Our weekly conversation with the street, this week featuring Alec, C215, Cash4, DestroyRebuild, Egypt, Katsu, Kid Zoom, Kouka, KR, NohJColey, ROA, Samson, and WK Interact.
DRAW
Draw
| DRAW is the largest contemporary drawing exhibition to emerge from New York City. It is a must-see art exhibition featuring original drawings by more than 350 artists influenced by the illustration, graffiti, tattoo, literature, design, animation, skateboard, music, psychedelic art worlds. The show is a tribute to the often-underrated but fundamental building block of visual and graphic art: the drawing.
Artists whose original works are in the show include : Chris Johanson, Terence Koh , Dan Colen , Aurel Schmidt , Benjamin Cho , DAZE , R. Crumb, Alex Grey, HR Giger, Clive Barker, Robert Williams, Mark Ryden, Wes Lang , Eric White , Rich Jacobs, Barry McGee , Rick Griffin, Ron English, Neck Face, Tim Biskup, Ed Templeton, Benjamin Cho, Mark Gonzales, Jack Rudy, Derek Hess, David Byrne, Mark Dean Veca, Gerard Way (My Chemical Romance), Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) , Kevin Long/Spanky, Hank Williams III, WK Interact, Jose Manuel Schmill, Shawn Barber, Doze Green, Kevin Llewellyn, Bast, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Greg Lamarche, Kostas Seremetis, Swoon, Tom Sachs, and hundreds more. After four years of gallery exhibitions, DRAW will have it’s museum debut at Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico, one of MexicoCity’s finest museums. The opening is on June 19, 2010 and will exhibit through August 15, 2010. To coincide with the exhibition, the museum will be publishing a book for worldwide distribution to contemporary museum bookstores around the world. Carlo McCormick, one of the most respected art writers and curators in the U.S. will be writing an introductory essay for the book. DRAW is curated by Erik Foss and Curse Mackey with guest curators Tim Barber, Miguel Calderon, Lisa Lebofsky, Jacaebor Kastor, Justin Giarla, Jamie O’Shea, Matt Campbell, Damian Weinkrantz, Les Barany, Sto, D* Face, Jonathan Levine, Tony Cox, and Anonymous Gallery Founder and Director, Joseph Ian Henrikson. Anonymous Gallery’s curatorial contributions include artists such as: Bast, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Greg Lamarche, Tom Sachs, Kostas Seremetis, and Swoon For more information, please contact info@anonymousgallery.com or visit www.anonymousgallery.com or visit http://www.fusegallerynyc.com/DrawTour/tour.html |
| A N O N Y M O U S G A L L E R Y www.anonymousgallery.com www.anonymoushop.com info@anonymousgallery.com o. 646.238.9069 |
Images of the Week 02.21.10 Our Weekly Interview with the Street
Looks like last weeks Valentine's date got Bangel all upside down! (Bishop203) (photo ©Jaime Rojo)
The video is produced by The Social Creative, a London based collective which makes films for issues that matter. They work with charities, not for profit agencies and creative and cultural enterprises, including a body of work comprised of web films and short documentaries.
A veteran of 10 years shooting the streets of New York, Rojo has amassed a collection of images that capture the scene with the appreciation of an artist. To celebrate the creative spirit that is alive and well on the streets of New York, this slide video gives a taste of what happened in ‘09, without pretending to present the whole scene or all the artists, known and anonymous, who add to the ongoing conversation.
Included in this collection of images (in no particular order) are pieces by Skewville, Specter, The Dude Company, Judith Supine, C215, WK Interact, Anthony Lister, Miss Bugs, Bast, Chris from Robots Will Kill (RWK), Os Gemeos, Cake, Celso, Imminent Disaster, Mark Cavalho, NohJ Coley, Elbow Toe, Feral, Poster Boy, Bishop203, Jon Burgerman, Royce Bannon, Damon Ginandes, Conor Harrington, Gaia, JC2, Logan Hicks, Chris Stain, Armsrock, Veng from Robots Will Kill (RWK), Noah Sparkes, Robots Will Kill, Heracut, Billy Mode, Revs, Skullphone, Spazmat, Mint and Serf, Roa, Aakash Nihilani, Broken Crow, Peru Ana Ana Peru, & Cern
All images © Jaime Rojo
First, the important news,
Oprah is retiring.
