Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. SOFLES: Raw Brick 2. Conor Harrington: The Patriot. Video by Chop ’em Down Films 3. Sao Paulo Pinacoteca: Os Gemos Reopening
BSA Special Feature: SOFLES: Raw Brick
While much of the western world is waiting around to see who wins the presidential election and wonders where this much vaunted civil war is taking place (Rachel?), let’s have a mental vacation with SOFLES as he shows us a graffiti piece being painted on a raw brick wall. The rich green, the deep purplllleeee…… Ahhhhhh.
SOFLES: Raw Brick
Conor Harrington: The Patriot. Video by Chop ’em Down Films
The Irish immigrants were once treated as badly as the Mexicans are now in America. Now one of them is lecturing on blind patriotism in the US in this new video by Chop ’em Down Films.
Sao Paulo Pinacoteca: Os Gemeos Reopening
In a genuine shifting of fortunes, Brazilian twin graffiti writers OS GEMEOS were once on the run from authorities for their artworks in Sao Paulo. Here to welcome their massive exhibition, is a video sponsored by Sao Paulo’s State Government.
From the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, at the Urban Morphogenesis festival, we see constructivism of an ecological nature by Vitaly Tsarenkov aka SY.
Vitaly Tsarenkov aka SY: “Love Of Nature”. Urban Morphogenesis Festival. Chelyabinsk, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“The name of the mural is ‘Love For Nature,’ ” SY tells us. “It’s about man’s exploitative treatment of the environment.”
Vitaly Tsarenkov aka SY: “Love Of Nature”. Urban Morphogenesis Festival. Chelyabinsk, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
A creator of paintings, murals, and sculptures, SY began his artistic career with graffiti and later moved to studio work and exhibitions. A child of the 1990s, he says his visual language is influenced by the aesthetics of 8-bit console video games, and you can see the simply vivid 3-D geometry continues to excites his imagination. He also says he was influenced by the Russian revolutionary avant-garde, and engineering drawing.
Vitaly Tsarenkov aka SY: “Love Of Nature”. Urban Morphogenesis Festival. Chelyabinsk, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Perhaps anti-intuitive to the idea
of those early computer games, his focus is often to examine social, political,
mental and the metaphysical. “The whole world stands on the threshold of global
ecological catastrophes,” he says as he takes a break from the new 18 story
mural that took him and two assistants 16 days to complete. “A lot of people
haven’t realized yet that the future of our planet depends on the actions of
every single person.”
Vitaly Tsarenkov aka SY: “Love Of Nature”. Urban Morphogenesis Festival. Chelyabinsk, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)Vitaly Tsarenkov aka SY: “Love Of Nature”. Urban Morphogenesis Festival. Chelyabinsk, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)Vitaly Tsarenkov aka SY: “Love Of Nature”. Urban Morphogenesis Festival. Chelyabinsk, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)Vitaly Tsarenkov aka SY: “Love Of Nature”. Urban Morphogenesis Festival. Chelyabinsk, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)Vitaly Tsarenkov aka SY: “Love Of Nature”. Urban Morphogenesis Festival. Chelyabinsk, Russia. (photo courtesy of the artist)
A pioneer in public art festivals, Asalto celebrates its 15th year here in San José, in Zaragoza (Spain) with a lineup of very thoughtful artists. The intensity of 2020 and the toll it is taking on the countries of the world – is somehow reflected in the gentle dispositions of this year’s collection, who add their works to the 300 artists and works of art here. Organizers say the connection to the community is predicated on the organizing structure of the festival, which doesn’t decree what is good, but Asalto creates “a dialogue with neighbors who see art as something intimate and in the works they can see scenes in which they can be identified.”
This years Asalto 2020 line-up
includes artists Akacorleone, Diego Vicente,
Elbi Elem, Isaac Cordal, Karto Gimeno, Lida Cao, Marta Lapeña, Slim Safont,
Anna Taratiel, Sawu Studio and Aheneah.
Below are a few that we thought you would enjoy, along with brief descriptions of the artists directly from the Asalto organizers.
Lidia Cao. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
Lidia Cao: “The artist Lidia Cao gives us in a large mural those hugs that we have been missing in recent months. With great sensitivity to capture moments in all her works, Lidia Cao makes this gift to the neighborhood. As the artist says ‘A hug. An act as simple as it is difficult. We have seen how a world, in the blink of an eye, has become something completely distant.’ This is a hug of joy or comfort but always comforting and that has already become a symbol for all the people who see it every day in its wake.”
