BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAYLooking at the cavalcade of new Retna paintings for his “Hallelujah World Tour” New York debut, currently on display at a pop up shop in West Soho, you’ll see elements of anthropology, historical academia, and the current street penchant for the remix, or mashup.
Retna (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Retna is one of a handful of today’s Street Artists with a background in graffiti taking the art form into the abstract, making it feel genuinely fresh and forward-looking. No doubt the literal meaning on the canvas might add an extra dimension to the piece but that’s probably not what the artist had in mind when he began exploring and developing his style as a graffiti writer in Los Angeles. It’s about the jolting energy of the street. Best viewed from the distance – his kinetic letters and symbols cannot remain still. The bold handstyle is spare, elegantly unpretentious and perfectly anarchistic.
How do you spell Retna? (photo © Jaime Rojo)
The effect of this stunningly lit and somehow crowded traveling show (despite a 10,000 square foot exhibition space) is mystery, monastery, in motion. It is also very exciting to witness in person; A periodic splash of red in the monochromatic scheme of white, black, and silver.
Retna (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Using the concept of the graffiti tag as a starting point to craft a secret language of symbols, the canvasses are messages known to him and his inner circle alone. His approach and style has been compared to hieroglyphics, the Egyptians, Incas and Eastern calligraphy but is probably more analogous to the coded graffiti of Brazilian pixação that his southern contemporaries are spraying in black throughout favela streets right now.
Retna (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Retna (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Retna (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Retna (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Retna (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Retna (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Retna (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Retna (photo © Jaime Rojo)
RETNA “The Hallelujah World Tour”
560 Washington Street, NYC
Thursday, February 10,2011 – Monday, February 21,2011
Daily Hours: 10 AM – 6 PM
General Inquiries: 212 242 2905
238
138
45
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
Art Basel has wound up another successful year in Miami and artists, dealers, buyers and sun seekers have departed. In their wake the streets of Wynwood have sustained yet one more onslaught of murals...
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities. Now screening : 1. URBAN ART 2014 on Auction 2. Building Detroit - Revok, Nekst, Pose 3. Sheryo and Yok in Indo...
Here's a quick shot from Hemlock Alley in San Francisco as Steel pays an explosive tribute to Nekst and the talented tattooist Lango lets the crimson power flow like a system of veins waving like flam...
The world is slowly making movements toward the door as if to go outside and begin living again in a manner to which we had been accustomed before COVID made many of us become shut-ins. Parisian stre...
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! The city of New York is hot, clammy, steamy, and caked with grime. It smells like fish, marijuana, musty A/C exhaust, curry, piss, fresh-cut grass, melting p...
