Not quite spring, the Art Fairs are arriving in New York ahead of the tulips. We strolled the impossibly long aisles and peered into the booths to find the folks who have at other times been called “Street Artists”. This weekend they’ll be fine artists, and the list is quite a bit longer than years past as the professionalization of the street continues.
Shows like the Armory, Scope, Volta, and Fountain are good testing venues to see the commercial viability for many of these artists and some have foregone representation – preferring to foot the bill on their own. Since walking the streets to see their work requires multiple layers and hats and gloves – traipsing through the fairs can be far preferable than dirty old Brooklyn streets. It’s also nice to see how some of these folks look in a tie or a blouse – or even just hit a comb. Here below we include some possible gems for you to hunt down.
Brooklyn’s already percolating artists neighborhood called Bushwick continues to thrive despite the circling of real estate agents, lifestyle brands and celebrity chefs. Born in the mid-late 2000s as it’s older sister Williamsburg to the West began to professionalize, this noisily industrial and dirty artists haven got a reprieve from gentrifying forces when the deep recession slowed the rise of rents for artist spaces, which remained still relatively cheap by Manhattan’s standards. Today the area boasts a diverse influx of artists, students, cultural workers, and entrepreneurs who are experimenting and collaborating on projects and shows.
That radical economic downturn probably also nurtured the nascent Street Art scene here, which was one of the early outliers of a cultural influx as artists and explorers began to skateboard to the local delis and stare at laptops for hours in the one or two cafes that offered Wi-Fi. Outcroppings of this new art movement combined with old-school graffiti to pop up on selected concrete and corrugated walls, signposts, and deteriorated blocks where the authorities were disinterested and the neighbors only partially curious in their activities.
It’s an age-old New York story by now; a neglected or winding down post industrial neighborhood reacts to the incoming and odd-looking artists with a sort of bemused affection, happy that at least the block is getting some attention for a change. Puzzlement eventually leads to familiarity and then buying you a sandwich – and then asking you to paint a mural inside his foyer. While national and international Street Artists were already making Bushwick a stopping point thanks to some of the earliest galleries like Ad Hoc and Factory Fresh, the scene recently got newly shot in the arm by a local resident who is facilitating much desired legal wall space to a crowd of artists who otherwise would be hunting and hitting up less-than-legal spots. Not to worry, there are plenty of aerosol renegades and ruffians scaling walls at night too; this is New York after all, yo.
But for now the Bushwick Collective, as it is newly christened by wall-man Joe Ficalora, has infused an adrenaline rush of creativity inside and outside the area that is roughly bordered by Flushing Avenue, Starr Street, Knickerbocker Avenue and Cypress Avenue. The Collective has guidelines on content (nudity, politics, profanity) so the works are not completely unfettered in the true spirit of Street Art/graffiti, but most artists are happy for the luxury of time to complete their work and not look over their shoulder. With a selection of murals that are densely gathered and easy to walk through, the new collection has attracted attention from media folks (and tour guides) on the main island brave enough to venture into the gritty wilds of Brooklyn for a Street Art safari.
As Bushwick hosts its 7th annual open studios cultural event this weekend, intrepid pedestrians who march through opening parties, rooftop DJ jams, dance performances, live bands, transcendent costumery, sidewalk barbecues, open fire hydrants and more than 600 open artist studios will also be buffeted by a visual feast on the streets themselves. As long as the L Train is running (fingers crossed) you can just get off at the Morgan stop. From there it should be pretty easy for any curious art-in-the-street fan to be regaled with big and small works of graffiti, Street Art, tags, wheat-pastes, stencils, rollers, murals, and ad hoc installations all day and night.
A shout out to Arts In Bushwick, an all volunteer organization that has steadily grown and fostered an open sense of community inclusiveness each year for Bushwick Open Studios and to the many volunteers who have contributed greatly to the success of many of the cultural workers here. Without an open studios event many of these shy and quirky artists and performers would simply have stayed unknown and unknowable.
So far Bushwick still has the unbridled imperfect D.I.Y. enthusiasm of an experiment where anything can happen, but grey ladies with kooky bright colored spectacles have already begun to flip it over to inspect it with one hand while pinching their nose with the other, so savor this authentic moment. Ethereal by nature, you know the Street Art scene is never guaranteed to you tomorrow – neither is the mythical artists bohemian hamlet of New York’s yesteryear. For now we’re hopping on our bikes to catch a golden age of Bushwick before it’s repackaged and sold back to us at a price we can’t afford.
The first series of images are walls from the Bushwick Collective, followed by a series of walls that you may also see in the neighborhood.
