Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Enzo and Nio, El Mac, Hargo, L.E.T., Paul Richard, Poster Boy, QRST, Retna, Skewville, Nice-One and Sweet Toof.
With photography by Carlos Gonzalez, Geoff Hargadon, and Jaime Rojo.
Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Enzo and Nio, El Mac, Hargo, L.E.T., Paul Richard, Poster Boy, QRST, Retna, Skewville, Nice-One and Sweet Toof.
With photography by Carlos Gonzalez, Geoff Hargadon, and Jaime Rojo.
Well folks it’s the End of the World, as we know it. How’re you feeling? Actually, according to a certain sect of clairvoyant Christians today is Judgement Day, and the end of the world is not until October, so you should still forget about that Christmas Layaway Plan you have at Walmart.
New York subways and buses have been pummeled for weeks with pulp novel style posters impugning the good name of the Devil and overweight puff pastry people from the Midwest have been milling around Times Square in sensible shoes telling us that repenting from our sins is pretty much going to be the only way out of the Late Great Planet Earth. As usual, these wild eyed tourists never make it out to Brooklyn, so our borough is going now to Hell – which will be big news to the Hasidic population.
For those of you unwashed who are still here after the 6 o’clock earthquakes roll through each time zone across God damned America we bring you the gloriously sanctified beauty of “Twin”, the new HUSH show at that den of iniquity called New Image Gallery in God forsaken West Hollywood.
“Tagging, Graf, Street Art and art; each is always a choice, an action,” HUSH told us a couple of years ago when discussing his work, and his open approach to borrowing from comic books, graffiti, and traditional Japanese iconography is what makes his work modern.
Internalizing and interpreting the energy from Krazy LA has been a dream for a free expressionist like HUSH, who likes to throw everything at the wall – tagging, painting, collage, – deconstructing and reconstructing until it achieves balance. “I’m big on progression and I’m always looking at how to take my work forward, pushing it while still retaining pointers back to previous works,” says the artist. With a number of shows and countries and street pieces under his belt, the British native is also quietly achieving a mastery of his technique, as urban turns urbane in the finely sprayed misty glow surrounding these peaceful idyllic visages, rising from the blue cacophony.
Marsea Goldberg, a wild and fine former Brooklyn gal, has been looking out for and championing the new talent on the graffiti/Street Art/fine art scene at New Image since the mid nineties, including artists like Bäst, Cleon Peterson, Clare Rojas, Date Farmers, Ed Templeton, Jo Jackson, Neck Face, Os Gemeos, and Retna, so she knows what she is looking for and knows how to create a charged environment for artists to stretch in.
“Hush is a fantastic artist and he has a down to earth, hard working vibrant spirit,” Marsea explains, “I’ve liked his work for a long time – The first time I saw his work was at the “Cans Festival” which Banksy put on in London 4 years ago. When I saw his colorful, ornate murals in the long tunnel I was beyond impressed. The interesting thing about Hush’s art is the combination of influences.”
For his part, HUSH is taking the opportunity seriously, “It’s great to be at New Image because of its history… I’ve always admired the rawness and energy of the place and Marsea’s commitment to whatever this art movement is.”
As his work mutates and configures across mediums, one might wonder how much of this has meaning to him and whether it is an involuntary stream of favorite symbols and techniques combined and recombined. “I feel like my works have matured and I’m creating my own visual language, even though it’s probably only me who understands it,” he says smiling.
“It’s funny – I’ve had this work in my head for the last few years but it’s just fitting into the story now. I think I’ve got until the year 2014 in paintings now but I’ll have to take you through it in real time… I’m looking forward to showing how it all pans out in the future though.” We would love to stick around here on Earth to see how his work turns out in ’14, but there is someone knocking on the door…
Photographer Todd Mazer captured the artist working outside this week on the “Barracuda” wall where Saber and Shepard Fairey did their near iconic flag interpretations. And through Todd’s lense we get to see Hush tagging the gallery walls and the installation underway.
