Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Eelco Virus, Faith47, Jetsonorama, JJ Veronis, Monica Canilao, Mr. Prvrt, Pyramid Oracle, Rambo, Sean9Lugo, Seeone, She Wolf, and Vexta
Dutch multidisciplinary street artist Eelco van den Berg (‘Virus) was in back in Brooklyn last week for a minute putting up a new wall with the Bushwick Collective – cat, fox, and bid in his distinctive style. “In the eighties I got infected with the hip hop virus,” he says, “Especially with graffiti.” Though he has painted with some of the masters of the graffiti scene, his own style evokes the folkloric and the graffuturist and 3-D modeling. Illustrator, painter, graffitist, all – Eelco is making an impression with his aerosol work no matter the label.
Jef Aerosol, the French master street stencilist for over 3 decades was in NYC this week. He took part in a couple of commercial events and to visit other Street Artists shows and events like Nick Walker’s show on the LES/Chinatown border and the L.I.S.A. Project outdoor jam in Little Italy with Zimad, Bishop203, Carlo McCormick, Martha Cooper, and a cast of hundreds.
He told us he is lining up a couple of projects for next year in New York, which is good to hear, and of course he managed to hit up a handfull of spots himself at The Bushwick Collective in Brooklyn, including a large piece he’s calling “Black is Beautiful”.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bishop203, Blek le Rat, Caratoes, Cone SP, Cost, Dasic, Eelco “Virus” van den Berg, ENX, Enzo Sarto, Jerk Face, Nemo’s, Ripo, and Trash Bird.
Veteran New York Street Art/graffiti artist COST was in the news this week after being nabbed for putting up illegal work, and as you might expect, is instantly a hero to some because of it. Literally the same day as the police press release about the arrest we noticed a fellow artist mask taping some letters on a buffed portion of this legal wall where COST and his fellow artist ENX have been riding for a while. We returned a day later to find the message below.
School’s back in session, the Jews just celebrated a new year, Kobra painted new portraits of Warhol and Basquiat in Williamsburg, and if you were at Brooklyn Museum last night you got to see Street Artist and muralist Don Rimx and us live – and us with markers in our hands looking completely lost.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring $howta, Apples on Pictures, Conor Harrington, Dain, EKG, Funky13, Jack the Beard, Jeff Huntington, Jesse James, Matthew Reid, Mr. Prvrt, Os Gemeos, Pyramid Oracle, Ramiro Davaros-Coma, Sam3, Square, Stikman, and What Is Adam.
““I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable.” ~ Maya Angelou ~
Autumn in New York yo! Crisp cool, sunny days. Girls in tight sweaters. Boys in combat boots. Every cool air festival you can think of is all happening simultaneously – skateboarders closing down Kent Ave on BKs north side, Indian Larry’s block party with motorcycles of every stripe, and this years San Gennaro festival in Little Italy looks like it wants to reclaim this part of town before it is subsumed by the crushing wealth machine now chewing through Chinatown. Literally the festival looks like it spans the entire length of Mulberry from Canal to Houston – that’s longer than the line to get the new iPhone in Soho!
But neither one of those will compare to todays’ expected line of concerned citizens snaking through the streets in Manhattan to address the effect of climate change. Coordinated with marches in cities around the world it’s estimated to draw 100,000 people. We’ve had a sneak peek at what Street Artist Swoon has in store for an installation at the end of the march, including some of the very same materials she just used for her “Submerged Motherlands” at the Brooklyn Museum, but arranged entirely cleverly differently.
A few weeks ago at Nuart we were invite to speak about activism on the street around the world using Street Art as a form of expression, and we are surprised to see a rising wave of it that not many seem aware of – including some of our artworld peers. This week alone a few Street Artists have created new work to promote today’s march. It is not hard to get us into the street on a regular day so this is just one shiny bauble of grassroots creativity that you won’t want to miss. Also, technically, it’s still summer until Tuesday.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bifido, Crash, Daze, Gilf!, Hek Tad, Jetsonorama, Karl Addison, LMNOPI, Misshab, Sean9Lugo, and Skount.
This weeks “21st Precinct” show of graffiti and street art style mural / installation work did blow some minds for sure, as did last nights official opening – mostly because of the great display of work on four floors. But additionally all sorts of paranoia was afoot when people began writing on social media and to us that they really thought this was a sting operation of some sort.
Aside from the fact that we clearly said in our postings on BSA and Huffpost that the building had long since been decommissioned as a precinct and we were simply focusing on the irony of the facts, minds and nerves were blown nonetheless. Truth is, this is a good show with some thoughtful pieces and installations and not surprisingly, many thematically addressed the contentious relationship some have with the police traditionally. But there is lots of other stuff too and it is worth your time. Just don’t get arrested. Kidding!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring APC Crew, Art is Trash, Bishop203, Castellaneta, Chekos, Cruz, Foxx Face, Franksy, Gaia, Hek Tad, JJ Veronis, Lorenzo Maza, Mark Samsonovich AKA Love is Telepathic, Melty Cats, Mr. PRVT, Mr. Toll, Nekst, Opiemme, Pixote, Shantell Martin, Skrew, UR New York and Wolfe Metal Work, Tommy Wolfe.
“These are the questions that people asked most often while Chekos and I were painting in Castellaneta.
