“In 1991, three intoxicated and disgruntled teenagers went out to take on the biggest graffiti crew in Copenhagen. Adopting the name MOA (Monsters of Art) the aim was to become the most recognized graffiti crew in the world…”
Now, over twenty years later, MOA is one of the most notorious graffiti crews and still hold the top spot for train ‘bombing’ in Denmark. Forever growing and expanding the fight for MOA global domination is far from over. This one-off exhibition will explore the crew’s unique codes and conducts that have, over the years, set them world’s apart from all other graffiti crews. Many crews have challenged their position but none have succeeded, proving that MOA really are the kings of unparalled artistry and skill. Since their arrival onto the scene MOA has been off-limits, only giving selected interviews and infrequent comments to certain publications. We are delighted and highly privileged to show a one-off exhibition looking back at MOA’s 21-year rein on the graffiti world.The exhibition will include original works, screenprints and photographic documentation.
Monsters of Art Studio and Gallery
112 Mill Lane
London
NW6 1NF
Numskull has a very distinct aesthetic, full of strong line work, collage elements, and a flurry of pop culture influences that he magically melds together into a cohesive style. His show, Dance Like A Video, Sting Like A GIF, will be opening with a bang next Friday, August 10th, at 350 Broadway in Brooklyn. We can’t wait for you to feast your eyes on more of this elusive artist’s striking pieces. For the truly charmed, we’ll also be selling a t-shirt at the even that you can see above.
Exhibition open to the public August 11 – September 1, 2012
Carmichael Gallery is pleased to present Primeval, a group exhibition featuring works by Emol, Stinkfish and Zio Ziegler. The exhibition will be on view from August 11 to September 1, 2012. Zio Ziegler will be in attendance at the opening reception on Saturday, August 11 from 6-9pm.
Cities and their streets put the three artists in daily contact with the urban elements that in turn influence their work. Be it architecture and propaganda for Emol, the texture of old walls for Stinkfish, or the color of pavement after a rainy afternoon for Zio, inspiration for these artists is inextricably drawn from the outdoor environments they encounter in their respective cities. Their individual mastery of line, sources of form, and choice of color share a compassion for and understanding of history and humanity. Such honest and considered motives translate into works that are powerfully evocative and, though indigenous, universally approachable.
Emol finds the connection between art, artist and city crucial to his practice. He believes that to paint outside is the best way to grasp what is happening at the moment and to know how one’s art affects communities. Emol considers his work an embodiment of antenna to roots, capturing that which is current, but with a strong link to the past and ancestry. He achieves this largely through his color choices, which symbolize Brazil’s wealth of distinct cultures. Through traveling the various regions of his home country and closely observing their different traditions, Emol combines the tropical colors he encounters, each offering a different vibration, with lines and forms to infuse sensorial joy into urban landscapes.
Stinkfish is equally indebted to the street, having spent his childhood playing soccer and going for bike rides around his neighborhood. He is drawn to bringing his work to as many people as possible, favoring busy crossroads and streets as locations for his murals. The texture of highly trafficked, decrepit areas gives Stinkfish the feeling that he is continuing the history of a wall, mixing his story into a larger narrative of crumbling paint, grit and wear. Stinkfish also remembers having an affection when he was young for the cameras his father would buy and sell, spending hours “playing” with them, discovering their mechanisms and teaching himself techniques of framing and focusing that would become essential to his art form. His transposition of photo to mural enhances the fleeting moments of human nature he captured with his camera, leaving the final interpretation up to the public.
Zio too finds that the balance of working publicly and privately assists his entire creative process in a symbiotic way. The open source template of the streets serves as a constant reminder to him of the democratic yet organic nature of art. Though influenced by classical philosophy, literature and art, Zio constantly reminds himself of the paradigm shift towards the digital age. To be aware of this ephemeral state of painting assists the visceral encouragement of instinct in the studio. And so, with the balance of both studio and street, instinct and patience, comes Zio’s paintings.
