Welcome to BSA Images of the Week!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Binho, Patch Whisky, Atomik, Mr. Blob, Ouch, Ghost Beard, Habibi, Mona Dash, John Pierre, WHKBT, Giulio Rosk, Weerdo, and Chica Dania.
Aretha Franklin’s voice was on many radios and car stereos in Brooklyn yesterday. You could hear her riding on the Freeway of Love from a passing delivery van on Flushing Avenue, rocking steady at a barbecue in Marcy Projects, saying a little prayer for you out through someones’ open window in leafy Fort Greene.
There was other music on the street to be heard, sure, – it was a sunny summer day in BK, ya’ll. But Aretha kept appearing, and reappearing, taking us to church, and sometimes bringing us to tears. Her impact on the streets was felt because of her indomitable, soaring and searing voice giving voice to women of color and because of her respected work in civil rights dating back to Martin Luther King Jr. – at times when being proud to be black was a radical act all by itself.
May Aretha’s voice never leave our streets because even though many changes did come, many of us still believe real change is still gonna come. The Queen of Soul is gone, but her soul lives on!
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Alien Mail, Captain Eyeliner, El Cekis, Ghost Beard, LMNOPI, MenaceTwo, Mr. Dis-Satisfied, Osiris Rain, Patch Whisky, Reza Piece, Sipros, Stray Ones, and Trap.
New York’s jewel of free theater in Central Park is actually trending on Twitter, believe it or not. The production of Julius Ceasar features a Trumpian-looking lead character and it has inflamed people who haven’t heard of Shakespeare – which means a large swath of pretty/handsome bobble heads on US TV. The cautionary story actually has referenced modern leaders in productions historically in theaters in recent years and as a rule. There is even a story about Orsen Wells directing a version with actors in Nazi uniforms in the 20s or 30s.
More recent productions have included an Obama lookalike (“Caesar is cast as a tall, lanky black man” ) and a Hillaryesque woman in a white pantsuit, so why people are scandalized we don’t know. Two protesters actually stormed the stage Friday night during the performance, and lily-livered brands like Delta Airlines and Bank of Russia have pulled their financial support of the production. This is what happens when the Arts are cut out of a generation of schools, sisters and brothers.
And in other polarized news, the planned protest (and performance piece) in front of the Houston-Bowery wall is still scheduled for this afternoon. Artists and organizers have been reaching out to tell us about the protest along with possible other demonstrations which have been kick-started by the controversial choice of artist David Choe by Goldman Arts to paint the wall. Rape, Rape Culture, the normalization of sexual abuse, predatory behavior and attitudes toward women, and related issues will be in the discussion due to Choe’s own involvement in a possible rape scenario by his own account and his subsequent muddy explanations about it. Choe’s public apology yesterday via Instagram may have altered the calculus slightly but the bigger issues still prevail and many opinions on social media still question Goldman’s silence on the topic. Meanwhile, the wall has pretty much been dissed completely.
Finally, the drama of the Welling Court mural festival, which we actually do not know any drama about and which brought all sorts of community murals to this Queens working class neighborhood for the 8th year last weekend. We got out there to shoot a number of the walls without the crowds for you this week, and here’s a selection below.
So here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring A Visual Bliss, ASVP, Below Key, Cey Adams, Crash, Daze, Dek 2 DX, Dennis McNett, Dirt Cobain, Eelco Virus, Eyez, EZO, Ghost Beard, I am Eelco, John Fekner, Jonny Bluze, LMNOPI, NYC Hooker, Patch Whisky, Queen Andrea, Ramiro Davaro-Comas, Rob Sharp, Sean 9 Lugo, and Toofly.
We spent one whole week in Detroit, Michigan as guests of the good people who present the Murals In The Market , 1xRUN and the Inner State Gallery. We scratched the surface.
Our selections for this week’s edition of BSA Images Of The Week are harvested from Detroit streets and rooftops and hidden little spots – the murals painted for this year’s edition of Murals In The Market, those are coming later on. Enjoy.
