If you are ever looking for an artist to paint your basketball court, Giulio Vesprini has that on lockdown. This is his seventh court project in recent years. Also, it would be helpful if your court is in Italy.
Calling this court of many colors “G O A L – Struttura G070” in Sant’Elpidio a Mare in Castellano, Italy, Vesprini says he has grown fond of these projects because he feels like he upgrades each small community when he creates and paints a unique scheme for each one. The artist says he believes that the courts create a sense of character for some neighborhoods and that the park itself becomes a meeting point between culture, sport, and nature.
This park already has a noted feature; “The park is famous for its astronomical observatory and my work pays homage to this fantastic place with its surrounding landscape by observing the moon, the sea, the beautiful countryside and the Via Lactea (Milky Way).”
San Luis Potosi is culturally rich, has a UNESCO protected historic downtown, and just hosted the Miss Mexico pageant last night – yet most people think of other Mexican cities before this one. It’s been an educational week discovering the city, its rooftop beer gardens, its cathedrals, it’s markets, museums, its seedy side of town with sex workers openly chatting, its gorgeous green parks that pop up every three blocks, its friendly helpful people, its mezcal, and its expansive safe walkways. This city may be one of Mexico’s most underrated.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Janin Garcin, Diego Rafel Lopez, Isela Vargas, Oscar Medina, Patricia Macias Mendizabal, Carlos Mejia, Says David, Panda, PaPa, and Celoz.
One of the best ways to see a city is through its advertisements, especially when handmade. Perhaps we’re disposed to thinking this because increasingly there is a blurred line today between typical commercial promotions and street artists branding their legal/illegal work on the street with social media tags or websites that lead to products to purchase.
Currently, at the Center for the Arts of San Luis Potosi (Centro de las Artes de San Luis Potosi), the “Sensacional” exhibition invites you to witness the graphical and design interpretations you’ll find on the streets of nearly every neighborhood – and you’ll feel welcomed. Walking through the galleries and seeing the figures, fonts, and colors is like sampling daily flavors and emotions you’ll find on Mexican streets. It’s a handmade open vernacular that speaks directly in the design and imagery of gas stations, corner groceries, signage, flyers, packaging, labels, posters, and announcements. The images may be painted with intense color schemes, skewed proportions, a familiar cartoon or celebrity, and humor; a pleasing sense of humor specific to the culture that is rather free of the usual contrivances.
Trilce Ediciones México. It has traveled to many cities since 2003 – including Glasgow (UK), Pasadena (US), Washington (US), New York (US), Boston (US), San Francisco (US), San Antonio (US), Zaragoza (Spain), Alexandria (Egypt), Bogota (Colombia), Zacatecas (Mexico), and Mexico City. Here in San Luis Potosi, we were happy to see many of the cultural influences that form the aesthetic of the street all joined together. The curators are well organized and the show is presented with categories that meld trade, food, aesthetics, nationalism, religion, animals, transportation, machismo, burlesque, music posters, and Lucha Libre.
Eclectic and entertaining, the everyday language of comics frequently appears in many images hand-created by untrained artists who function as advertising agencies for a client list that may include mechanic shops, churches, food vendors, liquor stores, mariachis, and wrestling expositions. Violating all kinds of corporate, copyright, and art school/trade rules, these idiosyncratic graphics are untouched by the blanded global commercial aesthetic, making them more authentic, human, and, definitely, pleasing.
These are the origins of the Universe, the concept of duality, the personification of diety, the reverence for the dead, the mourning of loss, and the paralyzing fear of the devil. These weighty themes and others have regularly been addressed through masks, costumes, and dance in rituals dating back to 3000 B.C. in Mexico. During the Pre-Hispanic period, people became gods and devils, eagles and jaguars – by donning masks.
Wearing a mask in ritual or celebration, one could assume powers over the harvest, influence relationships, attempt to sway health outcomes and even predict the future. Later, pagan practices were folded into western religious practices to gain new adherents (and donations) to the church, fortifying their importance in the histories re-told to future generations.
