Street Art is ephemeral. That, for the most part is true. Unless we consider the role that the Internet plays in the way most people experience it. Then it doesn’t seem ephemeral at all.
From the moment a piece of Street Art appears, its evolution begins. Transformed by the elements; rain, sun, the rusting and oxidation of metal, the fading of paper. If you become familiar with a piece on the street, you might see it daily on your way to work or school or the laundromat. Over time it matures, evolves, takes on new characteristics, and eventually disappears.
Today we look at metal and it’s collaborative behavior as art material, its personality, its natural qualities. Industrial lots, garbage bins, heavy old gates secured with chains and locks, scrap yards, untreated wood facades – they all provide a myriad of surfaces, textures, shapes that serve as canvas and collaborator. Over time you observe the aging process of a stencil on a metal plate, or a decaying wheat paste peeling off of it or rusting into it, masking it’s shape onto it. The collaboration of materials and elements can be one of the most beautiful experiences one encounters on the streets, even an enduring one.
1. QRST “Dreaming Without Sleeping” (Bushwick, Brooklyn)
2. Anthony Lister at New Image Art (Los Angeles)
3. Invisible Cities with Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Swoon at Black Rat (London)
4. Royce Bannon Curates “While You Were Sleeping” (Brooklyn)
5. Whisper Gallery Group Show (London)
6. Show Teaser for Anthony Lister at New Image Art (VIDEO)
7. David Shillinglaw “People Get Drunk” (VIDEO)
8. Italian Street Artist TELLAS in Sardinia. (VIDEO)
QRST “Dreaming Without Sleeping” (Bushwick, Brooklyn)
Street Artist QRST has his first solo show today at The Active Space. See our interview with him yesterday QRST Studio Visit and Interview .
For further information regarding this show click here.
Anthony Lister at New Image Art (Los Angeles)
Anthony Lister new solo show at New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles opens today to the general public. Lister used live ballerina models for this new paintings.
For further information regarding this show click here
Invisible Cities with Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Swoon at Black Rat (London)
London’s Black Rat Projects Gallery first show of the year, “Invisible Cities” featuring secondary market works by Banksy and Shepard Fairey alongside works by Swoon. This diverse group of artists are eponymous with the current Street Art movement in their retrospective cities. This show opens today to the general public.
The Brooklyn Artist Talks about Painting, Street Art, and Choking Chickens
You’ve seen his cats and dogs and birds and rats and people in wheat-pasted drawings and paintings on the street in Brooklyn the last couple of years, their big dark eyes staring plaintively at you, usually with some critters holding a banner overhead displaying his tag, QRST.
In a way, these are snapshots of his life, endowed with psychological drama and musings and universal or personal symbologies. Comedians and storytellers are always the most successful when they stick to the regular stuff that we all do and weave in the outlandish – just enough that it’s fantastic but not so much that it’s fantasy. QRST renders his characters without romance but maybe nostalgia, their magnetic eyes drawing you past the still countenance, grounded enough to sort of convince a passerby of their realness, even though they can’t possibly be. These are his relatives, his friends, his loves, his memories melted with meandering.
In addition to his regular job he’s been painting on a heavy schedule lately so he can have his show ready for unveiling this Friday in Bushwick, Brooklyn at The Active Space. A visit to his studio reveals a spare, brightly lit quietly manic room with a laptop playing the Bush Tetras balanced on a stool and a careful collection of the tools of the trade – paint tubes, canvasses stacked on the floor against a wall, a small pile of pencil sketches, an easel with a painting of a chicken beating up a boy.
“Yeah, it’s called ‘Formative Years,’” QRST says as he describes it’s origin, “My aunt and uncle had chickens and a giant rooster and when I was like two or three, one of them just mauled me. So it’s that story … but it’s also a lot about sex in like a generic, formative way. It’s a cockfight… he’s choking a chicken… So it’s kind of like a joke at my own expense because I’m getting my ass beat by a chicken but it’s also about figuring out masturbation and sex hangups and weird sex issues.