In 18 months! OMG.
So if you need to confess to an eating disorder or that you were molested by the mailman or if you have a book on self-empowerment for toads, you better call your P.R. agent and get yourself booked because in 2012 the world as we know it simply ends.
I saw the entire story from multiple perspectives on CNN today in the dentists’ waiting room as I counted the minutes till my wisdom tooth was scheduled to be yanked (OOOWWWWW).
Incidentally CNN had a little story about the US Senate debating the passage of the largest federal program in United States history. That 90 second story was sandwiched in between Oprah graphics and and heated conjecture about what the future without Oprah would look like.
And now it’s time for FUN FRIDAY!
WK Turns His Opening Into a Perp Walk
At his recent opening at Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles, 200 people were arrested.
Usually at an art opening the artist is (A.) lingering around the gallery uncomfortably answering questions about the work, posing for a picture in front of it, collecting phone numbers of groupies. Unless you are the shy type, in which case (B.) you are huddling in the back office taking nips out of a flask, doodling on the desk calendar, and waiting till the gallery starts turning out lights.
OPTION (C.), if you are WK Interact, is you think of almost everything as performance art, and every person as part of an installation. Then at YOUR opening you criminalize any willing participant and arrest them and put them through some playful militaristic institutional dehumanizing.
“I was really impressed by the turn-out and the audience enthusiasm to partake and let me ‘book’ them. Almost 200 people [about half the audience] waited in line to be fingerprinted and have their mug shot taken, incorporating another sense into the interactive experience: touch. It’s not often I get to be that intimate with the viewers, who actually became a part of the show through their participation and who are now part of the installation that hangs in the gallery for the duration of the show,” said WK.
The artist posed in costume and ran the guests through the penal mill with dry wit and gentle but firm authority. According to attendees, at first the experience was disconcerting, then funny, then funnier (that could have been the wine). WK himself at first tried to keep a mean-looking demeanor but clearly was having too much fun. This is why I always meet him in a public cafe, preferably with a bodyguard around the corner.
Brooklyn Street Art asked WK what was the procedure for processing the criminals in attendance:
“I simply did a mug shot that night and I let the crowd be part of my show. Then I put their arrest record on the wall ….. each one was finger printed and I Polaroid-ed them. I ask them their age and height in a typical arresting scenario. I recreated a desk at the entrance,” he recounted with satisfaction. And what was the reaction of the gallery guests? “The crowd was very enthusiastic!,” he reports. And for the officer on duty? “It was busy night of 4 hours’ work.”
I’m not sure if there will be more audience interaction and role playing at WK’s next opening, but for this group, it was certainly captivating.
Thank you to WK Interactive for these photos.
HERE is a good video to further describe the criminal records theory.
WK INTERACT at SUBLIMINAL PROJECTS from Joshua Gibson on Vimeo.
How To Blow Yourself Up NOW ON VIEW
New Works by WK Interact through December 5, 2009
After spending most of 2009 in preparation, Michael “RJ” Rushmore is one week from the opening of “The Thousands”, a retrospective survey covering artists of the last few decades that led to what we’re calling “Street Art” today.
Nick Walker for The Thousands (courtesy Michael “RJ” Rushmore)
As editor and author of the popular blog Vandalog, RJ has been taking readers on a tour of the Street Art scene from his unique perspective. Encouraged by his father, an avid and prodigious collector of street art, the recent high school graduate has labored for much of the last 5 months to pull together this show – reaching out to artists, collectors, authors, publishers, you name it.
When RJ first told us about his idea for a “pop-up” show in London, we thought it would be a small affair with perhaps one or three of the larger names and examples of work in an inflatable shop on cobblestone streets. But like so many young people energized by the excitement garnered in an exploding new movement, RJ has worked feverishly to grow this show into what he hopes will set a standard.
