Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Ziggy and Sonni and the Spiders from Mars
BSA Special Feature: Street Artist Sonni Animates Into a Rock God
His mural work on the street is unflappably sunny, so it makes sense that this animated version of a glammed up character has the same Sonni disposition that he displays throughout his work. Extra points to his team (especially Matias Fernandez) who help to turn this simple Brooklyn studio visit into a suddenly surprising and funny one. Well made!
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And for you Bowie fans who memorized the album years ago, you know what comes next.
Iranian Brothers Generate Cultural Exchange Between Two Homes
Icy & Sot, the Iranian Street Artists who have been making their mark on the New York scene for just two years are again making news by curating a gallery show that introduces Iran and the US to one another through the visual vernacular of Street Art.
With two shows running concurrently in Tehran and Brooklyn, the stencil loving spray painters have successfully exposed fans of this genre to the artists in another country with actual examples of art in a gallery setting rather than simply through the Internet. During the South Williamsburg opening on June 13th guests at the TBA temporary space were treated to works by 10 Iranian artists as well as a video projection on the wall of their counterparts viewing the US artists show at Seyhoun Art gallery, which was recorded only hours earlier.
Without diplomatic relations between the two countries, it is a wonder that this exchange could be cultivated, let alone executed. Given the restrictions imposed upon music, film, literature, and art since the revolution of 35 years ago, it added a layer of incredulity for gallery goers to measure the implications while viewing the works by a youth culture that has as its DNA a certain strain of rebellion.
New York sent the work of 35 artists, an impressively sized roster of participants who were each given size restrictions to keep shipping simpler and costs lower. While the brothers were clearly elated to bring new work to both cities, one might have surmised that the more excited feelings were directed toward their recently departed home where about 55% of the population is estimated to be under 30 years old and a youthful cultural evolution is said to be happening in the artist underground.
Work from the Iranians reveals an accurately studious affinity for the pop of Warhol and irony of Banksy alongside polished versions of wildstyle and more modern graffiti lettering and loose splattering. The larger cross section of New Yorkers sampled from that pot as well as the myriad influences on the streets today including illustration, photography, geometric patterning, cartoon, and collage.
BSA spoke with the brothers as they were installing the New York show:
Brooklyn Street Art:So would you say this is primarily about cultural exchange? Sot: Yeah, I mean the fact that there hasn’t been any relationship between Iran and the US, but this is totally about the relationship between the artists.
Brooklyn Street Art:What do you think that a viewer at the New York show is going to realize when seeing these works? Icy: First of all they are going to get to know the artists because they are not familiar with their work and haven’t had a chance to know them before. Also they will realize the fact that there are people in Iran doing this kind of art. It is underground, it is just a small scene, but still. Sot: It’s a good chance for these artists to show their work.
Brooklyn Street Art:Would you say that these artists are taking real risks by showing their work like this? Icy: I mean, for the street artists there everything is risky, putting works in the street… like having the show is stressful but luckily the people there have gotten their permits and stuff.
Brooklyn Street Art:Who did they have to ask for permission and what did they need to see? Sot: It’s hard to translate the name but it’s an official organization Icy: They have to check out the work and see it and they have to approve it. Sot: Yes they have to do that for everything – for music performance or for art exhibits or anything, they have to go through this – but for this show it is at one of the oldest galleries in Iran so.
The guys related some of the exigencies of putting a show like this together and Sot talks about one of the artists who is an old classmate of his who doesn’t use the tools of communication that so many of his peers in the west would. “He doesn’t have a website for his art and he’s not on Facebook,” says Sot, “so I was like Facebook messaging another friend to ask him to call this guy for me and ask him to be in the show, and then to ask him for the status of shipping of his piece or information about the piece.”
Brooklyn Street Art:So with the Superman and the Warholian Marilyn, I like this idea where there is a mixing of the two cultures together quite literally. Sot: Yeah, for these shows there wasn’t really a theme but some artists, because they knew where they were going to be displayed made specific choices to communicate something. Like Gilf! wanted to write something in farsi so she picked the words “I am You” in farsi. Icy: And El Sol 25 did the words “Iran So Far Away”, which is inspired by the song. (by Flock of Seagulls)
Brooklyn Street Art:What is one of your favorite pieces here, or rather, which one would you like to talk about? Icy: I like them when they talk about social issues. Sot: Like this one with CK1 – it has all these pictures from newspaper with the Shah
Brooklyn Street Art: They look like they may have been around ’81 or ’82…
Icy: Yeah, then the hijab came after the revolution and then the women had to wear the hijab. Brooklyn Street Art:So before then they didn’t have to wear it? Sot: No, before that they could choose. Icy: Then they had no choice. Sot: And this one with Superman and on his chest it says “love” in farsi and there is Tehran in the background and there is the freedom tower in the background?