Brooklyn Street Art: It’s all “nested” in there. QRST: Yeah, and it’s all inside of a childhood.
If it is a battle, the boy in the painting doesn’t look like he’s going down without a fight. His stuff on the street explores the past plainly, including the painful parts, like his serious re-examination of the influence in his life of his deceased father, called “Patron”, laden with symbols and signifiers. The work can be odd, and oddly sensitive to meaning and nuance as QRST is compelled to continually assess and think his way through the battles of life, peering at it from all angles.
“I think a lot of my work is always autobiographical. It always seems to come from stuff that I’ve experienced or thought about or people or places that I’ve seen, or been in, or things I’ve experienced. I think a lot of it is that. These paintings are not obviously exact. They are little seeds of actual reality that have all this stuff piled around them that comes from my mind wandering. So the stories kind of become fantastical and weird and their own thing but they really do start from a seed of, ‘I was walking down this street and I saw this thing’ – or ‘I was with this guy on the Mississippi River’, or ‘my aunt and uncle have a hummingbird feeder,’” he explains.
Brooklyn Street Art: Aside from studying painting, in a lot of ways I can see that your work is therapeutic for you. QRST: Absolutely. If I’m not painting regularly I go crazy basically. I get all super depressed and mean. And I’ve had people tell me “I can tell when you haven’t been making art because you’re and a**hole.” (laughs) I’m like “Great! Cool.” I’ve had more than one person tell me that. You can tell when I’m not painting enough. I get really distressed. It can be also be drawing but painting seems to be the best.
For QRST the work he makes for the street is the fun stuff, the place where he can experiment and get a little looser. His painting teacher from his youth would have cringed at the idea of painting as being fun. “He yelled a lot but was a good teacher,” he remembers. “He used to yell ‘Painting is not fun! Painting is in the blood!’” On reflection, QRST agrees that painting is something more for him. “There is a certain truth to that. I mean, I need to do it and it’s immensely satisfying in a way that is not parallel to anything else in my life. But it’s not “fun”, ya know?”
It may still be a little perplexing to the average person passing a particle boarded construction site to see one of his elaborately hand painted, wheat-pasted pieces. To think that he’ll spend forty to sixty hours on a street work that ultimately gets destroyed seems self-defeating but he has clearly delineated in his mind what work is meant to have permanence and what needs to stretch it’s legs and go talk to the city.
“The street stuff is really nice. It can get really stressful too but it feels less formal. It’s hard to describe but I can do whatever I want, and it’s just for kicks. I can figure stuff out real easily and put it out and it really doesn’t matter because it’ll be gone soon. It’s like doing studies or sketches or something,” he explains.
Brooklyn Street Art:It’s also maybe a safe way to experiment with an idea or technique? QRST: Yeah, it is. It’s easy to be experimental because with oil paint there’s a way you are supposed to do it. I’ve thought about being more experimental on the canvas but then, it doesn’t feel right, at least not at the moment.
Of the studio work and the street work, he sees separate goals and lives. “They serve different purposes, they go in different places, they are supposed to function differently. Also with the street stuff – at the end of it it comes with the adrenaline rush of doing something very barely illegal,” he smiles.
Brooklyn Street Art: They need to walk out that door. QRST: They do! They want to go outside.
Brooklyn Street Art:That’s something I associate with your work is the symbolism and metaphor, the additional layers of meanings that can go in multiple directions.
QRST: I spend a lot of time – I come up with the idea and its something that is sort of stuck in my head and then I start to flesh it out. As I’m painting it, I end up thinking about it a lot obviously. All of the language and connection to it comes out as I’m working on it. I’m like “oh yeah!”.
Dichotomy, by Criminy Johnson. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches.
The Active Space opens an all-new exhibition space
in its Bushwick facility with a reception for “Dreaming Without
Sleeping,” a presentation of new works by Criminy Johnson | QRST, on
February 24, 2012.
“Dreaming Without Sleeping” allows viewers to glimpse the artist’s
view of our waking world: a bent, slightly pessimistic and
occasionally hostile place populated by animals and people who are
often reluctant to be interrupted by the viewer.
