I first saw an iteration of this collective at their 2001 installation at SmackMellon in Dumbo, Brooklyn in an old spice factory – think David Ellis was doing a residency there... Anyway, the roster and locations and breadth of projects that the Barnstormers were involved in has evolved over the last decade,but the wild-eyed no-holds-barred inventive quality stays solid. This is a show I’m not missing.
The new group exhibition at Joshua Liner Gallery will feature works in a variety of mediums: painting, photography, video, mixed media works and installation. Here’s a half hour presentation, or rather, performance piece from 2005. An actual barn is involved.
Artists exhibiting at Joshua Liner will include: Alex Lebedev, Alice Mazorra, Bluster One, Che Jen, Chris Mendoza, Chuck Webster, David Ellis, Dennis McNett, Doze Green, GION, Guillermo Carrion, James Lynch, Joey Garfield, Jose Parla, Kenji Hirata, Kiku Yamaguchi, KR, MADSAKI, Manny Pangilinan (WELLO), Martin Mazorra, Maya Hayuk, Mikal Hameed, Mike Houston, Mike Ming, Miyuki Pai Hirai, Naomi Kazama, Pema Brush, Romon Kimin Yang (Rostarr), Shie Moreno, SWOON, West One, Yuri Shimojo and more. Joshua Liner Gallery 548 W 28th St. 3rd Floor New York, New York 10001 212-244-7415 joshualinergallery.com
For a limited engagement of one week only, come see the magical land of Pufferella. With all new work, she turns the front room of Factory Fresh into a circus specially made to host her latest fabric creations.
With Rides and Amusement provided by her friends Skewville and Plaztik mag, this is one show not to be missed.
Pufferella has been making Fabric creations since 2002 and has been involved with the Skewville missions even longer. Her work deals mainly with sexual relations and the afterthoughts. She is the woman behind the creation of Orchard Street Art Gallery in NYC and Factory Fresh Art Gallery in Brooklyn. Her work has been shown in both solo and group exhibitions throughout NYC, California, Dublin and London. www.pufferella.com
Sweet dreams of summer and banana splits
Polymetrochromanticism The Artwork of Josh Mccutchen
Josh McCutchen lives and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn. This is his debut show at Factory
Fresh. His narrative works are about mythology, science & technology, social commentary
and body image. He also works with polymorphic shapes, and abstract urban landscapes.
Josh is also a television personality. He hosted “Does This Look Infected” on MTVU network
from 2005-2007. When he’s not painting modern masterpieces, Josh is the host, writer,
producer, and editor of the Josh McCutchen Show. You can see him in action at http://www.youtube.com/joshmccutchen
From photographer Vincent Cornelli comes this fun collection of images from last nights opening of “All Shook Up”, Jef Aerosol’s opening at Ad Hoc/Eastern District in Bushwick, Brooklyn, curated by Brooklyn Street Art. A steady crowd carried through the evening to check out the new pieces and to meet the artist in person.
Stencil master and Street Artist Logan Hicks began this direction at the NuArt Festival in Norway this past September.
The Multi-Layered Work: Precise, cool, revealing.
“It’s part of a new direction that I have begun. I suspect that much of my new work will be following this same direction,” he says.
The new works which (once at least) have also included the artist himself, look like a still from a CGI effect – but the direction the movie is going is unclear. Is the line drawing, rendered with CAD-like precision, being brought to full bodied life?
“The panels were actually a re-spray of a piece I did down at The Art Center in Miami during Basel. It was part of the show called Blueprint for Space,” says Logan
Or is this a peeling back of the skin of architecture and streetscape textures to reveal the superstructures and engineering underneath, the bones? To further enhance the stripped-down feeling is a devotion to a monochrome palette, minus the ox blood and acrid red punches he has favored in the recent past.
Logan Hicks standing in front of his new four paneled stencil piece to be hung in somebody’s home.
Thanks Logan for showing your new stuff to BSA readers.
You are never going to get bored walking through New York’s boroughs because the sheer number of languages, cuisines, fashions, and music you will experience will continually surprise you and expose you to great new people.
