On the Street

Collaborative Individuality : Robots Will Kill, Plus Friends

May 24, 2011 Artists, Brooklyn, NYC, On the Street

Veng and Chris of RWK Plus Overunder, Never, Peeta and ECB Finish a Wall in Bushwick

Sometime in April we brought you a wall in progress with the tireless Veng and Chris of RWK in collaboration with Overunder, Never, Peeta and ECB for good measure. The guys finished their work a while ago and finally last week we had time to go and check it out. Not surprisingly, each member continues to tighten their individual visions and the wall is richly painted with beautiful details, vivid imagination and a mastery of the can.

ECB corner (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The walls of Robots Will Kill and friends can sometimes resemble an open sketchbook of imagination, predilection and pursuit; with Western and urban styles that coexist and interact, if not merge. A 90s 3-D wild style meets 2-D cartoon while a molten white man’s dinosaur heads floats nearby ominously. An ever evolving collective of painters, these friends have worked together often, watching their individual interests and styles develop and articulate.

Veng and Chris of RWK and Overunder (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In this fresh spring collection, the new element of an absurdist nature comes from the mind of Overunder, who sweeps up Veng’s 15^th century oil portraits with the roll down gates of city bodegas, depositing them in a ramshackle pile of human limbs and signage like a receding tornado. Another subtle humorist, Overunder gives his gates appropriate adornment; graffiti throwups, tags, a robot from Chris RWK and the time honored graff dis – “Toy” sprayed across a Nike logo.

Veng and Chris of RWK, Overunder, Peeta (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Somehow Veng’s formalist portrait retains its character and remains drolly poker-faced and disinterested among the debris, and Chris RWK’s robot rises above quizzically in a Shakespearian robe from the Costume Department. The crowning achievement is the deli-canopied cladding Veng’s character head gets – a surreal Star Wars / Escape From New York helmet that flies him here from a Van Ecykian past.

Chris of RWK and Peeta (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chris of RWK, Peeta and Never (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Veng of RWK and Overunder (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Overunder and Chris of RWK (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Peeta and Never (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Veng and Chris of RWK, Overunder, Peeta and Never (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Veng and Chris of RWK, Overunder, Peeta, Never and ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Manhattan Gets It Up : Beast Fools With Subway Map

May 23, 2011 Artists, Manhattan, NYC, On the Street

You ever notice how train lines look like veins on the subway map?

A couple of weeks ago we featured the work of street artist Beast on benches at bus stops in Los Angeles where he caught our beloved super heroes standing in the unemployment line.

This weekend he played with the NYC subway map and put it out for public inspection with a project titled “Unexpected Improvements”. Getting this outcome is not as hard as it looks, rather it’s the angle. Beast simply rotated the typical subway map 90 degrees. Tourists gladly pointed to it’s features while some quizzical old timers took a little while more to gander at it, wondering what seemed different about the new map.

Luckily we have photos to show you because almost all of them are down now. Guess even the Beast can’t keep it up forever.

Beast (Image courtesy © Beast)

Click here for more BEAST

Images of the Week 05.22.11

May 22, 2011 Artists, Brooklyn, California, Los Angeles, NYC, On the Street

Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Enzo and Nio, El Mac, Hargo, L.E.T., Paul Richard, Poster Boy, QRST, Retna, Skewville, Nice-One and Sweet Toof.

With photography by Carlos Gonzalez, Geoff Hargadon, and Jaime Rojo.

Sweet Toof at Factory Fresh. Today is the last day for you to see this show. If you miss it you’d be upset for the rest of your life. No kidding! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Poster Boy and Sweet Toof. One of the more effective Poster Boy interventions recently spotted. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Annie get your gun. Enzo and Nio (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Mac and Retna collaboration in LA (photo © Carlos Gonzalez)

Cash for Your Warhol in LA (photo © Hargo)

Paul Richard and L.E.T. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Paul Richard has been placing ironic placards in very funny places. Also here is a piece by L.E.T. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Skewville in Bushwick (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nice-One does this wheatpaste that looks like it has some Os Gemeos influences. Thanks Stephanie for the tip! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

QRST sets the birds free (photo © Jaime Rojo)

QRST (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Italian Street Artist Göla and His Fantastical Hybrids in Brazil

May 19, 2011 Artists, Brazil, Events, Gallery, On the Street, São Paulo

Italian Street Artist Göla is in Curitiba, Brazil working with Brazillian Paulo Auma as part of a public art / street art exhibition called “Hibrido”, or Hybrid. Engaging the children, adults, and walls with fantastic and glaring color drenched combinations of genetically modified animals, insects, food, and technological wonders is meant to be more than entertaining eye candy – while it clearly succeeds in doing that. As the French Street Artist Ludo does with his animal/techno fantasy combinations, this four month exhibit is an explicit call for us to think about the goals and results of our experimentation with the natural world, our ethics, and our blind obeyance to scientific endeavors for their own sake.

