Today at 10:00 AM PDT Shepard Fairey will release his newest print and collaboration with Martha Cooper, “People’s Discontent”. Shepard’s long friendship with Martha has brought several collaborations throughout the years with Shepard remixing some of Martha’s most iconic photos from her Street Play series from the mid-’70s. The print already saw its European release in Berlin last Friday, October 30th at the Urban Nation Museum in Berlin with us and Martha in attendance.
“I teamed up with my good friend and documentary photographer, Martha Cooper, on a new print release called “People’s Discontent.” Martha Cooper has been photographing creative kids in action on city streets since the mid-1970s. I remixed one of Martha’s iconic photos from her book, Street Play, titled “Hitchhiking a Bus on Houston Street” that she shot in 1978 in the Lower East Side of New York City. There was no advertisement on the back of the bus in her original photo, and since disco was the rage in the late ’70s, I thought it made sense for me to add a disco radio station with the slogan, “Listen To The Sounds of People’s Disco.” I added the “DISCO-ntent” and the spraypaint can in the kid’s hand as if he sprayed that on there. It’s a nod to that era but also to what’s going on now with the unrest around social justice issues.”
“This limited edition print was first released through Urban Nation Museum in Berlin as part of their current show “Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures” curated by Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington of Brooklyn Street Art and will soon be up on my website this Thursday at 10 AM PT. Check it out!” – Shepard Fairey
Shots today from last month’s Shepard Fairey “Future Mosaic” at Dubai’s Opera Gallery. With works on canvas, paper, wood, and metal, as well as examples of iconic images and repeated motifs from the breadth of his art and design history, Fairey was very much present for his first solo show here. In a grueling schedule of just 9 days he also managed to install two huge murals facing a skate park in a commercial district of the city, the d3 (Dubai Design District).
Shepard Fairey. “Future Mosaic”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong)
Rise Above Peace Dove and Rise Above Peace Fingers incorporate what appears as a richer vibrant palette and pulsing graphic interplay than previously, perhaps due to more dense hues and the fact that his core crew of Dan Flores, Luka Densmore, and Rob Zagula were on hand along with Jon and Marwan offering additional help. Staying clear of strident language or slogans, the new works are largely representational and universal in themes of “justice, peace and human rights.”
Shepard Fairey with the dream team ready to work. “Future Mosaic”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong)
Fairey withstood criticism on social media for even working in the region, it would appear, let alone lending his name to an effort that they saw as hypocritical in light of his previous vocal stances on human rights, for example.
He took to Instagram to address his critics, “I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but it’s not a perfect place, but perfection does not exist and certainly not in the US. However, without this experience, I would not have been able to engage in robust discussions with the great people I met in Dubai. There’s nothing more relevant to my inside-outside strategy than traveling there and doing public art conveying harmony and positivity.”
Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Fingers”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong)
Elsewhere in another post, he wrote, “It is very important for me to do public art when I travel because it engages people outside of the art world, but it is not easy to secure public walls in Dubai.”
The opportunity to show and share and sell your art is something we want for any artist. In the case of Fairey, judgment metrics would need to include his two decades of generous acts promoting and supporting all manner of environmental, social justice, and civic participation efforts. We’ll confidently observe that year after year, his impact can far outstrip the average street artist and certainly most art collectors by miles. We dare say he’s unmatched. Let that be your goal.
Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Fingers”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong)
“The show was massive, with 159 works that utilized the gallery space with a rhythm of scale and concentration,” he says. “My art practice focuses on the work’s cumulative effect, both visually and conceptually, so I was pleased with the final result.”
Shepard Fairey. “Future Mosaic”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong) Shepard Fairey. Skectch for “Rise Above Peace Fingers”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong) Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Fingers”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong) Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Fingers”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong) Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Fingers”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong) Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Fingers”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong) Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Fingers”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong) Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Dove”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong) Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Dove”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong) Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Dove”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong) Shepard Fairey. “Rise Above Peace Fingers”. Dubai. UAE. March 2021. (Photo: Courtesy ObeyGiant.com / Photographer Jon Furlong)
This way when the neighbors in the building across the street see you hanging out the window during our 7 pm public applause session — they’ll know even more about your worldview.
Social Distancing (courtesy of Studio Number One)
“Art has the power to bring us together, even when we’re apart,” says Street Artist, graphic artist, fine artist Shepard Fairey, who has designed posters along with his Studio Number One for us all to use as we like. It may even help many of us feel like we are doing this together, instead of solo.