Happy hot sticky Friday live from New York! Lots of cool stuff on the street and in the exhibition spaces this weekend – just bring a water bottle. Here are some of our picks for you on BSA.
1. Détournement, Carlo McCormick at Jonathan Levine (NYC)
2. Chris Stain and Joe Iurato at Mighty Tanaka (BKLN)
3. Peeta Solo at ArTicks (Amsterdam)
4. “You & Me” – Low Brow’s Second Group Show (BKLN)
5. Miss Van at Copro Gallery “Wild at Heart” (Santa Monica)
6. Part2Ism “New Horizons & Future Love Songs” at Red Gallery (London)
7. “Who’z Got Game!” ? at Sacred Gallery (NYC)
8. Numskull ,”Dance Like a Video, Sting Like a Gif” at Mishka (BKLN)
9. “Primeveal” group show Carmichael Gallery (LA)
10. Futura Live Painting (Richmond, VA)
11. KFC Loves The Gays with John Goodman (Video)
Détournement, Carlo McCormick at Jonathan Levine (NYC)
Carlo McCormick, Paper Magazine Senior Editor and NYC cultural intuitor, is guest curator at the Jonathan Levine Gallery with a show titled “Détournement: Signs of the Times” Carlo has assembled an interesting list of artists to tell his story with the works of AIKO, Dan Witz, David Wojnarowicz, Dylan Egon, Eine, Ilona Granet, Jack Pierson, John Law (Jack Napier), Leo Fitzpatrick, Mark Flood, Martin Wong, Max Rippon (RIPO), Mike Osterhout, Posterboy, Ron English, Shepard Fairey + Jamie Reid, Steve Powers (ESPO), TrustoCorp, Will Boone and Zevs.
Mining a vein that has been here in front of us all the time, the composition of the selected works reveals a powerful undertone about how we engage and communicate with our artwork, and hi-jack the messaging of others. Says McCormick, “We do not need to follow these signs, we need to make our own so as to find a way out of the mess we are in.”
It’s also one of the few shows that seamlessly blends Street Art and non-street art practices without needing to draw a distinction for its own sake. This show is now open to the public.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Chris Stain and Joe Iurato at Mighty Tanaka (BKLN)
Tonight at Mighty Tanaka Gallery in DUMBO the inevitable pairing of Street Artists Chris Stain and Joe Iurato finally takes place. With a show titled “Deep in the Cut” these two stencil artists will bring the knives out for the love of art and the perfection of their craft. Style and mannerism distinguish the differences between these two, and Stain has been at it much longer with a lot of work on the street, but metaphor and empathy to the human condition is the overlap in these guys work. Grab the F train to DUMBO and come see what new common ground emerges from this combination.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Peeta Solo at ArTicks (Amsterdam)
Italian Graffiti and Fine Artist Peeta has been writing his tag on walls, trains and many other surfaces since 1993. Like a few of his generation who have been stretching graff style past it’s outer limits and morphing it with abstraction, his work has slowing gelled into it’s own distinctive style. He focuses his lettering and his tag by feeding it through Chinese and Islamic calligraphy as a departure from the traditional Latin and Greek lettering. A collaborator of New Yorks RWK collective, he resides in Venice and tonight opens his solo show in Amsterdam at the ArTicks Gallery.
For further information regarding this show click here.
“You & Me” – Low Brow’s Second Group Show (BKLN)
The Low Brow Artique Gallery in Brooklyn has decided to enter the matchmaking business and Saturday their second show titled “You & Me” artfully combines the work of two at a time. While many of these artists have worked collaboratively on the street in the past, crossing freely between sanctioned and unsanctioned Street Art and graffiti, the results of merging their styles and techniques always creates new creatures with the combined DNA. Sometimes it’s a mutt, and sometimes it is purebred brilliance. Artistic couplings here include: Cash4 & Smells, Chris & Veng (RWK), EKG & Dark Clouds, Matt Siren & Fenix, OCMC & This Is Awkward, Royce Bannon & Russell King, and Veng & Sofia Maldonado.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Miss Van at Copro Gallery “Wild at Heart” (Santa Monica)
Miss Van, the French Street Artist and fine artist has a new solo show “Wild at Heart” in Santa Monica, California this Saturday at the Copro Gallery and the ladies are again strutting their stuff across her rich canvasses. Painting since the age of 18 Miss Van has chosen her appearances carefully while being very active within the smaller pool of female Street Artists, maintaining a continous presence with her unique doll-characters, a rich color palette and plenty of erotica.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Also happening this weekend:
Part2Ism has a new solo show “New Horizons & Future Love Songs” at the Red Gallery in London, UK and it is now open to the general public. Click here for more details on this show.