So, here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 907 Crew, Aryz, Avoid, Birdo, Dark Clouds, Droid, Ghostbeard, How & Nosm, Jarus, Kuma, Miss Van, NGC, Ouizi, Patch Whisky, Shepard Fairey, Smells, UFO, Vhils.
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!
This week BSA is in Detroit with our hosts 1XRun for the Murals in the Market festival they are hosting with 50+ artists from various countries and disciplines and creative trajectories. In a city trying to rise from the economic and post-industrial ashes it is often the dynamic grassroots energy and vision of artists that sets the tone for how the community evolves.
This market place is known for its local based foods and community based Detroit roots. We’re getting rides in cars at the moment – it is Detroit after all – but the best way to see the murals is on foot. Of course you may discover that there are some cutty little behind the scenes organic graffiti and Street Art spots too and this city has a lot of those as well.
Also, football fans – an ocean of them having “tailgate” parties in parking lots not far from the stadium before, during, and after the actual game. An organic practice born from the counter culture with hippies and rock bands back in the 60s and 70s, the “tailgating” of today is full-blown commodified excess with tents, chairs, flatscreen TVs, and beer. Lots of beer.
The wiley, quirky artists painting walls in the Eastern Market were inundated yesterday with these fans in team jerseys looking for parking spots and mural fans following maps and snapping pictures, and guys asking for a loosie or a light. Between the clubs/cafes, the sports fans, motorcyclists, custom bike tours, and pop-up djs hanging with the artists-the neighborhood was thumping with and aural menagerie of classic rock, funkadelic, hip-hop, and many slices of dance/techno throughout the day into the night.
Here a just a few of the artists at work whom we caught in the late summer Detroit sun.
Greg Mike is getting to work on the facade of a factory-like abandoned, now refurbishing, building that is jammed with organic graffiti inside. He came from a design background and says he grew up loving old-school cartoons like Ren & Stimpy and 1960s Disney characters. “All of that stuff inspires me and I like to mix it up and kind of mash them together,” he says.
Aside from being the symbol of the Detroit football team, the lion figures into his piece because it reminds him of his iconic personal character “Larry Loudmouth”.
“The lion is the loudest animal in the kingdom … I have him speaking the language of love because it is all about living life loud but being positive with the message of love – not just being angry, you know what I mean? There’s a lot of angry people out here.”
Valencia-based, Buenos Aires-born Felipe Pantone is knocking out a lateral slice of optic/ hallucinatory muralage in the heart of the Market across the street from Patch Whisky and Ghost Head’s new piece.
He usually works on walls that are taller and thinner perhaps, but he says he’s throwing himself into it by assessing it’s character and shape and creating a new mural in the moment.
“Yeah I’m used to working with every kind of format.
Every time you have to think of something specifically for the work. I didn’t bring anything from home – I saw the wall and sat across the street and looked at it for a while so I made this design that hopefully works.”
Is he a little unsure of how it is going to work, but he’s not worried about it.
“Uncertainty is the very essence of romance,” he says here on the sidewalk that is broken up and erupting. “That’s Oscar Wilde don’t give me the credit! But even when you don’t know what’s happening that still is what makes it fun.”
Mr. Jago is collaborating with Xenz on a wall and the music on this block it loud – a guy with a big grey beard and big belly just rode past blasting Foghat’s “Slow Ride,” effectively cancelling all conversation and even thoughts for a minute. Mr. Jago is himself nursing a sore shoulder, torso, head, and broken glasses from an unfortunate spill off a motorcycle recently. He moves limberly nonetheless, and keeps backing up into the traffic jam on the street, standing between cars to get some distance on his emerging composition.
“We’re going to slowly build it up I think and to add more of each other’s signature colors so they Marry,” he says of the celestial miasma emerging from the wall. He says that he and Xenz will begin with two large separate characters. “We will surround them with this sort of universe of gases and floating islands and his signature of insects and birds and make it a kind of nice place that doesn’t exist in this world.”