Détournement : Signs of the Times
Group Exhibition curated by : Carlo McCormickAugust 8—25, 2012
Opening Reception:
Wednesday, August 8, 7—9pm
Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to presentDétournement: Signs of the Times, a group exhibition curated by Carlo McCormick, featuring work by a number of artists, including: AIKO, Dan Witz, David Wojnarowicz, Dylan Egon, Eine, Ilona Granet, Jack Pierson, John Law (Jack Napier), Leo Fitzpatrick, Mark Flood, Martin Wong, Max Rippon (RIPO), Mike Osterhout, Posterboy, Ron English, Shepard Fairey + Jamie Reid, Steve Powers (ESPO), TrustoCorp, Will Boone, Zevs
CURATOR’S STATEMENT
A détournement is a detour of sorts, but not so much along the scenic route as over the tougher road that goes more directly to the truth. A more proximate translation from the French might be a derailment, but I’m not sure English is so well suited to get both the violence and hilarity of the term. Since coined by the Lettrist International in the 1950s, it has served various generations as a common strategy by which to subvert consensus visual language so as to turn the expressions of capitalist culture against themselves. The most typical folkloric version we encounter of a détournement is when someone writes a word at the bottom of a stop sign, so that with say just three letters this mundane road command might read “Stop War.”
Employed brilliantly by the Situationists, whose great philosopher Guy Debord laid out the socio-aesthetic framework for this practice, détournements twist the terms of mimicry in ironic parody using the a semblance of the easily recognizable to dissemble and redirect the literal meaning of signs so as to construe a more honest picture of their deceptive intentions. As such they are a mediation of the media, a way of transgressing the fine art of persuasion that dominates our visual landscape to offer alternative readings and deviant possibilities to the hegemony of mainstream corporate culture. A natural response to the lies and coercions we are fed on a daily basis, the détournement has been the reactive impulse of all those who question reality, from the Punks who adopted it in the 1970s through Culture Jammers, Adbusters, contemporary street artists and the winding legacy of protest movements from WTO to Occupy.
This exhibition is meant to both celebrate the lineage of détournement and bring attention to some of its current practitioners who embody its continued vitality through their art. We live in a forest of signs that are meant to confuse, distract and numb us to the more dire consequences of the human condition as it is. We do not need to follow these signs, we need to make our own so as to find a way out of the mess we are in. I cannot thank these artists enough for their contributions towards helping us find another way.
ABOUT THE CURATOR Carlo McCormick is an esteemed pop culture critic, curator and Senior Editor of PAPERmagazine. His numerous books, monographs and catalogs include: TRESPASS: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art, Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture, The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984, and Dondi White: Style Master General. His work has appeared in numerous publications including: Art in America, Art News, and Artforum.
The gallery is located at 529 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For further information, please visit:www.jonathanlevinegallery.com, call: 212.243.3822, or email:info@jonathanlevinegallery.com.
Yo what’s up Neeeewwwww Yawwwwk! You mean aside from brand new work on the streets this week in NYC from Faith 47, DAL, ROA, and JR? Oh, nothing really, just a normal boring summer. Street fairs, skateboarding, popsicles, public drunkeness, and I think the Olympics are still running but apparently only Michael Phelps is in them this year according to the TV. Also, something about VISA I think. Anyway, here are some fun activities for your weekend!
1. OS Gemeos Solo at ICA Boston
2. Fairey / Hecox / Houser at Black Book (Denver, CO)
3. “Public Works” at LALA Gallery (LA)
4. Faring Purth at Anno Domini (San Jose, CA)
5. Brett Amory and Adam Caldwell “Dirty Laundry” at ThinkSpace (LA)
6. “Cause and Effect” Group Show (BK)
7. “Eye in the Sky” Group Show @ Stolen Space (London)
8. Summer Exhibition at Joshua Liner Gallery (Manhattan)
9. Snyder’s ART HUNT in Carlsbad, CA
10. “Dead Meat” Conor Harrington By The Baron (VIDEO)
11. Does Anyone Care About the Olympics (VIDEO)
OS Gemeos Solo at ICA Boston
The first USA solo exhibition of Os Gemeos enjoys it’s first opening weekend at ICA Boston and you can see the first piece before you even enter the museum because they have just completed a large outdoor piece on a ventilation building over the Big Dig. The Brazilian Twins began their artistic career since 1987 doing graffiti and and have been painting all manner of imaginative pieces and murals non-stop on the streets of the world ever since. Along the way they have garnered the respect of their peers and thousands of art fans across all continents.
