All posts tagged: Addison Karl

Addison Karl: A Story of Stories as a Muralist Moves into Sculpture

Addison Karl: A Story of Stories as a Muralist Moves into Sculpture

“It makes you really understand the world in a really different way – of how you take responsibility for what you are doing.”

Addison Karl. Amazon Artist in Residency Program. (photo © James Harnois)

We don’t usually talk about Amazon and now we mention them twice in one week; Just this Sunday we told you about Amazon employees who have voted to form a union for the first time in New York City to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Today we bring you news about a street artist/muralist named Addison Karl, whose work we have published a number of times in the past, and his recent residency in Seattle at Amazon’s brand-new Bellevue campus.

Addison Karl. Amazon Artist in Residency Program. (photo © James Harnois)

Addison says he began in printmaking before graduating to large private and public commissions painting contemporary murals. Now he draws upon his traditional Chickasaw and Choctaw roots and methods of creating to develop his sculpture techniques. Selected as one of five artists from across the Pacific Northwest as an Amazon Artist in Residence last year, Addison says the stories that people tell each other and themselves lay at the root of his 10 new sculptures created during that time.

“During my 10 weeks we managed to create a series of new work that all correlates,” he says. “My goal with the residency was to use my time to create 10 new sculptures that would then be transferred into the casting process, rather than be the final material of bronze, iron, or glass.”

He says the experience was not just about creating, it was also about forging new relationships and self-education. “As much time as I’m putting into the creation of my work, equal time is being spent learning, reading, and hearing stories, culture, and history that help guide my work.”

Addison Karl. Amazon Artist in Residency Program. (photo © James Harnois)
Addison Karl. Amazon Artist in Residency Program. (photo © James Harnois)
Addison Karl. Amazon Artist in Residency Program. (photo © James Harnois)
Addison Karl. Amazon Artist in Residency Program. (photo © James Harnois)
Addison Karl. Amazon Artist in Residency Program. (photo © James Harnois)

From Addison:

A huge Thank You to the community of the Amazon Artist in Residence Program – and for letting it get weird to create magic in the studio.

Thank you very much, Tim D., Caitlin O., Jeffery H., Kate B., Jens B., Miles T., Paco M., Christine P., Nidhi S., James H., Dana P., Jenny P., and Amanda K.

Story of Stories – Art Video:

Based on a Laguna Pueblo Story from Leslie Silko
‘The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative’ Written by Thomas King
Retold by Addison

Regarding the video:

A storytelling art video was created during Amazon Artist in Residence Program 2022.

Producer: Jens Bracht
Producer/Lead Editor: Miles Tucker
Producer/Audio Engineer: Paco Mejino

Filmed at:
Doppler Building, Seattle – Amazon Artist in Residency
ARTXIV, Seattle – Art Production House

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Elisabetta Pajer, BSA Wishes And Hopes For 2019

Elisabetta Pajer, BSA Wishes And Hopes For 2019

As we draw closer to the new year we’ve asked a very special guest every day to take a moment to reflect on 2018 and to tell us about one photograph that best captures the year for them. It’s a box of treats to surprise you with every day – and conjure our hopes and wishes for 2019. This is our way of sharing the sweetness of the season and of saying ‘Thank You’ to you for inspiring us throughout the year.


Today’s special guest:
Elisabetta Pajer,
Curator of Imago exhibition at Munich Museum, cultural manager, founder of laNori Management


The image I choose for the 9th edition of the BSA End of The Year Tradition is the mural Lagrangian by artist Addison Karl. The artwork was painted in July 2018 in Munich for the MUCA Museum.

The engagement I have with the artists I work with sometimes raises challenges that immediately become a dialogue. This helps us find solutions and pushes both sides to get out of the comfort zone. The surface where this artwork was executed was irregular and pretty hard to paint on. However, this project triggered a very interesting conversation with Addison ending in this beautiful artwork.

The powerful piece represents a man looking at the horizon. It translates for me into a metaphor of hope, challenge, and strength.  May the ‘good’ challenges, a feeling of hope and strength be with us all in 2019.

Artist: Addison Karl

Title: Lagrangian

Size: 40m x20m

Location: Munich, Germany

Date: July 2018

Photo Credit: @AddisonKarl

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Street Artists At Munich Museum Present the Portrait, “IMAGO” Curated by Elisabetta Pajer

Street Artists At Munich Museum Present the Portrait, “IMAGO” Curated by Elisabetta Pajer

From cave carvings in Angoulême in western France 27,000 years ago to your daily, perhaps hourly selfie on a cell phone today, our desire to depict the figure is as much a reflection of the artist and their times as it’s sitter.