Wanna know “Who’z Got Game!” ? Head over to the Sacred Gallery for this group exhibition opening today in Manhattan. Click here for more details on this show.
Numskull will “Dance Like a Video, Sting Like a Gif” at Mishka tonight in Brooklyn. Click here for more details on this show.
“Primeveal” a group exhibition including Emol, Stinkfish and Zio Ziegler opens tomorrow night at the Carmichael Gallery in Culver City, CA. Click here for more details on this show.
Futura will paint live in Richmond, Virginia this Saturday.
Screen Shot from Futura’s Hennessy NYC Video.
Master Graffiti Artist and fine artist Leonard “FUTURA” is touring the country to promote this project with a spirit maker and this Friday he will stop in Richmond, Virgina where he will paint live on a canvas inside the ABC Store located at 101 North Thompson Street. The live painting will commence at 2:00 pm. It is a rare opportunity to catch Futura in action.
A recent ad featuring Futura for this campaign (not a sponsor)
ArTicks Gallery is pleased to announce PEETA – A SOLO SHOW, a solo exhibition consisting of new paintings and sculptures by the Italian artist Peeta.
Peeta endeavours to realize the sculptural quality of individual letters, namely the ones that spell out his own name. Being aware of the Greco-Latin origins of today’s modern alphabet which give it a certain abstract, rather than figural, quality, his task departs from this graphical history to follow the formal methods of Chinese and Islamic calligraphy. With his works, the artist always selects the specific letters “P-E-E-T-A” and breaks them from their generic typographical form, stylizing them with shape and volume beyond their mere semantic function. Thus his lettering is brought into the fluidity of the urban, where words are continuously ruptured from their own histories, readapted into idiom and gestures learned from the street.
And it is this urban terrain that Peeta is always drawn to: street walls, trains, abandoned factories. In a way, his work is record of evolving inscription—not in its traditional sense, but in terms of a fluency acquired through the urban vernacular. Peeta calls this a “geometry of writing”, where the rules are changeable and words are modified, deconstructed and regenerated as they intersect with convention and the new.
Peeta, also known as Manuel Di Rita, has been active as a graffiti artist since 1993 and is currently living in Venice. He is a member of the EAD crew (Padova, Italy), FX and RWK crews (New York City) and has participated in graffiti jams and Meeting of Styles events in Europe and the Americas. His work explores the potential of sculptural lettering, both in painting and in three dimensions. Peeta has exhibited at the Santorini Biennale (2012); Megastore Gallery – The Hague (2007); Magazzini del Sale – Venice (2007-2008); Edgeart Gallery – Manchester (2008); PrettyPortal Gallery – Düsseldorf (2009); Baron Gallery and Ayden Gallery – Vancouver (2010-2011); Da Baker Gallery – New York (2010); and H+ Gallery – Lyon (2011), among many others.
“PEETA – A SOLO SHOW” runs from 10th August – 30th August, 2012 Vernissage: Friday 10th August from 18:00 – 21:30
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Concrete Jungle, Edaurdo Jones, El Sol 25, Know Hope, Love Me, Matteo Efrem Rossi, Peeta, Phlegm, QRST, Rambo, Royce Bannon, Russell King, Shok 1, The Weird, Venezia, WAS, Swil and Willow.
This weekend in London is the Moniker Art Fair, which features the work of a number of Street Artists, as well as the artists themselves installing, performing, drinking. Part commerce and spectacle, the atmosphere at an art fair always has an expectant air of interactive theater; directors, actors, and prop masters all milling around fervently and working to create a dramatic scene. Ready or not, the doors fly open and in rushes the calico crowd of collectors, fans, and looky-loos to belly up to the stage, discover who has a new idea, and who is recycling old ones. This years Moniker includes work by Aiko, Banksy, Ben Eine, Best Ever, Cash For Your Warhol, D*Face, Dabs & Myla, Greg Miller, Herakut, Jaae, Matt Small, Nate Frizzell, Peeta, Marco ‘Pho’ Grassi, Pure Evil, ROA, Rero, Russell Young, The London Police, and Word to Mother.
Just flown into Shoreditch for an engagement all week, (don’t forget to ask your waitress for the House Specials), here’s your photographer/artist/collector Geoff Hargadon in the thick of it all with a photo essay of some highlights of the the action.
