If you are not seeing opinions and theories being expressed on social media or raging cable, you can always go to the streets today, as the voice of the people is marching out to grab a soap box and yell their opinion. Faced with a daily firehose of government neglect and corporate disinformation, you and your neighbors are either being tricked into hating each other of divining the truth.
You may not agree with the sentiment of the street artists who are going out right now to paint or wheatpaste their art and perspectives, but somehow you have more empathy and trust for them than the millionaires behind microphones on screens wherever you look.
Shout out this week to a new kid on the block, an artist named Stickermaul who puts out a smart array of messages using collage, hand written text, pasted text, photos, and USPS stickers to convey a number of quick socio/political messages in Manhattan. The new voices right now are informing us of the evolutions/revolutions that are taking place.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Bella Phame, Coby Kennedy, Elle, Live Thoughfully, Lust Sick Puppy, Mad Artist, and Rono.
Muralist Inti finished a metaphorical mastery in Grenoble, France last month that helps us to put ourselves in perspective, remembering that in the system of planets we reside in, the earth is just one minor player. This rising giant, perhaps goddess in a hand-tied apron and silenced by a flower, holds the globe in her hand.
Quoting the astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, Carl Sagan, Inti imparts an observation he is contemplating; “…Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” (Carl Sagan)
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. Freight Train Graffiti Melbourne. Can’t Do Tomorrow Festival 2. Anthony Lister – Head Hunter 2020
BSA Special Feature: Freight Train Graffiti Melbourne from the “Can’t Do Tomorrow” Festival 2020
Graffiti Writers and a major collaboration with Southern Shorthaul Railroad (SSR)
There is not unanimity of opinion about painting trains these days – in fact perspectives cannot be further apart when you consider the hot invective spilled on graff writers in some cities – and the invitation and embrace of them in others.
The video above from New York in January presents a conundrum of many sorts – a full train covered by graffiti is enraging to some, an indication of lawless disrespect for society. Only a month later Melbourne government blessed the Can’t Do Tomorrow Festival which invited graffiti writers to do something very similar to an entire train. Cognitive dissonance much?
Face it, for artists and fans the two videos below are a bit of freight porn – products of the urban art festival where a group of old school and prolific graff writers transformed a 22-carriage Southern Shorthaul Railroad (SSR) freight train into the largest outdoor gallery in Australia.
From the producers of the festival “Can’t Do Tomorrow was a massive
celebration of urban art and contemporary culture in one of the most iconic
underground spaces in Australia: The Facility. Across 10 days, over 16,000
PEOPLE immersed themselves in a new way of consuming, or being consumed by,
art.” Eloquent and on-point.
We also appreciate the description of the aspirational outlook of the organization,
“We don’t pretend to be custodians of the contemporary urban art scene. We’re a
micro-movement inside a macro-movement. We are serious about creating a
community that will garner the contemporary urban movement the recognition it
deserves.”
Freight Train Graffiti Melbourne. Can’t Do Tomorrow Festival
Anthony Lister is Head Hunting in 2020
Automated speech synthesis transcription is a current fashion and Anthony Lister cleverly frightens you while hiding behind this audio accompaniment to the video – a disjointed emotionally vacant spirit that parses at a metronomic tempo before melting into the hounds of Satan. How better to introduce the fascinating masks he has been creating for years.
“But in so
far as we are social beings who live in a community of similar individuals with
whom we are in continuous and direct competition, often unconsciously,
primitive beings also feel the urgent need to be different, to impress, to
bewilder and to instill fear, so that they may make themselves revered and
respected.” Happy head hunting!
Street artist Elbi Elem is revealing shapes that are inside this old building in Catalonia- a series of “Variable Geometries”.
Elbi Elem. Geometrias Variables. Konvent. (photo courtesy of Elbi Elem)
Productively using these days of social isolation, the artist has often created surprise sculptural installations in unconventional spaces. This one arose from wanting to “draw with thread.” An curious description, but it gets even better!
Elbi Elem. Geometrias Variables. Konvent. (photo courtesy of Elbi Elem)
“I wanted to achieve the perception of actually sewing the walls,” she says, “as if it were a wound and suture, drilling and piercing them, without use no visible element for its subjection.”
Elbi Elem. Geometrias Variables. Konvent. (photo courtesy of Elbi Elem)
This old factory
in Cal Rosal provided ample opportunity to test different techniques until finally
the desired effect was achieved.