“Criminy makes oil paintings in his studio but often makes wheatpastes
that relate to these in some way. Many people are familiar with
Criminy’s work but may have seen it outside of a gallery setting, and
QRST fans might be discovering Criminy Johnson’s paintings for the
first time,” says curator Robin Grearson, who worked with Johnson last
year on a group show at the Active Space. “Criminy has been in
Bushwick for a few years, and QRST’s street work often shows up here,
so the Active Space is an ideal location to present the two styles
together.”
“We opened in February of last year, so I’m happy that the first show
in our building’s brand-new gallery space falls on our first
anniversary,” says Ashley Zelinskie, director of The Active Space.
“Robin is an accomplished writer, yet this is the third show she has
curated here. Last year we discovered that we really work well
together, and one thing I appreciate about my role as director of a
Bushwick art space is the opportunity I have to support emerging
artists and curators I believe in.” Zelinskie says.
The opening reception for “Dreaming Without Sleeping” takes place
February 24, 2012, from 7-10 PM. The show will be open to the public
by appointment through April 20, 2012. Email ashley@566johnsonave.com.
Dreaming Without Sleeping
February 24, 2012 through April 20, 2012
The Active Space
566 Johnson Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11237 www.566johnsonave.com
1. Play a New Holiday Video Game from Chris Uphues – “Holiday Jingle Rocket”
2. “Rezolution”, a group show at Hive Gallery Tonight (Phoenix, AZ)
3. “Paranormal Hallucinations” at Pandemic (Brooklyn, Yo!) (Saturday)
4. David Choe and DVS1 for Nuart 11 (VIDEO)
5. “Images of the Year 2011” From Brooklyn Street Art (Video)
6. VINZ FEEL FREE. Don’t be afraid. Feel Free (VIDEO)
Play a New Holiday Video Game from Chris Uphues – “Holiday Jingle Rocket”
Street Artist Chris Uphues uses his signature characters to create this very entertaining game for you to play with while chugging eggnog and rum today as you drink and drive at your keyboard. Try to keep your sled flying over the houses without being hit by giant blobs of snow! It’s a winter blast!
Make sure to click on the link below to play the game:
“Rezolution”, a group show at Hive Gallery Tonight (Phoenix, AZ)
Chip Thomas AKA Jetsonorama and a number of other artists open today in a group show that is getting a lot of pre-buzz here and on Twitter and FB. It should be a great scene tonight at The Hive.
A very fun group show to end out the season before everybody goes into the holiday haze, featuring some unsung gems in the Street Art and graffiti scene, as well as others, including CHARLIE MARKS R.I.P, LLEW payote, Deuce Seven, Egyptian jason, Matt CRABE, Josh and Amy Shandick, Mikey Big Breakfast, Conrad Carlson, G II, Ryan C. Doyle, Mikey I.T., Tamara Santibanez, Othello Gervacio, Mike. P, and Swampy (above).
For further information regarding this show click here
“Images of the Year 2011” From Brooklyn Street Art (Video)
It’s been an excellent year for Street Art all over the world and we’ve had the pleasure of seeing a lot of great stuff from big names to the anonymous. Eye popping, brain-teasing, challenging, entertaining, aspirational and inspirational – it’s all happening at once. We’ve been walking the streets, meeting the artists, going to shows, curating shows, speaking to audiences, providing walls, and asking questions. It ebbs and flows but never stays the same. With the rise of the Occupy movement this autumn, we’re already seeing an uptick in the number of people taking their messages to the street with a renewed intensity.
VINZ FEEL FREE. Don’t be afraid. Feel Free (VIDEO)
It’s been an excellent year for Street Art all over the world and we’ve had the pleasure of seeing a lot of great stuff from big names to the anonymous. Eye popping, brain-teasing, challenging, entertaining, aspirational and inspirational – it’s all happening at once. We’ve been walking the streets, meeting the artists, going to shows, curating shows, speaking to audiences, providing walls, and asking questions. It ebbs and flows but never stays the same. With the rise of the Occupy movement this autumn, we’re already seeing an uptick in the number of people taking their messages to the street with a renewed intensity.
