Features

Isaac Cordal In Barcelona : His Miniature People in the Gallery

April 21, 2012 Artists, Barcelona, Features, Gallery, Spain

A grand opening for Street Art sculptor Isaac Cordel in Barcelona last week brought people in to personally inspect the miniature concrete actors he creates. RAS Gallery housed the latest collection of works presented by SUBEN and curated by Maximiliano Ruiz.

A varied group of folks gathered to the call of Street Art and free beer including some of the finest canine noses in the art world as at least 5 dogs attended accompanied by their humans.

Isaac Cordal (photo © Maximiliano Ruiz)

Adapting to the gallery format was a little challenging for Cordal since his small cement sculptures seemed more at home in the streets and the small incidental street locations he places them in are the perfect context to document them in. Nevertheless, the irony and depth of the message transcends the context and, in fact, can create it.

The social and cultural critique evident are as heavy sometimes as the little people, including a couple wearing gas masks to their wedding and the vision of a suicidal sculpture who chose to leap into the gallery void, leaving its pedestal empty.

Isaac Cordal (photo © Maximiliano Ruiz)

Isaac Cordal’s Solo Show is currently on view at the RAS Gallery in Barcelona. For further information regarding this show click here.

To learn more about Isaac Cordal’s street installations read our coverage on The Huffington Post here.

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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EVOL “Repeat Offender” in Manhattan

April 19, 2012 Artists, Features, Gallery, Manhattan, NYC

Berlin-based Street Artist Evol is now having his first solo gallery show in the US at New York’s Jonathan LeVine in Chelsea and it is an uncommon opportunity to see his ingenious mind up close. As many artists working on the street know, it is possible to imagine a world in the mottled scarred façade of a surface, and here Evol shows what he can do with cardboard and metal.

Evol “Repeat Offender” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A product designer by training, Evols’ detailed lines and careful attention to the finer points of the most unromantic architecture of the metropolis somehow makes you smile, even as it attests to his command of the multi-layered stencil technique. Repeat Offender miniaturizes the large-scale impersonal utilitarian repetitiveness of institutional design and brings the buildings into your careful consideration of their exterior and the possible nature of their interior. At that moment, he’s got you – having successfully transformed a surface into a world.

Evol “Repeat Offender” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Curious to know how Evol makes his stencil art? Find out the answer in the vid below from Evol:

Evol “Repeat Offender” is currently on view at the Jonathan Levine Gallery. Click here for more information regarding this show.

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Jeice2’s Lone Wolf in the Alley

April 17, 2012 Artists, Features, On the Street, Seville, Spain

After businesses are closed and respectable families are inside their homes gathered around their electronic devices, you are skulking through the streets in search of adventure. Wait, what was that? You turn back for a second to look through an opening you just passed. At the end of the cobblestone path the glowing eyes of a lone wolf await you in here in Sevilla. He looks kind of cuddly, but he may bite.

Street Artist Jeice2 hits us up with another piece from his project “Savage Planet” – this one is called “Rayo”.

Jeice 2 ”Rayo, The Wolf” Sevilla, Spain. (photo © Cristina Cerezo)

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Kraftwerk At MoMA

April 16, 2012 Artists, Events, Features, Germany, Manhattan, Museum, NYC, Performance

Stylized Leaders of the Computerized Electronic Revolution at MoMA

First as D.I.Y. experimenters and visionaries, then leaders in a nearly empty field, then as inspiring catalysts for man-machine marriage, Kraftwerk paved the way for millions of musicians, programmers, DJs, rappers, and fans to integrate a mechanized electronic precision into the modern musical oeuvre. At a time when the youth movement was peacing out and getting high with arena rock and disco, Kraftwerk was turning itself into robots and its vinyl platters were getting play in New York house parties as an ideal futuristic soundtrack to integrate with lyrics, riffs and samples. With New Wave, House, and Techno music all spawned with those same programmed beats, voices, and influences, now in the 2010s we acknowledge that a wide spectrum of musical categories, recordings, and performances contain a significant part of Kraftwerk’s digital DNA.

Kraftwerk. Museum of Modern Art, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A teenager in the early 80s listening to Man Machine and Computer World would have thought that Kraftwerk were geekily impressing each other with their sweeping vision of a future daily existence where people and robots interact via smart electronic devices and programs. Not only did each year afterward bring us many steps further into their outlandish computerized vision, it may be that they partially ushered it in with their undulating funky precision and robotic wit. And so it is in New York now that “Kraftwerk Week” is blowing away a roomful of people who are holding up their personal glowing rectangles toward the stage at the Museum of Modern Art. Over the course of 8 consecutive nights they appear as slightly human robots to perform one of their albums in it’s entirety, followed by a very satisfying collection of favorites.

The retrospective Kraftwerk 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 brings a vision of the current band members poised before their master controls while 3-D visuals crisply fly into your face with elements of aerospace, rail travel, and the pumping machinations of human propelled progress. Swelling pulsating vistas are punctuated by text and funnily low-tech robotic movements – all infused with a sense of classical European styling. As pure and total fans we were extremely lucky to have attended one of the performances and we felt like witnesses to an historic event that testified to the influence of 4 decades of experimentation but also displayed a delightfully stellar quality of skill and performance.