A new show at MUCA Munich (Museum of Urban Contemporary Art) opening today invites 30 primarily Street Artists to choose a significant reference portrait of any historical time, country of origin, or artistic movement and interpret their inspirations into a portrait.

Whether drawing influences from Vermeer, Courbet, or Lucien Freud, each artist ultimately represents their own life experiences in their choice of subject and the technique of portrayal. Perhaps that is why curator Elisabetta Pajer has asked each of the artists to give us a statement with their work to help put it into context. Pajer tells us that she looks at the collection of works and the statements create a ‘harmonic mosaic’ of these figurative and written testimonies.

“These artists have sought out inspiration from many mediums that portraiture finds itself interpreted within,” says Pajer. “Taking their themes and inspiration from classical paintings, sculpture, film, theater, photographer, interactions, culture, religion, and science. Exhibiting a great understanding of the complexity of self-reflection with art as the catalyst.”

We’re pleased to be able to present some of the artists and their own words here.


Andreas Englund

Andreas Englund. Tripping. IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo courtesy of the artist)

TRIPPING
Media: Oil on canvas
Size: 116 x 90 cm
 
-Statement
“I chose to tribute my artwork to the ‘‘Portrait of a smoking man’’ by Anders Zorn 1860-1920 – Swedens most internationally acclaimed artist. Born in my home region and very inspirational when it comes to his sketchy technique. By doing my own version of this masterpiece with my superhero, I have learned more about ‘‘the great Zorn’’ and his technique.”

Martha Cooper

Martha Cooper. Futura 1983. IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo courtesy of the artist)

FUTURA 1983
Media: Archival pigment print
Size: 50,8 x 76,20 cm

 
-Statement
“This is a 1983 photo of Futura, a legendary New York City graffiti writer, with a classic can of Krylon spray paint. Thirty-five years later, Futura is still spray painting and I am still taking photos of graffiti writers.”

Icy + Sot

Icy & Sot. Under The Water Light. IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo courtesy of the artists)

UNDER THE WATER LIGHT
Media: Stencil spray paint on canvas
Size: 91,5 x 123 cm
 
-Statement
“This portrait is part a series we created reflecting on the relationship between human and nature. Nature plays a big role in human lifespan, but nowadays people have distanced from nature. With this work, we want to show humans closer to nature and pay a tribute to it.”

Swoon

Swoon. Thalassa. IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo courtesy of the artist)

THALASSA
Media: Screenprint on paper with coffee stain and hand painting with collage mounted on board
Size: 123 × 138 cm
 
-Statement
“The name Thalassa is Greek word for ‘‘ocean’’, a primordial incarnation of the sea that is not often personified. Thalassa is said to have given birth to all tribes of fish in the sea. She is the pull of the sea that comes from inside the salt water in our blood. ‘Thalassa was originally created for New Orleans. It was the months after the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf in 2010, and this body of water that I’d loved since I was a child was in peril. As I drew Thalassa surging up from the water I felt her rising like a wake up call, one reminds us of our inseparability from the sea. When I stand in front of the ocean, the word that always appears first in my mind is “mother”. For me there is no mistaking the sense that the sea is our first mother.’ ”

Borondo

Gonzalo Borondo & Diego Lopez Bueno. Selfie Elvis II. IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo © Blind Eye Factory)

GONZALO BORONDO & DIEGO LOPEZ BUENO
SELFIE ELVIS II
Media: Acrylic and plaster on wood – Plasma TV 50’’- Video on loop – 16:9 Digital – Color
Size: 7 panels each – 120 x 70 x 1 cm + 1 TV
 
-Statement
“Inspired by several passport photos found within the Marseilles “Marché aux Puches” (FR), Borondo and Lopez Bueno have designed an installation project with the title “Selfie Elvis II”. Imagination is the basis of the multimedia work with self-portraits of a man recalling the contemporary “selfie”. There are dozens of frames describing human aspects and obsessions. They have been digitally elaborated and assembled in a video by López Bueno. Borondo portrayed Elvis with acrylic on wood and applying gypsum, then scratched with sharp instruments. Faces appeared by subtraction, the absence tells about an ancestral and intangible dimension, wondering about its existence. Is Elvis looking at himself or us in that picture? And what about our images, do they look like us or they are just our dreams? Elvis is not there, Elvis is still there.”