New Image Art Gallery
7908 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90046
1. Learn How to Count to 20
2. HUSH new show “Twin” Saturday at New Image Art Gallery in West Hollywood, CA.
3. Oh, Word? Word To Mother at FAME 2010 (Video)
4. BOXI, Dust the Furniture, Draw the Curtains (VIDEO)
5. APEX Rocking Jeans at White Walls Tonight
6. Supakitch y Koralie in Mexico City (VIDEO)
7.M-City in Warsaw, Poland (VIDEO)
Shout out to all the kids who grew up with Sesame Street and learned some serious counting skillzzzzzz. Happy Friday.
Quietly exuberant Hush opens a brand new collection of his pieces at New Image tomorrow night, and he’s been spraying the bejezus out of the walls of the gallery before hanging the new pieces.
Gallery owner Marsea Goldberg, brings Hush to her space after a number of years of watching his work evolve. “The interesting thing about Hush’s art is the combination of influences. His artwork posses a distinct link to traditional figurative painting specific to the UK while also possessing an elegant combination of the abstract and decorative,” she says.
Stay tuned for our feature on HUSH tomorrow with more images by Todd Mazer directly from where the action is taking place in Los Angeles.
OPENING SATURDAY MAY 21st 7-10 pm
HUSH
“TWIN”
with musical performances by
&
THE NORIEAGA’S
New Image Art Gallery
7908 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90046
Andrew Telling presents ‘MADRE” a small film with the work of Wordtomother at the FAME Festival 2010
Beyond Stencilling with Boxi – Thanks to Martin at Nuart for showing us this.
Street Artist Boxi creates “The Curtain”, an incredibly realistic 6 layer hand cut stencil.
8mm MDF , 12v Dimmable SMD LED’s, 180 x 220cm, 2009 – 2011
APEX does an entire gallery’s worth of his “super burners” all over denim.
More information about the show http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=20819
Filmaciones de la Ciudad presents these two Street Artists while they were in Mexico City recently.
“Over 6 days of intense work, the couple made a huge piece on wood, using different techniques such as spray, airbrush, paintbrush, marker, crayon,wallpaper and stencil, also painting their trademark characters who in this occasion, were influenced by Mexican culture, SupalCapone of Supakitch is a mexican revolutionary and Koralie´s Geishka is using a luchador mask. People where invited to enjoy this for free and meet the artists. In addition, the artists got to know part of the city and the lives of those who live in it.
Hush
OPENING SATURDAY MAY 21st
HUSH
“TWIN”
with musical performances by
&
THE NORIEAGA’S
Hush returns to Los Angeles with a new collection of work reflecting his unique blend of street
and cross-cultural aesthetics. Playing primarily with the idea of duality, the exhibition is a
carefully calibrated experience of Twin paintings-15 mixed-media works on canvas. Using the
symbolic subject matter of the female form, Hush has produced a large-scale installation in
which the gallery walls capture the essence of “action painting” and “pure expressionism” along
with traditional elements of fine art.
As a body of work, TWIN explores the nature of duality. By varying his approach to the same
image, Hush exposes nature’s inherent polarity. The juxtaposition of light and dark reveals the
complexity of conflict and unity-and dichotomies present within the human ego. TWIN is a
fascinating confrontation and debate on common conceptions of power, innocence, beauty and
sexuality. The collection also represents the blending of the street art aesthetic- as
simultaneously destructive and beautiful.
New Image Art is pleased to present TWIN, the highly anticipated solo show by UK-based artist HUSH.
May 21 – June 18, 2011
Opening Reception: May 21, 2011 (7 – 10pm)
Exhibition Runs: May 21 – June 18, 2011
New Image Art Gallery
7908 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90046
Italian Street Artist Göla is in Curitiba, Brazil working with Brazillian Paulo Auma as part of a public art / street art exhibition called “Hibrido”, or Hybrid. Engaging the children, adults, and walls with fantastic and glaring color drenched combinations of genetically modified animals, insects, food, and technological wonders is meant to be more than entertaining eye candy – while it clearly succeeds in doing that. As the French Street Artist Ludo does with his animal/techno fantasy combinations, this four month exhibit is an explicit call for us to think about the goals and results of our experimentation with the natural world, our ethics, and our blind obeyance to scientific endeavors for their own sake.