More inside looks at this Swoon Box below (courtesy Michael “RJ” Rushmore)
A tribute to his dedication and sincere regard for the work and the artists, “The Thousands” will feature many of the antecedent contributors (or pioneers) to the scene (Jenny Holzer, Blek le Rat, Futura 2000) as well as the better known artists that have come to symbolize the current explosion that began in the first half of this decade (Swoon, Banksy, Shepard Fairey) and many others of equal interest.
As if throwing a show of this scope was not enough RJ also created a book to accompany the show, published by Drago, one of the few small presses that have seriously and knowledgeably documented the growth of the graffiti-to-street art scene. With dedication, focus, and maturity, RJ navigates the back alleys and side-streets to bring this show in the heart of London to fruition.
Skewville from “The Thousands” (courtesy Drago press)
Brooklyn Street Art: What sparked your interest in curating this show of Street Art? How did the whole process start?
Michael “RJ” Rushmore: I think it was an idea that I’d had brewing in the back of my mind for a while, but I wasn’t taking it seriously until last January when I met with another street art blogger who proposed a similar idea about a having a street art retrospective. Eventually, we went our separate ways and I continued to develop the exhibition further. This is the show that a major museum should put on, but so far nobody has, and I hope that The Thousands helps to change that.
Brooklyn Street Art: “The Thousands” – is this a reference to the rise in this new wave of street art since 2000?
Michael “RJ” Rushmore: While probably 95% of the show is work from the last ten years, that isn’t where I got the name. It’s probably a more succinct explanation though.
The show’s title comes from a short story by Daniel Alarcón called “The Thousands”. The story is about this community that is built by society’s outcasts and dreamers and they build their city out of the discarded and disused materials of the city they used to live in. So that reminded me of street art and the street art community.
Veng from Robots Will Kill featured in “The Thousands” from his piece at the Mark Batty Urban Arts Fest in Brooklyn last month (courtesy Drago)
Brooklyn Street Art: Are most of the pieces in the show privately owned?
Michael “RJ” Rushmore: Yes. More than 2/3rds of the artwork comes from private collections. I wanted this to be as much like a museum show as possible, almost a pop-up museum, and the way to do that is fill the show with amazing pieces from private collections.
The process of finding work has at some times been a challenge because I don’t know every street art collector in England, but it’s also been a unique opportunity to view some truly spectacular collections.
Chris Stain will be represented in “The Thousands” (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: What piece surprised the hell out of you?
Michael “RJ” Rushmore: I’m saving pictures of this particular piece until after opening night, because I want people to come into the gallery not knowing exactly what to expect, but Roa’s piece is very cool and different. When Roa was in London recently, we spoke about his piece for The Thousands. He told me to wait and to trust him, that it was something special, so I did. Then he sent me the jpegs and I was definitely surprised. All I will say for now is that the piece is on venetian blinds.
Brooklyn street artists Faile will be in “The Thousands” (courtesy Drago)
Brooklyn Street Art: The show also has a handsome book to accompany it. What was the experience of putting it together?
Michael “RJ” Rushmore: Everybody at Drago, my publisher, has been extremely supportive of the show and the book. I would even say that Paulo, Drago’s founder and head guy, was the first person to actually believe that The Thousands was going to happen and not be a complete train wreck. So working with them has been good fun. But the process of putting together a book in such a short amount of time was very stressful and even led to a few days of working 12 hours straight on the layout and design.
The best part about the reading book was also my favorite thing about putting it together. The book is split into sections, and most sections cover one artist. Since everything was already organized by artist, I was able to get a number of other artists and art world personalities to write about their friends and favorite artists. For example, Know Hope has written about Chris Stain and Elbow-toe has written a piece on Veng.
A hand-made box by Brooklyn street artist Swoon that will be in “The Thousands” (courtesy Michael “RJ” Rushmore)
Brooklyn Street Art: The Swoon Box for “The Thousands”; Did she construct the box herself or was it a found box that she then later decorated?