Brooklyn Street Art:Is that called “Freedom Tower”? Sot: Yeah, or Liberty Tower, it’s like the symbol of Tehran. It’s like you have the Statue of Liberty here and that’s the freedom tower in Iran.
The Exhibition NYC to Tehran is currently on view at Seyhoun Art Gallery in Tehran, Iran. Click HERE for more details. The sister exhibition from Tehran to NYC is now closed.
Hello friend! Don’t forget that Welling Court is happening this weekend in Queens. The 5th annual neighborhood event has over 120 murals going up, and it is truly grassroots. Icy & Sot had their very successful cultural exchange this Friday as well, with 30 New York artists showing in Tehran, and 10 Iranian artists showing in Brooklyn – so hats off to them and the organizers for pulling that off. Olek has been at the Honolulu Museum of Art to celebrate World Oceans Day with a huge installation, and Swoon brought the New York premiere of “Flood Tide” and musical performances to The Brooklyn Museum this week for Submerged Collaborations. This week you don’t want to miss seeing four important NYC graffiti photographers at the same time in person at the Museum of the City of New York.
And we cannot believe the stunning amount of new stuff on the street: here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Blanco, Bradley Theodore, Damien Mitchell, Damon, Dan Witz, Dennis McNett, Dr. NO, Flood, Fra Biancoshock, Icy & Sot, JR, Myth, Olek, Sean 9 Lugo, Simek, Snow White, Sonni, TV with Cheese, and Winston the Whale.
Street Artist Blanco shares his new piece this week in Albany and in his description of it below you may draw a connection between recreation of old stories and myths and the recreation of our cities through gentrification as well – although he doesn’t specifically address the latter.
” This work was kind of inspired by my interest in the common roots of divergent cultures. An example is the eytemology of Dyaus Pitra (Sky Father, Hindu) = Zeus Pater(Father of Gods, Greek) = Ju Piter (God of the Sky, Roman). I am interested in the way that cultures evolve, split off and borrow from one another and how its all mixed back together. The way some Mongolian friends of mine revere Buddhist monasteries, consult shamans and consider themselves Christians or The way the Aztec mother goddess Tonantzin was transformed into the Catholic ‘Our Lady Of Guadalupe’. We are sometimes led to believe its all black and white but its not usually so simple. Cross cultural heritage and mixing have always interested me but Joseph Campbell wrote about this aspect of religion and story telling in a very interesting way.
In some ways modern cities bear some resemblance to this cross pollination as neighborhoods and buildings are transformed, converted and reclaimed.
Specifically for this piece I was interested in the Proto-Indo-European Mother Goddess and the way she was changed, destroyed, recycled and recreated as the Hindu goddess Kali. She is associated with the ability and powers for both creation and destruction.” ~ Blanco
As the Borough of Brooklyn continues a rolling cultural renaissance the spotlight shifts from one neighborhood to the next as investors and cultural workers leapfrog one another in search of opportunity. Naturally, “capitalizing” on that opportunity can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and is.
The Williamsburg Industrial Park, sometimes referred to as East Williamsburg, has been known for light manufacturing industry such as food processing, furniture making, packing/shipping of dry goods, warehousing – and of course it has played host to a growing number of artists studios in the mix. Of course it has been impacted by the ballooning interest in Bushwick and Williamsburg and all-things-Brooklyn in general but for some reason this still feels fresh and unjaded. Because you don’t have to worry too much about nervous neighborhoody types it has also been a welcoming environment for musicians to rehearse and artists to experiment.
The doors of cafes, live music venues, scattered galleries and performance spaces have opened in the last couple of years and a growing number of legal murals alongside an occasionally lively graffiti / Street Art scene has been cropping up and out. As is the case with new bohemia and a heady mix of hormones/entrepreneurship/euphoria/good weed, some of these dreams will take off and grow while others will fade into the lore of an experimenting NY scene that proudly cuts a notch with a pen knife into the cultural timeline. The best idea is always to jump in and be a part of it right now and enjoy it to its fullest. But that’s just us.
A music and mural art festival called “Juicy Art” saw its first edition this past weekend and the transformation continues with entire blocks getting smashed by a mix of independently produced work, unsanctioned guerilla pieces, and naturally, murals. Take a look at this survey of a popping scene captured by photographer Jaime Rojo in the last couple of weeks.