Veng and Chris of RWK Plus Overunder, Never, Peeta and ECB Finish a Wall in Bushwick
Sometime in April we brought you a wall in progress with the tireless Veng and Chris of RWK in collaboration with Overunder, Never, Peeta and ECB for good measure. The guys finished their work a while ago and finally last week we had time to go and check it out. Not surprisingly, each member continues to tighten their individual visions and the wall is richly painted with beautiful details, vivid imagination and a mastery of the can.
The walls of Robots Will Kill and friends can sometimes resemble an open sketchbook of imagination, predilection and pursuit; with Western and urban styles that coexist and interact, if not merge. A 90s 3-D wild style meets 2-D cartoon while a molten white man’s dinosaur heads floats nearby ominously. An ever evolving collective of painters, these friends have worked together often, watching their individual interests and styles develop and articulate.
In this fresh spring collection, the new element of an absurdist nature comes from the mind of Overunder, who sweeps up Veng’s 15th century oil portraits with the roll down gates of city bodegas, depositing them in a ramshackle pile of human limbs and signage like a receding tornado. Another subtle humorist, Overunder gives his gates appropriate adornment; graffiti throwups, tags, a robot from Chris RWK and the time honored graff dis – “Toy” sprayed across a Nike logo.
Somehow Veng’s formalist portrait retains its character and remains drolly poker-faced and disinterested among the debris, and Chris RWK’s robot rises above quizzically in a Shakespearian robe from the Costume Department. The crowning achievement is the deli-canopied cladding Veng’s character head gets – a surreal Star Wars / Escape From New York helmet that flies him here from a Van Ecykian past.
Veng and Chris from RWK gathered their paint tools and called a couple of their friends over to hang out and paint on their spot in Bushwick, BK. The results have been like chocolate and peanut butter together – you are not sure how it works, but it does. Overunder, ECB, Peeta and Never collaborated on this brand new wall, still in progress.
Never Say Die It all started in a small Staten Island, NY apartment in late 2000. Chris knew that Kevin was into web/graphic design and started to pick his brain about launching a website. It was to feature the work of Chris, as well as a few artists he collaborated with. The name was already chosen, Robots Will Kill. He had come up with it while in the midst of an art fellowship in Vermont the year before. Over the course of the seemingly charged conversations that followed, it became apparent to Chris that this could be something greater than a single Artist’s portfolio. He realized that there was opportunity to be found in the abundance of incredible artwork being overlooked by the mainstream world. The rebellious spirit of Graffiti and Street Art having been such tremendous inspiration for all involved- Chris summed up this move toward inclusion in no uncertain terms: “you wouldn’t give us a space so we built one”.
In March of 2001 Robots Will Kill went live. It was stocked with images from artists that Chris knew personally and also with a collection of Graffiti and Street Art pictures that he had been collecting for years. The site began small and slowly worked to a boil, the audience was growing with every new feature and content update. Emails from artists all over the world started to come in. They wanted in. Messages filled with graffiti pictures, hundreds of pictures, each week started to pour in! With the addition of the Graffiti/Street Art Self Upload feature, visitors were able to upload their own pictures, with complete anonymity, and the site exploded! The rising visitor ship, coupled with the free time that the Self-Upload provided, prompted RWK to design/sell more clothing and stickers that would help promote itself, with the added advantage of bringing in some money for printing and advertising.
Fast forward, and the next few years brought about some roster changes. Veng (USA) originally got involved with Robots Will Kill through painting walls around the New York area. His unique style and wide array of artistic influences have definitely made an impact on RWK as a collective. JesseR (Belgium) was one of the earliest contributors to RWK, and has remained one of the biggest supporters and artistic allies. Jesse’s combination of styles, illustrative and gritty subject matter and his range of media have made him a perfect fit and major influence on the other members. Peeta’s (Italy) foundation in graffiti helps keep RWK in touch with its roots, while his innovative 3D lettering style has elevated the medium to new heights. Flying Fortress (Germany) has used his smooth illustrative lettering and characters to build a cohesive collection of imagery that is unmistakably his in both subject and style. ECB (Germany) mixes lettering and incredible portraiture work to present expressive, technically superb pieces pulling the viewer in to a distorted reality. Kevin’s work, combining street-art stencilling and “free” painting techniques, has evolved over the years into symbol-rich portraiture with content inspired by such varied disciplines as Psychology, Theology/Mythology, Physics and Geometry. Chris has used his cartoon-like style and vocabulary of images to create canvases, wall murals, clothing and stickers that have been sent to 6 out of the 7 continents, gaining attention for RWK from collectors and visitors around the world.
As 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of the creation of Robots Will Kill, each of its members are proud of what we’ve accomplished, and more so- filled with hope for what’s still to come.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
