NYC

OLEK Queen of Crocheted Expressionism – With Balloons

March 29, 2012 Artists, Gallery, Manhattan, NYC

Crochet and knitting used to be for girls only. They would learn how to knit early in their training for their married life. Some girls were trained at finishing school while others learned it in an arts and crafts class. Often the trades you learned were split by gender – Mr. Arbunk, the Shop teacher, was teaching the boys how to make bird houses or hammered metal ashtrays while across the hall Miss Fortune, the Home Economics teacher, was showing the girls how to calculate the amount of dry pasta per person to put into the pot. Meanwhile your friends, who were skipping school, were at home calculating how much pot per person to put into the brownie mix.

These days crochet and knitting is no longer for girls only and is out for all to enjoy and there are actual knitting and crochet classes and clubs for the D.I.Y. generation. Just take the L train on an average Wednesday and you’ll see one or two young pretty boys and girls busy with their needles or hooks and their Ipods.

Olek and David Peterson “Synthetic Nature” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Maybe that is why the last decade has sprouted knitted art in new ways, and in recent years a handful of Street Artists have been using crochet and knitting as the the medium for their art. Two of the most prominent names, Olek and Knitta Please! have been industrious on the streets of New York, leaving large and small pieces, frequently full of color, their implicit humor lightening our heavy daily routines.

Olek favors covering practical objects that you use on a daily basis such as bikes or shopping carts or baby strollers. She also likes to make big statements by taking over large iconic monuments and giving them a poppy camouflage coat, literally covering entire sculptures with her art, like the cube at Union Square or the bull at Wall Street.

Olek and David Peterson “Synthetic Nature” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Currently Olek is teaming up with sculptor David Peterson for a new show at the Krause Gallery on the Lower East Side entitled “Synthetic Nature“. Mr. Peterson created a series of boxes/machines to simulate synthesizers and Olek, using balloons this time instead of yarn, interprets the movement of the sound that might emanate from those boxes. The entire installation is a cacophonic celebration, a sort of kinectic African folk expressionism in neonic color and neo-punk energy.

Speaking of music, if you put Olek’s pieces on and dance you’ll be transformed. In recent exhibitions, Olek has costumed actual people onto the street – 3-D installations with an organic rhythm and movement – balloons and mutlti-colored tentacles bobbing from her form fitting sculpture skins. The movement might recall for some the 1990s nihlist costume rockers Slipknot, minus the Aryan overtones and extended middle finger. It’s conceivable, even knittable, that this kind of handmade expression could take hold of the popular imagination and spread through the streets of Occupy Nation, given the enthusiasm of this professor.

Olek and David Peterson “Synthetic Nature” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Synthetic Nature” By Ian Sklarsky

“Synthetic Nature” is currently on view at the Krause Gallery in Manhattan. For further information regarding this show click here.

“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.

Rusted Metal: Canvas and Collaborator on the Streets

March 27, 2012 Artists, Brooklyn, Manhattan, NYC, On the Street

Street Art is ephemeral. That, for the most part is true. Unless we consider the role that the Internet plays in the way most people experience it. Then it doesn’t seem ephemeral at all.

From the moment a piece of Street Art appears, its evolution begins. Transformed by the elements; rain, sun, the rusting and oxidation of metal, the fading of paper. If you become familiar with a piece on the street, you might see it daily on your way to work or school or the laundromat. Over time it matures, evolves, takes on new characteristics, and eventually disappears.

Today we look at metal and it’s collaborative behavior as art material, its personality, its natural qualities. Industrial lots, garbage bins, heavy old gates secured with chains and locks, scrap yards, untreated wood facades – they all provide a myriad of surfaces, textures, shapes that serve as canvas and collaborator. Over time you observe the aging process of a stencil on a metal plate, or a decaying wheat paste peeling off of it or rusting into it, masking it’s shape onto it. The collaboration of materials and elements can be one of the most beautiful experiences one encounters on the streets, even an enduring one.

Here are some pieces on metal for you to enjoy.