With studio apartments in Manhattan now hitting nearly 3K a month the closest thing most Milennials will ever get to a house party in Gotham will be snagging a VCR tape of the Kid ‘n Play danceoff movie at their parents stoop sale. Last week during the “polar vortex” cold freeze some lucky invitees did get access to a secret house party in a dilapidated building on the Lower East Side for 2 hours however. There wasn’t much heat, no DJ, and your flask of Jack Daniels substituted as the bar, but if you made it in you scored a free condensed Street Artist show that is as rare as a New Jack Swing hit these days.
A little more than 40 (mostly) Street Artists brought the four floor former tenement building to life one last time before it will be destroyed – and they did it almost entirely in secret over the course of a week. Just how secret this event was is debatable considering the multitude of blog posts and photos of it that appeared in the days following but in the Internet age, news about stuff like this goes viral no matter what.
All tolled, the varied collection of participants was a cross-section; a blurry screenshot of Street Artists on the New York scene along with a few graff writers, taggers, sticker slappers, painters, illustrators, aerosol experts, installationists, art school students, and visitors to the big city who happened to be around at the right time. Also, a couple of pyros.
While this sort of artist takeover of an abandoned house or building is increasingly occurring in bankrupt cities and neighborhoods in America and Europe where no one wants to live except the creative types, you don’t find this unruly and freewheeling expression much in the increasingly scrubbed and mall-like playground for the rich in Manhattan.
Similarly, producers of large Street Art/Urban Art events in global cities can deliver murals that make you salivate and on a scale that dwarfs this “event” thanks to corporate underwriters and shills for sneakers/sodas/urban-themed tampons these days, but few can truthfully rival the unpolished impromptu spirit of a semi-secret House Party jam session. For one week during installations and on opening night it was like the ghost of New York’s downtown 1970s-80s Bohemia was coming back to the island in all it’s imperfectness to remind everyone of Manhattan’s former greatness as a petri dish for experimentation and discovery.
Considering the huge increase in sanctioned walls over the last two years in New York, this work looks surprisingly alive, and is just the sort of balm needed for the raw nerves of anarchists everywhere who have bemoaned the polished soul-deadening mural painting of late. Even if some of this looks sort of slap-dash and ragged in spots, and it does, it also gives off an air of being authentic and in-the-moment.
Notably, the ratio of penis, breast, and defacation-related themes was higher than your average art show but as you know, there is an audience for every artist, even the ones gravitating to bathroom humor as creative wellspring. Judging by the few hundred images floating around on Flickr and elsewhere, this pop-up was a hit for the people.
Given the growing number of artists communities that have blossomed outside of Manhattan, this could have been one of its last jams for Street Art. Yo! That’s my jam!
And now please step aside as we build another luxury condo.
Graffitimundo
Graffitimundo presents the group exhibition “The Talking Walls of Buenos Aires”. Opening Saturday, July 13th at The Fridge in Washington DC. This will be the first time Argentina’s unique urban art culture has been presented in the US.
Urban art in Buenos Aires reflects the city’s turbulent history and rich cultural heritage. Throughout the last century the city walls have been extensively painted by artists, activists, political groups and the public and have become an established and dynamic channel for expression.
During the last two decades several different artistic styles have developed. The devastating Argentine economic crisis of 2001 created a generation of young artists determined to take to the streets and reclaim their city. As they collaborated in a spirit of solidarity a new and distinctive visual language began to emerge.
“The Talking Walls of Buenos Aires” features mural art and original artworks from leading Argentine artists and art collectives, as well as video works and historical and contemporary photography portraying the urban landscape of Buenos Aires and seminal moments in the country’s history.
The exhibition celebrates a form of expression rooted in activism and a desire to transform public space, and in the process challenges conventional views on what graffiti is, what street art represents, who creates it, and why.
Artists
Buenos Aires Stencil / Cabaio / Chu / Defi / DobleG / Ever / Fede Minuchin / Gualicho / Jaz / Malatesta / Mart / Pastel / Pedro Perelman / Poeta / Prensa La Libertad / Pum Pum / Roma / Sam / Stencil Land / Sonni / Tec / Tester
Event information
The “Talking Walls of Buenos Aires” will open at 6pm on July 13th 2013 at The Fridge, 516 1/2 8th Street SE, Washington, DC 20003
Of the 10,000 images he snapped of Street Art this year, photographer Jaime Rojo gives us 110 that represent some of the most compelling, interesting, perplexing, thrilling in 2012.
Together the collection gives you an idea of the range of mediums, techniques, styles, and sentiments that appear on the street today as the scene continues to evolve worldwide. Every seven days on BrooklynStreetArt.com, we present “Images Of The Week”, our weekly interview with the street.
We hope you enjoy this collection – some of our best Images of The Year from 2012.