“We are all in this together,” Shepard says, “and we will
overcome this.”
Where is the People’s Bailout? Why has the bailout that was promised to small businesses already run out? Why is congress on vacation? Why is Biden staring up at the wall like he’s concentrating on a dead spider? The people are dying, running out of food, the economy is dying, businesses are dying. The Post Office, starved and bad-mouthed for years by the capitalists who want to kill it, is finally dying. Do we realize which direction the US is being dragged by the oligarchs and their one party corporate Republicrat-Demoblicans?
Banksy, with his typical sense of humor and levity, came out from isolation to share with us his visual metaphor that accurately illustrates one of the many ways in which isolation affects humans…photos were taken directly from the artist’s Instagram account. (photos @Banksy)Banksy. Detail. (photo @ Banksy)Banksy. Detail. (photo @ Banksy)Banksy. Detail. (photo @ Banksy)Banksy. Detail. (photo @ Banksy)Untitled. Brooklyn, NY. Spring 2020 (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
Hammering the display walls, sanding off the plaster bumps, the whirring and popping of construction drills: Two assistants are helping 1970s NYC subway writer Lee Quinones lay out a #2 train-car-length canvas on the floor while you are distracted by the Empire State building puncturing the Manhattan cityscape across the East River, a sweeping vista through the glass walls of this new high-rise in Williamsburg.
Nearby Cornbread’s notebook hangs next to his signature, a potent visual reverberation across five decades from graffiti’s Philly roots.
Elsewhere there are the sounds of woodsaws and metal clanging accompany the one-line drawings of freight-writer buZ blurr as historian Bill Daniel is completing his comprehensive mini-exhibition within this massive exhibition. With trains and photos and modern relics of American rail lore on display, this crucial antecedent of modern-day aerosol “writing” emerges and blows its chimes as well. This is a particular slice of the graffiti story that Mr. Daniel may describe, as he does in The Secret History of Hobo Graffiti, as “the dogged pursuit of the impossibly convoluted story of the heretofore untold history of the century-old folkloric practice of hobo and railworker graffiti.”
It’s an apt descriptor for Beyond The Streets as well. This multi-artist graffiti/Street Art-influenced exhibition directed by the discerning shepherd and seer Roger Gastman that is now mounting over two floors and 100,000 square feet in North Brooklyn tackles an endlessly convoluted evolutionary path. He says the size and composition of the exhibition has slightly changed since its first mounting last year in Los Angeles, and he is acutely aware that its location is in the city that claims a huge part of the graffiti genesis story, carrying perhaps a steep level of expectations.
Not that he has reason to worry: there are more hits here than a blowout at Yankee Stadium.
Like the blast of colors and pieces at a sunny Saturday afternoon Meeting of Styles jam, this show of many writers, photographers, documenters, collectors, painters, vandals, and attitudes won’t disappoint. You can see and construct your own version of a celebratory story that illustrates and reveals surprising ways that the street subculture has left its mark indelibly on the mainstream, yet often stayed separate.
From the Beastie Boys wigs worn in the “Sabotage” music video to the camera Joe Conzo used to shoot the Cold Crush Brothers, to the MDF and cardboard pay phone by pop sculptor Bill Barminski, and Dash Snow’s hi-low societal slumming photographs depicting sex, drugs, rhyming and stealing, visitors easily will have a flood of images and histories to author their own convoluted version of the graffiti and Street Art tale.
“Questioning the giant monolithic forces that we are all subjected to” – Shepard Fairey
“It all began with an absurd sticker of Andre The Giant that was a happy accident,” says Street Artist Shepard Fairey about his first foray as an artist on the streets back in ’89. “So there’s a giant in the original sticker which evolved into an exploration of control, questioning control, questioning the giant monolithic forces that we are all subjected to,” he says.
You didn’t doubt that Shepard had an anti-demagogue, anti authoritarian, anti-propaganda stance even then; his methods for skewering were cheekily challenging, often employing propaganda methodology of his own to get the point across. Good design, good satire, and grand targets.
As Fairey begins his multi-pronged celebration of three decades of questioning self-appointed authority and the agents of dis-information, the folks at Chop ‘em Down Films have produced the opening salvo here – and we’re sure you’d like to see it.
“Facing the Giant: Three Decades of Dissent” for the OBEY GIANT 30th body of
work – reflecting on 30 years of his art in the streets… and everywhere else”.