Göla. Curitiba, Brazil (photo © Fernando Cesar)

“I try to ask about the relationship between man and all other living beings,”says Göla about the influences in his work. With his painting and subject matter a meditation on the laws of nature, he warns of the dangers of messing with it. Fascinated with the hybrids that are coming about, his depictions profess affinity for the natural world.

As he name checks futurist artists like Eduardo Kac and Alexis Rockman , Göla explains “My work is influenced by an ever-present closeness with the animal sphere,” as your thoughts wander to discussions of trans-human futurism, fluorescent fish, all terrain dog-robots delivering bombs, and flying nano bugs watching you through the window while you drool over a Lady Gaga video.

Göla. Curitiba, Brazil (photo © Fernando Cesar)

Heady stuff for Street Art you say? Not really when you consider that today’s generation of Street Artists is coming from a huge variety of backgrounds with a flood of abilities, carrying with it bags of tricks only imagined in the aerosol infused reveries of yesterdecade. Göla, for all of this heavy thinking, is a jubilant ombudsman of a hopeful future, bringing an extremely playful and childlike wonder to his work, making it all so much more engaging.

While in Brazil, Göla took time to explore the country and to get up in various towns big and small. Here is the product of his work and collaborations with some local artists.

Göla. Curitiba, Brazil (photo © Fernando Cesar)

Göla, Paulo Auma “Hibrido” Curitiba, Brazil (photo © Fernando Cesar)

Göla. “Hibrido” Curitiba, Brazil (photo © Fernando Cesar)

Göla, Sao Paulo, Brazil (photo © Göla)

Göla, Niguem Dorme Sao Paulo, Brazil (photo © Göla)

Göla, Milo, Tim Tchais, Dedo Verde. Sao Paulo, Brazil (photo © Göla)

To experience Göla’s world click on his site:

http://www.golanimal.com/

“Hibrido” is on view from March 20-June 19, 2011.

To learn more about “Hibrido” click below:

http://www.hibridoart.net/

El Mac and Augustine Kofie : Two Cats in an Alley

May 18, 2011 Artists, On the Street, Pasadena

It happens on a roof in LA, in a back alley. El Mac and Augustine Kofie, two gifted graff writers, street artists, fine artists, balanced assuredly on ledges and ladders, cans in hand and collaborating on a new piece. It’s a dreamlike sequence of scaling and balancing, backing away and re-approaching, scanning the sky as day folds into night and looking back at the bricked canvas to see a gentle babe gazing upward from an abstract future past.

El Mac. Augustine Kofie. (photo © Todd Mazer)

Photographer and videographer Todd Mazer, a regular contributor to BSA, circled and treaded nimbly and quietly in panther-like pursuit of the right screen capture while the artists worked. Over time, perched camera in hand, he documents the dexterous and purposeful movement and focus of two big cats on the top of their game. And roof.

“For me I feel like that’s as good as it gets,” says Mazer.

El Mac. Augustine Kofie. (photo © Todd Mazer)

El Mac. (photo © Todd Mazer)

Augustine Kofie. (photo © Todd Mazer)

Brick: You’ll make out fine. Your kind always does.

Maggie: Oh, I’m more determined than you think. I’ll win all right.

Brick: Win what? What is, uh, the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?

Maggie: Just stayin’ on it, I guess. As long as she can. *

El Mac. Augustine Kofie. (photo © Todd Mazer)

Read our interview with Augustine Kofie with photos by Todd Mazer here:

http://www.brooklynstreetart.com/theblog/?p=18806

The piece was created behind 33third in Los Angeles http://www.33third.com/ A Graff and Street Art supply store in conjunction with:

The Street Cred Art show in Pasadena http://www.pmcaonline.org/exhibits/61/index.html

* from “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, a play by Tennessee Williams

Blowing Up a Tag : Gary Stubelick Lights the Street On Fire

May 17, 2011 Artists, Boston, On the Street

Using sparklers and an open shutter, artist Gary Stubelick creates glowing panegyrics to light up the urban night. The Boston based creative director has been exploring the fine art of time and light for a few decades and creates incandescent odes to hot summer nights in the city with his interpretation of mundane features of the urban landscape.

