs all week as well. We’ll be bringing you new stuff all week as part of our partnership with Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art (UN), investigating the creative process with artists, curators, and the organizing force behind all of this event.

In the mean time, we bring you work from New York and elsewhere in this week’s fine edition of BSA Images of the Week.

So, here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Aduk, Buff Monster, Crisp, Hiss, Lena Shu, Logan Hicks, Olek, and Wolfe Work.

Above: Logan Hicks. Detail of his mural “Story of My Life” on the Houston/Bowery wall, which pays tribute to the personal and professional friends and family who have helped him in the last 10 years in NYC. New York City. August 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Logan Hicks at work on his Houston Wall mural. New York City. August 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Logan Hicks. Detail. Houston Wall. New York City. August 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Logan Hicks. Houston Wall. New York City. August 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek Our Pink House for Kerava Art Museum. Finland. August 2016. (photo © Olek)

Our Pink House is a new crocheted covering for a house (the second) by Street Artist OLEK – this one associated with Kerava Art Museum’s upcoming exhibition Yarn Visions, which will place the spotlight on knitted, crocheted, tufted and embroidered works.

Drawing an analogy of protection and safety in these pink crocheting patterns that stretch from the top of the chimney to the foundation of stone, this building in Kereva in southern Finland, where many bombs fell during The Winter War of 1939-40. Olek says she is concerned about the 21 million people worldwide who lost their homes due to war and conflicts in 2015 and she wants to create community based projects like this one to draw attention to the topic, and to provide some healing as well.

This particular project enlisted the help of a large group of volunteers, immigrants and women from a reception centre for asylum seekers who she brought together to crochet this covering. “Our Pink House” is about the journey, not just about the artwork itself. It’s about us coming together as a community. It’s about helping each other. We can show everybody that women can build houses, women can make homes,”she says. – OLEK

Nailed it! Hiss is caught up in the Pokemon Go craze that has captured the attention of children, teens, and a certain photographer we know who is a perennial child at heart. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Buff Monster (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wolfe Work (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

CRISP (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ADUK (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lena Shu in progress for Artmossphere – Moscow International Biennale of Street Art 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unintended collaboration on the streets of Moscow. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Moscow, Russia. August 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.21.16

August 21, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here we go! Eat all the last fresh corn-on-the-cob, watermelon, lemonade, tomatoes, green beans, black berries, peaches that you can get before the summer disappears and your local grocer turns all those things into plastic hot-house versions imported from Pluto and transported with a million gallons of fossil fuel to you table. New York has many farmers markets and delis with fresh produce — it is not all expensive either. Chinatown in Manhattan still has some of the coolest stuff to eat and hasn’t jacked up the prices.

We’ve been riding around New York looking for new Street Art and for those who are complaining that the scene has devolved into festivals and large murals, you are just being lazy and relying on the Internet for all your news. There are so many artists out putting up small one-off individual pieces with social and political messages on the street – and of course there is a lot of aesthetically pleasing stuff as well. Its all alive and well and we are still missing much of it.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Baron Von Fancy, Buff Monster, bunny M, Crisp, El Sol 25, Mister Melty, PaytoPray, QRST, Space Invader, and Square, Suckadelic.

Our top image: QRST. An ad takeover in Brooklyn, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

QRST. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

QRST (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Buff Monster. Mister Melty. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

bunny M (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Baron Von Fancy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Square. Being Their. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pussy Power (photo © Jaime Rojo)

An unidentified artist impression of a deranged con artist trying to fool the whole USA. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

#overthrownewyork (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crisp (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Invader Ninja (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Invader (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Suckadelic (photo © Jaime Rojo)

#paytopray (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Manhattan sunset and the East River. July 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.14.16

August 14, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 907 Crew, Aneko, Cash4, City Kitty, COST, D7606, Gregos, LMNOPI, Opiemme, Phlegm, Pork, Rambo, Smells, UFO, Vhils, and Vudo Child.