Let’s take a look at some of our favorite shots, whether from a rooftop in Bushwick, Brooklyn, a block-long wall in Miami, or the “Art in the Streets” show at LA MoCA. As you sample this eye-candy platter, dig the staccato soundtrack made of sounds culled from Brooklyn’s streets by electro duo Javelin, who spent a day in the Red Hook neighborhood collecting sounds and then mixed them in the back of their car. This is the kind of D.I.Y. ingenuity that is fueling the fire in artists neighborhoods all over the world, with people taking their stories and skills directly to the streets. With Javelin as the perfect auditory partner here’s 90 shots by photographer Jaime Rojo from 2011.
The scenes and scenester included here: 5 Pointz, 907Crew, Sadue, Gen2, Oze108, Droid, Goya, UFO, Aakash Nihalini, No Touching Ground, Aiko, Martha Cooper, Anthony Lister, Boom, INSA, Miami, Primary Flight, LA Freewalls, Los Angeles, Kim West, Kopye, L.E.T., Purth, Lisa Enxing, Baltimore, Banksy, LA MoCA, Barry McGee, Blek le Rat, Broken Crow, Albany Living Walls, Chris Stain, Billy Mode, AD HOC Arts, Chris Uphues, Monster Island, Wynwood Walls, Creepy, Brooklyn Street Art, Jaime Rojo, Steven P. Harrington, Dabs & Myla, How & Nosm, Vhils, Dain, D*Face, ECB, El Sol 25, Elbow Toe, EMA, The London Police, Kid Acne, Will Barras, Enzo & Nio, Faile, Bast, Faith 47, Gaia Clown Soldier, General Howe, Hellbent, Herakut, Invader, JA JA, Jaz, Cern, Joe Iurato, Welling Court, John Baldessari, JR, Kenny Scharf, Knitta Please!, LMA Cru, LUDO, Mosstika, ND’A, IRGH, Labrona, Overunder, Nick Walker, NohjColey, Nomade, Occupy Wall Street, Os Gemeos, Veng, Chris, RWK, QRST, Radical!, Rambo, Retna, Gifted, Demon Slayers, Read, Booker, Read More Books, ROA, Shepard Fairey, Shin Shin, Wing, Skewville, Specter, Swampy, Sweet Toof, Swoon, Toofly, Various & Gould, VHILS, XAM, YOK, Pantheon Projects
Happy Halloween to all you good boys and ghouls lurking behind heavy closed doors with frogs in your pockets and bats in your hair. Do you dare venture out this All Hallows Eve? What will you see tonight in the cold black air?
“What beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?”
We know that BSA fans dig Halloween more than many holidays. Almost more than your birthday, but not quite, but almost. From his year round collecting of images, here’s a monstrous 39 photo essay from photographer Jaime Rojo of werewolves and vixens and frankenfreaks and zombies and ghosts just for you today.
More artists stopped by to put up pieces for “The Grassy Lot” show, an impromptu little get-together of 15 artists in a little bit of heaven on the Lower East Side. Jaime Rojo gives us some more shots of the lot.
Joe Franquinha, life long New Yorker, told us how he assisted Street Artist QRST with his decision of subject matter for this installation: “I told QRST – Rats have lived in this lot for years so rats should be represented here. Because we have the best f*cking rats and no one is going to take that away from us.”
We’re proud to announce the “Grassy Lot Show” coming this Thursday presented by Crest Arts at the Timeshare Backyard. It’s been a little whirlwind of activity with 15 artists putting up brand new work on the walls of this oasis on the Lower East Side for you to come visit. With Keith Schwietzer and us helping Crest out here and there, and of course with Franklin doing lawn roomba duties, it is a bit of a community event. All it is missing is you! What are you doing Thursday?
Crest Arts invites you to the TimeShare Backyard for “The Grassy Lot Show”
Thursday August 25, from 6-8 pm
145 Ludlow Street between Stanton and Rivington
Admission is free.