Naturally, these photos were shot on our personal hand-held computers.

Kraftwerk. Museum of Modern Art, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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More Mansion Rooms from “This Side of Paradise”

April 10, 2012 Artists, Bronx, Features, Gallery, NYC

A week and a half before the exhibition “This Side of Paradise” opened at the Andrew Freedman House, BSA readers got the first glimpse of the completed rooms of the mansion that were taken over by artists like Daze, Crash, How & Nosm, and Adam Parker Smith (“Poorhouse for the Rich” Revitalized By The Arts). The grand unveiling of the completed installations at last weeks opening was attended by throngs of people who simply poured in through the gates of the grand estate, darling, and listened to speeches, enjoyed libations, took photos, and waded through the crowded hallways to poke their heads in the individual mini-suites and their various interpretive installations.

Cheryl Pope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In case you missed the opening and still need some encouragement to see this free show over the next 7 weeks or so, we bring you views of some more of the rooms that have opened since the first visit. Each artist was well-schooled in the curious history of this place and it’s former residents so what emerges is part tongue-in-cheek reenactment, part fragmented memory, and part lyrical reverie. Thanks to Mid-Bronx Council for hosting us and here’s is what caught our eye to share with you.

Cheryl Pope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sylvia Plachy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sofia Maldonado (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Justen Ladda (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Federico Uribe (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gian Maria Tostatti (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gian Maria Tosatti (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Princess Alexander, Kristen McFarland, Jimmy Smith (photo © Jaime Rojo)

To read our article “Poor House for the Rich: Revitalized by the Arts”on the Huffington Post click here

For further details regarding this exhibition click here.

G40 Art Summit in Richmond: The Art of the Mural

April 5, 2012 Artists, Events, Features, On the Street, Richmond, Street Art Festival, Virginia

Arts festivals have a proud tradition of bringing creative expression directly to people on the street. When you talk about graffiti and Street Art you normally focus on the singular Street Artist who deigns their location and manner of display in the urban environment. But sometimes the display is collective and the planning and execution is actually a curatorial exercise with community arts leaders.

The ancient Greeks had the “Great Dionysia” spring art festival in April in Athens with tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Queen Victoria famously opened the Great Exhibition in 1851 that might have launched hundreds of cultural fairs world wide since. Chicago has had the 57^th Street Art Fair since 1948 that showcases original work and benefits the artists directly.

At any given moment there is a non-profit, public, or private cultural institution planning some sort of foray into the public sphere with the arts – sometimes with the full or tacit agreement of the community and often with it’s ignorance.

Street Artist JAZ getting up in Richmond, Virginia in this still from a video for the G40 summit (below).

And of course Street Art festivals have been running hard around the world in the last decade including Fame in Italy, Nuart in Norway, Cans in London, the stencil festival in Melbourne … the list continues to grow. Recently in the US we’ve been seeing Living Walls pop up in Atlanta and Albany, Open Walls in Baltimore and today we’re looking at the town of Richmond, Virginia, which is currently being installed with new work by Street Artists from around the world for the G40.

(Click image to enlarge map, courtesy Richmond.com)

The G40 Art Summit is marking its third edition and they will offer exposure to new faces in the Street Art scene and others to an audience who may never have heard of any of them, and that’s the point. For this year’s edition their focus is on “The Art of the Mural”. Art Whino, the creators and organizers have invited a handful of international Street Artists to participate.

Besides giving exposure to the artists, Art Whino explains in their press release how they hope to help the city:

“By inviting 12 of the top mural artists from around the globe to unleash their creativity to 20 large scale walls throughout Richmond, this project is sure to put the city on the map as a street art destination”.

As local art writer Christina Newton explains on Richmond.com the importance of programs like this in the public sphere ultimately goes to the average person on the street, “As many opportunities to experience art as there are in a city the size of Richmond, some will unfortunately never venture into a gallery because they think they don’t know enough about art or are shy about venturing into a space they have never been. Public art is important because it can more easily reach a broad audience, not to mention have the ability to move people out of their comfort zone, open our eyes and minds to something new, and beautify our environment.”

Artists included in the G40 this year are:

Jacopo Ceccarelli aka 2501, Italy, Angry Woebots – California, Aryz – Spain, El Mac – California, Gaia – New York, , Jaz – Argentina, Jesse Smith – Virginia, La Pandilla – Puerto Rico, Lelo – Brazil, London Police – UK, Pixel Pancho – Italy, Roa – Belgian and Scribe – Kansas City.

Here some examples of work on the street by some of the artist captured by Jaime Rojo.

El Mac (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gaia (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jaz (photo @ Jaime Rojo)

La Pandilla (photo @ Jaime Rojo)

The London Police (photo @ Jaime Rojo)

Pixel Pancho (photo @ Jaime Rojo)

ROA (photo @ Jaime Rojo)

For further information regarding the G40 Summit click here.

For further information regarding Art Whino Gallery click here.