Our top image: “Heading to Coney Island to catch some waves…” This small wheat pasted illustration on a NYC subway platform caught our attention for its composition, wit and well-placed location, so it leads BSA Images Of The Week with it. It is very important to highlight the countless small pieces of art on the street illegally put around the city. Yes, we are in a period of fascination with murals these days, but it’s these small ones that first captured our hearts. Please help ID the artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vudo Child. Detail. Unintended selfie. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vudo Child with COST posters on top. Detail. We saw the artist meticulously hand drawing a face on each brick. There are thousands of original pieces on this extensive wall with the abstract piece with black backdrop as the center of the composition. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vudo Child. Deatil. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vhils in Berlin in collaboration with Open Walls Galerie. The lone portrait on a wall is distinguished by its singularity – quite opposite of example from the work above. Vhils destroys to create. He chisels away from the wall do draw his portraits. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Two bunnies in love with PORK. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LMNOPI portrait of a demonstrator from the #blacklivesmatter movement. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gregos (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

UFO, Rambo, Smells, 907 Crew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cash4, 907 Crew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Phlegm in Berlin for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Phlegm in Berlin for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty . D7606 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

David Hollier portrait of Abraham Lincoln using an excerpt from his inaugural address speech. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

Opiemme using text from Nirvana’s In Utero album. Tuscany, Italy. July 2016. (photo © Opiemme)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aneko (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Berlin. July 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“ABOVE” in New York City

August 9, 2016 Artists

In dense cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo and New York there is so much activity that takes place above you, yet we primarily grant relevancy to what happens at street level from our pedestrian perspective.

Perhaps those machinations and love affairs and backroom deals and elegant dances and mergers of all sort on higher floors are what continue to fascinate Tavar Zawacki to direct our attention ABOVE our heads. Perhaps he is simply reminding us that there is a sky.

Tavar ABOVE Zawacki at The Quin Hotel. Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As an artist in residence this summer with the Quin hotel, the California born artist is currently visiting from Berlin but, as happens to many, is falling in love with New York.

His current show is a collection of highly glossed icons placing his nom de street front and center. These abstracted kaleidoscope-induced neon versions of his tag may bring to mind street signage and the blinking store window vernacular of nighttime commercial districts in many cities.

We’ve been seeing him around town and caught him painting last week in Little Italy with the Lisa Project and you will undoubtedly be seeing of ABOVE’s work in New York in the future. You know where to look for it, right?

Tavar ABOVE Zawacki at The Quin Hotel. Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tavar ABOVE Zawacki in Little Italy for his mural in collaboration with The L.I.S.A. Project. Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tavar Zawacki AKA Above solo exhibition at The Quin Hotel in Manhattan is currently on view and it is free to the public. Click HERE for more information.

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.07.16

August 7, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring ABOVE, City Kitty, Corn79, Crisp, D7606, Damien Mitchell, Dee Dee, EC13, Gregos, Hiss, Homo Riot, Imamaker, Invader, Mark Jenkins, MOMO, Olek, OneArt, Savior El Mundo, Stik, Wing, and Zimad.

Our top image: Stik for The L.I.S.A. Project. July 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Olek new installation in Avesta, Sweden. August 2016. (photo © OLEK)

We first called her the Christo of Street Art a number of years ago, and this latest project seems to finally confirm it. Olek created a two part installation for the Verket Museum in Avesta – in short it is about destruction and rebuilding. Above is the latest picture of the house she mounted the installation within – wrapped in meters and meters of pink crochet.

“Our pink house is about the journey, not just about the artwork itself. It’s about us coming together as a community. It’s about helping each other. In the small Swedish community of Avesta we proved that we are stronger together, that we can make anything happen together. People from all walks of life came together to make this project possible. Someone donated the house, another one fixed the electricity and Red Heart Yarns donated the materials. The of course, most importantly, many women joined us in the effort to make my dream a reality.

After I exploded the house I wanted to create a positive ending for them as a symbol of a brighter future for all people, especially the ones who have been displaced against their own wills. Women have the ability to recreate themselves. No matter how low life might bring us, we can get back on our feet and start anew.