Revs (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elbow Toe (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kaws (photo © Jaime Rojo)

C215 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bast (photo © Jaime Rojo)

See One (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Dude Company (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Anera (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jef Aerosol (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville (photo © Jaime Rojo)

White Cocoa (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NohjColey (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The 1% (photo © Jaime Rojo)

QRST (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jolie Routine (photo © Jaime Rojo)

No Longer Empty in Collaboration With Mid-Bronx Council Present: “This Side of Paradise” (Bronx, NYC)

March 24, 2012 Artists, Bronx, Events, Gallery, NYC, Opening

This Side Of Paradise

On April 4, 2012, the gates of the Andrew Freedman Home will open to the public. The Home was once built to be a haven, a paradise, for the rich elderly who had lost their fortunes. Bequeathed by millionaire Andrew Freedman, the Home provided not only food and shelter but all the accoutrements of a rich and civilized life style – white glove dinner service, a grand ball room, a wood-paneled library, billiard room and a social committee who organized concerts, opera performances and the like.

Referencing this quixotic history, This Side of Paradise will reference the past and reconnect the vision of Andrew Freedman to today’s Bronx and its realities. The exhibition and its extensive public programming onsite and offsite will draw together the economic and social history of the Home with the present day realities of the Bronx and its residents.

The selected artists’ will work in a site-specific manner and will respond to such issues as memory, immigration, storytelling, aging and the creation of fantasy that the original concept of the Home “being poor in style” suggests. This Side of Paradise will celebrate human ingenuity, the strength of the human spirit and the resilience needed to fashion beauty, hope and rejoicing.

Opening Reception will be Wednesday, April 4 from 6 to 8pm followed by the Speakeasy After Party Fundraiser sponsored by St. Germain starting at 8:30pm. Support NLE and future exhibitions by purchasing tickets here.

Exhibition Hours: Thursday to Sunday, 1pm to 7pm (extended hours when events are hosted).

Organizations Presenting Installations are Wave Hill – Installation by Adam Parker Smith; The POINT – Designed by Carey Clark, Alejandra Delfin, Danny Peralta, Lady K Fever, Sharon de La Cruz, Tats Cru, David Yearwood among others; The Bronx Museum of the Arts – Works by artists in the AIM Program; Bronx Documentary Center -Film by Tim Hetherington; Lehman College Art Gallery – Works by Scherezade García

Video and Production Support: BronxNet– a not for profit that provides local television by the people of the Bronx, for the people of the Bronx.

Media Partner: WNYC Radio

The Cafe in the Home is generously supported by La Colombe Torrefaction coffee.

This Side of Paradise is a collaboration with the Mid Bronx Senior Citizens Council, one of the largest nonprofits who has been providing community services in the South Bronx. Contact wpuryear@midbronx.org about the Andrew Freedman Home and mjenkins@midbronx.org about MBSCC.

Curatorial team is Manon Slome, Keith Schweitzer, Charlotte Caldwell and Lucy Lydon. A tremendous thank you to all our volunteers and interns involved in the project. Thank you!

ARTISTS:

443 PAS Gallery Presents: “The Best Kept Secret” A Group Show. (Manhattan, NY)

March 20, 2012 Artists, Events, Gallery, Manhattan, NYC, Opening

The Best Kept Secret

Images of the Week: 03.18.12

March 18, 2012 Artists, Brooklyn, Manhattan, NYC, On the Street

Our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Buttless, Curly, Don’t Fret, Droid, ENO, Enzo & Nio, ENO, Eras, Keith Haring, Memo, ND’A, Nev1, Never, Pakpoom Silaphan, Radical!, Read, Sheepman, and Skewville.

