All posts tagged: Toven

TOVEN says “Happy Skulloween” on the Streets of Baltimore

TOVEN says “Happy Skulloween” on the Streets of Baltimore

Happy Halloween! It’s going to rain on all the Trick or Treaters in the streets in New York tonight. Nevertheless, ye olde drizzle and mist doesn’t really put a damper on the eerie festivities, including the East Village Halloween Parade, which is reliably a misshapen, humorous and frightening mess of creativity, imagination, psychiatric therapy, music, and theatrical spectacle; all of it careening through the sloppy streets for your pleasure.

TOVEN. Giraffe Skull. Baltimore. October 2019. (photo © TOVEN)

This holiday used to be only for children and art-inclined weirdos, now its cosplay across the nation with children of all ages are in costume on the subway, on the bus, in line for pumpkin-spice latte.

In Baltimore Street Artist TOVEN has made plenty of preparations for you: cheerful and possibly unsettling skull wheatpastes for you to see out of the corner of your mask as you run door-to-door asking for candies.

TOVEN. Goat Skull. Baltimore. October 2019. (photo © TOVEN)
TOVEN. Deer Skull. Baltimore. October 2019. (photo © TOVEN)
TOVEN. Dear Skull. Small antler. Baltimore. October 2019. (photo © TOVEN)
TOVEN. Goat Skull. Baltimore. October 2019. (photo © TOVEN)
TOVEN. Ram Skull. Baltimore. October 2019. (photo © TOVEN)
TOVEN. Homo Sapiens Skulls. Baltimore. October 2019. (photo © TOVEN)
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Astronaut Street Art : Ground Control To Major Tom…

Astronaut Street Art : Ground Control To Major Tom…

Aside from signing the Outer Space Treaty that was ratified by 107 nations in which member states promise to not militarize the celestial heavens, US Vice President Pence tried to pull a fast one last week by announcing an idea for a US Space Force, the 6th branch of US Armed Forces.

Evidently being in 7 wars right now on Earth isn’t enough for the masters of war. There is surely more money to be made by further bloating a global weapons industry that focuses primarily on destruction rather than construction.

Victor Ash. Berlin, Germany. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

What is Mike Pence needing defense from exactly? Gays? Gay aliens? Intelligent assertive women? African-American or immigrants struggling to make ends meet, living day-to-day from paycheck to paycheck? We decided to take the whole ridiculous announcement with humor and found ourselves pawing through the archives for Street Art images of astronauts. We found many!

As we contemplate war in space, we turn to our collective fascination with astronauts and cosmonauts and nauts of many kinds. Since the dawn of this popular spaceman fixation there has been this guy or gal floating around weightless in our collective imaginations, bouncing along at the end of his tether, or untethered altogether.

Victor Ash. Berlin, Germany. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toven. Baltimore, USA. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toven. Baltimore, USA. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

B.D. White. NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Axolotl Collective. Mexico City. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty. NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cranio. Berlin, Germany. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Topaz. NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The London Police. Boras, Sweden. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tristan Eaton in Collaboration with CYRCLE. NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Joe Iurato. NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile. NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

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‘Homo Naledi’ in Baltimore Points to Our Modern De-Evolution

‘Homo Naledi’ in Baltimore Points to Our Modern De-Evolution

When you look at the corporate yellow journalism flashing across screens today, the shallow and sensational rhetoric may lead you to believe we are devolving as a race. In fact it is just the opposite in many quarters, so media literacy is more important now than ever to discern who is propagating this narrative, and to what ends?

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Alfredo Segatori and Pablo Machioli (photo © Matt Fox-Tucker/BA Street Art)

Certainly many cultural observers deduct that man and woman have not progressed since prehistory and a new Baltimore mural by Street Artists Alfredo Segatori (Argentina) and Pablo Machioli (Uruguay) is a throw-back to our less-evolved selves. “I believe that cavemen still exist today and this mural is a like a mirror to look back at our roots,” says Segatori about the singular ‘Homo Naledi’ figure whose bones were discovered by anthropologists in South Africa in 2015  “We need to decide what future we want for our kids and if we want to move forward as a human race.”

The mural is part of a larger initiative including more than 20 street artists participating in a two continent cultural exchange between Baltimore and Buenos Aires, an outside component of a gallery show entitled “Roots”. The show is curated by Baltimores’ Richard Best of Section 1 Project and Matt Fox-Tucker of Buenos Aires Street Art along with local Gallery 788.