We can show everybody that women can build houses, women can make homes. “

Gregos (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mark Jenkins in Montreal. July 2016. (photo © Andre Pace)

MOMO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tavar Zawacki AKA ABOVE (Invader on top) for The L.I.S.A. Project in Manhattan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Corn79 in Mantova, Italy for Without Frontiers. July 2016. (photo © Corny79)

OneArt (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

HISS (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zimad in collaboration with Damien Mitchell. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wing (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty in collaboration with D7606. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Homo Riot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Savior El Mundo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

EC13 in Granda, Spain. August 2016. (photo © EC13)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Imamaker (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crisp (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Speaking of the Constitution. Wall Street. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 07.24.16

July 24, 2016 Artists

“Vote for the one candidate who does not need this job,” intoned one of the many speakers who are receiving a trust fund from DJ Trump this week at the RNC convention. That’s convincing, isn’t it?

Blonde Women’s Lives Matter. Make America Salem Again. I am the Law.

The Donald didn’t let us down again this week – and for those of you who think we’re being partisan, we’re not. This dork has been doing this stuff in New York since the 80s – and we are all used to his grandiose claims and mid-speech reversals. But this week the RNC looked like it was going to devolve into Lord of the Flies crossed with the Salem Witch trials. No wonder the Street Art we keep seeing is approximately 10 to 1 against him – and still he’s like a gushing geyser of humor, comedy gold! Except for the violent parts.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alexandre Keto, Astro, Coloquix, Cyrcle, Dee Dee, Elle, Funquest, Lapiz, Leipzig, OverUnder, Patch Whisky, Uncut Tart, and You Go Girl!.

Our top image: Elle for #NotACrime in collaboration with Street Art Anarchy in East Harlem. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elle for #NotACrime in collaboration with Street Art Anarchy in East Harlem. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Thankfully there IS a light at the other end of the tunnel. Astro for #NotACrime in collaboration with Street Art Anarchy in East Harlem. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Specter took over a billboard to great effect (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Coloquix (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alexandre Keto for #NotACrime in collaboration with Street Art Anarchy in West Harlem. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Patch Whisky for #NotACrime in collaboration with Street Art Anarchy in West Harlem. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lapiz for Urban Art Festival Leipzig, Germany. (photo © Lapiz)

You Go Girl! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Overunder (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Overunder for #NotACrime in collaboration with Street Art Anarchy in East Harlem. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Funqest (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rabi of Cyrcle (and friends) for #NotACrime in collaboration with Street Art Anarchy in East Harlem. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Uncut Tart remembers the power and style of Run DMC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Uncut Tart. Michael Jackson. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Uncut Tart. Notorious BIG. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Uncut Tart. Bob Marley (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Marina Zumi for #NotACrime in collaboration with Street Art Anarchy in East Harlem. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist. Something about freedom of religion restricted under communism? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. East River. Brooklyn, NYC. July 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot “Let Her Be Free” Book Launch|Art Exhibition (Manhattan, NYC)

July 21, 2016 Artists

“We first met Icy and Sot the summer they arrived in New York. Their name was already preceding them on the Internet because even while still in Iran, they had developed a network of friends and collectors who had helped them to show their art in Europe. Images of their work had already caught our eye. We were lucky to be the first to interview them here.

That is how the friendship began–as immigrants to New York ourselves, we had a good feeling about them because they exhibited the right signs for success here. We’ve seen what sort of steely core you need to have internally to survive in this city and what alchemy of dreams, determination, and luck one will need to succeed as artists. We’ve watched many hopefuls come and go, feeling chewed up or put off by the love/ hate relationship most people have with this city. From the beginning, Icy and Sot appeared to have what it would take to persevere. Later we learned that they didn’t really have any other option.” – Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo in “Let Her Be Free”

BSA is proud to tell you of this new book, the first monograph of Iranian Street Art brothers ICY & SOT, which we dedicated many hours of design, editing, interviewing, and writing to, in addition to contributing photographs by Jaime Rojo. Along with the brothers and book designer Cassandra Brinen, we spent many hours in New York meetings in apartments and cafes sorting through images and stories to find the narrative and the flow of the pages and chapters (even laying all the pages across a living room floor), all the time wondering if we could finish it in time and to the quality level and taste level everyone was looking for.

We’re pretty happy with how it turned out and we hope to meet a lot of New Yorkers this Saturday for the books official debut! Luckily, there will be plenty of brand new stencil pieces for you to see in a pop-up exhibition as well.