Ernest Hemingway, Sean Connery, Sigmund Freud, Steve Jobs, Padre Pio, Van Gogh, Giuseppe Verdi, George Clooney, Lenin, Cavour, Garibaldi…are some of the guesses.
The work came from Chekos’s idea, a reflection on the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. We tried to bring the spectator to have an experience close to a personality test, with an iconographic work that recalls the Rorschach test. The words “Stereotype” in the center of the composition refer to the process that brings people to recognize different famous people.” ~ Opiemme
It’s the Dog Days of Summer and there are a lot of cool cats on the street right now.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fujita, Be Everything, Che Man, Clint Mario, Dan Witz, E.L.K. Icy & Sot, Ishmael, JR, Kenny Scharf, LMNOPI, Mika, Mike Makatron, Rusebk, Sabio, Solus, Sweet Toof, and You Go Girl!
Tragedy is grabbing world headlines again and we can’t help but be swayed by it as the downed passenger aircraft in Ukraine smells of a lawless future and the international community seems rather helpless to address it meaningfully. Simultaneously the Israeli / Palestinian crises flares for the seemingly millionth time along with international opinion, a fire now fed with large helpings of social media oxygen, buffeted by various marches in the actual streets around the world and here in NYC.
Our banner today is a relatively new collage/painting currently on view in the Italian Cultural Institute of New York by the Street Artist BR1, who depicts the strife in somewhat cartoonish exaggerated simplicity, flattening the complexity of history with two dimensional caricature. Comments some made when we ran it a couple of weeks ago for the opening of the show (before the current events had begun) made it clear that even art about the conflict seems radioactive.
Our top image this week is an actual street piece from Icy & Sot and it brought more comments on Instagram than most other photos, so strong are people’s reactions to it. As far as the Ukraine/Russia news, we haven’t seen any Street Art about that – except maybe for that Billi Kid caricature of Putin as a cowboyearlier in the year but you couldn’t really say it is directly related.
With this pall of strife filling screens and streets right now its no wonder the one image below of Ewok’s wall full of discontented people was shared so many times on our FB Fan Page this week. “Hey these grumpy faces make me happy,” said one commenter.
So anyway, here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Art is Trash, Atom, BustArt, Cold World, E.L.K., Ewok, False, GG, Gualicho, Icy & Sot, Kuma, Myth, Osch, Otto Schade, Post No Selfie, QRST, Sean9Lugo, Sebs, Sexer, Topaz, UFO907, Unvale, Wing, and Zaria.
Reprising some of the same thrust and parry action recently on display in his site specific installation at the Portsmouth Museum of Art in New Hampshire, Street Artist Li-Hill brought the same asymmetric energy, minus the lumber, to this Brooklyn wall this week. Living in New York at the moment, the Toronto based artist has experimented with graffiti in his exploration of painting, design, graphic design, and illustration.
The kinetic fencing tableau depicted here weaves and dodges and leans forward, echoing through duplication of layers like frames of an action, effectively a painted stop-action of planes and atmospheric waves. When describing himself Li-Hill says he is attempting to “decipher the complexities of the rapid development in our modern age.”
Using the full physical range of all his limbs in New York’s July sunshine, the artist directs his energy to the gestural and engages in a purposeful postmodern dance with paint and a wall — that may recall high-tech CGI scenes from The Matrix — in effect mastering the elements even while veils of separation dissolve before our eyes.
Apparently there is another spectacular sporting event that’s got everyone captivated today and for a couple hours it will be easy to get a cronut or a seat on the subway because people will be worshipping flat screens inside a dark sports bar on the Lord’s Day. We recommend you jog right over to the High Line because it’s free and will likely be a little more commodious than usual. You can lounge while listening to a sleek waterfall, stroll arm in arm with your beloved, gaze upon the urban-wild landscaping and even catch a new billboard high-jacking that might make you crack a smile.
The billboard space is great if reserved for Art On The High Line, but has been recently replaced by straight up garishly banal advertising, sort of marring the beauty of this big public works project whose spirit is better served when it steers clear of commercial messaging. This week sometime a few buckets of yellow paint were used to selectively buff the message to create a new one. A bit of genius goes a long way sometimes, doesn’t it? Although, for all we know, it’s a clever way to draw attention to the original ad, since you can still read it.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alice Pasquini, bunny M, Bust Art, Cera, Damon, Gazoo, Gum Shoe, Kid Monkey, Knarf, Labrona, LMNOPI, Low Bros, Miriam Castillo, Mr. Prvrt, Pyramid Oracle, Sweet Toof, Trentino, UD, Urban Spree, Vexta, Wing, and Zaria.
Now we’re in the thick of it – summer murals and independent interventions all. Regardless of technique, experience or background, artists of all stripes are bringing new works on walls across the city, including our top image this week which is by someone new to the street, Turkish fine artist, painter, designer Anil Duran in Bushwick. Labels (Street Art, graffiti, urban art, murals) can be helpful to categorize, but let’s drop them this week and call it art, and see if it applies.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Anil Duran, Anthony Lister, BD White, Chuck Berrett, Damon, Daniel Anguilu, EC13, El Niño de las Pinturas, GG Artwork, Hitnes, Joseph Meloy, Kremen, London Kaye, MKGO, Nepo, Nicole Salgar, Ramiro Davarro-Comas, TLC, Vandal Expressionism, and X-Men.
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
