One version of Street Art has as it’s mission to articulate opinions, truths, half-truths, subversive rants, and utterances of a political nature.
TrustoCorp, which so far has been nibbling around the edges with satiric plays on words, has gotten a lot more focused recently with some of these metal signs as well as their placement. Maybe it’s these polarizing times calling for clarifying amidst the smog machines….but TrustoCorp is a bit more ‘on-message’ in these recent postings on the streets of Gotham.
Now there’s a MAD COW – outside a certain fast food establishment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (Trusto Corp)
Our SELF-REGULATING friends could find this offensive (Trusto Corp)
A bit more vague and wide-sweeping, but we get the point (Trusto Corp)
"Thanks Madge, so do you!" - Who doesn't appreciate a positive affirmation once in a while? (Trusto Corp)
Street Artist Gaia worked two nights this week atop a ladder on a new double-headed Starling; a mutant foreshadowing of future Spring, under the darkened light of the Williamsburg Bridge.
Painting among and around the simple strings of outdoor lights gave the night-time a carnival like, magic-infused feeling. The sound of rumbling trains overhead quickened the heartbeat, the metallic serpents in the sky somewhat ominous.
“The patterns created by the line works confluence in the center establishes a new image born of the twins. There is a certain mystical quality to the double, the symmetrical and the Gemini. The corresponding likeness in a pair has always carried a certain sense of intrigue and mystery,” says Gaia
We’re not taking sides yet, but some serious allegations are being leveled by street artists Various and Gould against Brooklynite Gallery right now.
All we can say at this point is that we went to Brooklynite for what was supposed to be an interview with Various and Gould – That interview was abruptly canceled –leaving us standing in the rain. Instead, we were later emailed a link to this video by a now ex-intern (who is asking to remain anonymous). This video appears to show some bad sh*t. We’re hoping this isn’t true.
Brooklyn Street Art got a little hotter yesterday – thanks to spring time temperatures and the wildly talented Anthony Lister, who is working on this new mural.
In between his installation at PULSE art fair last week and his solo show “How to Catch a Time Traveler”next Friday, we had a really great time watching him painting this new face in the neighborhood.
Lyons Wier Gallery is pleased to present Anthony Lister’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, How to Catch a Time Traveler. The exhibition follows directly on the heals of Lister’s 50-foot, site-specific mural, “Red Dot”, created specifically for the Pulse Art Fair, NYC (2010), showcasing Lister’s undeniable signature style that has garnered him international acclaim.
Anthony Lister (courtesy Lyons Wier)
Known in the Low Brow movement for his intriguing, playful hybrid of street art,expressionism, and cubism; Lister’s new body of work shows the tongue-in-cheek frivolity of his earlier pieces developing (or decaying) into a more mature and disturbing direction. The deformities and un-done aesthetic resolve of Lister’s work provides viewers with a concretization of contemporary societies’ psyche – or, as the artist himself states, “making the obvious more, well, obvious”. In his latest series, Lister continues his examination of pop culture and how a generation raised on American television processes and interprets the symbols and imagery of their youth. The result is gender bending cartoon characters, and superheroes such as Wonder Woman and Bat Girl, that uncover the unconscious sexual desires and repressed taboos embedded in these seemingly innocuous popular icons. The work contains a circular perspective, one that shifts between, even confuses the non-rational inner workings of the child and adult mind. Yet this inescapable paradox of the human condition, wherein we are at all times evolving from and dependant upon the experiences of youth, is unlocked by Lister’s painterly antics, and revealed to be the utterly serious and impossibly ridiculous condition it is. Lister’s practice is indeed about reality. A reality his work does not claim to resolve, but rather to question, loudly.
Anthony Lister has shown widely internationally in solo exhibitions at Metro 5, Melbourne; K Gallery, Milan; Spectrum Gallery, London; Criterion Gallery, Hobart; and the Wooster Collective, New York; among others. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Artforum, Australian Art Collector, Vogue Magazine, Modern Painters, Paper Magazine, Art in America and VICE Magazine. Lister’s work is present in many reputable collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the David Roberts Collection, the TVS Partnership and the BHP Collection.
Lister is the receipient of the Prometheus Award (2009, 2005), the Dobell Prize for Drawing (2008) and the ABN Amro Art Award (2007).
– don’t know why I say it that way but it seems that the streets had a few more historical references and sudden intricate storylines when Gore B. was around. His new “drawing” show opening at Pandemic Gallery in South Williamsburg tomorrow features densely layered elements in black white and silver – all of his favorites: painted portraits from early photos, symbols from science, religious and maybe astronomy textbooks, ornate filigranic linework, and an ongoing fascination with type styles and letter faces.
But Gore B. will not be alone at Pandemic by any means on Friday – “Stokenphobia”, a show about two geometric shapes, will feature the work of around 40 street artists and friends in a show of community love for signage.
For the non-eggheads reading this – stokenphobia is fear of circles – so Pandemic has provided small rectangular shaped metal signs to a number of people to create a piece on.