Published by Lebowski Publishing under the guidance and vision of owner Oscar Van Gelderen and with a forward by Jess X. Chen, “Let Her Be Free” tells the story of the first 10 years of ICY & SOT working on the street, first in their hometown Tabriz, then Tehran, then moving to Brooklyn, New York to start and continue their odyssey. You don’t find artists who are as driven and focused and willing to work like this very often, nor those who have personal and political convictions and who are using their work to express them.

We were lucky to have enough photos that charted their early years and could tell their story, and of course it helps that they are good documentors as well – a lesson for all artists! As they continue to grow professionally and personally, we look forward to them challenging us and developing their craft even further.

We’re all looking forward to meeting you this weekend – the guys will be there signing books – and if you cannot make it we hope you’ll have time to look at the book the next time you are in a bookstore or library.

Our special thanks to editor Roel van Diepen for his kind and patient expertise.

Icy & Sot “Let Her Be Free” Lebowski Publishers. Amsterdam 2016

We visited Icy & Sot at their Brooklyn studio while they were busy at work getting ready for the exhibition that accompanies the book launch and asked them a few questions and took photos of some the pieces that will be on view and and available to purchase. The show will be a retrospective in miniature – as most of the pieces on view were created as a compilation of their greatest hits throughout their very short career.

Icy & Sot. Sasan Sasan at their studio in Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot invite you to attend the launch of “Let Her Be Free” and the opening of the art show this Saturday, July 23rd. Click HERE for full details.

Icy & Sot “Let Her Be Free” Lebowski Publishers. Amsterdam 2016

BSA Images Of The Week: 07.17.16

July 17, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Welcome!

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring American Puppet, Ant Carver, CDRE, Consumer Art, Crisp, Dain, David Hollier, Dee Dee, El Sol 25, Jules Muck, Myth, Ron English, The DRIF, and VJZ .

Our top image: Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR from his Ellis Island Series. Sorry we don’t know the name of the original artist. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR from his Ellis Island Series. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

American Puppet (photo © Jaime Rojo)

David Hollier (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Text on the illustration from Steppenwolf’s “Monster/Suicide/America”, written in 1969

“America where are you now?
Don’t you care about your sons and daughters?
Don’t you know we need you now
We can’t fight alone against the monster”

Speaking of monsters…Donald Trump as re-imagined by Ron English. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

…and by Consumer Art. This is a takeoff of a Banksy piece (photo © Jaime Rojo)

…and by an unidentified artist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

But Jules Muck has hope and so do we… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ant Carver (photo © Jaime Rojo)

CRISP (photo © Jaime Rojo)

CRISP does “Bling Vader” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Drif for The L.I.S.A. Project NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And let’s pay tribute to all the ballerinas out there who train so hard for years and years and days and days and hours and hours and go on the stages big and small all over the world who rapture us with their grace and artistry. We salute you!

CDRE (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

VJZ (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Okay, okay! No shampoo. We get it. Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Myth (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. China Town, NYC. July 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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!

Nychos Slays in New York : IKONS Revealed as Never Before

June 29, 2016 Artists, Interview

“Scientists, psychologists, surgeons…in the end we’re all driven by a similar curiosity.”

This month has been a whirlwind in New York for Austrian Street Artist /fine artist /illustrator named Nychos and he’s made quite the iconic impression. Anchored by a show that opened last weekend of canvasses and illustrations at Jonathan Levine Gallery in Chelsea named “IKON” and assisted by a co-branded sculptural event with the Vienna Tourist Board, the surreal dissectionist didn’t rest there.

In the weeks leading up to and after these events he also managed to hit a number of walls in Coney Island, Bushwick, and Jersey City…oh and he knocked out a box truck as well.

Nychos. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In addition to pulling out an astounding sculpture of Sigmund Freud looming over a couch that drew a crowd to the foot of the (also iconic) Flatiron Building at 23rd and 6th, the afterparty and reception featured Dominic Freud, the great grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis, who surmised that if he were alive today he would definitely have wanted to put Nychos on his couch.