Michael “RJ” Rushmore: I’ve never asked Swoon, but I would guess that she constructed the chest. It looks like the wood is salvaged from a bunch of different sources, and the hinges are so mismatched that the lid can’t sit parallel to the walls of the box.
Swoon lock box (top detail)
Brooklyn Street Art: It could be a time capsule, or a lock box of mementos and inspiring objects. What do you think?
Michael “RJ” Rushmore: Right now, I think of it more like a lock box, but 15, 20, 30 years from now… the meaning will probably change with time as street art and Swoon become more or less important. Maybe one day Swoon will be written about in art history books and the box will be seen in an entirely different light. But at its core, and for my family, it will always see it box as a lock box.
There is this old deerskin chest in my house that my family calls The Treasure Box. It’s been in my dad’s family for generations and dates back to some time in the 1800’s. It’s full of old letters and locks of hair and things like that going all back though more than 100 years of Rushmore family history. My family and I see The Swoon Box as very similar to our Treasure Box, so we will always see The Swoon Box as full of mementos and not just a piece of art history.
Inside the Swoon lock box. (courtesy Michael “RJ” Rushmore)
Brooklyn Street Art: What’s your favorite object in the box and can you describe it for us?
Michael “RJ” Rushmore: I usually like to get a behind the scenes view of things, so my favorite pieces in the box are the sketches for pieces that eventually became familiar Swoon images. In particular, I think the drawing for Zahra is a favorite. The sketch is beautiful, the end result is one of my all time favorite images by Swoon and I happened to meet Zahra earlier this year as well as her child.
Swoon’s “Zahara” (courtesy of Black Rat Press)
The Zahra sketch is pretty abstract, you can tell that there is a woman, but it’s really rough and seems to be more about the colors than any details about Zahra’s features. Without the image of a rising sun that is in both the sketch and the end result, you wouldn’t even connect the two pieces.
Swoon box has an original sketch for “Bethlehem Boys” (courtesy Michael “RJ” Rushmore)
Swoon’s “Bethlehem Boys” as seen on the streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn. (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: If you have a show in ten years called “The Teens”, what do you think we might see in it?
Michael “RJ” Rushmore: What really interests me right now and what I’ve been noticing lately is the continuing fusion of graffiti and street art. In most cities that have graffiti and street art, somebody is trying to merge the two cultures. In London some of those artists are Part2ism, Sickboy, the Burning Candy crew, Kid Acne, ATG crew, Elate and Word To Mother. Maybe that’s just my particular interest, but I’ve heard Pure Evil say that he is seeing something similar.
So if my taste is anything to go by, a decade from now I would like to see a show with classically trained painters showing off their lettering style and hard-core train bombing kings painting with a brush and telling everybody why Lee Quinones is their hero, except we won’t even notice the supposed role reversal I’ve just described.
And of course, since I’ll be nearing 30 years old, I’d want to include some artwork by actual teenagers to help support the next generation of street art/graffiti/whatever we’ll be calling this in ten years time.
What are you looking at? (Swoon courtesy Michael “RJ” Rushmore)
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“The Thousands” features artists Adam Neate, Aiko, Anthony Lister, Armsrock, Banksy, Barry McGee, Bast, Blek le Rat, Burning Candy, Chris Stain, David Ellis, Elbow-toe, Faile, Futura 2000, Gaia, Herakut, Jenny Holzer, José Parlá, Judith Supine, Kaws, Know Hope, Nick Walker, Os Gêmeos, Roa, Sam3, Shepard Fairey, Skewville, Swoon, WK Interact
November 18 “The Thousands” opens
People are fascinated and even in love with “Street Art” now, and that fact has certainly not escaped WK Interact. The brutal traffic and the construction noise common in New York in the summer is raging as we sit at a café looking across Houston Street at a huge colorful mural being painted by OS Gemeos, the Brazillian twin brothers. WK gestures to the cluster of fans standing on the sidewalk taking pictures of the guys painting, some asking them for autographs,
“10 years ago, 15 years ago, absolutely nobody would pay attention. You would see people driving by and they would stop and say, ‘Hey can you do the same thing on my garage?’ or something like that. People did not care. They would look and say, ‘Did people pay you for that?’ Now you have like 200 people going to that wall specifically to see it. So it’s a big phenomenon, it’s a really, really big phenomenon.”