Creating it as
a guest with Konvent Punt Zero the artistic residence in Berga, Catalonia, Elbi
says its the kind of space that encourages experimentation, research, and
expression. “I wanted to make a suspended composition of geometric shapes
aligned with each other,” Elbi says, “without the use of knots, joining both
ends to make them look like a unit.”
Elbi Elem. Geometrias Variables. Konvent. (photo courtesy of Elbi Elem)Elbi Elem. Geometrias Variables. Konvent. (photo courtesy of Elbi Elem)Elbi Elem. Geometrias Variables. Konvent. (photo courtesy of Elbi Elem)Elbi Elem. Geometrias Variables. Konvent. (photo courtesy of Elbi Elem)Elbi Elem. Geometrias Variables. Konvent. (photo courtesy of Elbi Elem)Elbi Elem. Geometrias Variables. Konvent. (photo courtesy of Elbi Elem)Elbi Elem. Geometrias Variables. Konvent. (photo courtesy of Elbi Elem)
“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
That’s the text of a cable sent by the writer Mark Twain from London to the press in the United States after his obituary had been mistakenly published, so the story goes.
Similarly, the “elite” of 2020 may be suitably surprised by this new text piece by street commentator ELFO on the streets of Verona, Italy. Since there are roughly four months remaining to the year, maybe this is a meant to be prophecy, but from what we all can see, the “elite” are getting richer and richer from this pandemic, as well as the custom-tailored “bail-outs” from the right- and left-wing politicians who write the bills.
Stohead (Christoph Häßler) started writing graffiti at 14 in southern Germany, where he was born, and last month he completed his largest mural in Berlin for UN, three decades after he began.
Exhibiting on canvas for the last two decades in galleries and art fairs, he is an innovator with custom tools and he has mastered his own techniques of deconstructing the letterform, repeating and rolling them in layers behind translucence, complementary waves of motion cascading across, over, and down the wall of this eight-story residential building.
Part of the “One Wall” program at the Urban Nation Museum, Stohead is a calligraffitist of the newer international order, not afraid to experiment and grow, borrow and synthesize in untypical directions. Perhaps its this 6th sense that is causing this new work to slow motorists along Delpzeile 14 in Berlin-Charlottenburg.
“Encased in a wooden frame,
the figure of Steve is shown seated, in a palette and pose reminiscent of
traditional celebratory portraits of kings or popes. In his hand, he holds a
timepiece, a symbol to the lost time waiting for change,” says the press
release.
Gabriel Pitcher portrait of Steve Barnabis. Wood Street Walls/Project Zero. London, UK. (photo courtesy of Gabriel Pitcher)
UK artist Gabriel Pitcher has just completed a new community mural to address the topic of vulnerable youths and knife crime in London. Located on Canning Road, the figure of Steve Barnabis rises many stories upward, a local leader who has worked hard to address social and financial inequities for some time. Now the Covid economy is threatening to foist cutbacks and setbacks on the organization he is a youth worker at, Project Zero.
BSA gladly encourages
readers, especially our London readers, to support this youth-centered project
that bridges the gap, creates community engagement, and provides badly needed
servies.
Gabriel Pitcher portrait of Steve Barnabis. Wood Street Walls/Project Zero. London, UK. (photo courtesy of Gabriel Pitcher)
“I have seen first hand the positive impact Steve and Project Zero have had on young people in this borough, and the void it has left in the community. I also recognize the significant financial challenge faced by local authorities suffering cuts from central government funding. These critical services are desperately needed, programs like Steve’s have a life altering effect on the people using them.” ~Mark Clack, Wood Street Walls CIC
Happy EID Mubarek to all our Muslim brothers and sisters. Full moon will wash over our warm summer skies in Brooklyn tomorrow – hopefully you can get up on a roof to see it.
Please tell us again about that two-party system we hear about every day. Why does it look like one party? Have you heard about this new documentary coming called “The Swamp”?
Maybe its the time in quarantine but the quality of the workspersonship on the streets these days appears to have increased overall – perhaps because artists have much more time to pour into their paste-ups, stencils, paintings.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Amir Diop99, BK Foxx, Black Ligma, Captain Eyeliner, City Kitty, De Grupo, Downtown DaVinci, Epizod Tagg, Panam, Texas, Zuli Miau.
Gonzalo Borondo stages an insurrection against the authorities who would hope to instruct you how to think about art in the public sphere, the right of the overlord to pollute the visual landscape at will, and the limitations of our imaginations in Segovia a nine-month installation.
A 32 billboard installation totaling
17 locations, the Spanish street artist and conceptual installation artist
evokes sepia-soaked memories of history as told through the view of those recounted
in a communal uprising here 500 years ago.