Indeed the you may wonder about the mind of this sharp-knifed artist who has decided to diverge from the realm of slicing open animals and fantastic creatures to taking apart cultural and pop-cultural icons for his fascinating painted science experiments.

Nychos. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With a free hand on the can and rarely a sketch, and an athletic kineticism that verges on dance, this artist is fully in his zone, at times delivering what one important art world figure described to us as a “virtuoso” performance, even when he’s de-boning Ronald McDonald. Among his new subjects on walls and canvas are included such recognizable figures as Batman, Darth Vader, Mickey Mouse, Elvis, Marilyn, Motörhead’s Lemmy, and the Statue of Liberty.

Yes, it is grotesque, and yes, some of these subjects were actual people. Additionally, there is a comical dark side in it’s glossy finish and stylized splash, with perhaps a greater critique of consumerist entertainment culture and more than a touch of sadism. This is the pretty gore that is familiar to an un-shockable generation raised by vampires. You know who you are.

Nychos. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We asked the celebritic internist to talk about his work and his prodigious program across NYC and he gave us an inside look at the heart and mind of Nychos.

Brooklyn Street Art: You like to open things up and look inside. Would you consider yourself more of a scientist or psychologist?
Nychos: I consider myself an artist. But yeah, the question is justified. Scientists, psychologists, surgeons…in the end we’re all driven by a similar curiosity.

Nychos in collaboration with the artist Lauren YS for The Bushwick Collective. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Usually you depict primarily factual arrangements of organs and systems – but you also include a huge amount of movement and activity and emotion! How do you feel? How does a viewer feel?
Nychos: People who see me paint often tell me that it’s like watching an entire performance, so you could say the movement is not only in the piece or only me, it’s a synergy of both. I feel like the viewer can recognize these (e)motions in the finished piece as well.

Brooklyn Street Art: Is this work intellectual or emotional? Or both?
Nychos: Both. In my eyes, a creative process always includes intellectual and emotional content. Both aspects are fuelling each other. At least that’s what I see in my work.

Nychos in collaboration with the artist Lauren YS for The Bushwick Collective. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: We associate your work with the animal kingdom, but you are slicing Sigmund Freud open here in New York – What will we all be studying?
Nychos: I’d suggest you tell me afterwards. I can only say that “Dissection of Sigmund Freud” and my exhibition “IKON” at Jonathan Levine Gallery are a good way to announce that I’m going to set a focus on human anatomy in the future.

Brooklyn Street Art: Does Ronald McDonald actually eat his own food or is mostly whole grains and salads and fresh wheat-grass juice.
Nychos: Good question. I’m gonna ask him when I see him next time.

Brooklyn Street Art: OneTeas, Ron English and Banksy have all bashed McDonalds a number of times with their work – why is that brand so hateable?
Nychos: Well, I’d say McDonalds is just the embodiment of all these fast food chains, so the criticism does not only refer to this specific brand, but to all of them. McDonalds just made a damn good job with burning this weird clown into our brains and with it the bitter taste of today’s dining culture.

Nychos. A drone surveying the progress of the mural at The Bushwick Collective. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos. The Bushwick Collective. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos. “Dissection of Sigmund Freud”. Vienna Therapy. Manhattan, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos. “Dissection of Sigmund Freud”. Pictured here with Jonathan LeVine. Vienna Therapy. Manhattan, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos. “Dissection of Sigmund Freud”. Vienna Therapy. Manhattan, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos. “IKON”. Jonathan LeVine Galler. Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos for Green Villain. Jersey City, NJ. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos IKON is currently on view at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Manhattan. Click HERE for more details.

Summertime Swoon in New York

June 16, 2016 Artists

Come on, you know the weather has been gorgeous, New York. So many memories to make right now, rolling in the grass, rocking in a swing, chasing after a skirt, slathering up a wall with goopy wheat paste and pressing your freshly colored lino type print on a dilapidated wall or doorway. At the apex of our Brooklyn reverie what, to our smog clouded disbelieving eyes do we see, but the sight of new Swoon pieces up around the BK.

The figures are not all familiar as she has been adding folks to the street party and the color palette is somehow more saturated and pungent, but yes these are the real thing, often imitated, never matched.