Addison Karl

Addison Karl. Kamassa. IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo courtesy of the artist)

KAMASSA
Media: Bronze, edition 1 of 10
Size: 30,48 x 20,32 x 15,24 cm
 
 
-Statement
“Portraiture in context to sculpture and form – referencing the masterpieces from both European Classical and Neoclassical time periods. From a culture l mirror of taking inspiration from Gods and Goddess of the ancient world, my sculpture’s subject is focused on a contemporary Chickasaw Elder. Using portraiture as a means of Cultural Preservation but equally re-appropriating classic sensibilities of art history to a Native Cultural narrative. “

 


Various & Gould

Various & Gould. Trigger (Rokhaya Diallo). IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo courtesy of the artists)

TRIGGER (ROKHAYA DIALLO)
Media: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 200 x 140 cm
-Statement
“Our portrait of Rokhaya Diallo refers to an iconic work by Nikide Saint Phalle: The artistically revised film still “Daddy” shows the artist pointing a gun directly at the viewer. Even almost 50 years later, her eye and the muzzle of her rifle leave no doubt that she is serious about it. Anyone who sees the work feels immediately like coming into the firing line.
In our painting, the French journalist and film maker Rokhaya Diallo takes the place and – freely recreated – also the pose of Niki de Saint Phalle. Thus, an early feministic, vigorous artist of the twentieth century is followed by a modern, committed internet feminist with no less strong verve than her predecessor. Both women are even the same age at the time of the illustration. Only instead of the rifle, Rokhaya Diallo relies on her very own “weapon”, the hashtag. At first glance, it may seem more harmless than a rifle, but in times of #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo it can be an even more powerful tool.”

 


Fintan Magee

Fintan Magee The Removalist. IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo courtesy of the artist)

THE REMOVALIST
Media: Canvas and acrylic on wall installation
 
-Statement
“The portrait has been ripped off the canvas and dragged across the ground and projected onto the wall. The artist has destroyed the canvas and made the portrait ephemeral, rendering it worthless and unsellable. The work comments on the commodification of artwork and the uneasy and paradoxical relationship between artist and the financier of his artworks. With street art becoming increasingly commoditized and contributing to gentrification this work doesn’t aim to make any grand statements on how art should or shouldn’t be produced, only highlight the illusionary, absurdist and contradictory image the art industry presents of itself.”

VHILS

VHILS. Matta. IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo courtesy of the artist)

MATTA
Media: Bas-relief carving on plasterboard mounted on metal structure
Size: 181 x 120,5 x 34 cm
 
-Statement

“Resorting to a bas-relief carving technique, applied here to a free-standing structure of plasterboard, this piece is a homage to the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, which became a major influence on me after I first saw it at an exhibition in Portugal, in 2002. Matta-Clark was one of the first artists to look at the urban space as a space of creation and reflection on the human condition in the contemporary times we live in. Those are the considerations I try to translate in my own work too, reflecting about the human condition in the contemporary times we live in.”


Andrea Wan

Andrea Wan. Being Of Light. IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo courtesy of the artist)

BEING OF LIGHT
Media: Ink on paper
Size: 50 x 70 cm
 
-Statement

“Fascinated by the lively and dynamic landscape in the paintings of native Canadian Artist Emily Carr, I chose one of her most renown works, Indian Church (1929) as the subject of reinterpretation. Seemingly more accurate than a realistic approach, Carr’s abstraction of nature elements not only communicated to me that nature is vast and subliminal but also ever-changing in form and expression. The white church which stands calmly in the midst of the mystical environment inspired me to personify the subject as a being who is in tune with all that’s around her.”


DALeast

DALeast. FIII. IMAGO. MUCA Munich. (photo courtesy of the artist)

FIII
Media: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 100 x 80 cm
 
-Statement
“A still moment of Fiii standing in the windy land, which is existing inside the transitory gathering of the particles of the magical net.”

IMAGO: A History of Portraits opens today at MUCA Museum of Urban And Contemporary Art. Munich. Curated by Elisabetta Pajer the show runs until November 2018.

IMAGO is a show dedicated to the history of portrait: over 30 artists from five different continents are invited to pay homage and interpret a portrait in their medium of their choice. IMAGO aims to lead visitors through different artistic eras, helping discover the international history and evolution of the portrait.

