All posts tagged: 0907

0907 Plays in Xi’an Grass / Dispatch From Isolation # 52

May 13, 2020 Artists

In Xi’an, a modern metropolis of 7 million and home to the massive installations of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang (the first Emperor of China), the weight of history often meets with the shallow vanities of today. Street Artist 0907 continues to examine the riddles of development and the implied values of a consumer culture here by looking at the banal lawn.

0907. *“The Goalkeeper”* Beijing, China. (photo © GOKO)

Consider the green grass lawn, that earthen symbol of suburban wealth and mastery of the elements as it is beamed across the decades and cultures. A lush and tightly trimmed lawn contains ironies of development and progress; defined geometries of fulsome mono-plantings, it status symbol measured by the centimeter or meter, sprayed with chemicals, cut and trimmed into patterns and reliefs. In cities on printed on fences it is also a visual metaphor to block the disruptive chaos of a lot that is under construction.

“With the acceleration of gentrification, people print out such a symbol of happy life on the construction fence,” says 0907, “which serves as a fig leaf of the on-going city construction – presented in a rather stark and crude manner.”

As is his style, in a subtle act of culture jamming, he here converts the lawn into a sport field –with a subtle addition of an athlete – hoping to further disturb the cognitive dissonance.

“The imagery of neatly mowed lawns is always a symbol for highly organized urban civilization,” he tells us.

“With my painting I present the picture of a goalkeeper in a soccer game on the imagery of the fake lawn, creating a dual visual misplacement. Thus a brand new absurd urban spectacle emerges. … the message that this image sends is more than firm: to catch the ball that the city kicks at us.”

0907 Feels Like “The Radiant Child” in Beijing

August 21, 2019 Artists

The resonance of Brooklyn/New York Street Arist Jean Michel Basquiat continues to amaze us, in his reach, in his relevance to people who he may have never imagined that he would inspire. Today we bring you 0907 in Beijing, who is telling us that he went on many spots throughout the city with his new cardboard composite work – a stencil that captures his feeling about an artist on the other side of the world who lived and died, perhaps before he was born. As an additional cultural mashup, he employs the vocabulary of a secondary Street Art, Shepard Fairey.

And Mickey Mouse for good measure.

0907. Radiant Child. Beijing, China. (photo © 0907)

“One day I watched a movie called “Basquiat,” he tells us, “and another called is ‘Ridiculous Years’ I had some insight into the age of his life. So I made a poster which borrowed Obey’s style.and I posted these on my city. At that moment I felt I am the radiant child in my city.”

0907 in Xi’an, China : Love At First Sight

February 20, 2019 Artists

The streets can be a mirror, a diary, a stage to rant, prophesy, profess love.

Today we have Chinese Street Artist 0907 pouring his heart out for all to see. This Saturday will be the 100^th day since he met someone very special he tells us. “This is a story about love at first sight,” he says, adding, “She is a student at an art college.”

0907. “*Lover*“. Xi’an, China. February 2019. (photo © 0907)

And what else does a Street Artist do when he’s in love? He makes art to tell the world, like this 50cm square stencil portrait. “I am sure I have fallen in love with her,” he says with stars in his eyes.

Go easy bro, one day at a time.

Artist 0907 Pays Tribute to Hongshen Jia in Beijing, China.

July 31, 2018 Artists

Wandering along a footpath under the elevated street in Beijing these days you are likely to find the same sort of graffiti tags, wildstyle burners and stenciled celebrities that you discover in so-called Western city graffiti/Street Art scenes.

Of course the language and tags are likely in Chinese and the honored pop culture figures are more likely to be Chinese film stars, like this new digitized stencil by Street Artist 0907 of Hongshen Jia (贾宏声).

0907. Hongshen Jia. Beijing, China. (photo © 0907)

“He is my favorite Chinese film actor and he is a legendary actor in China,” the artist tells us. On the Wikipedia page about the actor it says, “His performances were praised by critics and he developed a rebellious image that made him popular among artistic youth and the “Sixth Generation” of Chinese directors.^[1][2]” Struggling with addiction many times, he took his own life in 2010 and he is also slowly transforming into a kind of folk hero for some.

0907 Pays Homage To ‘Hero’ Keith Haring And #LGBT Community in Xi’an

May 29, 2018 Artists

Xi’an is a large city of about 7 million, the capital of Shaanxi Province in central China, often called the birthplace of Chinese civilization. It’s also been sprouting Street Art in recent years.

According to some tourist sites it is a city with a nascent Street Art and graffiti scene where there are more graffiti writers than in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou (Absolute China Tours). So it is notable when Keith Haring is honored on a wall here where it is unlikely many know his name or his significance as an early practitioner of the freewheeling public art interventions that came to characterize a movement of artists on the streets.

Street Artist 0907 tells us his new piece on this Xi’an street is called “Hero”.

Elephant0907: Child Labor Stencil and Layers of Significance

March 7, 2018 Artists

Chinese Street Artist Elephant 0907 has sent us his latest work that he says addresses child labor in the 1880s. In fact many children were working at factories across the Western World during the Industrial Revolution, resulting in many injuries and death of children, aside from the hazardous and sometimes cruel conditions that they worked under.

It’s an odd piece of history that is remembered in the US because, depending on where you hear it, you might have thought that it was the only cruelty to children taking place at the time. For indentured servants brought to the US and forced to repay their trip through years of labor, the hardships were recorded as well. For slaves and children of slaves whose labor was forced, the story was an ongoing horror.

If only slavery had been abolished and we could speak about it comfortably in the past. There have been documented factories throughout the world that are basically labor camps. Today in 2018, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) more than 40 million people worldwide are victims of modern slavery.

Although modern slavery is not defined in law, it is used as an umbrella term covering practices such as forced labor, debt bondage, forced marriage, and human trafficking. The United Nations says that there are 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1,000 people in the world.

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