Elbi Elem. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
Elbi Elem: “The artist Elbi Elem has explored every corner of the area of Zaragoza where the Festival Asalto has been held to continue on her path of artistic research. Elbi Elem has used the possibilities of water and reflection to create installations that lead us to recognize the duality between balance and movement or the constant change in which we find ourselves.”
Isaac Cordal. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
Issaac Cordal: “The small figures that Isaac Cordal has placed in different parts of the San José neighborhood are part of his series, called Cement Eclipses. With this game he invites us to look for the works – he wants to draw attention to our behavior as a mass and the effects of the evolution of society. Isaac Cordal presents this intervention to us as a game and as a surprise, each encounter with one of the figures makes us wonder and question who we are.”
Isaac Cordal. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
Karto Gimeno: “Karto Gimeno makes his first foray into public art at the Asalto Festival and he did so by transferring his characteristic style to the large format: photography and almost scenographic installation.
With that style with which he captures the urban environment that surrounds us, Karto Gimeno wanted to bring to the people some characteristic buildings that surround the neighbourhood where Festival Asalto took place this year: abandoned and invaded by vegetation and humidity houses. Three large photographs located on the facades of the buildings become three new windows from which to look and recognize the past of an area that has forgotten its agricultural past.”
Karto Gimeno. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)Karto Gimeno. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)Marta Lapeña. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
Marta Lapeña: “In a large mural of five panels, the artist Marta Lapeña remembers the everyday life of the San José neighborhood of Zaragoza with some of the elements that represent its past: glass, ceramics, wheat and barley or the thread with which industrial tarpaulins were manufactured. The 50s and 60s saw the birth of a neighborhood that was born around the industry and now the artist wants to take us to that simplicity of workers’ homes with a figurative mural in which color takes us from one scene to another.”
Marta Lapeña. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
Slim Safont: “After meeting the neighbors of the building in which he was going to make his mural and walking the streets of the neighborhood capturing his life, the artist Slim Safont noticed a scene as everyday as it was loaded with a message; a slogan on a young girl’s shirt and a nursery in the background remind us of the future that lies ahead. And he does it with that technical skill that characterizes his work: almost photographic paintings that acquire texture as we get closer.”
Slim Safont. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
Akacorleone: “Akacorleone’s mural ‘ILUSIÓN’ is a set of vibrant colors halfway between abstraction and figuration. With this work, the Portuguese artist wants to defend the life and flourishing of the human being after experiencing difficult situations. As he said “my idea was to create something that simbolized the calm after the storm, something beautiful that can emerge from dark times”. Painted with the spray technique, the refined shapes that we appreciate in this work also lead us to a oneiric world.”
Akacorleone. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
Sawu Studio: With the challenge of transform into a new space a degraded -although widely used- square, the Sawu Studio team has built an ephemeral installation that claims play and meeting spaces for people. A large circle symbolizes that circle or safety space in which dialogue arises and which also protects the little ones.
The effect of light on wood turns four colors into an infinite palette that changes with the sun and the movement of those around it. With this installation, Sawu has managed to point out the need to humanize public spaces and respect them and has responded to the more than 300 surveys with which the neighborhood expressed its wishes towards the “nameless square”, the place where locate this facility.
Sawu Studio. Festival Asalto. Zaragoza, Spain. Edition 15th/2020 (photo courtesy of Festival Asalto)
Street art in the last five years has been lit on fire with politically themed illustrations, installations, slogans, opinions, and insights that implore passersby to take action and to be engaged in the direction that society is leading.
The once-consolidated TV-print media system has had many challengers in social media and websites, though those now too are being censored, demonetized, and throttled by the corporations and certain state actors who have infiltrated and hampered the free-flow of opinions and political discourse under various “honorable” guises.
Because major political machines and the corporate media don’t typically use the streets as a communication platform in US cities, aside from the occasional poster campaign for a candidate, the rather unfiltered collection of views and voices come through.
The inheritor of the historically revered “soapbox”, a physical and metaphorical location in a public square where people put forward their opinions, beliefs, philosophies, and ideologies in an impassioned voice, street art currently thrills, perplexes, informs, and annoys. It reaches the tech-savvy and the greater majority of our neighbors who are not on social media.
Given that these opinions could be easily buffed or blighted by any passerby yet are permitted to stay, there is an argument that art on the street is the present Vox Populi, a truer representation of the voice of the people.
