Hooray Hooray, first of May!” chanted your cousin Felix, “outdoor fucking starts today!”
You both broke out in peals of laughter while your mom was walking out from the kitchen with a basket of garlic bread for your Saturday night spaghetti dinner. “What did you just say??”
It’s hard to believe it’s May already, and the smell of lilacs and aerosol paint and pot smoke is in the air in New York again. Ahhhhhhh. Duck between the skateboards and the hellions delivering Chinese on electric bikes, and you’ll see the chess players are setting up again in the park.
For the 12th week in a row, the President of the United States hasn’t tweeted something glorifying violence or attacking faith in public institutions, and people are beginning to mention the “H” word in reference to the rate of Covid-19 vaccinations in New York.
Keep squeezing your silver and keep your eyes open and don’t get hit by any NFTs. They seem to be dropping everywhere
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this time featuring: 2 Much, Andrea Carlson, Banksy, Bastard Bot, Bueno, Free Britney, Homsick, Marcos De La Fuente, Myles, Posterboy, Resop, Same PPP, Tom Bob, Vanessa Alvarez, WGE, and ZigZag.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: DASIC, Posterboy, Don Rimx, Swoon,The Yok and Sheryo, and BANKSY Entrepreneurs Make NYC Proud.
BSA Special Feature: DASIC
This short film is directed and produced by two brothers from the Bronx named Ruben Perez and Dan Perez, who profile Dasic, a native of Chile who was influenced as a youth by the volatile political climate in the country and the hip-hop scene of the 1990’s. A teen tagger who then went on to study architecture in college Dasic was drawn back to painting on buildings instead of designing them.
Now living and working in Brooklyn, Dasic has displayed a wide experimentation with styles incorporating a commercial sense of surrealistic magic dream sequences, the representational, the figurative, and an eye for design oriented graphics. As many artists on the scene today, he is not sure whether he is a graffiti writer, street artist, or mural painter. Like many artists we speak with on the street every day, he questions the need for those distinctions at all. “I believe in all my styles, I just try to keep the same energy,” he says.
Posterboy “How To Beat Meat on The Subway”
Posterboy is back, at least we think it’s that Posterboy. The schoolboy humor of the title tells us it is probably the same boxcutter jester who fooled with commercial ads in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Playing with a straight edge and grid configuration this time, he slices and rearranges a poster of a suburban chain deli more as a decorative meat pattern or flesh quilt than the cyber plastic surgery you may associate with Posterboy’s celebrity culture cutting of the past.
Diaspora Spanish Harlem: Don Rimx De La Calle
During the big Los Muros Hablan NYC festival this summer, Don Rimx tore up a huge wall for a number of days to create a mural – gathering the attention of many of the neighbors and visitors to el barrio. Here is a celebratory video that records the scope of the job and the community who supported his gift to the city.
Swoon: Dithyrambalina-Musical Architecture For New Orleans
Musical architecture is a grand experiment that went all right. With Street Artist and fine artist Swoon as the lead visualist, the idea of a musical building in a lot in New Orleans grew into a vision of a modular traveling interactive musical performance that attracted an eclectic range of musicians in its embrace. Once again, Swoon wholistically summons the creative spirit, points our noses in the direction of recycling what we have, finding value in our stories, working collaboratively as community. Next question?
The project is alive, and you can be a part of it if you like.
Click here to help Swoon and her team of artists and producers to bring art to New Orleans
The Yok and Sheryo in England
The Yok writes to tell us that he and Sheryo were in London town a little while ago with the Propa Stuff team for an event in Cambridge and the White Canvas Project. A pastiche of snippets, a visual and audio travelogue, herewith is a new video record of their work and play there.
BANKSY Entrepreneurs Make NYC Proud
The ongoing “residency” by Street Artist Banksy plods forward into its eleventh day – exactly as long as the U.S. government shutdown. Coincidence?
Each day brings some new news about the phantom Banksy – and if the celebrity-loving culture can’t help itself but to frolic through the streets on a treasure hunt for whatever he announces next on his website, you just KNOW some flimflam man is gonna try to make a buck off of it. Yes, professor, that’s the genius of capitalism!
And as long as people are breathlessly in pursuit of the new installations and offering myriad opinions congratulating and/or deriding the show master at work in New York, we say “What the Hell!” . It’s a lot cheaper than seeing “Gravity” in 3-D, and at least it gets people off their butts and out in the street!