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: What do you think of the growth of Street Art over the last few years – born in graffiti but it no longer feels like it’s related to graffiti, and the number of people who are involved…
WK Interact: Maybe 15 years ago most of the people described what we do as “graffiti” because that was it. I never really called myself a graffiti artist. I used to call myself an “urban street artist”. I didn’t even feel like the stuff I was putting on the street was art. It was not art. It was a situation. I always said “If you want to make art, you can go to your place and stretch a canvas and you paint”. To me the street is not about creating art, it is creating a language. That’s why I don’t like to make murals, or put a frame around it. I like it to be incorporated. The point of my work is not what I do but how I conceptualize my work.
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: What do you think of New York people?
WK Interact: It’s the regular type of people that I think are very interesting. It could be a carpenter, it could be an electrician, could be a kid six years old, it could be an old man … I don’t really value people for what they own, I value people for the way they are standing. I don’t expect everybody is going to be rich or intelligent or smart or creative. I think every individual has something. …That is one of the reasons that I live in New York – it is such a mixed population.
(image WK Interact)
Just completed in August: A 100 meter long 7 meter high wall in Italy (image WK Interact)
Detail of wall in Italy (image WK Interact)
Brooklyn Street Art: So you don’t think of your work as art, you think of it as an action. You worked in film, and you do create with storyboarding, so would you think of it as theater?
WK Interact: For me putting something up on the wall is the same as someone planting that tree right there, and letting it grow. It is more like urban vegetation for me. We have to call it art because it’s aesthetic. But for me it is not theater, it is more like a three dimensional urban situation.
Newest work: Motion Pictures are portraits of friends (WK Interact) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Painting at Jonathan Levine Gallery this summer by WK Interact (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Mixed media piece at Jonathan Levine Gallery this summer by WK Interact (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about the feeling of “action” more?
WK Interact: I like also to create, especially on the streets, to create a film, an action. It’s totally not about the party that created the piece, it’s not about the size, it’s not about the color – it’s about the effect and the affect. It’s not about the beauty of how many colors you have, or something you have to stand and pay attention to. It’s a “SNAP” like that (claps his hands together fast). And you basically are sucking up all this energy in half a second, and you don’t even know it… you connect with viewing something and seeing something. And for me the street is like this. I don’t see it like a mural, like an art, like a thing of beauty.
“At that moment, the person passing becomes part of the piece.” (image WK Interact)
Brooklyn Street Art: So the “action” is what is happening to the person…
WK Interact: I like to work on a human scale. I want people to incorporate into it. When someone passes in front of my work, another person on the other side of the street sees them passing in front of it and sees my piece in the background. At that moment, the person passing becomes part of the piece. The one who is across the street actually sees the effect of it.
I don’t think people really see this in my work. They just see a simple black and white image. I really don’t talk that deep or detailed about my work, and if you do not explain this to people they just don’t know.
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: You are very methodical in planning and execution
WK Interact: Yes, and then I criticize my stuff. And the next year go back over my stuff. It’s kind of crazy too when you took so much work and so much effort to do it. I am interested in challenging myself to do better.
WK Interactive art for Suzuki
Brooklyn Street Art: How do you balance that desire to make more money and be better known and still not feel like you have “sold out” to, say, the corporate world. How do you find that balance?
WK Interact: I have been lucky to have not sold myself to some really big companies, because some people have come to see me and offer me things. It’s very difficult. I fight it a lot of the time. Even the few projects I did with brands, people were like “Oh, you sold yourself.” And they really put me down.