For further information regarding this exhibition click here.
Fairey / Hecox / Houser at Black Book (Denver, CO)
The Black Book Gallery in Denver, Colorado new Group Show includes Shepard Fairey, Even Hecox and Jim Houser and it opens today. The gallery is also organizing mural installations at the Metropolitan State College of Denver.
For further information regarding this show click here.
“Public Works” at LALA Gallery (LA)
“Public Works” is the title of the second show that is opening today at the still smelling-like-new LALA Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. Contributing artists include How & Nosm, Insa, Push, Revok, Risk, Ron English, Seen, Shepard Fairey, Trustocorp, WCA Crew, Uglar, and Zes.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Faring Purth at Anno Domini (San Jose, CA)
Portraitist Faring Purth spent a year or so traveling from city to city last year finding abandoned places to mount giant faces, full of character. “I will be sharing a body of work I’ve been preparing since my return from that insane journey last year and I will be taking over their entire space with pieces scaling from 10′ x 12′ to 3 “x 5”.
“This Snow Rising” opens at the Anno Domini Gallery San Jose today.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Brett Amory and Adam Caldwell “Dirty Laundry” at ThinkSpace (LA)
“Amory and Caldwell each mobilize their unique representational strategies to invoke the modern day disconnect between time and space, self and other, and present and past,” which is exactly what I was gonna say.
“Dirty Laundry” features very cool work by Artists Brett Amory and Adam Caldwell’s opening Saturday at the ThinkSpace Gallery in Culver City, CA. Feel free to show up and air some of your own.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Also happening this weekend:
“Cause and Effect”, a group show curated by URNew York and Tone MST at a Greenpoint Pop Up in Brooklyn is now open to the general public. Click here for more details on this show.
In London at the Stolen Space Gallery the ATG Collective project “Eye in the Sky” is now open to the general public. Click here for more details on this show.
In Manhattan the Summer Exhibition at the Joshua Liner Gallery is now open to the general public. Click here for more details on this show.
Snyder has a solo show and a fun ART HUNT in Carlsbad, CA opening on Saturday. This event is all day or until supplies last. Click here for more details on this event.
Sacred Gallery
We wanted to let everyone know that Sacred Gallery NYC is pleased to announce “Who’z got game!”, August 10th (8-11pm), at Sacred Gallery NYC.
This group gallery exhibition, curated by KIDLEW, showcases some of the best names in the NYC street graffiti scene. Starting with artists from the late
60’s and working up to modern day, Kidlew personally went after the best names in the game to bring you a true NYC graffiti Subway map show.
The gallery will be auctioning off a true 4’x5′ NYC subway map that exhibiting artists will collaborate the night of the gallery opening. 100% of the proceeds from the won auction will
go to The Coalition For The Homeless (http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/). The auction will be on display and available for bidding all month, and will close on the 31st.
BAMA
LAVA 1 2
TON
JAMES TOP
BOM5
COPE2
INDIE
DIL
PYTHON
SIEN IDE
SEE TF
ZIMAD
SEXER
MERES
HALOZ
SINXERO
RAVE
RWK
ARMY OF ONE
JESUS SAVES
SHIRO
KIDLEW
ANGEL “LA2” ORTIZ
Anchoring this year’s exhibition schedule, Black Book Gallery in Denver will be welcoming powerhouses, Shepard Fairey, Even Hecox and Jim Houser together in a group show during the month of August. Denver is a common place to meet for the three artists, who all have held significant exhibitions in 2012. Houser’s artwork appeared at LeBasse Projects in Culver City back in April, Hecox was at Joshua Liner Gallery in June and was also featured in Juxtapoz last month and Fairey showed work at Pace Prints in the spring.
One of Shepard’s most noteworthy visits to Denver was for Manifest Hope during the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Fairey, of course, is known for his repetitious images. Two of his most prominent images include, “Andre The Giant Has A Posse” and Obama “Hope” he created during the 2008 election, which became a national icon of an era. The Manifest Hope art show marked a turning point in Denver art appreciation, which continues to expand today.