A time lapse photographer since 1973, the artist “paints” objects discarded, overlooked and discovered with sparklers, incandescent tungsten, and highway flares, giving them shooting star status, if just temporarily. This public art art is less than ephemeral – it only existed briefly and linearly, with it’s layers collected here and displayed as one perfect moment.

Blowing up a tag and this messengers’ bike while he’s inside delivering a pizza. “Urban Frontier” (photo © Gary Stubelick)

“The idea behind the shot was to combine the renegade nature of graffiti with the explosive energy of pyro. I utilized ballistic sparklers to achieve the splattered paint effect. The bike is a Schwinn Frontier mountain bike which accounts for the title, ” says Stubelick.

The humble fire hydrant is set ablaze. Gary Stubelick “Fire Hydrant #7” (photo © Gary Stubelick)

Gary Stubelick “Target Glass” (photo © Gary Stubelick)

Gary Stubelick “Firebird” (photo © Gary Stubelick)

Transforming a mound into a rumbling mountain of bubbling lava. Gary Stubelick “Urban Volcano” (photo © Gary Stubelick)

Gary Stubelick “Fire Balls” (photo © Gary Stubelick)

To see more of Mr. Stubelick’s work click on the link below:

http://g-flip.deviantart.com/

Images of the Week: 05.15.11

May 15, 2011 Artists, Brooklyn, Manhattan, NYC, On the Street

Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Elle, Googly Eyes, Julia Langhof, Karat, Kid Zoom, Money Population, Sweet Toof, The Dude Company and scenes on the street from photographer Jaime Rojo.

Hiding behind a fern; an unknown artist’s wheat paste of a B&W photo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kid Zoom in Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Some people go into debt to bury their dead. Death is far from free – and what about those pesky estate taxes? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Another fleeting moment on the streets of New York;

This construction worker appeared to mimic dance-like movements while working before this street level video installation of a dance troupe. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Looking to zone out? Here is as good a place as any. Artist unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sun dappled Elle is such a lamb. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eve in the garden of Brooklyn and Evil. Julia Langhof (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Street Artists, illustrator, graphic novelist Karat recently installed these bronze plaques in locations in New York that mark historical events in her life. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Go NYC, yeah you know me. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Money Population (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Googly Eyes intervenes ever so slightly in this media campaign poster (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Dude Company recently rolled through Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sweet Toof (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With love from the streets of Brooklyn. Untitled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With love from the streets of Manhattan. Untitled (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Chicago Street Art” Debuts with an Exhibition and a Book

May 12, 2011 Artists, Book Review, Chicago, Events, On the Street, Opening, Street Talker Interview

Author Joseph J. Depre has been traveling around the world to photograph and write about Street Art for the last few years and and when he returned to his hometown of Chicago he rediscovered his love and appreciation for the art in the streets of his city. The images in his first book just released give a very good documentation of the current scene while his essays are personal, poetic and passionate.

Opening tomorrow at the Chicago Urban Art Society is a retrospective of work by many of the artists on that scene today. With brand new works curated in this not-for-profit gallery environment developed by Lauren Pacheco and Peter Kepha, visitors will have the chance to see the Street Art talent that is growing in their community, including pieces by Artillary, Bonus Saves, Brooks Golden, Chris Silva, CLS, Senor Codo, Cody Hudson, CRO, Cyro, Chris Diers, Don’t Fret, Emen, 80 Legs, Tom Fennell IV, “It’s Yours, Take It”, Goons, The Grocer, Juan Angel Chavez, Kepto Salem, Melt, Nick Adam, Oscar Arriola, Poor Kid, Safety First, Saro, Sighn, Solve, Tiptoe, The Viking, You are Beautiful, among others. More information about the show at the end of the post.

Debuting his book “Chicago Street Art” for the first time at the opening, Mr. Dupre is very excited to see the show come to fruition after nearly a year of planning. Brooklyn Street Art asked him about the Chicago scene today and his new book and he gives us some insights here. We also had an opportunity to shoot some art on the streets of Chicago last month – see photos by Jaime Rojo after the interview.