The masks we saw this week at the National Museum of the Masks (Museo Nacional de la Máscara) in San Luis Potosi were formidable, frightening, and fascinating – and you are guaranteed that there is never a dull moment as you walk from room to room. The mechanics of artifice and imagination summon some of the strongest emotions and associations perhaps because of their human scale. Whether made for “Las Mascaradas” or in later centuries at “El Carnaval” one realizes that sophistication and skill can be revealed in the most intricate pieces with valuable materials and those of the roughest cut or bluntest application of color.
Housed in a colonial palace in the beautiful historical center of the city that was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2010, surprisingly this museum presentation appears to have missing texts, holes where items once were, and darkened lights – detracting from the grand history of masks in general, and Mexico’s role in particular. A final section dedicated to masks worn by wrestling performers known as luchadores is a missed opportunity to connect the ancient with the contemporary and pay homage to the powerful impact and significance these masks have had in multiple media and on modern imaginations.
Overall the masks and costumes are incredibly impressive, drawn from regions and tongues across the country and centuries. Seeing these masks in this grand former home gives visitors a greater appreciation for the role artists have played in communicating the sacred and profane, the rituals of celebration and mourning, the creation of drama and myth, and the creation of traditions.
Certain sectors of Mexican society have a women problem. More accurately, they have a lack-of-reverence-and-respect-for-women problem.
Ongoing violence against women has pushed many in civil society to fight back in an organized fashion across classes, ages, trades, professions, religious and academic spheres. With marches, protests, street art, and speeches millions of Mexican women from all sectors of life and demographics have been coming out to the streets to let their leaders know that they are fed up.
“Ni una más” is the slogan most often used; “Not one more”.
In March protests in more than 20 states across the country women called for an end to gender-based violence. The Mexican newspaper Milenio reported extensively on protests in Mexico City and included news about marches in cities large and small; Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Tijuana, León and Puebla – all saw marches, as did numerous smaller cities including Morelia, San Luis Potosí, Saltillo, Cancún, Mérida, Oaxaca, Guanajuato, Los Cabos, Veracruz, Zacatecas, Hermosillo, Tlaxcala and Chilpancingo.
Several women’s rights organizations have accused President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of not making the problem a top priority in his administration. Even worse, some assert that he has callously blamed the problem on the victims themselves, adding to a general perception in the country that the president really doesn’t care. According to the Guardian, ten women are killed every day in Mexico.
This week in the historic district of San Luis Potosi we saw more references to this topic than any other in the street art and graffiti on walls. The technique and format of creation varies, but the messages are empowering and they illustrate a determination and resilience of people who are advocating for change.
Slogans are stenciled on fencing, wheat-pasted graphics are stuck to door ways. Here in La Calzada de Guadalupe, a green and vibrant park that tourists flock to, a statue paying tribute to woman’s rights is adorned with fresh flowers and information about the Femenicidios (or Femicides) that terrorize people lays at its feet.
Every few blocks you can see a poster seeking missing young women taped to light posts. In a city that has such a strong reverence for history and the sacrosanct place of women in its evolution, it is striking to see such issues so fervently discussed in the art on the street.
Intergenerational conflict ebbs and flows through history – and right now, along with so many other points of societal contention, it appears to be flowing.
In a matter of a decade, for example, the term “Baby Boomer” has transformed from something to be admired to the shortened term “Ok Boomer”. Coined by their own progeny – it is meant as a dismissive, even contemptuous disregard of the generation born after WWII. Sort of ironic, given the rebellious young hippies that the Boomers once were, to see them openly derided by Millenials.
And the youth… ahh, the youth. They’ve been bothersome for years – or centuries, to be exact. 4th Century B.C.E. carries a quote from rhetoric by Aristotle about those darn kids:
“[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances. … They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.”
Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
While we aren’t sure what the backstory is of this new photo-pasted mural by the Italian street artist Bifido, one may surmise the screaming old and young subjects have reached a tipping point in the high-intensity arguments that occur between generations. Added to this fight is that the one the young artist tells us surrounded it’s installation here in Sicily, Italy.