A relatively new figure from Swoon – a man she met during a program with Philadelphia Mural Arts who is an inmate at Graterford state prison. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“A historical portrait of the American steel industry based off a very inspiring man named Henderson, who fought for equality in the mills, taught himself to become a crane operator, and, I just learned, was also a jazz guitarist,” says Swoon in her Instagram feed.

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Artists Bring 22 New Murals to “Coney Art Walls 2016”

June 15, 2016 Artists

Just in time for this weekend’s Mermaid Parade, London’s D*Face is finishing up “Live Fast Die Young,” his beauty-and-the-zombie comic couple sipping an ice cream float at the soda counter. Austrian surrealist slicer Nychos has completed his dissection of a Ronald McDonald-ish character without a sketch; running, jumping, nearly flying through the air with aerosol in hand, flinging the spent cans over his shoulder blindly to skitter across the pavement. Baltimore-based freeform anthropologist Gaia is cavorting with passersby who want to take cellphone selfies in front of his painted wall that depicts exactly that; selfies taken in Coney Island.

This is a modern version of the multi-mirror funhouse in mural form, and Coney Art Walls is bringing it again.

22 new murals on standing slabs of concrete join a dozen or so that were retained from last summer to present an eclectic and savory selection from the old-school and the new. When it comes to art in the streets, a salty luncheonette of city-style treats is on a large public platter these days, with names like graffiti, street art, urban art, installation art, public art, fine art, even contemporary art. For some of those hapless gatekeepers of any of these respective categories, this show in this location presents degrees of discomfort and anger as many subcultural roots are now brought into the light in tandem with one another in a public display – funded by a real estate firm. For the artists and majority of fans, however, the trend is more toward delight and gratitude.

While you are unpacking that, consider that lead curator Jeffrey Deitch has often proved very adept at plumbing the aesthetic margins of our culture while rearranging and intermingling the parties, helping the viewer to appreciate their differences. This outdoor exhibit co-curated with Joseph Sitt provides a venue for a wide audience to contemplate the range of expression that New York streets have had over the last few decades, including a few artists who are trying this manner of expression for the first time.

As the Thunderbolt, Steeplechase, Cyclone and Wonder Wheel spin and swerve nearby and overhead, sending screams and personal projectiles into the ocean breeze, you have this paved lot full of paintings to peruse, lemonade in one hand and the cotton-candy-sticky hand of a sunscreen-slathered child in the other. Here you’ll see a large two-walled corner smashed with Coney Island themes by Bronx graffiti masters Tats Cru (Bio, BG183, and Nicer), a selection of hand-drawn wheat pasted portraits of Coney Island youth by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, and 4 full-form sculptures by John Ahearn creating a modernist view of divers on the beach .

Tooling elsewhere through the loose labyrinth you come upon a monochromatic cryptically patterned tribute to Brooklyn-born Beastie Boys vocalist Adam “MCA” Yauch by Brooklyn tagger/train writer/artist Haze and a seemingly lighthearted abstractly collaged wall of mermaids by fine artist Nina Chanel Abney, whose work is currently on the cover of Juxtapoz. There is also a spectacular underwater-themed symmetrical fantasy topped by pylons bearing the likenesses of characters from “The Warriors” film by artist duo The London Police, and a stenciled “Last Supper” featuring heads of world currency playing the disciples and George Washington as Jesus sprayed across the face of a huge dollar bill by Iranian brothers Icy & Sot.

We often travel streets and neglected spaces in cities looking for signs of freewill artistic expression and often the creative spirit surprises us as it can be expressed in so many ways with emotion, agenda, and idiosyncratic point of view. It may be the plurality of voices one experiences surfing the Internet or the multi-cultural nature of living in New York with a continuous river of fresh arrivals mixing in with established and old-timers every day, but one comes to expect this variety of viewpoints and rather naturally creates accommodation for inclusion that celebrates without negating – and in many ways Coney Art Walls does that as well.

Oppositional viewpoints are present if you look: There are coded messages and obvious ones, critiques of corporate hegemony, issues of race, commentary on police relations, sexuality, religion, capitalism, community, the languages of advertising, movies, music, entertainment, local history, and examination of roles and power structures.