Artists include 2501, 4Burners, 907, Above, Aiko, AM7, Anarkia, Anthony Lister, Anthony Sneed, Bare, Barry McGee, Bast, Billi Kid, Cake, Cash For Your Warhol, Con, Curtis, D*Face, Dabs & Myla, Daek One, DAL East, Dan Witz, Dark Clouds, Dasic, David Ellis, David Pappaceno, Dceve, Deth Kult, ECB, Eine, El Sol 25, Elle, Entes y Pesimo, Enzo & Nio, Esma, Ever, Faile, Faith47, Fila, FKDL, Gable, Gaia, Gilf!, Graffiti Iconz, Hef, HellbentHert, Hot Tea, How & Nosm, Icy & Sot, Interesni Kazki, Jason Woodside, Javs, Jaye Moon, Jaz, Jean Seestadt, Jetsonorama, Jim Avignon, Joe Iurato, JR, Judith Supine, Ka, Kem5, Know Hope, Kuma, Labrona, Liqen, LNY, Love Me, Lush, Matt Siren, Mike Giant, Miyok, MOMO, Mr. Sauce, Mr. Toll, ND’A, Nick Walker, Nosego, Nychos, Occupy Wall Street, Okuda, OLEK, OverUnder, Phlegm, Pixel Pancho, Rambo, Read Books!, Reka, Retna, Reyes, Rime, Risk, ROA, Robots Will Kill, Rone, Sacer, Saner, See One, Sego, sevens errline, Sheyro, Skewville, Sonni, Stick, Stikman, Stormie Mills, Square, Swoon, Tati, The Yok, Toper, TVEE, UFO, VHILS, Willow, Wing, XAM, Yes One, and Zed1 .
Art from the streets has been heralding a new eye-popping geometric disorder that can now fairly be called a movement. With roots in recent art history and the rhythms of the street, artists are giving themselves over to pungent color, pattern, grid inspired line, and a sharp edged abstraction. No one can say what has moved the conversation toward this aesthetic – it all mimics the repetitive patterns that are found in nature as well as the cool symmetries programmed by human industry. These modern alchemists from across the globe are somehow pumping the Street Art scene with an oxygen-rich supply of lifeblood and a variety of possible directions to explore.
An uncanny blending of the cans, both the graffiti tradition and the Street Art practice each find common ground to be a place where tagging and Pop irony all dissolve together into form and shape. On walls around cities where these two practices were once polarized, we’re seeing that everybody can drop their guard and just paint, bro.
In these images collected by photographer Jaime Rojo over the last couple of years, you can see elements of mid 20th century modernism, sci-fi fantasy, retro-futurism, imperfect folk patterning, and the distinct echoes of Wild Style. The common thread in this new discovery of graphic geometry is not just what it is, but as it pertains to art on the street, also what it’s not.
Summer jumped off with fires ablaze this week as Street Artists and all other manner of related plastic arts activity began flaring all over the place. It helps that finally the epicenter of Street Art has officially relocated to Bushwick years after Ad Hoc Gallery announced it’s arrival. Of course it’s also in Red Hook and Greenpoint and LIC and Ridgewood and Bed Stuy and even, dare we say it, Williamsburg.
But hot damn if we didn’t have more fun this week in Williamsburg watching a couple of leggily mincing models down by the waterfront kicking their shapely gams into the air and grasping the entire island of Manhattan between their feet (check out the coda photo at the end for a lick). It was extra fun because only 10 years ago this location was a garbage strewn dump where people went to get high and have sex in the wild brush and watch tall-bike sparring matches and the City didn’t even care about it. On a hot day you might find two portly Polish women in their 60s wearing wire bras and sunning themselves on plastic chaise loungers – in fact we used to call it the Polish Riviera. Now this is a public park created for shiny NYU students to play sports in and get ripped abs and clever “location scouts” have “discovered” it so it was especially fun to find this fashion shoot happening here and have one of the overheated stylist queens march over and try to shoo us away while snapping the free shoe show. Try.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, featuring Bishop203, Brett Amory, Essam, Dan Witz, ENX, Love Me, Mint & Serf, Mr. Toll, Nick Walker, Olek, Troy Lovegates (AKA Other), Sabio, Sheryo, Sonni, The Yok, and Willow.
The streets are alive again with all manner of styles from wheat-pastes to stencils, painting, murals, weaving, sticking, slapping, pop appropriation, comic parody, memorial outpouring, collectivism, mavericks, fantasy, pattern, geometry, photography, and yes, beef! Call it what you like, it looks like art is in the streets.
So here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alec Monopoly, Bast, Ben Wolf, Bishop 203, Dain, Danielle Mastrion, Don’t Fret, Enzo & Nio, Heidi Tullman, Hot Tea, Jason Woodside, Klub7, KRSNA, Michael DeNicola, Mr. Clean, and Sonni.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