Extending beyond the frames with sculpture, layered textures, and projection, the post-industrial modernist documents events and takes liberties with his interpretation, a 5 chapter “INSURRECTA” that instructs and reflects with symbols and figures and open spaces. For those familiar with his vocabulary over the last decade+, it’s a fulsome maturity that commands as it expands, with poetry. Sometimes it plays with it background, other times the background has its way with the canvas.
Paying homage to Goya, his engravings of “Los Caprichos” and “Los Desastres”, he works within a narrow palette and innovates forcefully, playing with perspective and your willingness to interpret.
In his description of the Segovian people
and their fierce spirit of defiance and riotous acts in pursuit of autonomy and
self-reliance, he says he is inspired by “humanity confronting nature, the
discourse of the urban in the natural landscape, the effects of imposition on
society, the reappropriation of spaces by different agents.”
Leaning heavily on visual metaphor,
many in the graffiti and street art communities can identify with his take on reappropriation
of land, resources, and the expression of art in the public sphere. It has
become commonplace to expound upon street art as an “outdoor gallery”, but this
mapped and self-guided tour looks as close to a museum exhibition as we’ve
seen, and it’s even walkable for many.
Gonzalo Borondo presents INSURRECTA alongside the City Council of Segovia in collaboration with Acción Cultural Española (AC/E). The project sees the Department of Culture commemorate the 500th anniversary of the communal uprising in the city.
Segovia, Spain, from 29 June 2020 to 23 April 2021
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. disCONNECT, a “Lock-Down” Artists Takeover
BSA Special Feature: disCONNECT, a “Lock-Down” Artists Takeover
London / 24 July – 23 August 2020
Today a series of videos from the artists takeover of this London home, a testament to the fortitude of organizers and artists who didn’t accept “Lock-down” for an answer. Yes, everyone practiced social distancing, and no, a large public opening event could not take place. But this may serve as one welcome new model for art in the time of Corona.
The video series is expertly produced by Fifth Wall TV and a small consortium of commercial/cultural partners including HK Walls and Schoeni Projects. Details at the end of the video parade.
Mr Cenz / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
David Bray / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
Aida Wilde / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
Alex Fakso / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
Isaac Cordal / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
Herakut / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
Zoer / disCONNECT / Fifth Wall TV
To find more about disCONNECT A “Lock-Down” Artists Takeover / London / 24 July – 23 August 2020 click HERE
Sydney-based social realist painter and muralist Fintan Magee has been burrowed in his studio for the last few months, wondering when he was going to be able to do some figurative painting. The plants have kept him company, and he finds it reassuring to watch them in the winter sun as he keeps himself quarantined from unnecessary contact with others during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Every day
while in the lockdown, I photographed and painted two small plants that I had
recently repotted and was keeping on my balcony,” he says as he scans over the
32 small still life works he created. It’s been a good exercise, working
outside his comfort zone perhaps – not photoshoots of subjects, no imagining of
them operating inside a new metaphor.
Now he shares
with BSA readers what the process looks like, and picks 9 of his favorite still-lifes
as a cross-section print for you to marvel. “The work documents the simple act
of keeping the plants alive during the lockdown. Each work took 5-7 hours to
make and allowed me to discard building concepts and focus primarily on the
painting process making each work a daily meditation, allowing reflection on
physical space and the passing of time while marking a day of the crisis.”
For illustrator and muralist Erendaj, that is an open question to us as he reveals the skeleton beneath this soft skinned portrait based on the classical painting of the 19th century. Erendaj says that the painter Ernst Deger of the Dusseldorf School inspired him greatly, and “I had a strange feeling that that very image was ideal.”
The Russian
painter completed one painting directly over another here in Penza, and he
slowly removed one while the camera recorded its progress. When the images are
rolled together for a stop action video one gets a sense of time passing over
this figure, who could be from a few different time periods. “I had to choose
just an image not attached to modern time or reality,” he says.
Painting on
the streets for over 12 years, he says, and Erendaj estimates that he has created
over 100 murals in that time period. Now he is wondering about the impact that
an artist can make in history – or any of us really. And he shares his
manifesto here: “Many people live only for living. They leave nothing after
them. What is living – if you are already dead? Other people create … they
build houses, write books, draw pictures, create couples and families,” he says
before his parting shot “Make history before you go.”
Street art welcomes all manner of materials and methods, typically deployed without permission and without apology. This hand-formed wire piece …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
