An hour north of New York City in the wealthiest
county of the state, a new mural program extends the reach of organizers Audrey
and Thibault Decker of Street Art for Mankind. They say that they have
produced murals and exhibitions in Larchmont, Mamaroneck, and Midtown with the support
of more than 50 international Street Artists in the last few years – all with
the goal of raising awareness and funds to stop child trafficking worldwide.
The New Rochelle murals that went up this fall and were
debuted in November through and organized art walk and other events appear to
be more loosely correlated with local pride and history, such as the one by
artist Loic Ercolessi featuring local-born musician Don Mclean (“American Pie) and
Manhattan-born musician Alicia Keyes (“Empire State of Mind”).
An inspiring walk through the city’s downtown neighborhood on a grey and brisk fall day to discover these new murals was warmed by sharing the experience with photographer Martha Cooper, who took the train up from the city with BSA co-founder Jaime Rojo to catch the new works. The program here is called “NRNY Artsy Murals” and a highlight from this day was taking a cherry lift with Ukrainian Street Artist AEC to get a closer look at him while he worked on his new mural of allegorical surrealism.
The
quality is obviously high and the program eclectic, including artists such as DanK
(GBR), Elle (USA & AUS), JDL (NLD), Loic Ercolessi (USA & FRA), Lula
Goce (SPA), Mr Cenz (GBR) and Victor Ash (DEN, FRAand POR). Ash left the city
with a new floating astronaut high above the Earth, which may describe some of
the uplifting feelings passersby may experience here in New Rochelle.
Ukrainian duo Interesni Kazki are as understated in person as they are fantastic in their illustrative paintings. Aleksei Bordusov and Vladimir Manzhos may offer insight into their process and thematic development when prodded, but they prefer that you travel within the stories they have created unencumbered by their perceptions.
Their new show, “Sacred Gravitation” at Manhattan’s Jonathan Levine Gallery plunges viewers into an open window of gods and monsters using a pungent and crisp graphic neo-psychedelia style that recalls rock double album covers of the 1970s and fully rendered computer animation worlds in the early 2000s. On the other side of these large looking glasses are tales told with allegory and metaphor, of blindness and revelation, politics and corruption, eternity and memory, suffering and transformation, conflict and guile, the natural world and the spiritual one.
Not fully mythic nor folkloric, theirs is a unique contemporary style that welcomes and escorts the viewer instantly to enter, much like their large scale murals on city walls in Eastern Europe, the US, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere over the last decade and a half. Showing a genuine evolution and mastery of technique, this paintings in person create such a sense of dimension that you may long for your arms to be transformed into wings to more fully explore.
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