Chris Jordan : A Bold Light Artist Hits Iconic Icelandic Church

April 4, 2012 Artists, Events, Features, Iceland, On the Street, Reykjavik, Street Art Festival

Rafmögnuð Náttúra: The Hallgrimskirkja Church in Reykjavik, Iceland

It’s not that light artist Chris Jordan didn’t find the sweeping supersonic jet-shaped façade of the church inspiring. He just wanted to make it visible again to the people in town.

Hallgrímskirkja, the Lutheran church in the center of Reykjavík, with it’s soaring steeple and outstretched wings it has been an architectural icon since it’s completion in 1986 and anyone first laying eyes on the largest Icelandic church is usually impressed by it’s command and design. And yet, somehow even pivotal architecture can disappear before our eyes due to familiarity and it may take a visionary talent like Jordan to bring it back to our attention with animation, mapping, color, and pattern.

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra” (photo © Enki)

From his home in New Yorks’ Chinatown, Jordan, who teaches interactive design at Baruch College and New York University, talks about his work in the same way that Street Art is often credited in the urban environment: art as activation. “Activating is about changing people’s perceptions of overlooked or invisible spaces. A building can become an archetype, invisible, like for a New Yorker, for example, the Statue of Liberty. You look at it, and it disappears into the thousands of times you’ve already seen it. So for me, this light project was so exciting because here’s this massive landmark church that this whole town can’t see anymore.. made completely fresh and new. To see that reflected back at me through the faces of viewers was exhilarating.”

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra” (photo © Enki)

That observation perhaps was the pinnacle of his Icelandic experience in February when he camped out in front of the church over four days in the back of a box truck with his collaborator Marcos Zotes, a handful of computers, three projectors, and a low budget. Together they created a series of site-specific video performances that brought to life Zotes’ idea for a project called Rafmögnuð Náttúra.

The two had met while Jordan was performing his 24 hour timelapse of Hurricane Irene inside an engineered cloud at New York’s Bring to Light Festival last October. Zotes asked if Jordan would like to collaborate on a project to illuminate the 150 foot wide façade of a church in for the Winter Lights Festival in Iceland. Since Jordan has over the last decade created installations appearing at MoMA, The New Museum, The Whitney, The Museum of Natural History, The Chelsea Museum, in Times Square, and many unusual places in between, he had a good idea what cool stuff he would like to do. With the free help of other artists, software designers, and even NASA, Jordan brought a mind-blowing façade to the church that Zotes had only imagined.

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra” (photo © Enki)

“We collaborated on how we could, with a very limited budget, create something spectacular for the festival,” explains Jordan. “We knew that the majority of the budget would be going for projectors so we called our friends up to help us with creating animation sequences that could be mapped to the facade, in triple-HD resolution.”

“We developed a workflow and a template for each animator to follow; then compiled the animations together into a final 15-minute composition. In addition, I contacted friends at NASA for solar imaging data, and created animations using graphic and solar elements. The dream was to have northern lights over the building with the accompanying solar data displayed. Although the solar and earth weather didn’t collaborate, the animations of the sun in a dark cold city on this Norse façade were very appropriate and powerful.”

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra” (photo © Enki)

Jordan’s work over the years has included explorations into memory, and elements of photography, film, interactivity, and projections. We talked with Jordan about traveling to Iceland, transparent ideas, the importance of community, and what a light artist has to go through to reactivate an icon.

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about the trip to Iceland?
Chris Jordan: We went to Iceland with just one day before the opening. The Icelandic people were incredibly accommodating, and set up three massive projectors inside a box truck, with a massive piece of glass mounted on it. The box truck became our projector-heated cabin in the center of Reykjavik for four days. Location is everything! It was a great setup. The projectors were aligned and from there I mapped the content using the software MadMapper by Garage Cube. Garage Cube are also friends of mine and they helped me troubleshoot the tech issues the day before. The opening event had the band For a Minor Reflection accompany us, right after the mayor of Reykjavik introduced the festival to the audience.

But the day before this we went through myriad technical issues. Many times I thought this was going to either look horrible, or crash altogether. There was no budget for a backup computer, or to test the entire setup beforehand. Luckily, Iceland has an early sunset, so we gleaned a couple crucial extra hours to configure everything. The mapping was completed literally seconds before the mayor spoke. It all went off smoothly and the people that braved the intense horizontal-downpour cheered.

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra” (photo © Enki)

Brooklyn Street Art: You managed to transform a landmark into a completely different light using your creativity. Doesn’t that feel pretty powerful?
Chris Jordan: Yes. It was pretty fantastic we were able to do this on such a small budget. It absolutely required a community to make happen. When our main computer failed, the Icelandic underground came to the rescue. One person there offered graphics cards he’d had in a drawer. Another brought us snacks from a nearby cafe. That community effort is really what made this project powerful for me.