WK for fashion label Marithe
A lot of people like you to struggle. A lot of people want you to be in a place where you have absolutely no way to create something… They want you to be in pain. They want you to be successful but they don’t want you to be more successful than they are. The minute you go to making way too much money, having a car, they have problems. You always have to balance a bit. I’m lucky because I don’t really need a Porsche, and I don’t need to wear a brand name. I can just sit somewhere and say, “That’s me”.
In an example of the conversations that happen with street art, someone placed a blue cross over this piece because they may have though WK was glorifying war. In fact, this soldier was part of a series he created to give a message to bring all the soldiers home from Iraq. (WK Interact) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: Did you receive reassurance or encouragement from your parents?
WK Interact: My parents, who are both artists, did not believe in my work. It took them 10 years to believe in what I was doing. They were totally rejecting what I was trying to do, and they basically told me ‘you’re never going to make it’.
It’s funny you said that because I kept all of the press from 10 years I had collected about my work and I wrapped it in newspaper and one Christmas I took it home and put this huge pile on the table. I said to my parents, “This is your present, for both of you”. They thought at first they were just some magazines in English, until I showed them the articles. They were shocked. I didn’t really want them to tell me “It’s great,” I just wanted to prove to them that they were wrong. On that day, in that minute when I did this I changed the way they used to view me. They were shocked and they said, “How come you never told us?”
I was proving something to myself, and proving also that they were wrong. And I was trying to believe in myself. It’s this motivation that is what is inside me, what has made me. It is probably one of the best qualities that I have, instead of wanting to be rich or famous or anything like that. This is probably what makes me keep wanting to put things on the street now.
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: Can you now assume the parent role and offer a young street artist who is not feeling confident in themselves or their work? Can you give encouragement to that person?
WK Interact: I’ve been giving encouragement for almost my entire life. I used to help other students in school. I had an “Open-Door” policy at my gallery on the Lower East Side for five years. So many people used to come to my place with their book, or they left messages on my machine, and every time, it didn’t matter if it was a good day or a bad day I had to pay attention, and I had to be there, and be open to people. Meaning, what I did for all these years, instead of doing what they did to me, I did the exact opposite. I felt like “you cannot stop talent”. If you see somebody coming in your door, he has taken the time to come and ask you questions and is very open-minded and presenting his work – and you push him away, you create an angry young artist who will never forget that. So you have to be careful.
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: So you are saying that you took this opportunity to heal yourself of the pain of rejection by doing just the opposite.
WK Interact: Yes, I mean, if I had realized that I was doing that, I would not have chosen to do it at the street level. I mean it is good, but at the same time, I should have maybe worked out with it at a school as a teacher. When it comes to working with people and taking photos, or you put me with animals or kids; I do very well. I feel connected. As a teacher, I probably would be a good teacher. And it would have been less stress.
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Brooklyn Street Art: Is it your responsibility to help young artists?
WK Interact: This is also one of the reasons why when I see somebody who’s got talent, it doesn’t really matter what it is, the person doesn’t really need to be painting, just talent, and he can believe in himself, I almost want to lift this person up.
When someone who is in a position to help says, “It’s not my fault, it’s somebody else’s”, I don’t believe it. I say this is your decision. If someone has come to you and told you something then you have a choice to help or not. It’s important because sometimes you just have to do one thing to destroy all the dreams of these people. It is very fast.
“It is very important to interact.” – WK Interact
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
WK Interact was 8 years old, spending hours drawing on old floor plans. On the job with his father, even then he buried himself in his work while Dad rushed around giving orders at his interior design worksites in the south of France. A few years later, his drawings came alive with movement as he hung out all day in dance schools watching young bodies fly across the floor. Once more his style catapulted forward the day he discovered how to stretch and animate a figure just by dragging it across the glass of a photocopier. Action. Captured.
Without question, his love of the street, of art, and wild motion fully materialized and went on steroids when WK first laid eyes on monstrous, convulsing New York City. He was 16. He was blown away, frightened, and excited. Two years later, he gave into the magnetic pull of New York’s raw power.