Says Robbie D. of Pandemic, “It’s kind of sporadic. There was no real theme except ‘Just do whatever you feel on the objects we give you.’ We provided the metal signs and basically everybody is allowed to do what they want. So there’s no real theme to the artwork – it’s just about the shapes.”
Speaking about the makeup of the group who was invited to participate in the show, Robbie D say, “Mainly they are street artists but there are a lot of friends and artists who don’t work on the street but work in a studio. So it’s really just acquaintances and other street art people we respect and have known for a while now – kind of a close group of people that we know.”
March is here but don’t put your woolens away laddies and lasses.
BSA predicts at least two more snow storms before you can work on the tan line. Because, you know, we are weathermen too. Our weekly interview with the Streets
Spring is already in the air and on the streetswith brand new shoots and stems popping through the tundraby some of the new crop from the last couple of minutes.
This week we clocked none less than Poster Boy, Shin Shin, Oopsy Daisy, Primo, and Tazmat on the frozen streets of this most loved city of ours. The Poster Boy pieces in particular are a brand new direction – more focused and concepted – but after a minute of study you know they’re his and they are just as wacky as ever. Maybe they’re related to thenew book coming out this month .
These are not heady times, but neither are they maudlin. We’re just getting really focused on some things that are a bit more consequential.
If the Whitney Biennial 2010 is taking hits for being restrained due to budgetary cuts and the Armory is criticized for being overblown, you could say the Fountain show is optimized for impact. Now in it’s 4th year, there wasn’t any fatty hype that needed to be trimmed. With some of the machine-fog of a bubbled art market clearing, it’s not surprising that there are some strong voices here.
Fountain for me is a kind of raw, dense, and measured survey of the moment, and curator David Kesting steers this 10,000 sf. ship of serious mis-content with an uncanny skill for cutting out the flim-flam. Herding cats can be easier than directing artists, and a fair number of these felines may border on feral, but the bow is pointed in a surprisingly assured direction. Because of it’s outsider billing you could expect anarchy here but in many ways this collection of 20 or so galleries, collectives, and projects can be rather unified.
And it couldn’t possibly be more thoughtful – Whether it is a Swoon benefit rep speaking earnestly about sustainable communities, La Familia’s co-founder Jennifer Garcia explaining their nearly 50-member collective’s contemplation of the definition of family, Gregg Haberny’s hyper-wrought stabs at oil oligarchy and hypocrisy in general, street artist Zeus’ dripping corporate logos, or Dave Tree’s shovel-blunt criticisms of agribusiness’s seedless produce, you get the idea that somebody is actually studying the underbelly. All this frankness is refreshingly hopeful and many pieces are downright fun. But if these are the artists in the margins that portend our future, we may be heading for a cultural awakening and radical realignment of society.
The projects in Fountain New York 2010 include NYC based collective The Art Bazaar, Christina Ray – Swoon Benefit for the Braddock PA Studios, Leo Kesting Gallery from New York, Galerie Zeitgeist from Paris, the Brooklyn based project Open Ground, Baltimore based Nudashank Gallery, We-Are-Familia artists collective which will be displaying their keep-sake boxes with work from Whitney Biennale 2010 artist Rashaad Newsome, LA based website ArtSlant, Shelter Island Projects Boltax Gallery and Sara Nightingale Gallery, CREON gallery, UK based Holster Projects and artists installations by: Alison Berkoy, Miguel Parades, Seth Mathurin, Temporary States and Gawker Artists.
Fountain NY 2010
Pier 66 at 26th St in Hudson River Park NY, NY 10011 Telephone: 917.650.3760 Email: info@fountainexhibit.com Website: http://fountainexhibit.com Dates: March 4-7; 11am–7pm
To save their reputation and do a bit of DAMAGE:CONTROL the wise visionaries at Factory Fresh have flown in Boris Hoppek and Alex Diamond from Hamburg sister gallery Helium Cowboy to stage an unforgettable show tonight in Bushwick.
Tonight at Factory Fresh
This is what they have to say about it:
“The exhibition is called DAMAGE:CONTROL – each of the artists supplied one of the words when finding a joint theme for the show. Who does the damage and who’s controlling it is hard to tell, all we can leak is that we know who contributed which word
Although being close friends for a long time, Boris Hoppek and Alex Diamond have never collaborated this closely in the past. Everyone involved in the show is really happy with the result: it seems like the perfect match; the works correspond nicely, and the whole set up of the room couldn’t be more harmonic.
While Boris will be showing photos and watercolors, Alex brought along brand new china ink brush drawings as well as a series of collages. Most of the work has never been exhibited before and was specifically created for the Factory Fresh show.
On location, Boris installed a new upskirt installation (this time you have to slip underneath a beautiful, vintage wedding dress), as well as painting one of the walls with markers. Alex has been busy creating a new piece of collage work (assembled and painted on the gallery floor).
It seems to be heavily influenced by this trip, and sports quite an unusual motive compared to others. It comes on 4 wood panels, that are attached to each others, and is integrated into a wall painting, jointly with the six new collages he brought along on this journey. The work is called “Demon skull”.”
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