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra” (photo © Enki)

Brooklyn Street Art: You were given no budget whatsoever, aside from a plane ticket and 3 projectors. How do you plan for a live performance with the inevitable technical issues?
Chris Jordan: Years and years of failure. I read an Edison quote the other day, “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate”. I’m also a huge proponent of transparency, modularity, and scale. These tenets allow me to see unique solutions to problems, and find compelling solutions. Light art is still maturing as a public medium, as last November’s Occupy Wall Street “Bat-signal” projections attest. It’s a wide-open field for creative expression.

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra” (photo © Enki)

Brooklyn Street Art: Without revealing your trade secrets, is it true you plan to introduce more community interaction into your future work?
Chris Jordan: Always. There’s an axiom I live by: “There is no art without politics”. You either choose to engage it, or you choose political apathy. This ties in with ideas around real-time performance and feedback. I hate the word “rendering”, as it equates to “pouring concrete” on ideas that demand continuing dialog. “Trade secrets” imply hoarding of knowledge. I only want to work with transparent ideas and accessible technologies that ‘spotlight’ the individual’s role in society through creativity. I try to live an open-source life.

Brooklyn Street Art: What role does community play in this project and in your philosophy?
Chris Jordan: I love interacting with communities and to give them the control to create dialogue. This fascinates me, and informs my work constantly. My next long-term outdoor installation is on Governor’s Island, where I’ll be engaging the broadest spectrum of people on the planet (New York) in playing and building, using buckets and stop motion photography. For me it’s all about the community. Without it, we are making monoliths to our egos.

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra” (photo © Enki)

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan on the back of their box truck. (photo © Enki)

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra” – Chris at work on his live creations. (photo © Enki)

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra”. Mission control trailer. (photo © Enki)

Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan “Rafmögnuð Náttúra” (photo © Enki)

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With very special thanks to Enki for sharing this incredible photographic story.

Rafmögnuð Náttúra, a concept by Marcos Zotes created by Marcos Zotes and Chris Jordan

We would also like to recognize the other creators and contributors to the project:

Animators Thessia Machado, Noa Younse, Andrea Dart and Steven Tsai
Performer Coco Karol
Videographers Azmi Mert Erdem and Raghul Sridharan
Photographer Enki
and the music group For a Minor Reflection

The Hallgrímskirkja was designed by architect Guðjón Samúelsson

“Poorhouse for the Rich” Revitalized By The Arts

March 28, 2012 Artists, Bronx, Events, Features, NYC, Opening

A block-long limestone mansion originally built as a welfare hotel for the retiring rich invites streetwise Graff artists and others to gild it’s decayed rooms, raising it from pigeon-infested squalor. Call it “This Side of Paradise”

Enter a discussion about the impact of the modern Street Art movement and someone will inveigh with swollen gravitas that Street Art has the power to “activate” or “re-vitalize” a previously moribund space, to bring it to life. Aside from sounding like part of the gentrification process, the “activate” argument is meant to tip on its head the impulse of simple-minded dullards who opine that Street Art and it’s cousin graffiti are pure social disease and degrading to the foundations of city life.

How and Nosm “Reflections” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Opening in April in the Bronx a similarly anti-intuitive project invites artists of the street to create new life in a decaying mansion and the looking-glass contradictions are as rich as those of the benefactor for whom the aged home is named. The Andrew Freedman Home, with it’s Italian Renaissance details and stepped back grandeur along the Grand Concourse and a mile south of Yankee Stadium, acquired its landmark status in 1984 – the same year it breathed it’s final breath as a retirement home for the rich who had fallen on hard times.

When the building’s namesake, a New York millionaire businessman and colleague of the corrupt Tammany Hall, died as a confirmed bachelor in 1915, he wanted to make sure the money he left would keep the wealthy feeling wealthy after falling in the poorhouse. He simply didn’t want his peers to suffer no matter their financial plight so his wealth commissioned this mammoth home with roughly twice the space of the White House to give these deserved folk a good life in their later years, with servants. Beginning in the Roaring Twenties and over the next six decades, with hallways as long as 22 Town Cars, the ground-bound ship liner swam with former Cunard attendants serving the mostly white seniors as they dined in red and black Chinoiserie style, thumbed books in the library, played sport in the billiard room, and bobbed in the grand ballroom.

How and Nosm “Reflections” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I think that you cannot help but be struck by the bizarre nature of the enterprise because it was class solidarity. He was less concerned with the indigent poor than protecting his own class who had fallen on hard times,” exclaims Manon Slome as she frames the ridiculous circumstances that kept “members” well heeled into their twilight.

Slome is President and Chief Curator of No Longer Empty, a contemporary public art organization that takes empty buildings that are often in disrepair and revitalizes them with site-responsive contemporary art exhibitions. Together with the Mid Bronx Senior Citizens Council, the non-profit that has owned the 117,000 square foot complex since 1984, No Longer Empty is curating a 32 artist show that for two months will offer curious visitors the first peek at the decrepitude that is slowly being enlivened. Since bidding farewell to their last upper crust in the early 1980s, the crusty decay of walls and ceilings has been curling and peeling and dropping to the floor. With artists interpreting the history and memories of the place along with their own take on the economics involved, the results are definitely site specific.

