All posts tagged: Project M/7

NeverCrew, Andreas Englund, Onur Dinc, KKade, and Dot Dot Dot at Urban Nation

March 23, 2015 Artists

Street Art is this enormous moveable and on-the-move feast for the eyes and mind and heart. The players and places change, the songs and the dancing revolves, the color and texture everchanging. Exploring Street Art in Berlin is like wandering onstage at the Metropolitan Opera during Wagner’s Ring and discovering that there is a superstar DJ with lasers, a death metal band, and a poetry jam on live horses as well. Die Fledermaus meets DeadMaus meets Mickey Mouse.

Mounting a show with Urban Nation (UN) in windows and the gallery was already a feast for senses, but in addition Yasha Young invited guest performers to join in the festivities, making every movement new and many of them revelatory.

So while 12 artists from Brooklyn were mounting Project M/7 we also had the opportunity to see and meet new folks we had not seen before – The NeverCrew (Switzerland) , Andreas Englund (Sweden), Onur Dinc (Switzerland), KKade (Switzerland), and Dot Dot Dot (Norway). Actually DDD was a Nuart last year but evidently was very shy.

Today we wanted to share with you these additional dishes that were on the table at the UN feast, these talented folk deserve their own posting and we are pleased to share them with you.

Onur Dinc (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Onur Dinc (photo © courtesy of @urbannationberlin)

Andreas Englund (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NeverCrew (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KKade (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A KKade observer one second before she began cursing at us and waving us away. Oops! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KKade (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DotDotDot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Urban Nation Walls took place in conjunction with Project M7 “Persons Of Interest”. The walls are currently on view 24/7 at:

URBAN NATION
Bülowstraße 97
10738 Berlin-Schöneberg, Germany

http://www.urban-nation.net/

Dispatch from Germany: Pop-Up Show at UN Gallery with BSA

March 14, 2015 Artists

A great many things underway here in Berlin for the debut of “Persons of Interest”, a show of 12 artists who have worked on the streets of Brooklyn bringing their A Game to Berlin. This group of talented people have transformed the Urban Nation Pop-Up gallery with an astounding array of styles, skillz, techniques, and a lot of imagination. We couldn’t be happier with the results. The camaraderie is strong and the creative display directly on the gallery walls is iron-clad.

If you are in Berlin anytime Saturday come see the windows being installed in the UN Haus and at 7 pm come to the reception. Both events are curated by Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo co-founders of BrooklynStreetArt.com and we will be very happy to meet you.

Here is a preview of the Pop-Up Exhibition…more to come

Swoon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon with Chris Stain on the backgorund. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris Stain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NohJColey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NohJColey asses his progress. Swoon on the right. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cake (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don Rimx (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Specter (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Specter tries some yoga. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (“Here Today”) (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gaia (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Esteban Del Valle (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy and Sot (Photo © Jaime Rojo)

Click HERE for the FaceBook event and more details about UN Project M/7 Persons of Interest and Pop-Up Exhibition.

NohJColey and Katharina Oguntoye – “Persons of Interest”

March 12, 2015 Artists

BSA is in Berlin this month to present a new show of 12 important Brooklyn Street Artists at the Urban Nation haus as part of Project M/7. PERSONS OF INTEREST brings to our sister city a diverse collection of artists who use many mediums and styles in the street art scene of Brooklyn. By way of tribute to the special relationship that artist communities in both cities have shared for decades, each artist has chosen to create a portrait of a Germany-based cultural influencer from the past or present, highlighting someone who has played a role in inspiring the artist in a meaningful way.

Today we talk to NohJColey and ask him why he chose his person of interest, Katharina Oguntoye.

For his portrait at Urban Nation the Brooklyn native NohJColey chose Katharina Oguntoye, the Afro-German feminist writer, historian, activist, and poet raised in Nigeria and Heidelberg, Germany. Her study of German culture and her status within it led to her co-editing of the 1986 book Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out (Farbe Bekennen) and to the founding of Joliba, a nonprofit intercultural association in 1997. The organization provides support to a varied intercultural community and hosts educational and cultural events like dinners, seminars, kids events, reading groups, and public art events.

“I have chosen to create a piece that focuses on Katharina Oguntoye because of her contribution to the woman’s equality movement in Germany, “ says NohJ. “She has overcome countless obstacles in her lifetime and has changed so many lives for the better because of her relentless efforts.”

Street Artist NohJColey tells stories with his figures in the public sphere, examining their interrelationships and their place within an urban environment that is often hostile, fraught with anxiety and hypocrisy, yet tempered with humanity. Using various art making disciplines he constructs the stage; hand-carved linotypes, paper cuts, mobile sculpture, painting. A shrewd observer and communicator, his sometimes surreal narratives can be complex, often involving critique of classism, consumerism, racism, addiction, and a broken justice system – each from the perspective of characters who are affected by or perpetuating them.

