In Honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day

BSA Images Of The Week: 03.20.16

March 20, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

The Street Art world was shaken this week by the announcement and group action by BLU and friends in Bologna buffing/chipping away his street pieces in reaction to the opening of a new show there Friday night that contained BLU works done on a derelict building owned by someone else.

The ironies are rampant when a city chases down vandals, sponsors graffiti/street art clean-up programs, and then heralds the exact same works in a formal museum show with good lighting, cocktails, elegant suits, a press conference, and invited guests. Aside from the various contingencies trying to hi-jack these events to put forth other agendas or establish their opinion as sacrosanct, the psychological and philosophical rifts have been self-evident long before this show and this astounding act of self-destruction.

We’re all wondering what is an amenable solution to interests that are by nature in conflict yet are so intertwined as to appear fused, and the list of questions to consider continues to grow. See our questions from a posting earlier in the week HERE. Normally the press ignores these stories which we talk about regularly, but BLU mastered the PR game this week (and you know that serious money is involved) so it was in Le Monde, The Guardian, and ArtNet, among others. See some images from the opening and press conference are here.

Meanwhile the street can’t stop, won’t stop.

Here’s our our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Fu, ATOMS, Butt Sup, El Sol 25, Fish With Braids, KEO Xmen, Knon, London Kaye, Nipper, Persue, Reed B More, Sean9Lugo, Scott Marsh, Self-Indulgence, SGNL, Skewville, Tara McPherson, The Yok & Sheryo and Zola.

Our top image: Reed B More. — Finding this handmade wire mobile hanging from electrical wires somewhere in Brooklyn made us very happy this week because; a. mobiles are cool, b. It’s hand made, one of a kind, and c. artists like Skewville and others were doing them at the turn of this century and we haven’t seen many lately. It is fashionable to bash muralism at the moment for usurping the spirit of Street Art, or some other silliness. It’s mucho mas dopetastic to just do good work and put it out there and let the hackneyed non-debate rage without you. We’re keeping our eyes open for small, often hidden, fresh, well placed, unexpected, unpredictable, original, one of a kind, non-derivative, non-hash-tagged pieces. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Speaking of Skewville…these new dogs have suddenly been flying in Brooklyn skies. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It’s not just Pi. It’s octopi. London Kaye forever and ad infinitum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

London Kaye. Here is our guess with this installation. The graff by Knon was already on the wall and she decided to collaborate. What do you think of the results? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Butt Sup under a Pear. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SGNL (photo © Jaime Rojo)

KEO Xmen on the other side… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tara McPherson (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sean9Lugo in collaboration with El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sean9Lugo. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Popeye imagery pops up again. El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nipper in Stavanger, Norway. (photo © @toris64)

Zola. An apt street visual representation of the polarity we’re dealing with today. Although there would probably need to be 98 more of the figure on the left to present a more accurate ratio, and 97 of them would be sleeping or watching reality TV and ESPN. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zola. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Speaking of celebrity culture, Sydney based muralist Scott Marsh often depicts recognizable music personas like James Brown and Biggie Smalls in his figurative works. This week he completed this intense love scene parody on the street. But this is evidently more than romance, it’s carnal.

“No one can love Kanye quite like Kanye,” says Marsh of the new piece on Zigi’s Wine & Cheese Bar in Teggs Lane, Chippendale. Wonder what music they are listening to?

New mural of Two Kanyes kissing in Sydney. Detail. Scott Marsh (photo © Scott Marsh)

“I’m a big Kanye fan,” says Marsh. “He’s an incredible artist and a character and I like that. I was contacted by Lush’s manager to help find him a wall in Sydney. He painted a giant Kim Kardashian at the other end. It’s probably the least effort I have put into any mural – I painted it in four hours as a bit of a laugh. The response has been hilarious.”

Two Kanyes kissing in Sydney. Scott Marsh (photo © Scott Marsh)

Fish With Braids updates Frida Kahlo on a purple van (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Self Indulgence (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ATOMS. Adam Fu and Persue (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Yok & Sheryo. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Yok & Sheryo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nuart Day 1: Isaac Cordal Installs His Preoccupied Little Businessmen

September 1, 2015 Artists

Tor (@toris64) picked us up at the airport using his hand-made faux-Banksy Nuart sign, wearing his fresh Dismaland t-shirt, and we immediately knew we were home here in Stavanger. Born and raised in this town Tor knows it’s every turn and twist and because he travels extensively for his regular profession, he also gets to explore other cities and take photos of Street Art and share them on Instagram. Luckily there is a pretty notable festival right here and his enthusiasm grows with the opportunity to meet so many of his favorite artists each year.

This small Norwegian town is again hosting a kick-ass mural/street art/graffiti festival again this year and its sort of rainy today but Icy & Sot are painting anyway, as are Ella & Pitr. Ernest Zacharevic has arrived and Martin Whatson has finished his piece, as have Pejac and Dot Dot Dot. Harmen de Koop is devising a live performance with an economist giving a lecture on a wall Thursday (not kidding), Bordalo is gathering garbage and throwing it into the back of a truck for his trash installation, and Martha Cooper just arrived this morning and Tor took her to find a hidden conceptual piece in a doorway by Fra. Biancoshock that says “Martha Please Take a Picture of Me”.

Once settled in yesterday we immediately began tooling around town with Isaac Cordal, the Northern Spanish activist with a big heart in these small sculptures of desperate/guilty/soulless little corporate men who he positions in precarious locations wherever he travels. We carried a bag full of these fellows yesterday while he shouldered an expandable ladder and marched though the hilly streets looking upward, scanning battered Noregian industrial architecture for opportune ledges for his little men to teeter off the edge of.

As we have featured his work numerous times over the years on BSA, it was finally great to meet Cordal and accompany him on his interventions – which sort of magically transform a mundane spot into a stage for his “figurativos” to contemplate their lives. Cordal says they are meant to symbolize many things – one of them being the corrupt wolves in business suits who are running much of the world today, and you immediately know of whom he speaks. Comedic in placement, dastardly in deed, you want them to fall, or jump, but somehow it is better that they are frozen in the midst of their drama, frozen with fright and fear.

Cordal also talks about the current romance that many public art fans are having with the mural as a means of public expression (which we can verify) and how he feels like his very small concrete (now resin) men can be just as powerful as a large mural. And in a way we can entirely agree – the placing of these figures transforms the space by engaging your imagination, and you KNOW where that can take you; the key unlocks a part of the viewer that he or she once accessed regularly as a child when wild stallions and robots and Jesus and pop stars and Darth Vader all seemed like plausible characters in the same play. Seeing Isaac and his enthusiasm will assure you that art in the streets can have a formidable impact on a passerby, no matter its diminutive scale.

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