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)
Détournement : Signs of the Times
Group Exhibition curated by : Carlo McCormickAugust 8—25, 2012
Opening Reception:
Wednesday, August 8, 7—9pm
Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to presentDétournement: Signs of the Times, a group exhibition curated by Carlo McCormick, featuring work by a number of artists, including: 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, Zevs
CURATOR’S STATEMENT
A détournement is a detour of sorts, but not so much along the scenic route as over the tougher road that goes more directly to the truth. A more proximate translation from the French might be a derailment, but I’m not sure English is so well suited to get both the violence and hilarity of the term. Since coined by the Lettrist International in the 1950s, it has served various generations as a common strategy by which to subvert consensus visual language so as to turn the expressions of capitalist culture against themselves. The most typical folkloric version we encounter of a détournement is when someone writes a word at the bottom of a stop sign, so that with say just three letters this mundane road command might read “Stop War.”
Employed brilliantly by the Situationists, whose great philosopher Guy Debord laid out the socio-aesthetic framework for this practice, détournements twist the terms of mimicry in ironic parody using the a semblance of the easily recognizable to dissemble and redirect the literal meaning of signs so as to construe a more honest picture of their deceptive intentions. As such they are a mediation of the media, a way of transgressing the fine art of persuasion that dominates our visual landscape to offer alternative readings and deviant possibilities to the hegemony of mainstream corporate culture. A natural response to the lies and coercions we are fed on a daily basis, the détournement has been the reactive impulse of all those who question reality, from the Punks who adopted it in the 1970s through Culture Jammers, Adbusters, contemporary street artists and the winding legacy of protest movements from WTO to Occupy.
This exhibition is meant to both celebrate the lineage of détournement and bring attention to some of its current practitioners who embody its continued vitality through their art. We live in a forest of signs that are meant to confuse, distract and numb us to the more dire consequences of the human condition as it is. 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. I cannot thank these artists enough for their contributions towards helping us find another way.
ABOUT THE CURATOR Carlo McCormick is an esteemed pop culture critic, curator and Senior Editor of PAPERmagazine. His numerous books, monographs and catalogs include: TRESPASS: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture, The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984, and Dondi White: Style Master General. His work has appeared in numerous publications including: Art in America, Art News, and Artforum.
The gallery is located at 529 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information, please visit:www.jonathanlevinegallery.com, call: 212.243.3822, or email:info@jonathanlevinegallery.com.
Bring to Light is New York City’s first-ever Nuit Blanche festival. A Nuit Blanche is an all night arts festival of installations and performances celebrating the magic and luminance of light.
BRING TO LIGHT NYC will be held in Greenpoint, Brooklyn primarily on Oak Street between Franklin St. and the East River waterfront beginning at sundown this Saturday Oct. 2. The event is free and open to the public. This unique block will play host to local and international artists, performers, galleries, and musicians as they Bring to Light the street itself as well as its unique assets including metal, set design and textile workshops, residential facades, an indoor gymnastics park, and much more.
Jacob Abramson will perform his Digital Graffiti at “Bring To Light”
The experience will be thrilling, original, mesmerizing, ceremonial, contemplative and illuminating. This is a one-night event to remember, but also the start of something intended to grow into an annual, world-class event. Artists will create works that inhabit street corners, galleries, shops, rooftops, vacant lots and buildings. These spaces will act as sites for light, sound and unexpected installations, performances, projections, works of art with natural and artificial LIGHT.
Please click on the animation here to visit the event’s site for a full list of artists as well as all pertinent information regarding time, location and transportation to the event.
WE ALSO ENCOURAGE YOU TO PLEASE CLICK ON THE “HELP FUND THISEVENT” BANNER ON THEIR SITE. DONATE WHAT YOU CAN TO THE KICK STARTER CAMPAIGN. WE DON’T WANT THESE KIDS TO GO BROKE TO ILLUMINATE US ALL!
BLF in New York
Long before Street Artists like Fauxreel or PosterBoy started messing with them, the BLF (billboardliberation.com) began altering outdoor advertising in 1977. They like to say they are helping improve the billboards. As they say in their press release, “prior campaigns have included work for Exxon, R.J. Reynolds, and Apple Computers.” Thoughtful, no?
A new short film featuring Specter, Signtologist, the Public Art Campaign and Jayshells
There don’t seem to be buckets of money funding these Public Ad Campaigns to do this switch-a-roo stuff but the people who create and execute them are so earnest and straight-talking… And from what we have witnessed and heard, artists of all stripes everywhere are lending them a hand in taking over advertising space.
Trend alert! Give it a name! Commodify it! I have the Tumbler page ready.
This week in Toronto a large number of illegally posted spaces were re-posted with art, by street artists and otherwise. Revolutionary? Not really, unless the aforementioned MONEY is an issue.