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Alfredo Segatori and Pablo Machioli (photo © Matt Fox-Tucker/BA Street Art)

As Street Art and murals are continuing to bring more of the social and political themes to the streets in cities like Baltimore and Buenos Aires, traditional organizers of public art programming appear to be on the wane – perhaps because taxpayer funded initiatives have evaporated in most cities and more complex privately funded programs triangulate outcomes.

Actual grassroots organizers of programs like this, while still related to a gallery show, are more likely to respect intellectual rigor and are increasingly carving out their own curatorial niche. It is an interesting crack in the dialogue in public space where the final artworks often respond to society in more challenging ways, rather than producing only pleasing imagery and messages approved by committee or commercial interests.

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Alfredo Segatori and Pablo Machioli (photo © Matt Fox-Tucker/BA Street Art)

For Segatori, this mural is a direct response to how we are behaving as a race – particularly toward one another. “I believe that in the world today there is still a lot of violence and intolerance so the idea of our mural is to show the reality of the society that we live in,” says Segatori of the new piece.

“There are people around us who are still forced to live in poverty, suffer from racism, discrimination and persecution due to the color of their skin.” Whether locals will take this message away from the mural is anyone’s guess, but the organizers of “Roots-Raices” say they hope to open the discussion between communities about how to assist in our collective evolution.

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Alfredo Segatori and Pablo Machioli (photo © Matt Fox-Tucker/BA Street Art)

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Alfredo Segatori and Pablo Machioli (photo © Matt Fox-Tucker/BA Street Art)

‘Roots’ brings together artworks by more than 20 street artists from Argentina and Baltimore exploring origins, cultural identities and social and racial history. Baltimore street artists who have created new artworks for the show include Gaia, Pablo Machioli, Paul Mericle, Billy Mode, Nether, Reed, Mas Paz, Ernest Shaw, Gregg Deal, Lee Nowell-Wilson and Toven plus photographs by Martha Cooper. Argentine artists represented are Alfredo Segatori are Nazza Stencil, El Marian, Luxor, Ice, Patxi Mazzoni Alonso, Maxi Bagnasco, Primo and Juan Zeballos.

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Toven in Baltimore: One Giant Leap for Poets

Toven in Baltimore: One Giant Leap for Poets

A recent sunny day brought Baltimore Street Artist Toven outside to install some new work, including his humorous mashup of American romantic writer Edgar Allan Poe and an astronaut. An avid reader, this ex graffiti writer has also done large wheatpaste tributes in the past to some of his heroes like Burroughs, Bukowski and Kerouac. 

TOVEN (photo © Toven)

While he experiments with images of wildlife of the elephantine variety and dips into more gothic or macabre imagery periodically, it’s his twisted portraits of these thinkers and dreamers that have more clearly established Toven’s insider status in outside art like this.

TOVEN (photo © Toven)

TOVEN (photo © Toven)

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Images of the Week 09.02.12

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Cassius Fouler, Cruz, Dan Witz, Distort, Don John, Faust, GR170, Hellbent, Knarf, Leon Reid IV, Lumpenpack Crew, Meer Sau, Noah Sparkes, Rae, Ryan Doyle, Sobekicis, Sofia Maldonado, Swoon, and Toven from places like Brooklyn, Baltimore, Copenhagen, Vienna, Austria and Croatia.

Special shout out to photographers Meer Sau, Henrik Haven, and our own Jaime Rojo for getting all these great exclusive shots for BSA readers.

Sofia Maldonado (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unkonwn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Knarf from Lumpenpack Crew in Vienna, Austria. (photo © Knarf)

Knarf from Lumpenpack Crew in Vienna, Austria. (photo © Knarf)

Meersau from Lumpenpack Crew. Knarf taking a piss in Croatia. (photo © Meer Sau)

Rae (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sobekcis in Copenhagen (photo © Henrik Haven)

Gr170 in Søllerødgade on the North Side of Copenhagen for Galore Festival. Stay tuned for more coverage of the Galore Festival coming this week. (photo © Henrik Haven)

Distort (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toven in Baltimore (photo © Toven)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cruz in Milan (photo © Federico Cruz)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Brooklyn Shelflife Project by Showpaper created for BAMArts 2012 and curated by Andrew H. Shirley included five sculptures that will serve as “kiosks” for Showpaper. Finally three of the pieces, shown above, were installed outside the Brooklyn Academy of Music as they were originally intended. From left to right: Swoon and Ryan Doyle, Leon Reid IV and Noah Sparkes, Cassius Fouler and Faust. Click here to see our coverage of this show as it was being installed back in June. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Swoon and Ryan Doyle piece being admired and contemplated for peeing upon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Is this a quartet of pop heroes? Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don John in Copenhagen (photo © Don John)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hellbent (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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