Artists include:

Jef Aerosol
ASKEW ONE
Borondo
Vesod Brero
Martha Cooper
DALeast
Paola Delfin
Anna Piera Di Silvestre
Andreas Englund
Evoca 1
Ricky Lee Gordon
Hubertus Hamm
Handiedan
Icy&Sot
Addison Karl
Know Hope
Klone Yourself
Fintan Magee
Mario Mankey
Marco Mazzoni
Antony Micallef
Miss Van
Nychos
Sepe
David Shillinglaw
Søren Solkær
Sten Lex
SWOON
TelmoMiel
TWOONE

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BSA Images Of The Week: 10.29.17

BSA Images Of The Week: 10.29.17

BSA-Images-Week-Jan2015

Halloween this year is on a Tuesday so its hard for people to know when exactly to celebrate it – we had 20 or so Trick-or-Treaters Saturday night so that tells you the kids vote in this part of Brooklyn.

Of course with the folks we have running the White House, every day feels like Halloween. “Here, I’ll trick you with this POPULIST costume, and my treat will be to take whats left of your middle class chocolate.”

Trick or Trick!

It doesn’t help that Tabloid TV loves the “Zombies on Parade” – they are like sugar addicts dancing for eyeballs and advertising dollars.

But from a Street Art and public performance perspective, New York is a thrill, a regular monster mash! The East Village parade 2017 on Tuesday will have puppets, 53 bands performing different types of music, dancers, artists, and thousands of New Yorkers in costume. Be safe out here ya’ll.

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Karl Addison, Bifido, City Kitty, Denis Ouch, Don Rimx, Elliott Routledge, Julien de Casabianca, Julieta, Lungebox, Nevercrew, Outings Project, Revok, Sipros, Strayones, and TurtleCaps.

Top image: Elliott Routledge (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Revok – MSK (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Denis Ouch (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Portraits of a clown king. Denis Ouch (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Strayones brings out Cat In The Hat. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sculptural Street Artist Strayones tells us that the story represented here is a critique of “how business people and wealthy men are making us step over the edge into the abyss”.

Nevercrew. “Dimensional recipe”. Los Angeles. Part 1 (photo © Nevercrew)

“Dimensional recipe” is a series of three interconnected mural paintings realized in Los Angeles (USA), curated by Anne­Laure Lemaitre (FatCap), 2017.

About the work:

This is a work about mankind’s relation with creation, about the mutual influences between creativity and reality and the anthropological loop
that originates from this continuous correlation. It is about the feeling of being part of a system, of being a participant and being able to view it from a certain point of view, for what it is and for what it could be.”

Nevercrew. “Dimensional recipe”. Los Angeles. Part 2 (photo © Nevercrew)

Nevercrew. “Diposing Machine”. Melano, Switzerland. Part 1 (photo © Nevercrew)

“Disposing Machine” is the new mural from Nevercrew in Melano, Switzerland for Artrust. Their statement:

“Habits, attitudes, principles and awareness are conditioned by reality, and reality is conditioned by the perception everyone has of it. The position of humankind in its environment, in its World, is at the same
time part of its nature and a point of view from which to perceive it.

Systems are then interpretations, a way to give human shape to
something that’s not necessarily made for it, as well as a way to decide
which shapes to give and how to read them. As reality could be built and
altered by systems, so nature could then risk to be detached from
human sensing; an human reconstruction of something that exists
outside this given shape but that still is directly subjected to each action
that’s made on it.”

This image of Dreamers reminds us of our grandfathers and grandmothers and the stories of refugees all over the world overcoming obstacles to make a better life.  (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dom Rimx (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Collaboration between Bifido and Julieta in Lecce, Italy. (photo © Bifido)

The Italian Street Artist Bifido and Spanish artists Juelieta completed this fantastical work in Lecce, Italy this week for the 167 Art Project. Bifido tells us that the title is “First Fire” and it “talks about the possibility to love each other in a fantastic way, and it focuses on the importance of play in our lives.”

Collaboration between Bifido and Julieta in Lecce, Italy. (photo © Bifido)

Turtlecaps . City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

An atmospheric Addison Karl . “Okchamali Nebulae”. Washington, DC. (photo © Addison Karl)

Lungebox (photo © Jaime Rojo)

One question: what is a furring channel? Sipros for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Outings Project in Paris. (photo © Julien de Casabianca)

Outings Project in Paris. (photo © Julien de Casabianca)

Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Brooklyn, NY. October 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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