“This piece is the fruit of many days of work. Work often hindered both by the hosting community and by the very people who commissioned it. It was a process made up of arguments, silences and distances difficult to bridge. During my stay, many times I changed my mind about what I was going to do and I finally decided to honor some teenagers I met there, without whom I couldn’t have done anything. Those teenagers come up every single day against a narrow-minded and short-sighted mindset which they stubbornly try to change.”
Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
It sounds like it was a very intense experience, and yet we all know the fervor the artist speaks of. Diplomats also council that the only way forward is usually some form of compromise.
“So, no compromises,” says Bifido of his experience. The name of the work also indicates the rancor that can lead us to wars – again it rings through the centuries; “everything changes but you’re always the same shit”
Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)Bifido. Everything changes but you’re always the same shit. Sicily, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artist)
The sheer number of organic and community walls in Berlin means that you are exposed to a great variety of styles and opinions and perspectives through art daily on the street. There is a sense of pride about this as well – and we’re pleased to see free speech here while privately held social platforms are growing tumors of censorship. Long live the contradictory opinions that challenge our minds and our assumptions.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: 1UP, Dave the Chimp, Lacuna, Anne Bengard, Murad Subay, Caro Pepe, Sam Crew, Dafne Tree, Little Ms. Fierce, Emily Strange, Anne Baerlin, Kiexmiezn030, Cippolini187, Artmos 4, Juliana Zamoit, Paris, Urteil, and Mate X.
As the weather turns warmer, activities on the streets become more fevered, energetic, free.
Graffiti writers burst out of the doors to their apartments and houses with backpacks filled with markers and cans, looking for opportunities to express themselves, to claim space, to be seen. Last week in Spain, a crew of the most actively known writers in Catalonia got together for a graffiti jam on the embankments of the Rio Congost a few miles from Barcelona. BSA contributor and photographer Lluis Olive took a day trip to the area to document and share the results of the jam with our readers.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. George Booth life at The New Yorker 2. DOES X JORIT team up for a large mural in Napels, Italy. 3. PichiAvo in Linz. Timelapse video.
BSA Special Feature: George Booth life at The New Yorker
Directed by Nathan Fitch, the iconic artist George Booth looks back on fifty years of work for The New Yorker.
Drawing Life: George Booth
DOES X JORIT team up for a large mural in Napels, Italy.
You may still be wondering what Post-Graffiti is, since the term has appeared as early as the 1980s and yet, graffiti persevered decades afterward and is just as vital today as it ever has been. Perhaps we’re being too literal.
The Speerstra Gallery says in their new press release that “Seven’s characters have taken over the walls of Paris. Accompanied by a text calling out to passers-by, Seven’s figures are the voice of the oppressed whose lives have been turned upside down by horror, whether they are from Africa, Syria, Ukraine or elsewhere.”
Seven. “Borders”. Speerstra Gallery. Paris, France. (photo courtesy of the gallery)
At times illustrative, figurative, you can see forms congregating, laying down in a group, rising from the group. The scenes bring to mind those chased by war, now reduced to a number, simplified to a logo of human. It reflects these people as much as our desensitized approach to others in need. To address the complexity of the masses, Seven appears to be stripping away to the most elemental, looking to evoke a storyline with his characters. With “Borders”, he is on his way.
Seven. “Borders”. Speerstra Gallery. Paris, France. (photo courtesy of the gallery)Seven. “Borders”. Speerstra Gallery. Paris, France. (photo courtesy of the gallery)Seven. “Borders”. Speerstra Gallery. Paris, France. (photo courtesy of the gallery)Seven. “Borders”. Speerstra Gallery. Paris, France. (photo courtesy of the gallery)
Exhibition and artists reception: Saturday 14 MAY at 2:00 pm
SPEERSTRA GALLERY / PARIS / FRANCE 24 rue Saint Claude 75003 Paris
Street artist Pejac is raising funds for NGOs that provide services to war-torn populations, with a new auction of his latest print entitled So Far, So Close.