Street art fan and photographer Carlito Brigante (aka Charles Le Brigande) has been hanging in Bed Stuy Brooklyn for a few years, and has fallen in love with the music and history of the Jamaican soundsystem. A recent piece he did in the street recalls the big mountains of music speakers that pump loudly in the street with ska, reggae, and rocksteady music spun by a handful of disc jockeys engineers and MCs.
In addition to two of videos of that corner deli installation, Carlito engaged neighbors and shot pictures of them dancing in front of the paste-up. With a special affinity for the culture and the people, he loves street scenes that capture the flavor of this neighborhood.
Brooklyn Street Art: What is a “soundsystem” and where did they begin? Carlito Brigante: A soundsystem can be described as a means to bring the music to the people. In Jamaican popular culture, sound systems first appeared in the ghettos of Kingston in the late 40’s, way before the birth of ska, rocksteady and reggae music. Poor people could not afford the high prices of jazz and rhythm & blues (R&B) concerts organized for the wealthy elite and tourists, so sound systems sprung up. DJ’s would assemble large heavy speakers, power amplifiers and generators and blast music all night in the streets.
Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about the genesis of the “rubadub session” video and the wheatpaste? What was the aim? Carlito Brigante: The rubadub session project is a tribute to the Jamaican sound system culture. It was my way of bringing an unfamiliar art form (wheat-pasting) and combining it with a familiar cultural symbol (the soundsystem) as a gift to the neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. One day I was walking-by a laundry in Bed-Stuy, and the shape of the wall reminded me of a huge speaker. I immediately thought of doing a piece representing a sound system there.
Brooklyn Street Art:It’s great how you feature people interacting with the art and with each other. What inspires you most about the project? Carlito Brigante: The idea was to recreate the mood of a Jamaican soundsystem and capture people’s reaction. This corner is always very busy, people are hanging around there all the time, so by pasting-up on this spot, I knew that people would relate to the piece and would interact with it. I wanted to make them dance with no music!
Brooklyn Street Art:The neighborhood of Brooklyn called Bed-Stuy certainly has roots in the Jamaican soundsystem. Can you talk about your experience of living here? Carlito Brigante: This piece was directly inspired by a personal “Bed-Stuy/Jamaican” experience. Two years ago during a block party, I took a photograph of a natty dread skanking in front of a massive wall of speakers. I mean, every time I go out to take pictures here, I find amazing material. Bed-Stuy is full of surprises. It is an ongoing source of inspiration for me, from a visual standpoint but also from a human perspective. I have met so many incredible people in this neighborhood and taken a good amount of images.
Brooklyn Street Art:How is this project related to your passion for street art and urban photography?
Carlito Brigante: With the rubadub session, I wanted to blend my passion for street art, urban photography and Jamaican culture. That’s the reason why I have created this “background”. I knew that the spot was pertinent, that the piece would generate genuine reactions and that I would be able to take great photographs.
It was great to see people dancing and jamming throughout the whole process.
Photographer Vincent Cornelli was out on a legal wall tour with international stencil artist Jef Aerosol this Saturday; With a name like Aerosol, you don’t invite photographers to watch you work otherwise. The sunny January afternoon pretty much blew Vinny’s mind, and he writes here about how he got such rockingly cool pictures:
On Saturday, I had the privilege of showing Jef Aerosol around the streets of Bushwick, Brooklyn. I think the day was the perfect example as to why the Street Art Movement is so special…and it is deserving of capital letters. Encounters such as these are not only incredibly rewarding and inspiring, but they foster an intimate connection between you and a city that is changing right in front of you. It was one of the greatest of days
When I met Jef, I was photographing the front door of Eastern District/Ad Hoc Gallery. It was a warm greeting, with instant recognition of the other before exchanging “hellos.”
Everything from start to finish breed this notion of connectedness – from Eric of Eastern District giving us a ride to Veng’s wall; to catching up with Ali and Garrison of Ad Hoc, listening to their exploits up and down the eastern side of the US; to Veng offering up a nice piece of real estate on a wall he often works with.