Take off your shoes and walk in the grass and do a cartwheel while looking at brand new outside work on the walls by Bishop 203, Creepy, Gaia, General Howe, Jake Klotz, Laura Meyers, Nanook, Over Under, QRST, Quel Beast, Shandor Hassan, Travis Simon, Veng, XAM, and Yok.
We’re proud to announce the “Grassy Lot Show” coming this Thursday presented by Crest Arts at the Timeshare Backyard. It’s been a little whirlwind of activity with 15 artists putting up brand new work on the walls of this oasis on the Lower East Side for you to come visit. With Keith Schwietzer and us helping Crest out here and there, and of course with Franklin doing lawn roomba duties, it is a bit of a community event. All it is missing is you! What are you doing Thursday?
Crest Arts invites you to the TimeShare Backyard for “The Grassy Lot Show”
Thursday August 25, from 6-8 pm
145 Ludlow Street between Stanton and Rivington
Admission is free.
Take off your shoes and walk in the grass and do a cartwheel while looking at brand new outside work on the walls by Bishop 203, Creepy, Gaia, General Howe, Jake Klotz, Laura Meyers, Nanook, Over Under, QRST, Quel Beast, Shandor Hassan, Travis Simon, Veng, XAM, and Yok.
HuffPost Arts and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) hosted a presentation and panel discussion presented by Brooklyn Street Art founders Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo this past Saturday at the Ahmanson Auditorium with 150 guests. Five days after the closing of the record breaking “Art in the Streets” show at LA MOCA, which was seen by over 200,000 visitors, BSA charted some new ground going forward in the ever evolving graffiti and street art movement.
The panelists, who included HuffPost Arts Editor Kimberly Brooks and Street Art phenom Shepard Fairey, watched a presentation by Harrington and Rojo about a new storytelling direction that artists are bringing to the streets of New York and other cities around the world. With examples of relative newcomers not seen by many in the audience, they pointed to precursors from the last 40 years to this storytelling practice and questioned how its sudden growth may be evolving what we have been calling “Street Art” for the last decade.
After a conversation with panelists Brooks, Fairey, Marsea Goldberg, Ken Harman, and Ethel Seno that covered topics like the paucity of females in the street art scene, the influence of the Internet on “getting up”, and the significance of personal engagement in the work of many of today’s new street artists, Harrington and Rojo opened the discussion up the auditorium. Here topics ranged from LA’s evolving approach to Street Art to include public and permanent art, the influence of money on street artists, and how a show like “Art in the Streets” effectively influences the next generations’ perception of street art.
The packed event was interesting enough to bring many audience members down to the stage after the show to continue the conversation and meet the panelists and LA MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch, who took great interest in the presentation, talked with a number of people before taking off. Fairey, with his wife Amanda at his side and a healing black eye from his recent trip to Copenhagen (see his account for HuffPost Arts here) gamely took on questions from many and posed for pictures after the event and at the reception which HuffPost hosted afterward.
Brooklyn Street Art Co-founders Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington converse with esteemed panelists at “Street Art Stories”, hosted by HuffPost Arts and LA MOCA.
MONICA ROACHE, JESSICA YOUN, CHRIS RICHMOND, DAVID BRADSHAW, JEFFREY DEITCH, LYN WINTER, PATRICK IACONIS, TANYA PATSAOURUS, TRAVIS KORTE, MELINDA BROCKA, TINA SOIKKELI, EUTH, ANDREW
HOSNER, CARLOS GONZALEZ, KIMBERLY BROOKS, MARSEA GOLDBERG, KEN HARMAN,SHEPARD FAIREY, ETHEL SENO, THE MOCA MUSEUM STAFF AND SECURITY,
THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES (MOCA), BROOKLYNSTREETART.COM, HI-FRUCTOSE, JUXTAPOZ,
IMAGES IN PRESENTATION BY JAIME ROJO WITH ADDITIONAL PHOTOS BY MARTHA COOPER, REVS PHOTO BY BECKI FULLER, and FAUXREEL PHOTOS BY DAN BERGERON
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