Skewville IS NOT ON SALE but you could make him an offer he can’t refuse. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Curly wants to know how much longer he has to toil…any answers? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Radical and ND’A making a connection. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Punk wheat paste. Who is the artist? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Never . Eras (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sheepman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nev 1 with girl in her panties. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Enzo & Nio (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Droid . Read (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Buttless helped out Supreme with their ubiquitous yearly banal postering campaign, in much the same way that Faile assisted in 2009 with tiger heads over Lou Reeds’ face. Their big Kate Moss repetition irked a number of Street Artists again this time by mindlessly papering over the individual with the mass message. By the way, is smoking cigarettes the new heroin chic? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

MEMO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don’t Fret in Chicago (photo © Don’t Fret)

Pakpoom Silaphan did this portrait of Keith Haring on a vintage Pepsi sign spotted at one of the art fairs last weekend. Might this have been a calculated effort to ride on the success of the Keith Haring retrospective currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum? Maybe it is simply another expression of the well worn practice of re-appropriating pop culture, with Haring clearly now in icon territory. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We listened for some ambient synthesizer music when this was discovered. ENO (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artsee Presents: Kemp “Behind her Disguise” (Manhattan, NY)

March 15, 2012 Artists, Events, Gallery, Manhattan, NYC, Opening

Kemp

KEMP is an intriguing Irish artist, making his debut solo exhibition in New York City.

KEMP digresses from the traditional features of stencil art, which tend to be represented as flat simple modes of mass-communication sprayed in public spaces. By taking the concept from the political and urban sphere into a studio environment, more akin to the screen printing process, he breaks down the customary limiting stencil strucure by creating multiple layers of depth from light through to shadow. He attacks the formal representations of his selected images by re-introducing detail in certain areas and pulling out and accentuating shapes, where the order of dark to light is not always regarded.

KEMP’s unusual colour choices move away from the type of palette often used by other artists of a similar visual nature, generating vibrancy while still using a predominantly muted palette.

During a trip to Ireland, the co-owner of Artsee, Oleg Rabinovich, became aware of KEMP and invited

him to hold his first American exhibit in the unique space that is Artsee, Battery Park City, NYC.

Behind Her Disguise is a collection of seventeen wood-panel iconic visuals of women, as seen through the KEMP filter. This exhibition was inspired by subculture, pop-art and the cult of celebrity. KEMP emphasises eyes and lips, while preserving the subject’s beauty as other features are flattened, obscured or masked. In selecting the subjects for the exhibition, KEMP chose sometimes beautiful, sometimes dysfunctional, sometimes disturbed women. He elicits an alternative underlying meaning during the process of production, as reflected in the titles of the pieces. KEMP invites the viewer to climb into a piece, wander around and unveil the truth behind her disguise.

KEMP is excited and honoured to introduce the city of New York to his collection and is enthusiastic about building connections with the city and its inhabitants as inspirations for his future work.

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. Untitled, 1982. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation. The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo

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.

Keith Haring. Untitled, 1982. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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. Matrix, 1983. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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.

Keith Haring. Untitled, 1982. Courtesy of and © Keith Haring Foundation, The Brooklyn Museum. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“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)

Keith Haring. Detail. 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)

Keith Haring. Thirty untitled subway drawings, 1980-85. Private Collection. 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.

Pandemic Gallery Presents: “20” Stikman Celebrates 20 Years on The Street (Brooklyn, NY)

March 13, 2012 Artists, Brooklyn, Events, Gallery, NYC, Opening

“20”

Pandemic Gallery Presents:

“20” a solo exhibition by Stikman

Opening Reception: Fri. March 16th 2012 • 7-11pm
show runs through April 6th

What more can be said about the mysterious artist known only as “Stikman” that hasn’t been uttered hundreds of times by passersby all over the city? His work is sneaky, incredibly thought provoking and uncommonly satisfying to come across, and if you have been living on the east coast or, well, basically anywhere in the states you no doubt have discovered it in some aspect. It could be in the form of 3D men made of small sticks to figures hidden in iconic imagery pasted to doors, or literally under your feet, smashed into the concrete. The range of mediums used and the calculated creativity given to each piece is overshadowed only by the sheer amount of work he has affixed to our cities surfaces. Tireless efforts aside, his stick formed character remains one of the most recognizable images in urban art culture. So, on that note we are proud and excited to announce the first solo exhibition of our favorite and New York’s most elusive street artist: Stikman.

from the artist:

It was the summer of 1992 that I deployed my first stikman in the East Village. In the early years the sticks were not painted, It took me much longer to make them at the time because I was always changing the way they were constructed. In the first year I don’t think I made more than 50 of them, they were between 5 and 6 inches tall and made of basswood. By 1996 I had started painting them and begun producing many more per year.