Brooklyn Street Art: How long have you been preparing this book “Chicago Street Art”?
Joseph Depre: I originally had the idea for a book on Chicago Street Art when I started to integrate into the Chicago Street Art community in 2004. I think that is about the time I started writing. I was fascinated by these unique artists and was lucky enough to be able to talk openly with a good number of them, bounce ideas off the artists and they helped me refine my thoughts. As I traveled I was able to get together with Street Artists in cities like New York, Berlin, Barcelona, and Sao Paulo. After experiencing the Street Art in these cities and got back to the States my thoughts reflected back to Chicago and the incredible history of Street Art we have here and I thought it was important to give Chicago the recognition it deserves. So I’ve sent the last 9 months talking to all of the Artists and putting this all together.

Brendan “Solve” Scanlon (photo courtesy of the author © Oscar Arriola) from “Chicago Street Art”

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you introduce us to the Chicago Street Art scene at this moment from an artist and creative perspective?
Joseph Depre: I won’t be so forward to say I can tell you anything from an artist perspective, but as a conscious observer I can say there are a lot of good things happening in Chicago at the moment. Nice-One seems have refined his characters with an air-brush technique that looks really nice. Don’t Fret has really been putting in his time and effort. His characters are always fun and expressive. He’s turning into to a great storyteller. Mental 312 has been hitting the streets hard and doing some really beautiful work. He’s one of my favorite artists right now.

TipToe (photo courtesy of the author) from “Chicago Street Art”

Brooklyn Street Art: Chicago has a very active anti-graffiti program, which cleans or “buffs” pieces, good and not so good, quickly with brown paint. Can you talk about how Street Artists have responded to the efficient and rapacious pace of buffing?
Joseph Depre: Most of the Street Artist I know really hate the buff and attribute the fact that Chicago has so little international Street Art respect to “the buff.” But all of these Artists just work harder in spite of the Buff. In New York one piece can stay up for years, in the Chicago the Street Artist has to do 20 pieces just to stay up through the season.

Brooklyn Street Art: Street Artists like Chris Silva and Cody Hudson have gone beyond two-dimensional painted works to create sometimes expansive sculptural set installations. Do you see more stuff like this around Chicago these days?
Joseph Depre: Oh Yeah. The first artist that comes to mind is CLS. It is really amazing what he has been able with scraps of wood and branches he finds on the street.

Brooklyn Street Art: Borrowing a tenet from the flash mob street manifestations of the last decade, Street Artists like BonusSaves devised something called “It’s Yours, Take It”. Can you talk about this practice of giving art to the public and how it has become an international programmatic approach to engaging communities?
Joseph Depre: The Internet has really helped out with this. Through sites like Flickr, BonusSaves is able to organize and direct hundreds of people from all over the place. All with the same state of mind and love of giving art to people and bringing communities together through gifting creativity. But it is not solely his doing… All the artists really believe in the idea and have been running installations in cities all over the world all by themselves. It really is a testament to the power of people to come together and do something really good just for the sake of doing something good.

Brooklyn Street Art: You dedicate a few pages of your book to the occurrence of a piece attributed to London Street Artist Banksy on a wall in Chicago, and the response of the city and other street artists to it. Is there such a thing as a “Banksy Revolution”?
Joseph Depre: I cannot say what Banksy’s actual intent is – only he knows what that is. For my part, I hope he’s attempting a revolution. If not then we are all the butt of a pretty sick joke. I also hope that he doesn’t get discouraged, I think people are just starting to listen. Maybe not the people who were introduced to Street Art through “Exit, Through the Gift Shop” but others.

Brooklyn Street Art: What do you think distinguishes the Chicago scene and why do you feel an affinity for it?
Joseph Depre: Other than Chicago being my home and my introduction to Street Art, I think there are quite a few things that distinguish it from the rest of the world. The sculptural history exemplified by the likes of Juan “Angel” Chavez, Cody Hudson, and Chris Silva would be a good place to start. The other thing is that all of the artists are personally close here. Everyone knows everyone. They don’t just meet up at shows and events but talk on a regular basis and are invested in each others’ lives and success.