“I remember I went downstairs and I said to my parents, ‘You know what, I am going to New York’, and my parents said ‘But why, what for? Are you going to be able to get a good job? Why do you have to go to a place where you don’t even speak English?’,” he remembers. A great struggle took place but he left for the United States anyway, alone for the first time. That’s when WK’s war began, almost a quarter of a century ago, on these streets. And he won.
(image WK Interact)
If his work on the street is an indication, it has been a constant state of war. Look at these images and themes that reappear in WK’s work since he first came to New York; Ever-present fear, violence, anxiety, overheated sex-play, fishnets & firearms, contorted figures racing, martial arts kicks to the head, hand-to-hand combat, boxers swinging, prisoners tied and bound, hooded figures snapping heads of bound businessmen, terrifying escapes in progress, maniacal twined and twisted forms and faces, propaganda, undercover spies, official seals, gun assembly diagrams, digitized labels, ID fingerprints, cameras, surveillance, camouflage, radioactive symbols, streaming codes and bureaucratic text passages, black military choppers hovering overhead, contorted soldiers screaming “bring me back”, a permanent state of survivalism… All of these hellacious visions collide and collapse and expand in continuous motion and interaction almost exclusively in black and white in wheat pastes, paintings, screen prints, photographs, sculpture, and performance installations on the street.
(image WK Interact)
You may think that some of this work is vaguely autobiographical, but for WK, all of this work is simply a reflection of the city he chose and the atmosphere here. “New York is extremely demanding and challenging”, he says, “If you do something sexy in the street in New York you are in trouble. If you do something violent, people will give you the thumbs up!”
In other words, he’s playing to the audience in this particular city and unfortunately it may give an inaccurate impression of WK, the person, “I’ll just say this; My work, the people always see one thing – fear, attack, violence. They have absolutely no clue of the other side. I don’t think they are ignorant. My work is very black, it’s very bold, it’s very graphic, it’s very strong. There is nothing really friendly like a little bird flying around or a pink piglet… it’s totally not that. But I live in New York City and I am responding to that kind of contrast. The weather is very strong, very hot and very cold. All the traffic is heavy, the structure of this city is almost like a double bladed knife. I wanted to adapt myself as a New Yorker and adapt my mind as an artist. I’m always fascinated by this fear, and the people who want to ignore it.”
It was the mid-1980’s and there was not such a thing as “Street Art” yet, but “Low-brow” was in full effect, with graffiti as a new darling in the booming art market. The City had just pulled out of a deep recession, Wall Street wall was flush, newly minted “Yuppies” were ordering sushi and flashing their Swatches, Run DMC was rocking a tricky rhyme, and graffiti had been nearly scrubbed from all the subway cars. Kenny Scharf took his cartoons into the Tunnel, Richard Hambleton was doing shadows on the street walls in the Village, Keith Haring was doing his thing in the subways, and Warhol was fixating on Basquiat.
Image of Richard Hambleton shadow work by photographer Allan Molho
WK Interact knew very little about all of this activity, but he gradually learned. 18 year old WK looked for work as a graphic artist but because he spoke little English and had few connections, doors slammed in his face quickly one after another. Eventually he got work as a carpenter and painter, living in a tiny room on Houston in Alphabet City.
The Lower East Side was his first real school; “I was like a student. I was not that good in school, and all of that work, work, work to get a diploma! That diploma was absolutely no help to me. My own diploma was my own dream, it was my own need. It was not proving anything to anybody, just me.” What followed was the “School of Hard Knocks”; occasional opportunities, a lot of drawing and time alone observing city life and street life, experimenting with his work on the street, and missteps that included a period actually living on the street in a box. Socially, he wasn’t able to connect with other artists and couldn’t really understand how to navigate the city and street culture world he had thrust himself into. He spent a lot of time feeling a deep sense of alienation.