How and Nosm “Reflections” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As she talks about the new show “This Side of Paradise,” Jeanette Puryear, Executive Director of Mid Bronx Senior Citizens Council, reflects on how she used to watch the games and social activities in the grassy gardens of the home from the other side. “We began across the street when the council started in 1973. I came aboard as a staff person in ’77 and I used to look down on the parties that they had on the lawn here. I just thought it was a wonderful building.”

Discussing the selection of No Longer Empty (NLE) as partner to the arts community and curator of the new show, Puryear feels like it is a natural accord. “The idea, our collaboration, really came about when I met Manon and she talked about NLE’s interest in revitalizing communities and it really fit very much with our mission of comprehensive community revitalization.”

Justen Ladda. “Like Money, Like Water”. Eventually this installation in progress would be black lit. The blue tape affixed to the walls is to economize and will not be a part of the installation. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Daze (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This may come as news to some that graffiti kings like Crash and Daze were called upon to do community revitalization in the same borough where leaders once reviled their painting style. With a few heavyweight street art and graffiti names bringing these rooms to life, it’s interesting to see their role as one of contributing in a positive way here where the emergence of a global “Wildstyle” graffiti first blossomed while entire neighborhoods burned.

“At the same time in the late 70s and early 80s when this home’s original purpose was failing you had the rise of Bronx graffiti,” says curator Keith Schweitzer, who introduced Crash, Daze and Tats Cru alumni How & Nosm to Slome, each taking one of the rooms and bringing it to life. Schweitzer sees many parallels in this Bronx tale as he reflects on the role of the artist rising from the ashes of the burned-out neighborhoods then and an art show in the decay of this home now. “At that time you had things like Fashion Moda in the Bronx, which sort of incorporated graffiti into a contemporary art exhibition and these conceptual spaces that Street Artists and Graffiti artists participated in. And it all happened at the same time.”

Daze (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Slone brings the stories full circle as she excitedly relates the multiple arts and education projects currently afoot in the home, including many with a social mission of building community and connections within it. “When we started selecting and inviting the artists, we steeped them in the history of the home. The goal was really to create a fusion of the history of the home and the nature of the history of the Grand Concourse and the present day realities of the Bronx. And that fusion was really the creative springboard, if you like, for most of installations in the exhibition.”

Whatever role you assign the artist in this clubby home of decay, the experience of discovering these complete room installations is at times reflective, sometimes illuminative, and often revitalizing to the spirit. It will depend on the definition of paradise.

Crash “Connections” 2012. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Scherezaede Garcia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cheryl Pope “Then and There” Installation in progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Adam Parker Smith. “I Lost All My Money In The Great Depression And All I Got Was This Room”, 2012. Installation in progress in collaboration with Wave Hill. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Pigeons took over while most of the house remained close and unused. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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This Side of Paradise will open on April 04 at 6:00 pm. For further details about this exhibition click here.

With special thanks to President and Chief Curator Manon Slome and Curator Keith Schweitzer of No Longer Empty for their generous access to the installations in progress. To learn more about No Longer Empty click here.

BSA would also like to extend our gratitude to Jeanette Puryear, Executive Director of Mid-Bronx Council for taking time to answer our questions. To learn more about Mid-Bronx Council click here.

Mexico City : A New Surrealist Face for Street Art

March 22, 2012 Artists, Features, Mexico, Mexico City, On the Street

Comic, surrealist, role-playing psychological explorations, with a tip of the hat to Breton, Carrington, and Lucha Libre, among others.

Pixel Pancho (photo © XAM)

Mexico City culture can be as varied and diverse as it is homogeneous, with a respect for tradition and, when it comes to artistic expression, a catalyst for exploration. André Breton is reported to have described Mexico as “the most surrealist country in the world,” where painters like Leonora Carrington and Frida Kahlo unhinged their imaginations from the limitations of the material world. As these new images on the streets of Mexico City taken by Brooklyn architectural street artist XAM show, the love for a psychic automatism continues into the public sphere.

Of course the Mexicans are not strangers to art on the streets; “great Latin American muralists” is a phrase almost synonymous with Mexico and names like Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros coming to mind. Political advocacy and populist criticism of social policy on the walls here is similarly a tradition respected by the culture. Now a century after the revolution and birth of the modern Mexico, the experience of Los Capitalinos, as the residents of Mexico City are called, is affected daily by surrealism, pop culture and global capitalism swimming alongside folk and historical symbology, and a bit of anarchy. It’s all part of one fabric, a rich and varied textile that we export to you here.

Ben Eine (photo © XAM)

Says XAM of his experience, “Barcelona, NYC, Amsterdam, and Paris are all similar in a way when it comes to street art – you can walk around and come across work on the streets fairly easily, but traversing the barrios of Mexico city is much different. I guess in some way you can compare it to San Francisco, Chicago or Los Angeles – there is quality work to be found. The city differs from all mentioned in that it appears to be young when it comes to street art by having a small group of participants.”