“I try to ask about the relationship between man and all other living beings,”says Göla about the influences in his work. With his painting and subject matter a meditation on the laws of nature, he warns of the dangers of messing with it. Fascinated with the hybrids that are coming about, his depictions profess affinity for the natural world.
As he name checks futurist artists like Eduardo Kac and Alexis Rockman , Göla explains “My work is influenced by an ever-present closeness with the animal sphere,” as your thoughts wander to discussions of trans-human futurism, fluorescent fish, all terrain dog-robots delivering bombs, and flying nano bugs watching you through the window while you drool over a Lady Gaga video.
Heady stuff for Street Art you say? Not really when you consider that today’s generation of Street Artists is coming from a huge variety of backgrounds with a flood of abilities, carrying with it bags of tricks only imagined in the aerosol infused reveries of yesterdecade. Göla, for all of this heavy thinking, is a jubilant ombudsman of a hopeful future, bringing an extremely playful and childlike wonder to his work, making it all so much more engaging.
While in Brazil, Göla took time to explore the country and to get up in various towns big and small. Here is the product of his work and collaborations with some local artists.
To experience Göla’s world click on his site:
“Hibrido” is on view from March 20-June 19, 2011.
To learn more about “Hibrido” click below:
It happens on a roof in LA, in a back alley. El Mac and Augustine Kofie, two gifted graff writers, street artists, fine artists, balanced assuredly on ledges and ladders, cans in hand and collaborating on a new piece. It’s a dreamlike sequence of scaling and balancing, backing away and re-approaching, scanning the sky as day folds into night and looking back at the bricked canvas to see a gentle babe gazing upward from an abstract future past.
Photographer and videographer Todd Mazer, a regular contributor to BSA, circled and treaded nimbly and quietly in panther-like pursuit of the right screen capture while the artists worked. Over time, perched camera in hand, he documents the dexterous and purposeful movement and focus of two big cats on the top of their game. And roof.
“For me I feel like that’s as good as it gets,” says Mazer.
Brick: You’ll make out fine. Your kind always does.
Maggie: Oh, I’m more determined than you think. I’ll win all right.
Brick: Win what? What is, uh, the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?
Maggie: Just stayin’ on it, I guess. As long as she can. *
Read our interview with Augustine Kofie with photos by Todd Mazer here:
http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=18806
The piece was created behind 33third in Los Angeles http://www.33third.com/ A Graff and Street Art supply store in conjunction with:
The Street Cred Art show in Pasadena http://www.pmcaonline.org/exhibits/61/index.html
Using sparklers and an open shutter, artist Gary Stubelick creates glowing panegyrics to light up the urban night. The Boston based creative director has been exploring the fine art of time and light for a few decades and creates incandescent odes to hot summer nights in the city with his interpretation of mundane features of the urban landscape.
A time lapse photographer since 1973, the artist “paints” objects discarded, overlooked and discovered with sparklers, incandescent tungsten, and highway flares, giving them shooting star status, if just temporarily. This public art art is less than ephemeral – it only existed briefly and linearly, with it’s layers collected here and displayed as one perfect moment.
“The idea behind the shot was to combine the renegade nature of graffiti with the explosive energy of pyro. I utilized ballistic sparklers to achieve the splattered paint effect. The bike is a Schwinn Frontier mountain bike which accounts for the title, ” says Stubelick.
To see more of Mr. Stubelick’s work click on the link below:
May 15, 2011
Brooklyn Street Art Presents Street Art Saved My Life : 39 New York Stories in collaboration with ThinkSpace Gallery, an art show to exhibit at C.A.V.E. Gallery in Venice (LA), California on Friday, August 12, 2011.
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Street Art Saved My Life : 39 New York Stories heralds the new highly individual character of stories being told on the streets of New York by brand new and established Street Artists from all over the world. Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo, founders of BrooklynStreetArt.com focus on this flashpoint in modern Street Art evolution by curating a strongly eclectic story-driven gallery show with 39 of the best storytellers hitting the streets of New York.