A younger WK on the Williamsburg Bridge (image WK Interact)
“When I started to do my stuff I was so ‘not there’. I was so different and without an understanding of the art, the graffiti, the branding. Nobody really understood me; I was a bit early to be put in this category so I created myself just to be “this guy”. There were groups there, but I was on my own. And it was very, very difficult to believe in myself. It was so difficult not to be a part of a group. It was so difficult not to be able to speak English. I used go seek artists because I liked their work, and they never replied, or never wrote back.”
While WK still values those hard years because his inner strength and knowledge of humanity and inhumanity was greatly broadened, not to mention his development as an artist, he wouldn’t recommend them to you as a friend, as those years haunt him today. Coupled with feelings of rejection from his parents, this sense of alienation made him a lone wolf in a hostile town.
Prince and Lafette (image WK Interact)
A turning point for WK may have been the literal turning point of the corner of Prince and Lafayette streets in Soho, a garage and mechanics business. WK liked the multiple surfaces and angles of the lot, as well as their industrial rawness and he inquired about who owned it. After cajoling the owner of the garage to allow him do a piece on the wall, he eventually went on to “run” that whole corner that was a mechanic’s garage for a number of years. He likes to say no one noticed the racing, leaping, landing, crashing, chasing, panicked people in black and white on that block for many years, but in fact many New Yorkers around at that time still remember the sudden surprise of those images on the buildings and began to look forward to checking them out in when they passed through Soho.
Alek and WK (image WK Interact)
A piece on it’s larger overhead walls one time featured model Alek Well – a bicephalous blur portrait of gut-busting joy and ebullience as one head is tossed back to the left and one slightly forward to the right, anchored by solid shoulders. The scenes and players changed but usually the entire space was a spooked by hair-raising scenarios which you may or may not want to understand more clearly.
Similarly many people remember as “classic” the view of WK’s iconic 2-story speeding rollerblader racing along a building on the southwest side of Houston street to jump across Broadway. To hit one of his spots in it’s context is to experience a sudden pick-up in pulse, or skip in the beat, and a little bit of confusion that sharply torques the wild energy of the urban environment. No one else endeavors to shake you like this. It’s safe to say that you admire the mind of the artist who brought you this jolt.
(image WK Interact)
He lived frugally in a tiny studio and brought home left-over paint from his day jobs. It was pretty early in his career that he decided black and white paint was the best way to portray New York and it’s brutal contrasts. “If I go back to my country I will begin to paint blue and pink,” he explains.
Suffice to say, it’s been a long, arduous climb and not one he likes to speak about for a long time, understandably, but eventually WK Interact found his way in New York, and London, and Paris, and Italy, and Sydney, and Japan…. With labor, persistence and luck one opportunity turned another. He doesn’t appear unduly proud that his work today is in demand. He is thankful that he shows in respected galleries, is featured in articles, videos, and he is continuously on the move.
(image WK Interact)
When looking at the rough times, he says, “Those limitations created what I did. That made me want to reverse it, to upgrade it – so I made myself do more. You can see the force in my work, that constant motion, the face. It is on the move, you can see the actual thing vibrating, and this has been my position, and it has been like this for the last 23 years. As far as what happened to me coming to the States, I don’t wish this for anybody. I think this was painful, and it will always be painful.”
WK Interact (photo Jaime Rojo)
Part 2 of this inteview continues here
Fat Kat in Brooklyn (QRST) (photo CJ)
Happy Birthday Freddie Mercury September 5th!
Jonathan See Lim (The 2nd from the series Sprayed N Stone) (NohJ Coley) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Jonathan See Lim (Detail) (NohJColey) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Jonathan See Lim (Detail) (NohJColey) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Our Weekly Interview with the Street at BrooklynStreetArt.com
Child with a toy hand grenade (original photo by Diane Arbus1962) and Shin Shin (photo Jaime Rojo)
Andre keeping an eye out (Shepard Fairey) (photo Jaime Rojo)
by Shepard Fairey (photo Jaime Rojo)
Specter (photo Jaime Rojo)
WK Interact
"Propero" (Specter) (photo Jaime Rojo)
Sho Shin and friend (Specter) (photo Jaime Rojo)
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