“I was hosted by both MUMUTT Arte and Museo del Juguete Antiguo Mexico, who are both responsible for providing concrete canvases in Mexico City for artist such as ROA, M-City, Pixel Pancho, and fresh stuff from the locals like Saner, Sego and the MOZ crew. Mexico City DF has the most museums in the world and MUMUTT and Museo del Juguete are largely responsible for adding street art to the vast archive of amazing work. They escorted me around to locations they provided for the above artists – It is evident that everyone brought their A-game. The weathered concrete walls made wonderful surfaces for imagery such as Dronz & Koko’s character, offering hallucinatory candy at the toy museum to Ben Eine’s work that speaks about class issues on a worksite for a future mall.”

Ben Eine (photo © XAM)

Pixel Pancho (photo © XAM)

Liqen (photo © XAM)

Jaz (photo © XAM)

Saner (photo © XAM)

Saner in collaboration with Bastardilla (photo © XAM)

Samurai . Ceci (photo © XAM)

Roman (photo © XAM)

Roman . Acute (photo © XAM)

ROA (photo © XAM)

Meah (photo © XAM)

Broken Crow (photo © XAM)

MCity (photo © XAM)

Moz Crew (photo © XAM)

Kokor . Dronz (photo © XAM)

Bimek . Done (photo © XAM)

Bue (photo © XAM)

Ever (photo © XAM)

SBTG. The artist worked on this piece on commission to promote an event sponsored by a shoe company. We like the placement. (photo © XAM)

Click on the links below to read our previous stories of MAMUTT Arte and MUJAM and to learn more about their work in Mexico City:

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/09/20/m-city-in-m-city-polish-stencillist-in-mexico/

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/05/07/video-premiere-broken-crow-in-mexico/

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/03/04/broken-crow-a-mexican-travelog/

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/03/09/broken-crow-a-mexican-travelog-part-ii/

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/2011/02/05/roas-magic-naturalism-street-arts-wild-kingdom-in-mexico/

ROA: Postcards from The Australian Outback and The Coast of Chile

March 15, 2012 Artists, Australia, Chile, Features, On the Street, Santiago, Valparaiso

ROA continues his vertiginous worldwide tour with the animal kingdom in tow, meeting many of the two legged species on the way. Venturing far from his river town of Ghent in Belgium, ROA brings his distinctive monochromatic aerosol painting everywhere; high lands, flat lands, canyons, mountains, crusty old buildings, huts, rusty car carcasses, wooden vessels, water tanks. More often today he also brings them to a gallery or the occasional museum.

ROA. A Bilby. Pilbara, Australia (photo © ROA)

His unassuming depiction of an animal that is native to the area is ROA’s way of offering a non-sentimental, beautiful side of the material world and a way of respecting it; these are the flesh and bones of the animals that we eat, hunt, care for or ignore. Whether we regard them for our use for pleasure or our survival, ROA gives animals the main stage, where we’ll be more likely to appreciate their role, existence, death, and even personality.

At ease in cosmopolitan areas with Street Art scenes like New York, London, Los Angeles or Mexico City, ROA shares here brand new images from his most recent travels in the Australian Outback and the coast of Chile. Their distinctly different climates and unassuming relics of the built environment can serve as thoughtful vessels, breath-taking back drops for the creatures he brings with. ROA’s acute observational style, rendered with a can in what could be described as a fine and precise hand, continues to illustrate his vivid eye and almost daring approach to his craft.

In person these are striking, a strong reminder of our own mortality and our role as humans on the planet we share with other species. These images below, exclusively for BSA readers, are as beautifully painted as they are placed.

While in Australia ROA was a guest of FORM, a non-profit organization who works with the Aboriginal communities throughout the Pilbara region. He was invited on a field trip to gain a better anthropological perspective of the native culture and nature of the land.

While in Chile ROA visited Santiago and Valparaiso. In Santiago he painted the horse mural on the San Miguel Neighborhood. He was a guest of the famed local muralist Mono Gonzalez. Mono, as he is locally known, has been painting murals in Chile for several decades since before the dictatorship. Mono is the director of an open air museum called “Museo A Cielo Abierto de San Miguel”. ROA is very thankful for the hospitality of the Familia de Roberto Hernandez.

To learn more about the murals of Museo A Cielo Abierto de San Miguel click on the link below:

http://www.mixart.cl/index.php

Keith Haring 1978-1982 : Early Keith at The Brooklyn Museum

March 14, 2012 Artists, Events, Features, Museum, NYC

1978 and 2012 seem closer to one another than ever right now when we look at the blossomed Street Art scene in cities around the world. More than 30 years after Keith Haring moved to New York as an art school kid at the School of Visual Arts, a new generation of art school kids consider it almost a birthright to take their work directly to the street. Right now feels like an excellent time for Brooklyn to spotlight this study of his first four years in the city that blew his mind and inspired him to alter the whole system of how an artist reaches the public.

Keith Haring: 1978-1982, a traveling exhibition first shown in Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna and The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, introduces a period of his work not often examined, taking you up to the edge of the seemingly sudden international fame he experienced as artist, activist and public figure through the rest of the 1980s.