In an explanation of the project, a press release for the installation says this:
“While it is understood that commercial messages do not share our collective interests, we still do not question its use of our shared environments. In an effort to invigorate debate about how commercial interests are using public space and raise questions about how our communities desire to use those same spaces, non-violent civil disobedience projects like TOSAT engage the public in a dialogue of participation.”
Brooklyn’s Bast in Toronto is replacing an ad in one of 41 allegedly illegal kiosk displays.
For filmmaker Sarah Berman, who made the brief and to-the-point documentary (below) with Jordan Seiler and friends, it is all about taking back public space that has been illegally seized by corporations. When you consider that just a couple of years ago Jordan was pretty much a lone wolf howling about illegal billboards, and this year the City of New York BOOTED one giant company who had been plastering willy-nilly all over Gotham thousands of posters – it sounds like the message resonates.
Brooklyn’s Quel Beast in Toronto
And today it’s not only the Public Ad Campaign who is reclaiming public space – you’ll notice an up-tick in the PosterBoy-ish messing with subway posters in the last months. You can dismiss it as pranksterism – but perhaps that’s just on the surface. Maybe it’s also because today’s teens and twenty-somethings have been cajoled and hoodwinked from every angle to buy “stuff” since the forceps clamped their soft skulls – and they see where all of that breathless pursuit of “stuff” has gotten us. Maybe it is just because freedom of speech is a deeply rooted need and certain parts of “the public” want to give, not just receive, messages.
Sarah Berman explains Corporate Graffiti with Jordan and John.
Fitful growths of irregularity (Pork) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Less boxy, more planular (I made up that word), Mr. Nihalani is experimenting with new abstractions. (Aakash Nihalani) (photo Jaime Rojo)
On the lookout for incoming battalions of duncery approaching in their cargo shorts and Abercrombie t-shirts (General Howe) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Hey everybody! Come look at this new Jack Black movie! I won't bite, promise (Hellbent) (photo Jaime Rojo)
A needed Herakut (photo Jaime Rojo)
Boy, the way Glenn Miller played.... (KH1) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Its a Revolution! (Nine Flies) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Nomade keeps good company (photo Jaime Rojo)
Roof Pork (Pork) (Photo Jaime Rojo)
Which way? I'm always getting lost in this part of town. (Space Invader) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Sexy Blossoms of Wisteria only this time of year (photo Jaime Rojo)
Akash Nihalani, Poster Boy, and Passenger Pigeon become far out and psychedelic (photo Jaime Rojo)
Welcome back to the hideout (Dain) (photo Jaime Rojo)
These beer-swilling men, they're all flat and grey to me. I need someone with excitement, know what I mean? (EllisG, Leif Mcllwaine) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Shark Toof flies the friendly skies (photo Jaime Rojo)
Sometimes we have no idea what is on the wall. One of the many mysteries of the street art scene. (photo Jaime Rojo)
The more you see it, the more you know it down in your heart that we have turned a corner.
Hype be damned, the result of Posterboy’s plundering of the inescapable advertising messages you pay $2 to see in the subway is a new visual vocabulary that continues to pull surreal visual punches when you least expect it.
These portraits below could be the work of Posterboy, one of his admirers, or it could be the work of a team. From the average viewers perspective, that’s hardly the point.
Dear Mr. Black President (photo Steven P. Harrington)
The fact that new subway station banners are made of this easy-to-manipulate vinyl sticky backed material, coupled with the fact that there are rarely subway personnel or police in the subway stations these days, and you have a primo creative laboratory for everyone from “culture jammers” to collage artists to pop surrealists.
It’s the visual equivalent of the mash-up so popular in the digital DJ age; whole cloth samples snatched from fully realized pieces and re-matched with other genres, categories, styles, and eras. Sometimes the results are genius, sometimes clunky, many times causing nauseous feelings of disorientation.
Rockin the new specs (photo Steven P. Harrington)
These modern billboard materials are layered one on top of the another but peel back in a jiffy, easy to slice away and see what might be underneath. You may not even see Posterboy’s remix on the crowded platform while you lean against a grimy column. You may be watching a rat skittering along the third rail with a Snickers rapper in it’s mouth. But your train still hasn’t arrived because of (yet more) service cuts, and your phone doesn’t work down here in the tunnel so you glance up at the ad space and see the mangled headline manipulated to say “Get Head” with two floating mouths wide open beneath it.
It’s not graffiti, it’s not really street art, but it’s eye catching even when it’s not completely successful. It feels more like a studio than a gallery, full of experiments, dead ends, and occasional glimpses of brilliance.
