BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
After a successful, painful, and funny take-down of the Dollar bill at their last group show, the artists-run collectivists at 148 Frost Gallery are smoking again with their newest installations and canvases related to the biggest money-maker of all time: War.
“War & Order” features street artists, contemporary artists, outside artists and those adjacent ruminating on the role and roll of the war machine in the 2020’s with Gabriel Specter, Renelerude, Escif, Dan Sabau, Kazuhiro Imafuku, M Shimek, and Cash4 on the march.
Between those two shows, this gallery may have captured the moment prophetically, like a seer in a storm, evaluating the past and anticipating what is next.
A century, at the rise of the so-called American Century, it had just become clear that undermining a nation’s currency through inflation was instrumental to eroding its economic and social order – Lenin is reported to have posited it as a beststrategy. Keynes agreed, and observed that a rampant inflation that debauches your currency secretly will confiscate wealth, breed inequality, and shatter the trust that underpins society. Not that we’re headed toward rampant inflation, but the similarities of these days and those days leading to world wars are striking, including our own media’s consistent underreporting of the dollar’s loss of value and global influence.
During WWI, all major governments resorted to a programmed money printing. Whether by design or incompetence, the results were undeniable: economic destabilization, often hyperinflation, internal chaos, political upheaval, and war. For many decades people swore that we would never let that happen again. But most of those people are dead now, and the dollar today is worth a nickle, compared to a century ago.
What is that saying, often paraphrased, “history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.”?
“War and Order” enlists international and local artists for a pointed, and occasionally mischievous, look at the world we’ve managed to build for ourselves. It doubles as inquiry and needling social commentary, with each artist charting our tangled relationship with war, the creeping architecture of the police state, and the long shadow of militarism, surveillance, and planetary harm—all unfolding in an age where social media spins narratives and we scroll past catastrophe.
Murals, installations, paintings, and performances push these ideas, probe our past, and interrogate the present. It’s uncomfortable, for sure. What comes next, we have a dreadful guess. But there is a countenance of repairing the broken, correcting injustices, healing pain – even though this is not the focus. As the organizers put it, the exhibition is “our protest, our loud speaker to the world—an unedited, unsilenced voice.”
Kazuhiro Imafuku’s watercolors read like a plaintive diary of a soul under siege—an illustrated reckoning as he “displays and deciphers” his grandfather’s service in the Manchurian war. Though distant in time and culture, the story feels painfully familiar to the stories of soldiers here and abroad today. His grid of small works echoes the disarming clarity of Escif’s massive hand-painted banners hanging around the homemade gallery space, where the Spanish conceptualist delivers coded commentary in a deceptively plain voice, sharpened by deep critique. Elsewhere and throughout, artists confront imperial overreach, immigration persecution, and high-tech terror without flinching—perhaps daring us not to look away.
Specter’s opus “Expressive Love” calls to mind the glib narcissism of the 20th century westerner historically, a simplistic Norman Rockwell sentimentality that sees the ideal in spite of the truth. It also calls to mind the last enormous propaganda push that engulfed continents for the profits of a few, the fake ‘war on terror’ of the 2000s, when an Internet meme featured UK Prime Minister Tony Blair happily posing for a selfie before a hellfire scene from the oilfields of Iraq.
Adjacent to Specter, the French street artist Rene LeRude presents a disjointed monochrome macabre missive of winners and losers updated with dark tech, echoing the dimension, and disconnected field of vision of Guernica by Picasso – a phalanx of streaming cameras mounted to the wall next to it make sure the scene is monitored and broadcast for best effect. These are the suffering and distorted figures that Picasso was protesting, reported without humanity in black and white back then; atrocities committed against civilians; violence unleashed by authoritarian regimes. LeRude’s own neo-cubism strikes a similarly expressive distortion, his own moral indictment.
This is the kind of work you can still encounter in Brooklyn today, in a warehouse space that brings together music, art, theater, and other forms that resist easy classification. Rooted in DIY culture, punk, activism, and inclusion, Frost doesn’t need to be idealized—only recognized for its commitment to fostering conversations that many would rather sidestep.
We spoke with curators and artists Gabriel Specter and Rene La Rude about the show,
Brooklyn Street Art: “War & Order” is described as both a social study and a critique of global affairs. What was the initial spark that inspired you and the other artists involved in the show to frame the exhibition around the tension between war and order, and did the original idea evolve as you and the rest of the artists began discussing the show?
Gabriel Specter: The initial spark was our current political state. Where freedom of expression and protest are being silenced. We wanted to make a show where the artist could speak their minds without censorship. Each artist added their voice, and through that, there was a natural evolution of the original idea.
BSA: The exhibition explores our “personal and collective relationships to war and the threat of the police state.” How do you balance your own perspective as an artist with the collective voices and experiences represented in the show?
GS: Part of having your own perspective is about respecting and listening to others perspectives at the same time so the show reflected that type of idea creating a nice balance.
BSA: The show is described as “our protest, our loudspeaker to the world.” How do you see visual art functioning as a form of protest or resistance today—especially in an era dominated by social media and engineered narratives?
GS: I feel like people are starting to value real interactions more and word of mouth is coming back in vogue so I believe the underground has a real power to effect change and as they say a picture tells a million words!
BSA: Since we have known you, and your work on the streets, you have been consistent with delivering messages highlighting a scope of social issues that are relevant to our society. When you began this practice social media and AI didn’t exist. Do you think these new digital tools are useful for you in the transmission of your work? If so how?
GS: New tools are always helpful, can save time, make you more self-sufficient and help you reach new audiences but they can also dilute a lot of your messages and take away the edge and reality of what you’re trying to get across.
BSA: The exhibition includes murals, installations, and paintings. How did you decide which mediums best convey the urgency and emotional weight of these themes? I think the combination of mediums gives an overall experience and that is what we were really trying to achieve.
GS: We have the power of scale in the murals, the intimacy of the smaller paintings and the raw visceral nature of the installation.
BSA: In an age of “mass desensitization to violence,” what emotional or intellectual response do you hope visitors will leave with after experiencing War & Order?
GS: I hope they care about people’s lives and recognize that life is important even the lives of those you disagree with. People are not pawns, they are flesh and blood and we should never forget this.
BSA to Specter and Rene LaRude: The murals are compelling and powerful, with references to both Picasso and Rockwell. How did you decide to use these two paintings as inspiration for your murals?
GS: I chose the work by Rockwell as inspiration exactly for this reason that it is revered as a romantic time in American history. The kids depicted would have been of “The Greatest Generation”
We still cling to this American Iconography today. It is rebranded and used for promoting a xenophobic political message, so for me this iconography was the perfect tool to use to flip the narrative.
Rene LaRude: It wasn’t an easy decision given the impact the piece has had over the years.
I wanted to make use of certain things from Guernica, narrative, composition, and of course colour (or lack thereof) to apply it to what is happening now.
The piece is about Gaza and the litany of war crimes that have been committed. I wanted to honor the original composition and change elements to stories relevant in Palestine. The use of greyscale is because Gaza has been turned into a land of rubble. even things which are not grey are covered in dust.
My effort is certainly overly dense and packed in but then again, that’s just what I wanted to get across in many ways.
All warfare is based on deception.
Sun Tzu (544–496 BC?) – Ancient Chinese Military Strategist
“If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one would remain in the ranks.
Frederick the Great (1712–1786) – King of Prussia