Detroits’ Pat Perry is taking a huge wall to address a huge issue bigger than Detroit, yet firmly rooted in its history as a car producing capital of the oil-burning 20th century. Even though it was trade agreements that turned much of this city into a shadow of that former muscular self, Perry is also looking hopefully to the end of the fossil-fuel age which is represented here by a marching band that reaches and arc and then declines.
“It’s like a timeline of the end of one chapter a humorous last celebration of the oil age,” he says.” This is kind of a look into the eight ball of the futuristic city of Detroit”
An illustrator for magazines and online publications, he says he is really a painter who has been doing a lot of landscapes lately. Painting with aerosol is not usual for him.
“I kind of don’t like the look of spray paint and I’m trying to make it feel more painterly I think if I had endless time I would try to make this all bucket paint. But I’m learning to work with this medium – like doing the big areas with bucket paint and doing small areas with line work but trying not to have the line look so huge and thick.”
“I’m from Charleston South Carolina and my buddy ghost beard lives up here so I’ve been coming here for some years now,” says Patch Whisky as we stand under a temporary tent on the street by his wall to hide from the midday sun.
His second year at Murals in the Market, Patch says the two are college buddies from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh 16 years ago and they have always had affinities for similar cultural references.
“Stylistically we are both cartoon dudes and we grew up watching those Bugs Bunny cartoons – so we both come from the same love of those characters that we grew up with.”
How would he describe his work?
“Colorful, playful, whimsical, creepy, silly.”
“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!.
Here’s our weekly interview of the street, this week featuring $hota, Armer, bunnyM, C215, Curtis Kulig, DAO, Demian Smith, Essencia, Gyser, Irade, Joseph Meloy, Judith Supine, Love Me, Meres, Monsieur Plume, Patch Whiskey, Raid Crew, Mr. Blob, Robert Janz, SEN2, Shiro, Smogk, Spagnola, Theo David, and Thomas Buildmore .
We’ve seen a lot of fat cats, but never one this big. French Street Artist C215 finished it this week on a wall in the 13th arrondissment of Paris. Demian Smith, founder of Underground Paris, says the chat géant is “part of the neighborhood’s strategy to create an alternative tourism industry in this pretty ugly, working class area in the south of Paris.” – Not the first time that Street Artists have perked a place up, just usually not on this scale. The strategy has so far included murals by Shepard Fairey, Inti, and Vhils, he says. Special thanks to Théo David for sharing these exclusive shots for BSA readers.
Thank you to Théo David for shooting the C215 wall in Paris for BSA. Visit Théo’s site here for more of his work.
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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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1. Giants Fans in Manhattan Streets (VIDEO)
2. “F*ck Art” at Museum of Sex
3. CASA DE EMPENO at Anonymous (Mexico City)
4. “Love & Hate” Group Show at Stolen Space (London)
5. CREEPY at Okazi Gallery (Berlin)
6. Chris Stain and H. Veng Smith at C.A.V.E. Gallery (Los Angeles)
7. Winter Group Show at White Walls Gallery (San Francisco)
8. Zes and Retna new show “Excavated Revelations”
9. German duo Herakut paint a mural at Big Art Labs (VIDEO)
Streets in Manhattan were bloated with about a million crazy football fans this week as the Superbowl-winning New York Giants had a parade and almost everybody skipped school and work to go see their heroes. Office workers literally dumped garbage cans of shredded paper out the window en masse while fans poured into the city from every direction, including nearby states, to roar as the players rode by. Some people were well behaved, but they were hard to see or hear because of all the hooligans raising holy hell. Here’s a video taste of it – some seriously funny sh*t. Watch out for unbridled testosterone fueled aggression, swear words and Giants inspired freestylin. NSFW, but okay for the street.