In the city that knew him first, Donald Trump is given special scrutiny and particular invective for his actions, inactions, behaviors in the role he has occupied as president of the country since 2016. His official opponent in the race is a career politician, an historically right-wing version of a left-wing party, is somehow positioned as a better alternative for an electorate who is desperate for something, anything better than what they have.
By night’s end (or week end, or year end) we will know who is the winner of today’s election; Trump or Anti-Trump. No matter who prevails, street art will undoubtedly weigh in with its opinion.
Political cartoons and murals sometimes overlap but rarely as impressively and with such frightening a warning as this new one from Juanjo Surace in Barcelona.
The skill and quality and powerful depiction all come together here from across the Atlantic Ocean, perhaps a clarion summation of how those outside the U.S. now see us and the current occupant of the White House.
The artist is professionally a painter, sculptor, and animation professor. He says he is self taught and that his deepest love for his craft is expressed when spray it on the street.
Feeling dizzy? Not much to worry about should be a slow week coming up.
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week including Billy Barnacles, Calicho Art, City Kitty, D7606, Fire Flower, GoInco, Lucky, Lunge Box, Phetus, Praxis, Ree Vilomar, Turtle Caps, Wayne, Zuliamiau.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada: Somos La Luz (We Are The Light) 2. Vegan Flava: Migration In The Anthropocene 3. “The Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock – Diner Scene
BSA Special Feature: Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada: Somos La Luz (We Are The Light)
“This project is very personal to me. I have lost friends due to Covid 19. During the process of creating this portrait, I was able to meet Dr.Decoo´s family. I saw firsthand their immense sorrow for his loss. His life faded away just as the portrait I created was meant to fade away. Too many frontline workers are in danger of fading away. We must realize that this is in part due to the reality of institutional racism. I have seen the effects of poverty and marginalization. We must come together to address this reality.” – JRG
Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada: Somos La Luz (We Are The Light)
Vegan Flava: Migration In The Anthropocene
Maybe its because this weekend is Halloween but this promo video for street artist/land artist Vegan Flava may bring to mind another movie from this time of year.
“I think that we are in a moment of
humanity when the world is becoming polarized and part of the population is
choosing to withdraw into itself,” he says. So symbolically he is spraying
massive patches of grass with images of hands joined in cities across the world
– including Paris, Andorre, Geneva, Berlin, Ouagadougou, Yamoussoukro, and
Turin.
Today we take you to his latest
installation of three clasped hands in Istanbul, particularly symbolic because
it is at the precipice of so-called East and West. He says that since he would
like his monumental works to be bridges painted between cultures, the city of
Istanbul constitutes an essential stage, at the crossroads of the worlds between
the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
“Istanbul is really on two
continents between Europe and Asia,” he says, “and it’s amazing because we’re
going to be able to connect the two here. We made three frescoes; a fresco on
the European side, a floating barge covered with grass that will cross the
Bosphorus, and a fresco on the Asian continent in Beykoz.”
The three
frescoes were created using biodegradable pigments and included one artwork at Bogazici
University (2500 m2) on the European side of the country, a second
one was created in the Beykoz district (1600 m2) on the Asian side
and the two of them were linked by an artwork painted on a floating barge in
the Golden Horn of the Bosphorus (2200 m2). Valentin Flauraud stood
in for Saype at the barge.
The work
carried out in Istanbul was benefitted by support from the Istanbul
Metropolitan Municipality, Kültür A.Ş, the Municipality of Beşiktaş, the
Boğaziçi University, the Consulate General of Switzerland, the French Institute
in Turkey and UPS.
“I am convinced that it is only
together that humanity will be able to respond to the biggest challenges it
will have to overcome them.”
Fintan Magee has been experimenting with the various visual effects that occur when one is looking at a figure through a lens/glass/texture of some kind. In August we showed you a mural he had completed in Queensland, Australia that featured two figures behind a mottled glass pattern that you may recall from going to a lawyer or perhaps to hire a private detective.
Today we have ‘Shadow’, a new work in Newcastle that he created for the Big Picture festival. The vertical striping creates a subtle optical illusion of its own. He says he painted alongside a statue of Australia’s first female mayor as it looks across Civic Park toward the old civic trains station at the center of town.
Italy’s Mr. Fijodor has three new projects to share
with BSA readers that he recently completed, despite the obstructions that have
affected “normal” life.
“Some works have been interrupted, some never started,”
he says, “and now slowly – but fortunately – they are slowly returning to their
‘work in progress.’ ” A graffiti writer since 1994, he has continued to evolve
his art and art practices, which now include urban muralism and street art.