Once I started painting the 3-D stikmen I also started to paint stickers. Combining the 2 dimensional graphic element expanded my view of the ever changing stikman form, and the project took off in unforeseen directions. I was finding many different materials and processes with which to explore the realm of stikman. Over the years I have affixed and painted the stikman on numerous LP record covers, prints, book pages, cut paper paste-ups, hollow core doors and a variety of metal, wood, cloth and plastic objects. Some of my favorite pieces include stenciling images on ping pong balls, bricks, tiny slide viewers, and playing cards. And of course there were always little wooden men made of sticks.

My pieces start their lives as static objects, but they come to life when I place them in a public place where they are subject to the forces of time, interactions with humans and climate. I share this transient form of art to connect with a viewer whom I will never meet, in hopes that the joy of finding the unexpected has altered their consciousness. It finds an indigenous space in our surroundings like a flower escaping from the crack in a sidewalk. Continuously altered by time and circumstance.

To celebrate twenty years of playing in the street with sticks I have created a special battalion of twenty figures to send out into the world with the hope that the friends of stikman will take him along on new journeys to places he has not yet been. I have also created twenty works on paper to commemorate the paper element associated with stikman.Ten of these are PAINTBLAST, which is a form of automatic painting that occurs when I paint the wood figures.

PANDEMIC gallery
37 Broadway btwn Kent and Wythe
Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.pandemicgallery.com

Gallery hours:
Tues.-Fri. 11-6pm
Sat. & Sun. 12-7pm
closed Monday

or by appointment

L train to Bedford ave, J train to Marcy ave, or Q59 bus to Broadway/Wythe

Mighty Tanaka Presents: “Color & Motion” Featuring JMR and See One (Brooklyn, NY)

March 13, 2012 Artists, Brooklyn, Events, Gallery, NYC, Opening

color and Motion

Color & Motion Opening Reception:

Friday, March 16th

6pm – 9pm

(show runs until April 6th)

111 Front Street, Suite 224

Brooklyn, NY 11201

(F Train to York Street, A/C Train to High Street)

Worlds are created, destroyed and manipulated with a single stroke of the brush. Through the swirling movement and radiant bursts exists an abstract landscape of hostile environments intertwined with gentle allure. A semblance of paths and trails carved through the terrain, guides the eye through a visual exposé of mutually complimenting color tones and textures, further descending into the heart of the painting. Mighty Tanaka is happy to present our next show, Color & Motion, featuring the explosive abstract work of JMR & See One. Together, they explore the bounds of abstract art and intend to move beyond the barriers.

Color & Motion is an all-encompassing journey of expression that highlights a strong pallet and maintains a constant flow. Through the line work of JMR or the color shards of See One, both artists influence the movement of the eye with their chosen techniques. The work lends itself to a variety of interpretations that exist in the eye of the beholder.

Both artists utilize the very idea of Color & Motion within the overall approach, choosing to create work with acrylic paint as well as incorporating collage elements. JMR and See One, while similar in approach, both execute their work in unique and mesmerizing ways that invites the viewer to look a little closer.

BSA Goes To The Fairs

March 13, 2012 Art Fair, Artists, Manhattan, NYC

So you had to work over the weekend, and then catch up on laundry? No prob! Check out some of the eye candy we caught at Scope and Fountain. We also walked by Amory but decided against it and checked out the crocuses in the park since it was a warm and sunny day and too much art is too much! No terrific insights except to say that there is a lot of derivative work out there, amongst the rock hard gems, and the chocolately delicious. It’s all subjective of course.

You are all winners, don’t you ever forget that. The Kenton Parker Mirrored Trophy Room for Primary Flight Projects at Scope (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A Keith Haring photo from 1985 by Tseng Kwong Chi at Scope. Don’t forget the Keith Haring exhibit opening at the Brooklyn Museum Friday. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Every 1’s a Winner by Hot Chocolate

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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