“Raphaela Platow, who was the original curator of this show, went into the archives and pulled out things that had basically just been sitting there, ” explained Tricia Laughlin Bloom, the project curator for the current show as she gave a tour this week before its opening at the Brooklyn Museum Friday.

At a time when the small-town boy was developing his visual vocabulary as an artist, Haring was also discovering himself as a man in the world and in a city that he found endlessly fascinating and worthy of exploration. Capturing his spirit of hands-on experimentation, the show is almost entirely comprised of works on paper with one collaborative piece on plywood with his contemporary Jean Michel Basquiat, paper collage, video, and documentary photos.

In these years Disco was on a full force collision course with Punk, New Wave, and Rap, and Haring was embracing the nightlife of a college student sampling the downtown scene, exploring his sexuality, and commandeering entire rooms at SVA to mount shows on paper. Some of those “body involvement” painting sessions are documented well here in video; a sort of full immersion painting baptism. While jamming out to music he covers every white surface with thick black symbols and gestural marking, sometimes painting with both hands in a rhythmic automatic study of both the physicality of the process and his own interaction with space and materials.

Not to be missed in person is the 30 piece collection in the final room of actual subway black papers that Haring adorned with his white line drawings, energetically created symbols and characters throughout stations in New York’s train system. The frames and glass protect them for us to appreciate them today in their disarming simplicity, their collection ironically alleged by some to be why the artist discontinued the subway practice. Equally compelling is the projected large slide show of Haring in photos by Tseng Kwong Chi, whom the artist called to shoot almost every time he did an illegal piece in the subway.

Keith Haring. Manhattan Penis Drawings for Ken Hicks, 1978. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With almost half of the pieces here never displayed publicly like this before, the show is a welcome revelation for fans hoping to peel back a little of the hype-like gloss that time and opportunism may have shined his legacy with. Whether it’s his hand-collaged flyers for the indie group shows he curated, his home movies of Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias performing in the living room, or the complete re-installation of a wall from his 1980 show at PS 122, you get the idea that this was an audacious observant art student gulping at the faucet of life in a pulsating dirty city that welcomed him.

“He’s such a thoughtful and complicated figure – at the same time with that really pure impulse of not wanting to alienate people but to bring them in,” says Laughlin Bloom as she describes the young artist she discovered en route. “He’s this combination of fun-loving, and life-loving, and intellectual, accessible – a total populist but not in an insincere way.”

Keith Haring. Twenty Polaroid self-portraits with glasses painted by Kenny Scharf and Peter Schuyff, 1979-82. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Still from Lick Fat Boys. April, 1979. Vide0 3 min. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Still from Lick Fat Boys. April, 1979. Vide0 3 min. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo

After 1982, Haring’s entire visual language of characters and symbols would become iconic, international; his work in dialogue with modern art history and everyday people eventually outlasted him to inspire a diverse generation of artists working on the street from Shepard Fairey and Swoon to Stikman and Specter, among many others.

“Haring saw the subway as the ideal platform for showing work – one of the few places to catch New Yorkers off-guard,” says Poster Boy, a Street Artist/collective who is credited/blamed for re-engineering and culture jamming subway posters with a razor in very recent years. Speaking of Haring’s chiding of corporate commercialism in the culture, Poster Boy observes, “For advertisers it’s the perfect opportunity for a commercial break. Haring saw it as a break from commercials.”

Respected for his early interest in busting down barriers in social activism, street art, and illegal art, it’s likely that many on the Street Art scene today will be checking out the pre-buzz Haring on display at this show. At the moment, it feels like one of New York’s adopted hometown heroes is back in Brooklyn.

“Art is for everybody. To think that they-the public- do not appreciate art because they don’t understand it, and to continue to make art that they don’t understand and therefore become alienated from, may mean that the artist is the one who doesn’t understand or appreciate art and is thriving in this “self-proclaimed knowledge of art” that is actually bullshit.” 1978

– Keith Haring Journals

Keith Haring. Cipher chart, 1971-73. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Keith Haring. Wall papered with reproductions of hand collaged flyers to advertise shows that Keith Haring curated, 1981. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“These are flyers from 1981 – an aspect of his production that maybe people aren’t aware of. He did a lot of organizing shows in alternative spaces and curating 24 hour exhibitions, xerox exhibitions, neon exhibitions, open-calls for artists where they show your work for 24 hours and then it’s taken away. He designed these – the framed works are the originals of the collages and posters that he did for these shows,” Tricia Laughlin Bloom, the project curator for the show. Keith Haring. Detail. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With special thanks to Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Sharon Matt Atkins, Sally Williams, Marcus Romero, Matthew Branch, The Brooklyn Museum, and the Keith Haring Foundation.

Images of the Week: D*Face Drama in NYC With 3 Murals in 1 Week

March 11, 2012 Art Fair, Artists, Brooklyn, Interview, Manhattan, NYC, On the Street, Street Talker Interview

It’s true that the art fairs descended on New York this week. Equally true is that the multiple fairs don’t just bring rivers of collectors and dealers and Looky-Loos, these teeming steaming orgiastic fuster-clucks with names like Poke, Stroke and Fountain also can bring in a wave of the Street Artists! Look at the seven days alone with BSA posts on LA’s Retna, Tel Aviv’s Know Hope and todays’ very special edition King of Images of the Week, D*Face!