NohJColey in Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NohJColey in Albany, New York (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Check out the Facebook page for PERSONS OF INTEREST

See Full Press Release HERE

Specter and Sally Montana – “Persons of Interest”

March 11, 2015 Artists

Today we talk to Specter and ask him why he chose his person of interest, Sally Montana.

Specter is multi-disciplinary on the street, including sculptural installations, photography, and hand-painted large-scale one-off wheat pastes. It was the latter practice that first drew us into his personal stories and portraits on the streets in the 2000s, enlarged versions of people you might meet in the neighborhood. There was the guy with a grocery cart full of recyclable bottles, the food delivery dude on a bicycle, the burly homeless gent wrapped in a red blanket.

These are everyday people on the streets of Brooklyn, and Specter elevates them for passersby to stop and consider.

For his PERSON OF INTEREST Specter is painting another Brooklyn artist as a way of honoring the thousands who have made a thriving and buoyant scene in the 1990s-2010s in neighborhoods like Bushwick, Gowanus, BedStuy, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint – similar in many ways to Berlin’s neighborhoods of Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg, Schöneberg and Mitte.

To find his portrait subject, Specter just looked next door to his studio. “Sally Montana is my neighbor. She is from Germany but lives in Brooklyn and is a professional photographer and one of the nicest people anyone could ever meet. The reason I choose her is because I feel she embodies this project. The connection between NY and Berlin art communities being the two of the largest in the world and the back-and-forth sharing of people and influences from each others cultures.”

Specter in Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Check out the Facebook page for PERSONS OF INTEREST

See Full Press Release HERE

GAIA and Fereshta Ludin – “Persons of Interest”

March 9, 2015 Artists

Today we talk to GAIA and ask him why he chose his person of interest, Fereshta Ludin.

It has been nearly 12 years since Afghanistan-born German Muslim school teacher Fereshta Ludin won the right to wear her headscarf in the public school system and the topic remains very hot around the country. For one thing, eight German states forbid the practice and as the website DW reported “the verdict’s results continue to spur controversy and leave some asking what is more oppressive: wearing a headscarf or excluding those who do?” . If this teacher and Afghanistan advisor/minister had tried to get a job as a sales clerk at Abercrombie and Fitch in the United States, Ms. Ludin might have been part of a headscarf case before the US Supreme Court this spring.

Street Artist Gaia typically studies the society and culture in which he paints murals and depicts figures who reflect the history and forces of change and stasis that characterize that neighborhood, town, or city. A leader in what we’ve been calling the New Muralism, Gaia has produced these amalgams of symbols, history, and persons – these glocalized paintings – around the world in cities from Seoul to Perth to Honolulu to Baltimore to Miami and Johannesburg, among others in the the last five years.

Since his earliest days as a Street Artist in Williamsburg and Bushwick, Brooklyn, Gaia has engaged the personal, social and political with his artistic ability; first as linotype prints, later as full-blown aerosol murals. So it is no surprise that he chooses as his subject for this show a figure who has held a pivotal role in the evolution of a necessary conversation in classrooms, boardrooms, courts – and the court of public opinion. It is here in the public sphere that Gaia has always drawn inspiration and energy and returned it back with an impetus to spark examination, discussion and debate.

“The proposal for ‘Persons of Interest’ features a portrait of Fereshta Ludin superimposed over a sky and images of peace,” Gaia says. “I chose to focus on Fereshta Ludin because of her advocation for multicultural understanding and cooperation in the face of intense national debate regarding the sphere of religious expression in German politics.”

A Gaia lino print piece based on a photograph by Martha Cooper in Baltimore, 2011 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gaia in New Jersey 2015 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon and Turkish Immigrants – “Persons of Interest”

March 8, 2015 Artists

Today we talk to Swoon and ask her why she chose her persons of interest, Turkish Immigrants.

54% of Brooklyn residents age 5 and older speak English at home as a primary language, followed by Spanish, Chinese, Russian and many others. The immigrant story has always been part of the Brooklyn story actually, including a flood of new German immigrants in the mid 1800’s to New York and Chicago which changed and formed the country. [note] Historic Overview: Germans in Chicago, Goethe Institute [/note] Today Berliners talk about the largest ethnic minority in Germany, Turkish immigrants, who account for about 4% of Germany’s total population, according to the census 2011 [note] File Migrationsberichtdes Bundesamtes für Migration und Flüchtlinge im Auftrag der Bundesregierung, Migrationsbericht 2012)[/note]

The topic of immigration is relevant to both sister cities and their artists communities, as they grapple with age-old questions about absorption and assimilation into the culture and whether traditions and behaviors can accommodate one another. Naturally, emotions can run high and rhetoric can be very strong at times and as usual art on the streets reflects society back to itself in an ongoing dialogue. If New York’s reputation as a melting pot is any indication, eventually people do find a way to coexist despite our sometimes marked differences.