Siting Marshall McLuhan, a well-known media and communications theorist, Fairey uses the slogan, “the medium is the message,” which can be found throughout his work. Fascinated by philosophy in general, Fairey also draws influence from the notion of consciously structuring the subjective experience, known as phenomenology. In this way, Fairey’s work can be seen as a study of using media and artwork to create personal realities.
Hecox, who is based in Denver, records the detail of his surroundings in snapshots and moments in time. These frozen frames depict layers of the urban environments that Hecox is so curious to know. Cities radiate their own unique energy, when even a walk down the street can present a feast for the senses. By precisely and diligently placing the details of day-to-day urban life, Hecox recreates the beauty of simply existing in this space. Working from his own photographs of cities around the world, Hecox maps these scenes in a multimedia fashion. Gouache and acrylics, pencil drawings and ink washes are consistent medium choices for the artist. Having shown internationally, Hecox’s work resonates across a wide audience base, perhaps because of their diversity in nature.
This will be Houser’s second show at Black Book Gallery. Houser brings his familiar lines, colors and mix of props. Emphasizing the arrangement of his mixed media work, including installation, to create a unique exhibit each time, Houser tells stories and stacks hidden meaning throughout. Each individual piece Houser creates is carefully made and can stand alone, but it is the sum of these parts that make up Houser’s larger statement.
The opening for the Black Book Gallery exhibit, titled, “Fairey | Hecox | Houser,” is August 3rd. This will be a great way to begin the descent into the fall gallery season. If you’re in the area, be sure to swing through for a glimpse at the combined efforts of these three prime artists who have not only grown up along with, but also have significantly contributed to the contemporary canon of street-influenced art today.
OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, August 3rd 6pm-11pm
Artists will be in attendance
Open and free to the public
MURAL INSTALLATION:
Shepard Fairey and Evan Hecox will be installing murals on the Metropolitan State College of Denver CVA (Center for Visual Arts) We will have more information soon.
PANEL DISCUSSION AND BOOK SIGNING:
On Friday, August 3rd there will be an invite only panel discussion with all 3 artists at the Metropolitan State College of Denver CVA (Center for Visual Arts) – More information coming soon.
As part of their Vandal or Visionary Series, where BSA selects one Street Artist to curate a show that follows their specific vision of the scene, BSA is proud to introduce Hellbent as curator of the inaugural show of the series titled “GEOMETRICKS” at new Gallery Brooklyn in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, New York City, opening September 22, 2012.
GEOMETRICKS turns the spotlight on the movement on the streets that boasts bold color, wild patterning, sophisticated lineplay, and a modern approach to abstraction.
As the stylistic circle widens on the street, GEOMETRICKS grabs a razor-sharp cross section of the growing number of graffiti artists who depart from traditional forms of lettering, Street Artists who are not interested in Pop-inspired icons or irony, and fine artists who never considered the “rules” of the street to begin with.
GEOMETRICKS references modernists, tribalists, and the rhythmic symmetry of the natural world, with it’s hexagons and spirals and comforting repetitions. Old labels about graffiti and Street Art mean little; this group takes the formalist clarity that references geometry, folk art, and science, and often smashes it with an abstract hammer.
Parallel, perpendicular, rigid, curvilinear; lines and shapes intersect and play off color-rich pattern – challenging the shape, form and expectations of many in the Street Art scene. GEOMETRICKS show how graff and Street Art right now are exploding in a new direction together without first asking for permission, again advancing the conversation of art on the streets.
“I’m stoked to be able put together this GEOMETRICKS show with some artists who I’ve really admired for a long time as well as some of the new players on the scene. This show is a great opportunity for me to create a vision and really put a dream team of artists into one room and show people what I am diggin’ right now.” – Hellbent
The Vandal or Visionary Series presented by BSA GEOMETRICKS
Curated by Hellbent
The Vandal or Visionary Series calls into question the simplistic characterization of artists who work on the street as one dimensional vandals and it wonders aloud what a gallery show would look like if viewed through their eyes. Many artists have always had a better understanding of the scene than academics or experts who talk about it and this series allow us to see a show curated by someone with a direct view and a very unique perspective.