Facing the Giant: Three Decades of Dissent. Video by Chop ’em Down Films
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Welcome To America Owen Dippie by Erin Dippie
2. Covert To Overt: Photography of Obey Giant by Jon Furlong
3. Taken By Storm: The Art Of Storm Thorgerson And Hipgnosis Trailer
4. Sobecksis Mural “Motion” in Mannheim
BSA Special Feature: Welcome To America Owen Dippie by Erin Dippie
A nice homemade video this week by New Zealand painter Owen Dippie’s talented wife Erin, who documented his trip to New York and LA. Without the hype this gives you an idea what it is like to be a tourist here, and it is good to see the experience through the eyes of a loving partner.
Covert To Overt: Photography of Obey Giant by Jon Furlong
A unique way of promoting a book and a photographer, this video introduces us to Jon Furlong, who has been trailing Shepard Fairey for about a decade and has become a trusted and valued member of the team.
Taken By Storm: The Art Of Storm Thorgerson And Hipgnosis Trailer
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Shepard Fairey’s Wall in Little Italy
2. ARYZ for CityLeaks
3. Robots Spraying Out the Window – Jeff Soto
4. Robo-Rainbow
5. NO AD: NYC
6. Edoardi Tresoldi “Pensieri” For street art festival “OLTRE IL MURO” in Sapri, Italy
7. Ryan Seslow / Adam Void * Handstyles
BSA Special Feature:
Shepard Fairey’s Wall in Little Italy
Produced by Element Tree, this is the video by Serringe that just came out a couple of days ago of Shepard Fairey’s recent installation in New York.
ARYZ for CityLeaks
From the CityLeaks Urban Arts Feastival in Cologne, Germany, here is ARYZ speaking about the largest skeleton he’s every painted.
Robots Spraying Out the Window – Jeff Soto
This car manufacturer placed robots in a car to spray the walls to give their product some street cred. While they are busy patting themselves on the back we’re reminded of many street art autonomous innovators who have done this kind of work on the streets before, like Mudlevel, who created the Robo-Rainbow three years ago (below). Self-funded experimenters have jerry-rigged bikes, scooters, contraptions, machines, even drones to spray paint onto walls over the last decade so this brand hasn’t pioneered anything new necessarily. Possibly they just saw the Alexander McQueen robots spraying a dress in 1999.
Cool project nonetheless and props to artist Jeff Soto for his continued good work.
Robo-Rainbow
A splendid look at street ingenuity and over-thinking the simplest job. Clap your hands for MUDLEVEL.
NO AD: NYC
Augmented reality continues to grow into the consumer world and this app will help you to replace those pesky print messages foisted into the public space with, oh, art.
Perhaps soon when you scan one of those hideous new all-car subway advertising campaigns it will trigger a full car piece by Lee Quinones! Now that’s an idea worth pursuing!
Edoardi Tresoldi “Pensieri” For street art festival “OLTRE IL MURO” in Sapri, Italy
A permanent installation of electro-welded net for Oltre il Muro festival, in Sapri, Italy, bends perception depending on the angle it is seen from, especially when shot by drone.
Grafideo = Graffiti + Video * Ryan Seslow / Adam Void * Handstyles
In their second collaboration, this Street Art and graffiti duo offer up their latest experiment combining their interests and skills and feeding them through a series of texturing. “This is what happens when new-school meets old-school, when technology collides with the primal. Real life distortion of spray tags & letter styles merged with animated gifs & overlay filters.”
Boy did you smell the rotting hot winds blowing hard through Brooklyn this week? Makes you want to wash the ick off doesn’t it? Ballooning above the fetid stench of decaying garbage in dumpsters and drunken late-night urination, a distinctly bloated snorting powdery heat rose from Duane Reade Island and came across the East River, bringing with it a rather Coney Island-style circus of crusty hot air mixed with a whiff of braying pomposity. Luckily, it was a brief blast of the gaseous odor, dissipating quickly back into irrelevance and the now clean cool air has returned. At least as clean as the BK can muster.
As we do every week, here are a selection of new work that has arrived as we celebrate the true spirit of creativity and the community that has always buoyed us, no matter the weather. As usual, we’re happy to be right here with you on the stoop, hopefully staying cool.
This weeks interview with the street features Bisco, Bo130, Buff Monster, Case Ma’Claim, Cash For Your Warhol, El Tono, Galo, Microbo, Nychos, Shepard Fairey, Smithe, and The London Police.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