The Museum of Sex new show “F*ck Art” is open to the general public. With a group of 20 Street Artists participating from different cities and countries the show includes: AIKO. Andrew H. Shirley, B-rad Izzy, Cassius Fouler. DICKCHICKEN. DROID, GEN 2, OZE 108 of 907, El Celso, Jeremy Novy, JMR, LUSH, Miss Van, MODE 2, Patch Whisky, ROSTARR, RTTP: Nathan Vincent & Bryan Raughton, Tony Bones, William Thomas Porter, WOLFTITS, and Wonderpuss Octopus.
For further details on this show click here
Click here to read our article and interviews with the curators and some of the artists.
In Mexico City Anonymous Gallery new group show “Casa de Empeño” opens today to the general public. Centered around the themes of a Pawn Shop the show includes internationally recognized Street Artists Judith supine. Maya Hayuk and Davil Ellis among others.
For further information regarding this show click here
“Love & Hate” the new group show at Stolen Space Gallery in London opens today to the general public. With the participation of several Street Artists from different cities including: D*Face, Dan Witz, Miss Van, Ronzo, Toshi, Will Barras, Word To Mother, Jeff Soto and EINE among others.
For further information regarding this show click here
Kyle Hughes-Odgers AKA Creepy new solo show “If We Can’t Control the Boat, Let’s Control the Ocean” opens today at the Okazi Gallery in Berlin.
For further information regarding this show click here
Chris Stain and Veng go to Little Venice, CA for the opening of their new show this Saturday at C.A.V.E. Gallery.
Click here to read our article on Chris’ new works for this show.
And a preview of Veng’s work on The Street Spot.
For further information regarding this show click here
The White Walls Gallery new show “Winter Group Show” opens this Saturday in San Francisco with the participation of well known Street Artists including: Eine, Blek le Rat, Apex, Know Hope, Above, D*Face, Augustine Kofie, D Young V and Ernesto Yerena among others.
For further information regarding this show click here
Zes and Retna new show “Excavated Revelations” opens this Saturday at Known Gallery in Los Angeles. Click here for more details on this show.
“F*ck Art”, an undulating and adventurous group show by New York Street Artists opens its arms and legs to you at the Museum of Sex (MoSex) tomorrow and whether it’s the human powered penetrating bicycle or the glass bead encrusted dildo, it endeavors to satisfy.
Co-curated by Emilie Baltz (Creative Director) and Mark Snyder (Director of Exhibitions), the show selects 20 current Street Artists who have pushed notions of propriety into provocation on the street and it invites them to let it loose behind closed doors. Not that Miss Van needs anyone’s permission; her sensual role-playing painted ladies have been playfully preening on graff-piled walls and blue-boarded construction sites for much of the 2000s. Similarly the powerfully stenciled sirens by Street Artist AIKO have been bending over in high heels on walls all over the world with just a hint of the geishas from her native Japan for over a decade.
The “Fuck Bike #001”, a pedal operated plunging machine by William Thomas Porter and Andrew H. Shirley, has at its conceptual base an ode to the lengths a guy will go to reach his natural objective. The two artist met at a Black Label Bike Club event called “Ridin’ Dirty” in 2010 and later schemed together to make an entry for a bike-themed group show in Bushwick, Brooklyn that featured many Street Artists like DarkClouds, Ellis G., UFO, Noah Sparkes and Mikey 907. “I approached Tom with the idea of creating a kinetic bike sculpture which you could f*ck someone with,” remembers Mr. Shirley, “Tom is a very gifted artist and bike engineer, it took a few days for him to build our design.”
Visitors to the show are invited to mount the bike and take it for a spin. “This bike is more sculpture oriented, but still functions sexually. It’s also totally interactive,” explains Mr. Shirley, who has displayed the bike in cities in Europe and America, most recently at Art Basel in Miami in December. So the bike has gotten around and Shirley happily recounts stories of intimate encounters it has had with both genders. (See the very Not-Safe-For-Work film of the bike in action below.)