It was also quite nice to have company from Stephan Missier and Becki Fuller, two great street art photographers who were around for a better part of the day. It was a day where everyone just seemed to fit so well with one another.
Jef and I spoke briefly of this sense of community, and family. He mentioned what a great feeling it is to be able to travel the world, always having another artist, gallery, blog or photographer willing to show you their city.
I felt so comfortable with Jef that I even asked him for some thoughts on a couple larger life-changing decisions in my own life. I thought the perspective he offered was quite spot on. He is a warm, witty and well-spoken man, confident in his outlook and mindset. It shows in his detailed and carefully placed stencils, and in his smile.
“All Shook Up”, the debut solo New York show by Jef Aerosol will open this Friday at Ad Hoc/Eastern District in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Read more about the show HERE.
One week from his debut solo show in New York, internationally known Street Artist Jef Aerosol showed his love for NYC with a large stencil tribute to one of Street Art’s recognized inspirations, Jean-Michel Basquiat. From some of the newest kids on the scene to guys like Aerosol, who has about 30 years in the game, it’s remarkable how Basquiat’s artistic legacy has such magnetism and a clout across the field.
For the first piece he’s done since arriving in the city this week, Aerosol picked an elevated roof spot a short walk from the location where the graffiti-influenced expressionist painter had his studio in Brooklyn. About 3 meters high and 4 wide, the three-layer stencil didn’t give him much trouble since there wasn’t much wind on the roof.
On a partially sunny day that was pretty mild for NYC in January, Aerosol seemed stunned by the experience at one point. “I’ve painted in many cities around the world, but there are only a couple that can move me in such a way as New York does. Even while I was creating this piece today, my mind was wandering and I was reflecting on how really luck I feel to be here, ” remarked Aerosol.
Maybe that is why he picked one of Basquiat’s quotes to write alongside the portrait, “I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life.”
To use a mangled metaphor, it looks like street artist Specter has thrown his terry cloth headband into the basketball ring in the ongoing Atlantic Yards dispute between pro-development and anti-gentrification forces in downtown Brooklyn.
For those of you who have been living under an IKEA, gentrification has been plowing through New York City since at least the 1950’s and it went on steroids in the 1990’s as developers began mowing down anything in their path by brandishing a legal claim of “Eminent Domain”.
For my money, and I’m broke, social critique doesn’t get richer than this, and this series will get tongues wagging if these posters stay up for any period of time before being bulldozed. Start the clock!
Included in the Atlantic Yards plans are new condos and a giant shiny new stadium for the basketball team The New Jersey Nets (huh?). That is helpful to know when looking at these hand made posters that have appeared in the affected neighborhood; the gentrifying forces of the moneyed class are depicted as parodies of movie genres; a Kung-fu movie, a horror movie, and a high-stakes pimps-n-hos movie.
The genres are employed effectively, and point clearly to topics not usually so blatantly discussed when talking about gentrification – I’m thinking specifically of the one called “Caucasian Invasion”. That one might get some of our more socio-politically astute neighbors in a frothy choked-up indignation.
As you can see across the bottom of the pieces, the hand painted posters are also for an art show at the MoCADA gallery in two weeks. But these are more than merely advertisements.
Street artists C215, BEEJOIR, MISS BUGS, and EELUS have donated pieces to an auction that is still being planned as a fund raiser to help an orphanage in Haiti called “Chances 4 Children”
The four confirmed participants in the auction so far are the following:
“High Hopes” by EELUS, Screen print on 500x700mm heavy art paper. Number 2 of a signed and stamped edition of 75. This image is of the original (print version to come)
The auction, which is still being put together is entirely for the benefit of the orphanage.
100% of the PROCEEDS WILL GO TO THE ORPHANAGE. CHECKS / CHARGES WILL BE MADE DIRECTLY TO THE CHARITY.
Beejoir "Oil Can Special, Double Can Edition" - this is not the exact image, the actual image will be coming shortly.
According to Rae, Brooklynite has an indirect link to the orphanage because very good friends of theirs were in the process of adopting two children when the earthquake hit.
The story has been covered on CNN and in the Daily News.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