D*Face, one of Street Art’s original British invaders, hit up New York with three new murals this week (two in Williamsburg, one in SOHO) employing sharply graphic pop lines and a humorously tart tongue to create works of high drama. With themes of lust, treachery and broken promises, the D*Face miniseries was streamed live on the street with no cover charge or icy art matron scanning through her iPad list for your name.

The final mural D*Face did was on Friday in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. While nicely sunny, the wind whipped through often enough to keep his fingers cold and his collar up. But on days like this New York can feel like a small town and the icy weather didn’t prevent a small group from hanging out, helping the artist and entertaining one another. Producer Stephen Thompson, photographer Jason Lewis and videographer Cliff Cristofarah took turns making observations, cracking jokes, fiddling with the music, and checking out the local parade as it scurried by.

For an additional feeling of street art community, Futura sauntered by to say hello and to offer entertaining stories and even go on a run for refreshments; water, coffees, and Mexican Coca Cola (with real sugar!). With Rob and Cliff taking turns at their MP3 players and the speakers blasting a bit of a 70s arena rock tribute (The Who, Led Zepplin, Black Sabbath), a couple of bike dudes came by to practice their tricks with a dog in the backpack.

Brooklyn Street Art: How would you describe these new pieces in New York?
D*Face: All the pieces surround the notion of ‘Love’, ‘Loss’ and ‘Longing’, all drawn from recent personal experiences, everything I create is pulled from experience personal to me, hopefully people will also connect to them too. I have three new pieces so I wanted to get three good spots with as much visibility as possible, the larger the better.

Brooklyn Street Art: Will you get a chance to skateboard while you’re here?
D*Face: Unfortunately not. I love this city for skateboarding, but I wont get to do much other than paint walls and hopefully cut loose and party a bit.

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about where your work is going thematically now?
D*Face: Thematically my work always draws upon personal experiences, whether thats the saturation of media in our lives, our fascination with celebrity and stardom or more singular experiences such as the loss of loved ones, searching your heart for love or holding people close when you should be letting them go.

I mostly rework old imagery that I’ve discovered, chopping bits of one or several images with another to create a new image that I feel is more relevant to today’s society and certainly the message I want to get across. So thematically its a continuation, it just has several veins that it runs off into.

Brooklyn Street Art: It feels like the Occupy Wall Street movement may have taken up some of the same punk aesthetics and energy that you were first drawn to. Is your work changed or affected at all by OWS?
D*Face: Haha! No not at all, but there’s always someone more punk than you, punk!

Brooklyn Street Art: Reworking the vocabulary of advertising and the practice of culture jamming can be very effective as education. Do you think of your work as message-driven?
D*Face: Yes, first and foremost my work has to have a concept, an idea, a message, it’s that which drives my work. Conceptually I’m always trying to push my ideas, push myself, keep myself excited and interested. I don’t want to stand still and see the growth of my work as a flik book, by that I mean small evolutions over time, what I want are solid chapters, which carry a thread of thought linking them all together.

Brooklyn Street Art: What role does humor play in your stuff?
D*Face: Oh its massively important, life is pretty heavy at the best of times, so even serious messages or thoughts don’t have to be heavy in execution, even the dark thoughts or concepts in my work I hope are executed in a poppy way, I want to draw people in first, get them to appreciate the aesthetic, then hopefully they start to question the image, its content, its meaning. If they don’t and appreciate it only on its surface value then thats fine. I don’t want to ram messages, political, religious, consumerist or otherwise down peoples throats in a way that burdens life’s load.

D*Face. Third mural in Williamsburg. Stephen Thompson his producer and assistant showing some back handed technique and snaazy foot wear. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: You’ve had some serious success in galleries. Why is it still important to you to hit the street today?
D*Face: I’m privileged to have the gallery success I do. I thank everyone that has supported me and my work over the years, to live as an artist, support my family, employ artists to help me, is an amazing opportunity and something I wake up thankful of everyday.

Whilst I love gallery shows and the opportunity to work in a gallery, it brings with it the ability to create different works, execute concepts and play with space in a different way, but you have to want to see ‘art’ or know about the artist or the gallery to see that work, galleries can be intimidating places, I don’t want that, I want my work to be inclusive, not exclusive, so putting work in the streets is the most effective way of doing this.

You can’t beat the feeling of painting in the street, interacting with people, hearing their views, thoughts and ideas on what it is your painting… you know you get to bring the unsuspecting public in, people that may have no interest in art, never walked in a gallery, suddenly when faced with a painting in the street have a different take, a different perspective… it’s really, really interesting, that interaction, even if they don’t like it, you’ve still changed their day, opened their eyes, hopefully you might get them to LOOK at their surroundings and not just see.

With special thanks to the Corey Helford Gallery for helping coordinate these murals and to Rob at Thunderdog Studios for hosting us on the Williamsburg sidewalk.

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