Senseless loss comes from war, and artists again rise to the occasion to aid those who are hurt by it.
The artist says that 100% of the proceeds will be given to the NGOs Voices of Children, which focused on helping children who have suffered as a result of military operations to recover psychologically and psychosocially, and Acted, a French NGO that works to provide basic necessities to the population as well as helping in evacuation and crisis management training.
Pejac. So Far, So Close. Charity Auction For Ukraine. (photo courtesy of the artist)
The auction starts today, tomorrow the 12th of May at 16:00 hrs (CET) and will run until the 26th of May at 16:00 hrs (CET). It will be held by the Tate Ward auction house together with the online art platform Artsy. To take part online you can use the following link. Potential buyers will need to register for an account with Artsy on their website.
Pejac. So Far, So Close. Detail. Charity Auction For Ukraine. (photo courtesy of the artist)Pejac. So Far, So Close. Detail. Charity Auction For Ukraine. (photo courtesy of the artist)
SPECIFICATIONS
So Far, So Close – Artist’s Proof Print 110 x 80 cm (43.3 x 31.5 inch) Single-coloured hand-pulled photopolymer on hand-coloured monotype Okawara paper on Velin d’Arches cotton paper 300 gsm Hand-finished by the artist by use of acrylic paint and pencil Signed and numbered by the artist A certificate of authenticity will be issued six months after the purchase Packed and delivered in a custom-made wooden crate featuring a laser-engraved image of one scene of the artwork.
Pejac. So Far, So Close. Postcard Lottery ticket. Charity Auction For Ukraine. (photo courtesy of the artist)
The artist invites anyone who’d like to spread awareness of the fundraising to do so through his Instagram profile @Pejac_art. To say thank you for the help and support there will be a giveaway of 5 hand-painted, signed postcards from the SFSC collection.
So Far, So Close – Postcard Lottery Ticket 21 x 14.8 cm (8.27 x 5.83 inch) High-quality digital print in colour Finesse Premium Silk 350 gsm paper mounted on 2.25 mm grey cardboard Hand-finished by the artist by use of acrylic paint Signed by the artist
Enigm. New Surrealism. BSMT Space. London, UK. (photo courtesy of BSMT)
We’ve been seeing an uptick – perhaps you have too – in the surrealist inspired works on the street over the past couple of years. In fact it has heightened our interest so much recently that we will soon be looking at originals by Leonora Carrington to reacquaint ourselves with a master of the 20th century movement and to perhaps divine what is coming during globally turbulent times. For this reason it is not a surprise to see these street/studio artists opening a new show next week in the gallery/street that will be endeavoring to stare through the surrealist lens in London as well.
Enigm. New Surrealism. BSMT Space. London, UK. (photo courtesy of BSMT)
Given our poor choices in leaders, our unresponsive institutions, our heaving movements in society and science, and the march of the war industry directly toward what may already be the beginning of WWIII, it is appropriate to consider the role that surrealism played the last time we were slip-sliding toward Hell.
Here in London, the gallery BSMT Space presents what they are calling a New Surrealism with a selection of four new horseriders of the apocalypse: Ed Hicks, Enigm, Perspicere, and Ronch. Grandchildren of the original surrealism movement, they have the distinct honor of living beyond it. Now at the dawn of artificial intelligence, drones, and realistic robots, perhaps it is time to paint surreally, really.
Ed Hicks. New Surrealism. BSMT Space. London, UK. (photo courtesy of BSMT)
Siting Andre Bretons pronouncements in the ‘20s about dreams and realities, this quartet “aims to explore this famous cultural movement through the lens of a new wave of artists whose dream-like scenes and illogical or bizarre imagery collectively explore the workings of the mind,” in these ‘20s. Here their unfamiliar landscapes are welcomed and complex – and familiar.
“From the automatic drawings and paintings of Stefano Ronchi and Enigm which attempt to unlock ideas and images from their unconscious minds to the dream worlds of Ed Hicks or hidden psychological tensions of Perspicere, this exhibition attempts to engage with this new reality through the veil of the Surrealist movement.”
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