The first wall is about a tiger balancing on the edge, a symbol of disappearing species. Here in Montale, a hamlet of Castelnuovo Rangone in the province of Modena, a wall for Rosso Tiepido, a cultural local association. He’s calling it “Gattrigre in equilibrio precario!” (the precariously balanced tiger).
“In the era of dissipative
consumption, resources are disappearing faster and faster. In 50 years 60% of
animal species have been lost. Pollution and wild deforestation threaten
biodiversity on a daily basis, exposing it to constant risk. Gattigre is a
reinterpretation of the condition of the tiger, which, due to poaching and
climate change, risks extinction. It stands in balance, precariously in fact,
on shopping trolleys, a metaphor for our lifestyle that is increasingly geared
towards consumption and the frenzy of having.”
“Street Art Between Underground Culture and Contemporary Values”
His second project is more of a development project
that he did over a ten-month period with artist Fabrizio Sarti (aka SeaCreative).
A mélange of themes that include climate change, immigration, and peace, it may
not be completely clear to the passerby, but they are sure that they used only ecological and non-polluting sprays
and paints. MrFijodor says that area youth supported the artists during the project
and he was glad to include them.
He says the
project is part of a redevelopment action in the Brione district in Rovereto
promoted by Cooperativa Sociale Smart with the contribution of the Municipality
of Rovereto and the Autonomous Province of Trento.
“A factory and a bird”: Mrfijodor for “Innesti” @ MCAMuseo a Cielo Aperto di Camo
And finally, “Innesti,”
which he describes as “a graphic and illustrative work that tells an easily
accessible story, free from too many involved concepts.
It’s the story of “a
factory and a bird”, he says, and describes the longing for freedom during
lockdown, the interaction between community and territory, and thinking of
himself perhaps as a bird who flees the industrial city to take refuge in a rural
place to recharge creativity.
As we step monthly into the Greater Depression and hope for greater understanding of the mathematical trickery that is leading us there (with or without Covid), we’re curious to see what former hedge fund manager and now installation artist savant Nelson Saiers is creating.
Formerly working with HG Contemporary and its owner Philippe Hoerle-Guggenheim, who has artists like Retna and Kobra in his roster, Saiers is a self-directed representational artist whose circuitous route to truths frequently follow a mathematical one. Right now he’s not talking about quantitative easing or trillions of US debt, he’s talking about social inquality of a different nature: the paucity of black and brown-skin people in the fields of technology and some of the underlying structural foundations that aid and abet the systems.
He shows us his latest installation in front of the Lincoln Memorial and describes how it came together and the significance of his additions and subtractions.
“I’m doing an on and off multi-week installation in front of the Lincoln Memorial in DC. The exhibit uses math to argue for the increased inclusion and just representation of African-Americans in the world of technology (and the further advancement of their civil rights and equality).”
“This piece applies mathematics to argue for the fair representation of African-Americans in our tech businesses and throughout society. The math symbols on the computer printer paper hint at an important theorem from topology called Brown Representation, which has been added, but it is incomplete (topology is a modern form of geometry).
In essence, this argues that African-Americans should be fully represented in technology companies and other thriving industries. The incomplete list of math conditions is symbolic of the fact that while some basic strides have been made in this regard (for example, Brown v. Board of Education), much more is needed. The Domino box, which has been X’d out, points to the sugar industry (and its role in slavery), and the arrow directed at the printer paper references the migration of African-Americans from one category to another: poorly treated slaves to successful leaders.
The fact that some of the symbols were crossed out and then replaced (e.g., the “for all” symbol – upside down capital “A”) alludes to the tragic hiccups on the road to the achievement of these basic civil rights. Finally, the work’s raw cotton canvas background points to slavery and the centrality of cotton to its vile practice, a symbolic gesture to describe where our society started (and a fact that should not be “whitewashed”). Among many other mathematical motivations nestled in this piece, there is the word ‘monochromatic’ (one color) crossed out and replaced with the word ‘spectrum’ (range of color). While there are clear interpretations of this in the context of social justice, in math, a spectrum is also intimately tied to Brown Representability, expanding this metaphor and the important range of work we must achieve as a society to move forward.”
Some hard news seems to great us every day, yet New Yorkers don’t give up so easily. And by the way, banging bright and crispy fall weather we’ve been having, right?
Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week including Adam Fujita, Crash Floor, Disgusting is Good, Drop Dead Grace, Eye Sticker, Labor Camp, Mad Vaillan, Par, Save Art Space, Server Up, Specter, Texas, and Vayne.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