Brooklyn Street Art had the fortune to be in Chicago for a day recently where photographer Jaime Rojo got an afternoon to run around shooting as much as he could find. Brooklyn artist Gaia had recently been in the city and he left some nice gifts for the Chicago art lovers to enjoy. The images below are from that visit to Chicago and are not a part of the book “Chicago Street Art”

Chicago Urban Art Society, 2229 South Halsted. The show will run until June 4. http://chicagourbanartsociety.tumblr.com/

Book Cover Artist: Chris Sliva

Skin Deep Beauty on the Subway in NYC : Poster Boy Interventions?

May 11, 2011 Artists, NYC, On the Street

The Reality-Show-Industrial-Complex continues to warp everyone’s perception of reality with its brain cell melting fusillade of advertising everywhere you turn. Street billboards, banner ads, barking taxi cab screens, and bone-headed subway posters spill bilious candy coated banality upon bystanders and passersby with entreaties to experience the misadventures of buxom babes and the buff boys who bang them.

You have to wonder how these funhouse images affect the self-perception of girls and boys and women and men who are surrounded daily by them. You will not escape the visual assault as you ride captive on the trains to your job or school or museum or library or the unemployment office – as the vast tentacles of the entertainment industry reach ever further in search of a market.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that citizenry doesn’t talk back.

From Keith Haring in the 80s to Poster Boy (s) and LUDO and a number of non street artists in the last couple of years, there is an occasional attempt to steer the conversation, stem the tide and claim the eyeballs and attention on the subway, if just for a minute. Some artists feel that the subways are a fair playground and an instant gallery, to the chagrin of those who see their art interventions as crimes or at least, damaging to profits.

Recently we spotted a series of ads with images of the new “celebrity” class marred with the tiniest “interventions” that ring of Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kreuger and even William Burroughs. Whether these are the work of Poster Boy or the Poster Boys he hoped to inspire, the placement short circuits the messaging and questions how women are being portrayed. Ultimately these little interventions are just a finger in the whole.

Signs of the BEAST Seen in California (Rapture Update)

May 10, 2011 Artists, California, Los Angeles, On the Street

I swear if the world does not burst into flames this year and the sky doesn’t cloud with locusts and the Chinese don’t bomb the shit out of the heartland and if Angelina Jolie does not ride naked and pregnant on an 8-headed lion with wings and Jesus Christ doesn’t appear floating in the sky with his arms open to welcome all the Republicans who just got sucked out of their cars up into his embrace – if all that does not happen on May 21, 2011, I will never again listen to any prophecies for the rest of my time here with you. I’m serious. I have spent my entire frickin’ life expecting supernatural star spangled annihilation and a prison planet and all I got was this orange “War on Terror” t-Shirt and a machine that scans my nuts at the airport.

Street artist Beast put up his/her own series of billboards in Los Angeles last week. In this case, we can actually say that we are seeing the Signs of the Beast. He used the back of 25 bus shelter benches, which usually advertise nasal decongestants and accident lawyers 800 numbers, to bring an uplifting message of impending pestilence and catastrophe and unemployment. Times are so bad that superheroes are trying to cut in line at the job fair.

You know, we spent $3 Trillion on something over the past 10 years with this war machine, surely someone could start up a World War to give these spandexed and bedazzled folks some work. Although I don’t see too many people carrying resumes in hand here, so they could also use some career coaching.

Beast (photo © Beast) This dude will face some stiff competition to snag a position with that crowd ahead of him. Hang in there buddy, Jesus is on his way.

Birdman Captures ROA in Wilds of LA

May 9, 2011 Artists, California, Los Angeles, On the Street

Photographer and BSA contributor Birdman captures Belgian Street Artist ROA at work in Los Angeles last week as part of LA Freewalls Project spearheaded by Daniel Lahoda. ROA loves long walls and jumped on this one like a bird of prey.

Perusing the selection of night images, a hallucinatory sun burned tint washes over ROA’s images like a lost day baking in the desert, certain feathered friends flying in circles over your head.

Street Artist Ethos Surreally Big in LA

April 30, 2011 Artists, Los Angeles, On the Street

Bryson Strauss and the L.A. Art Machine keep an eye on global art phenomena and support the ongoing conservation of Los Angeles’ substantial outdoor mural collection, continuing to promote a vital art community on all levels. This week they hosted Brazilian Street Arts Ethos to come and paint and the results have been giant! Talented photographer Carlos Gonzalez jumped into some very tricky spots to get you these dynamic process shots of Ethos in action.

L.A. Art Machine

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