When tooling around this collection, you may wonder what, then, are the commonalities of this survey. Certainly there are the recurring references to Coney Island lore and aspects of performance and flimflam, oddity, fantasy, even the erotic. Naturally, there are elements of natural wonder as well, perhaps expected with the proximity to the beach and the ocean and the history of this place as a vacation getaway.

Aside from this, the connective tissue is what we frequently identify as what is distinctly New York – the plurality of voices. Arguing, making fun, praising, preening, bragging, lambasting, mocking, singing. Despite the continuous attempts by others to divide us, we’re strangely (very strangely), beautifully united.

Marie Roberts has multi-generational roots here and her work makes you stop and study it. She has painted many visions and views around the neighborhood, and is considered the artist-in-residence. Coney Art Walls – 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Originally from Japan, Brooklyn’s AIKO has a double sided stencil sonnet to the romance of the sea. With “Tale of the Dragon King and Mermaids in Water Castle” Aiko tells a new version of Urashima Tarō, an old Japanese legend about a fisherman who rescues a turtle and is rewarded for this with a visit to Ryūgū-jō, the palace of Ryūjin. Says Aiko, “This piece speaks to my and all women’s fantasies; chilling hard super sexy in the beautiful ocean with friendly dragon who is super powerful and a smart guy – they are about going to water castle having good time.”

Coney Art Walls
2016 New Artists: Nina Chanel Abney, John Ahearn, Timothy Curtis, D*Face, Jessica Diamond, Tristan Eaton, Gaia, Eric Haze, Icy & Sot, London Police, Nychos, Pose, Stephen Powers, Tats Cru, and Sam Vernon. Returning artists who created new works: Lady Aiko, Mister Cartoon, Crash, Daze, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, and Marie Roberts. 2015 Murals on display: by Buff Monster, Eine, Ron English, How & Nosm, IRAK, Kashink, Lady Pink, Miss Van, RETNA, eL Seed and Sheryo & Yok. There are also three community walls.

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

BSA Images Of The Week: 06.12.16

June 12, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

The annual Welling Court Community Festival in L.I.C. in Queens took place yesterday. BSA was there on Friday to photograph the completed walls while a bevy of enthusiastic artists were busy at work on their walls and getting ready for yesterday’s block party. We wanted to bring you Part I of our coverage of this year’s festival on this Sunday’s edition of BSA Images Of The Week. Sit tight, Part II will come later next week as we wait for a few artists to complete their walls.

The 7th year for this eclectic homegrown collecting of graffiti and Street Artists for communal mural-making has not diverged much from its original character. You are still entirely welcomed. There are no corporate sponsors or sales of T-Shirts or silly app-designer types striking poses or stroking beards or like, privileged like, verbally challenged, like, young professionals looking for like brunch? nearby? Er whatever.

Wellington Court still feels like real people, and hard working families, with plenty of kids and community and homemade foods. At least for now. Thanks to organizers Garrison and Alison Buxton for pulling this off once again.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Billy Mode, Cern, Chris Stain, Depoe, Drsc0, FKDL, Icy & Sot, John Fekner, LMNOPI, London Kaye, Myth, OX, REPO, Skewville, Stikman, Vlady, and Voxx.

Our top image: Icy & Sot draws a direct connection between industrial pollution and the globe. Welling Court 2016. L.I.C. Queens. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artist LMNOPI lends her voice to the growing calls for stores to boycott the world’s largest supplier of berries until they treat their employees fairly after being accused of abuses, among them child labor. Learn more about the worldwide boycott of Driscoll’s here.

OX and Vlady do some clever circuit-jamming of public space here with advertising signage that features images of advertising signage. Also an impossible to read larger message. Biancavilla, Italy. (photo © Vlady)

While gazing at the gams on this one earlier in the week, we found ourselves wondering if London Kaye will get a tan this summer. London Kaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

drscØ left a few new pieces around town this month, each appearing to be shocked in disbelief at something, maybe passersby. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist’s take on The Donald. The HRC, referencing Hillary Clinton was added later for an additional bit of levity. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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