You gotta some pretty lips Miss-ter (photo Steven P. Harrington)
April showers only slightly dampened the mood in Bushwick Brooklyn
at two openings Friday night. AdHoc featured 4 fine artists from outside New York in their various gallery spaces, while Eastern District devoted their room entirely to the first solo show of Posterboy that drew an excited inquisitive crowd.
Ekundayo & Joshua Clay shared the front gallery, where their complimentary illustration styles and sordid-themed murals easily took over and called the space home.
Hawaiin born L.A. native Ekundayo’s contorted curmugeons and malformed miscreants sang a song of sixpence, saliva, and silly – in a well formed cast of characters that could be called a family (but you may want to pack a crucifix in your picnic basket on reunion day). In fact one looks kind of like my Aunt Marge.
Lookout, Cannonball! (Ekundayo courtesy AdHoc Art) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
A well regarded talent in the current post-pop L.A. scene, Joshua Clay, easily opens the door to dark dens of iniquity with playful flair.
Whisky and wayward women are a sure way to run afoul of the church. One of the murals in the gallery (Joshua Clay courtesy AdHoc Art) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Elisabeth Timpone held down the alcove with her own mini-show called “Tails of the North”. The collection of finely inked animals and creatures read like shaker drawings, but closer my dear pretty, come closer, and see friendship, fear, and feral savagery.
Elizabeth Timpone courtesy of AdHoc Gallery (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Elizabeth Timpone courtesy of AdHoc Gallery (photo Steven P. Harrington)
To curvaceously round out the show with 60’s pop poster colors and buxom babes was TheDirtyFabulous. A sort of cherry on top, you might say.
Peter Max, the Grateful Dead, & Juggs Magazine all Come Together Over Me (TheDirtyFabulous courtesy Ad Hoc Art) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
And just steps away, the subway slicing superhero/s stirred the minions of inquisitive fans into Eastern District Gallery for Posterboy‘s first solo show.
Adbusters all (courtesy Eastern District) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
The show consisted of two very large expanses of billboard grade vinyl stretched along facing long walls and loosely affixed pieces creating a new story with the same material.
From the vinal were cut familiar shapes from Picasso paintings and a troubled-looking Obama under the lettered banner “Hype?”. Tongues wagged about meanings, motives, and make-believe, as gallery goers read into the wall pieces and donated $5 for a sticker stencilled with “Posterboy ?”.
Don’t Believe It (Posterboy courtesy Eastern District) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
No it’s not another 80’s song with a drum track and lyrics flowing over top,
it’s a brash re-ordering of a postering campaign in Williamsburg, Brooklyn over the past couple of weeks, where hundreds of copies were on surfaces everywhere. The original picture appears to be of Lewis Allan Reed, a purported musician of some type, wearing a t-shirt of the advertiser’s name, as interpreted by photographer Terry Richardson.
Within the first week (or day) the campaign appeared on abandoned lots and on the sides of condo construction sites, the rows of repeated posters were re-faced by street artist collective Faile, neating placing tiger’s heads over the bespectacled rocker and the word “Vanit y” over the logo on his t-shirt.
Saturday night on Bedford Ave. we spotted this total reapportioned interpretation, using what appears to be multiple pieces of the image in a bag and then dumping it out. It’s not signed but we have a good guess who this collab is. You just can’t be sure who to shout out to sometimes.
Poster Diddy featuring Bid Daddy A. (photo Steven P. Harrington)
PosterBoy “AdBooster” presented by PublicAdCampaign
April 3rd – April 26th
Opening Reception 7-10pm Friday April 3rd 2009
43 Bogart Street, Brooklyn, NY PosterBoy www.publicadcampaign.com Street Art and and vandalism have never been paired so eloquently as they are when PosterBoy gets out his razor. Through a simple act of civil disobedience, this work challenges our intense relationship with outdoor advertising in the city. It proposes new ways of interacting with your public environment and challenges notions of public and private space. Out of the work comes a dialogue which is sometimes political, sometimes humorous, and always a perspective shifting moment of communication.
By bringing outdoor advertising into the gallery, this installation will attempt to discuss the appropriation of public space by outdoor advertising from within the gallery walls. The artist, having more time to construct the imagery will engage a more intense dialogue with both the advertisement and the viewer. By physically altering the medium of outdoor media, the PosterBoy movement critiques both the content and the dissemination methods currently overwhelimg our collective consciousness. Ultimately what starts as an act of social unrest becomes a reimagination of the spaces we all occupy and a vision of a different shared public environment.
Over the past year PosterBoy has brought his critique of advertising and public space use to the streets of New York City with prolific force. Eastern-District is proud to bring you his first solo exhibition, including a large scale installation by the artist as well as prints of his now famous subway installations.
Posterboy and Aakash Nihalani (photo Steven P. Harrington)
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