Swoon “Cairo” in Brooklyn. September 2009. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

When Brooklyn Street Artist Swoon first learned about PERSONS OF INTEREST, she first thought of the many times she has been to Berlin and the artist community with which she has worked and played over the last few years. Known for her intricate paper cuts and linotypes that depict an inner world of a person, often you can read the interior of her forms as a diary. To join the two cultures and her experience of it Swoon also thought of the rich Turkish community she became familiar with in Berlin and she decided to dedicate her portrait to them.

“This portrait is a celebration of the cultural diversity of the city of Berlin, and specifically of it’s large and vibrant Turkish community,” she says. A hand painted linoleum block print with cut paper elements, Swoon says she thinks of this installation as “a long distance love letter to the city that informed so much of my early work, and which inspired and embraced the creative evolution of art on the streets like few other places in the world.”

Olivia Katz, an artist who has worked closely with Swoon in studio, agrees with her sentiment about this piece and expands on it. “This piece celebrates urban diversity,” says Katz. “It is meant to reflect on cities as densely pluralist environments that are built upon countless different people and communities living and working together. It is essential to recognize each other as neighbors, each living our lives soulfully and with meaning, and to nourish relationships that cross even the widest cultural chasms.”

Check out the Facebook page for PERSONS OF INTEREST

See Full Press Release HERE

Don Rimx and John A. Roebling – “Persons of Interest”

March 6, 2015 Artists

Today we talk to Don Rimx and ask him why he chose his person of interest, John A. Roebling.

What better symbol of connectedness than the symbol of the bridge? For PERSONS OF INTEREST we wanted to draw attention to the bonds we share with our creative communities and Brooklyn mural artist Don Rimx chose the German civil engineer who designed the Brooklyn Bridge, a feat that joined Brooklyn and Manhattan in the late 1800s and became an iconic symbol of New York.

Rimx was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Brooklyn as a young man to paint many of his architecturally inspired aerosol murals during the last decade. Inspired by the portraits of Rembrandt and paintings of Joaquin Sorolla as well as the work of Puerto Rican graphic artist Lorenzo Homar, Don Rimx is developing his own vocabulary of portraiture that often includes rough-hewn architectural elements like wooden supports, trussing, cables and limestone brick to form the contours and details of faces and features.

Born in Mühlhausen, Germany (Prussia at the time), Roebling was an immigrant to Brooklyn along with a huge number of his countrymen in the mid 1800s. It is reported that Brooklyn had a population of 200,000 in 1855 and about 30,000 of those were a new wave of immigrants from Germany. In many ways the very diverse culture of Brooklyn and its millions of immigrant stories are told as well in this portrait of a bridge maker.

“For me, Roebling fits perfectly into the line of work I’ve been developing lately. Roebling’s design aesthetic provides me with the inspiration for how to play with structure to connect and make links. I love the concept of the bridge, which reminds me how in art we carry culture and send ideas from one side of the world to the other,” says Rimx.

Check out the Facebook page for PERSONS OF INTEREST

See Full Press Release HERE

DAIN and Marlene Dietrich – “Persons of Interest”

March 5, 2015 Artists

Today we talk to DAIN and ask him why he chose his person of interest, Marlene Dietrich.

Over the last decade Street Artist DAIN has made many famous actresses from the silver screen his muse in his collages for the streets of Brooklyn: Betty Davis, Liz Taylor, Audrey Hepburn…all popular icons from an era he didn’t grow up in but has a fascination for. For him, the women of that era exemplified a time of demure glamour, one that didn’t need to disrobe to draw avid attention, leaving something to your imagination. His modern remixes that jump from walls and pop out of doorways on the street invariably grab the eye and garner a second look, creating a new sense of mystery that can seem futuristic and nostalgic at once.

The Brooklyn native and former graffiti writer told us that he thinks he gained his appreciation for mid-century Hollywood aesthetics from listening to his parents talk about their favorite stars and points to them as an influence on his work. “I guess it was maybe my folks. They’re from Brooklyn – Coney Island. And they’re kind of caught up in that. One of my favorite movies is On the Waterfront. I remember being a little kid and my father telling me ‘You gotta see this movie’,” he says. “I love that stuff. I love black and white. You use your imagination in black and white.”

Born in Leberstrasse 65 on the Rote Insel in Schöneberg (now a district of Berlin) in 1901, Dietrich became a star of screen, stage, and music with a career that some would easily call legendary. While she became an American in 1939 and continued her career giving concerts and appearing in movies around the world into the 1980s, she also famously included in her singing repertoire a song called, “Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin” (“I still keep a suitcase in Berlin”).

“I chose Ms. Dietrich because she was one of the most famous German American actresses. She had a style and look that were both glamorous and exotic. I love the fact that she continually reinvented herself – not only within acting but as a show performer later in her career,” says DAIN

Check out the Facebook page for PERSONS OF INTEREST

See Full Press Release HERE

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