Street Art Saved My Life : 39 New York Stories, the gallery show, accompanied by an LA street wall series by selected artists and a public panel lecture and discussion, intends to stake out the New Guard in street art while recognizing some powerful near-legendary forerunners.
The mainly New York lineup exhibits talent from other parts of the US and internationally (Australia, France, UK, Canada, Israel, Germany) and it is as steely, idiosyncratic and storied as the New York scene itself, including Anthony Lister, Adam Void, Broken Crow, C215, Cake, Chris Stain, Clown Soldier, Creepy, Dan Witz, El Sol 25, Ema, Faile, Futura, Gaia, Gilf!, Hargo, Hellbent, How & Nosm, Imminent Disaster, Indigo, Judith Supine, Kid Acne, Know Hope, Ludo, Mark Carvalho, Miss Bugs, Nick Walker, NohJColey, Over Under, Radical!, Rene Gagnon, Skewville, Specter, Sweet Toof, Swoon, Tip Toe, Troy Lovegates AKA Other, Various & Gould, and White Cocoa.
The staunch individualists in Street Art Saved My Life : 39 New York Stories give voice to the evolution of the Graffiti, Mash-Up, and D.I.Y. movements that birthed them; creating an eccentric, highly individual, and raucous visual experience on the street. With widely varied backgrounds, techniques, and materials at play, “The Story” is the story. With truths as diverse and difficult as the city itself, each one of these artists is a part of a fierce, raw, new storytelling tradition that is evolving daily before our eyes.
Show Name: Street Art Saved My Life : 39 New York Stories
Location: C.A.V.E. Gallery, 1108 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, California 90291
Date: Opening reception Friday August 12, 2011
Duration: August 12 – September 4, 2011.
Online Press Release: http://mim.io/692a11
Contact: Info@BrooklynStreetArt.com
Presented by Brooklyn Street Art in collaboration with ThinkSpace and C.A.V.E
Curated by Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo of BrooklynStreetArt.com
Brooklyn Street Art is proud to collaborate with ThinkSpace Gallery and C.A.V.E. Gallery. Please note that the show will be at C.A.V.E. Gallery. Thank you.
Thinkspace Art Gallery www.thinkspacegallery.com
6009 Washington Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232 (310) 558-3375
Wed – Fri 1PM-6PM Sat 1PM-8PM contact@thinkspacegallery.com
C.A.V.E. Gallery (location of the show) www.cavegallery.net
1108 Abbot Kinney Boulevard, Venice CA 90291, (310) 450-6560
Wed – Sun 12PM-6PM or by appointment info@cavegallery.net
Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo are founders of BrooklynStreetArt.com and co-authors of Brooklyn Street Art and Street Art New York, both by Prestel Publishing (Random House). Harrington and Rojo are also contributing writers on street art for The Huffington Post.
It may seem impossible to imagine, but rock music never dated classical till the Beatles, and before Run DMC married rock and rap there was no love between the two. Hardly seems worth mentioning now as the subgenres of music propagate nearly weekly – have you seen the Techno Hippie Disco people in your neighborhood yet?
Likewise, it seems like only a decade ago the chasm could not have been wider between hardcore graffiti writers and the relatively new Street Artists popping up on the street. It’s not that the two didn’t know each other and see each other at barbecues and even get drunk together sometimes, but their divisions and personal alliances disallowed hanging out regularly. Those Cold War years are being chopped away brick by brick like the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, and a new language borrowing vocabulary from graffiti, street art, fine art, advertising, and pop/punk/hiphop/skater/cholo/tattoo culture continues to emerge in ways we never thought of before.
The current show at Hold Up Gallery in the Arts District of downtown LA called “Hi-Graff” reveals the lengths that artists will go to work together these days, and the results are a surprising hybrid. Photographer Carlos Gonzalez took these shots to illustrate what curator Brian Lee refers to as graffiti’s “embellishment period”.