BrooklynStreetArt.com is a daily source for Street Art reporting, interviews, and photography in New York and around the world.
We’ve been thinking a lot about this show and recently published examples on the street that are indicative of one new direction;
“Art from the streets has been heralding a new eye-popping geometric disorder that can now fairly be called a movement.”
~ From our recent piece on The Huffington Post : “Color, Geometry and Pattern on the Streets”
ArTicks Gallery is pleased to announce PEETA – A SOLO SHOW, a solo exhibition consisting of new paintings and sculptures by the Italian artist Peeta.
Peeta endeavours to realize the sculptural quality of individual letters, namely the ones that spell out his own name. Being aware of the Greco-Latin origins of today’s modern alphabet which give it a certain abstract, rather than figural, quality, his task departs from this graphical history to follow the formal methods of Chinese and Islamic calligraphy. With his works, the artist always selects the specific letters “P-E-E-T-A” and breaks them from their generic typographical form, stylizing them with shape and volume beyond their mere semantic function. Thus his lettering is brought into the fluidity of the urban, where words are continuously ruptured from their own histories, readapted into idiom and gestures learned from the street.
And it is this urban terrain that Peeta is always drawn to: street walls, trains, abandoned factories. In a way, his work is record of evolving inscription—not in its traditional sense, but in terms of a fluency acquired through the urban vernacular. Peeta calls this a “geometry of writing”, where the rules are changeable and words are modified, deconstructed and regenerated as they intersect with convention and the new.
Peeta, also known as Manuel Di Rita, has been active as a graffiti artist since 1993 and is currently living in Venice. He is a member of the EAD crew (Padova, Italy), FX and RWK crews (New York City) and has participated in graffiti jams and Meeting of Styles events in Europe and the Americas. His work explores the potential of sculptural lettering, both in painting and in three dimensions. Peeta has exhibited at the Santorini Biennale (2012); Megastore Gallery – The Hague (2007); Magazzini del Sale – Venice (2007-2008); Edgeart Gallery – Manchester (2008); PrettyPortal Gallery – Düsseldorf (2009); Baron Gallery and Ayden Gallery – Vancouver (2010-2011); Da Baker Gallery – New York (2010); and H+ Gallery – Lyon (2011), among many others.
“PEETA – A SOLO SHOW” runs from 10th August – 30th August, 2012 Vernissage: Friday 10th August from 18:00 – 21:30
Thinkspace is pleased to present Dirty Laundry, an exhibition of new work by painters Brett Amory and Adam Caldwell. Amory and Caldwell each mobilize their unique representational strategies to invoke the modern day disconnect between time and space, self and other, and present and past. Amory’s atmospheric preoccupation with memory, the moment, and nostalgia, is dynamically in contrast to Caldwell’s abrupt composites and recombinations of imagery, from sources spanning mass media to antiquity. Both artists approach their medium as a means of problematizing temporal identity, and the social experience, by exposing the nitty gritty polarities and paradigm shifts of an increasingly fractured reality of the self.
“This Snow Rising”
opens on August 3rd, at Anno Domini Gallery in San Jose, CA. I feel so
fortunate to be working with these incredible people. They are
rarities to say the least and a perfect match for the starry eyes &
working hands you’ve continued to support. I will be sharing a body of
work I’ve been preparing since my return from that insane journey last
year & will be taking over their entire space with pieces scaling from
10x12ft to 3x5in. As many of you know, I have plans to hit the road
again shortly after & it will most likely be some time before I find
my wandering feet in a gallery setting again. I would so love to see
as many of your beautiful faces as I possibly can! Please come …
Give me a hug, share adventure stories, & see the work your inspiring
lives have helped create. All my love.
This Snow Rising
Opens August 3rd, 7-11pm.
Anno Domini Gallery
366 S 1st Street
San Jose, California 95113
In her latest mural, Faring Purth delivers a powerful reflection on connection, continuity, and the complexity of evolving relationships—a true …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