The street has certainly seen an increase of fairly graphic sex related Street Art in the last decade or so as people have become more comfortable with such themes and much of this show can often be seen throughout the city without the price of admission. Gay couple Bryan Raughton and Nathan Vincent have been putting large and small scaled paste-ups of sexually themed imagery as a Street Art duo called RTTP for about two years on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Short for “Reply To This Post”, the line-drawn torsos and spread eagles are all part of their collaborative Street Art project that explores the desires of men seeking men on Craigslist.
Describing the work, Vincent says it’s a process of lifting the mystery off of a just-below-the-radar Internet dating game – and pasting it on a lightpole. “Users post an ad with an image, title, and a short description of what they are looking for tonight. The photograph they post of themselves is drawn and titled with the ad’s title.” By putting these erotically based desires on the streets, Vincent thinks “they magnify those desires that often seem to live at the edges.” Says Raughton of the project, “We see it as an interesting way to take people private desires to the public street.”
In discussing the origins and underpinnings of a show like this, the co-curators reveal a more academic and sociological grounding than the prurient and salacious sauciness one might infer by a display of so much “F*ck Art”. We asked Baltz to give us a sense of the context for a Street Art driven sex show.
Brooklyn Street Art: What is your favorite part of curating a show like this?
Emilie Baltz: Seeing the different interpretations and energy that each artist brings to their work is always the most interesting part of curating – with this topic, especially, it’s the fact that they are all pushing the limits of their medium by creating such provocative statements.
Brooklyn Street Art: While these pieces are behind closed doors available to a certain audience, Street Artists typically put their work out in the public. Do you think the work should change depending on the audience?
Emilie Baltz: We don’t think it’s about changing the work, it’s about how the work changes the environment it lives in. Street art has a long history of revealing different perspectives on its surrounding environment and by placing this work in a museum it creates a certain energy and visual provocation that changes the relationship we traditionally have to the museum-going experience.
Brooklyn Street Art: Do you think there has been an increase in sex-related street art in recent years, and if so, why?
Emilie Baltz: There definitely is an increase in sex-related conversations in recent years. It’s not that there is more content suddenly, it’s just that culture is actually ready to start talking about it now, rather than ignore it.
Brooklyn Street Art: We have noticed that themes of sex and sexuality are often quickly destroyed on the street, while other pieces remain for months. Is this a form of selective censorship by the public?
Emilie Baltz: Street art is a dialogue. Its creation is about expression and commentary, and therefore can become a barometer of cultural consciousness (or unconsciousness). The intimate and emotional nature of sexual content can obviously elicit strong feelings in viewers, and, given that street art is an environmental medium, either you have to live with it or get rid of it. Sex walks a fine line between acceptance and rejection. Public response to this kind of art is potentially a mirror into how our society relates to the topic.
Brooklyn Street Art: What surprised you the most about putting this show together?
Emilie Baltz: The enthusiasm from the public. People are genuinely excited to talk about sex in public space and it’s an incredible honor to be able to help facilitate that discussion.
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F*CK ART
A Street Art Occupation at the Museum of Sex in New York City, opens February 8 and will run through June 10, 2012.
Emilie Baltz, Co-Curator, Creative Director, F*CK ART
Mark Snyder, Co-Curator F*CK ART, Director of Exhibitions, Museum of Sex
Meghan Coleman and Alex Emmart of Might Tanaka Gallery in Brooklyn served as Chief Advisors.
Participating Artists:
AIKO. Andrew H. Shirley, B-rad Izzy, Cassius Fouler. DICKCHICKEN. DROID, GEN 2, OZE 108 of 907, El Celso, Jeremy Novy, JMR, LUSH, Miss Van, MODE 2, Patch Whisky, ROSTARR, RTTP: Nathan Vincent & Bryan Raughton, Tony Bones, William Thomas Porter, WOLFTITS, and Wonderpuss Octopus
Fuck Art
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