Says Gonzalez, “Hi-Graff” is “an impressive show featuring some of graffiti’s greats as well as some notable up and comers. ” It’s a thrilling sign to see everyone can actually get along, and with frequently stunning results.
“Clearly, the show succeeds in more ways than one and it points very much toward a street art movement where trends and talents can all merge into one cohesive unit, both inside a gallery space and on the concrete streets,” Carlos Gonzalez
Carlos Gonzalez is a contributor photographer to BSA. To see more of his work click on the link below:
www.facebook.com/CarlosGonzalezPhotography
“Hi-Graff” at Hold Up Art
Featuring the work of Alec Monopoly,Augor,Cache,Chor Boogie,Codak,Coto,Cryptik,Cyrcle,Defer,Free Humanity,Midtz,Rick Ordoñez,RISK,ROOTSYSTM,Slick,Spurn,Teal,Vyal, and Zes
On View May 7th-June 2nd, 2011
Artspace + Us Gallery @ Gothenburg, Sweden
Things Come Undone : Shai Dahan
May 27th – June 20
Opening Reception: May 27th @ 6-10 pm
Södra vägen 30
412 54 Göteborg
Artspace + Us Gallery is proud to present the first international solo exhibition by urban contemporary artist Shai Dahan in Gothenburg Sweden. The show will include new works by Shai including large scale canvas paintings, illustrations as well as mixed media installations.
With his recent relocation to Sweden from New York, Shai chose to combine both cultures into the work for this solo show. The work includes hybrids of urban landscapes and familiar Scandinavian wildlife. With his signature birdguns, Shai expanded his animal-gun series and also chose to utilize other means from their environment to express the conflict between animals and the humans who invade their habitat.
Earlier this year, Shai took part of the Madrid Street Ad Takeover and also exhibited in Philadelphia. In 2010, Shai took part of the New York City Underbelly project with a selected group of artists painting in an abandoned New York City subway rail station. In 2009, he took part of the New York Street Ad Takeover, joining other artists to paint over illegal advertising throughout the New York City neighborhoods.
Shai currently lives in Borås with his wife and two dogs where he continues to paint.
artspaceandus.se
thevacantwall.com
Paperwork
May 19 – June 18, 2011
Opening Reception – Thursday May, 19 2011, 6 – 8pm
The Kravets/Wehby Gallery is pleased to announce Paperwork, a group exhibition curated by Nina Chanel Abney including work by Njideka Akunyili, Firelei Baez, Cake, Sydney Chastain-Chapman, Caitlin Cherry, Oasa DuVerney, Langdon Graves, Yashua Klos, Michelle Matson, Aaron Romine, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Aya Uekawa, Nick van Woert and Saya Woolfalk, opening on Thursday, May 19, 2011 and running through June 18, 2011.
The exhibition Paperwork, curated by Nina Chanel Abney, is comprised of young and upcoming artists whose work explores the manipulation of paper in all forms. Traditional pencil on paper drawings are accompanied by 3 dimensional sculpture and collage, all flowing in a seamless cohesion and showing the ways that a simple medium can inspire a new generation of artists. In Nick Van Woert’s historically charged sculpture, paper spitballs mask the identity of a plaster bust while making oblique historic references. The candy colored spiritual worlds in the work of Saya Woolfalk, are whimsical and playful, also veiling societies more ominous side. Street artist Cake moves her public art in-doors, her delicately painted figures describe the way in which people disconnect and how the emotion inevitably shows up in their faces. Figures appear in many of the pieces, providing an inviting glimpse into the fresh thoughts in their minds. Still, each artist utilizes paper in a unique form of expression.
Nina Chanel Abney is an artist working in New York. Her work can be seen at the Brooklyn Museum as well as in the 30 Americans exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art, which will travel to the Corcoran Museum in September. She was recently included in The Incomplete Paris exhibition curated by Hubert Neumann. This is Nina’s first curatorial project.
For further information please call the gallery at (212) 352-2238 or email info@kravetswehbygallery.com.
www.kravetswehbygallery.com
KRAVETS|WEHBY Gallery
521 West 21st Street, Ground Floor
New York, NY 10011