All posts tagged: Artmossphere Biennale 2018

Shepard Fairey’s “Tunnel Vision” : Interconnected Networks of Art and Propaganda in Moscow for ARTMOSSPHERE Biennale 2018

Shepard Fairey’s “Tunnel Vision” : Interconnected Networks of Art and Propaganda in Moscow for ARTMOSSPHERE Biennale 2018

November 3, 2018

New exclusive images today from Moscow as Shepard Fairey joined the 3rd ARTMOSSPHERE Street Art Biennale where BSA were co-curators this August and September.

In conjunction with ARTMOSSPHERE and his personal exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, an expansive collection that Fairey told us totaled 400 or so pieces and a huge crowd (see Zane Meyers video below), he created his first large-scale street work in the Russian Federation.

Shepard Fairey. “Tunnel Vision”. Artmossphere Biennale Moscow 2018 . (photo © Vasiliy Kudryavtsev)

Entitled Tunnel Vision, the mural is derived from a recent fine art piece he did for his DAMAGED exhibition that incorporates his deep appreciation for Russian Constructivism and his own unique geometric studies in design. At the center, placed hypnotically and in a typically humorously ironic way, is his own meta icon, Andre the Giant framed inside the gear star symbol, flanked by icons of the machinery of messaging and distribution. A frequent critic of the mediated, manipulated techniques of global dis-information today, Fairey intrinsically loads his own imagery with the flair of a seasoned elocutionist on a world stage.

The significance of the more structural geometry of a tunnel is magnified by the location of the mural on the façade of a tram depot. Moscow’s impressive metro system dates back to 1935, a time period that parallels the powerful Soviet posters and artworks that communicated with the population and promoted the might of train systems as a point of national identity and pride.

Shepard Fairey. “Tunnel Vision”. Artmossphere Biennale Moscow 2018 . (photo © Vasiliy Kudryavtsev)

That this form of messaging and image-making inspired many artists and designers around the world for decades afterward, it adds layers of significance to this photo (below) of Fairey on the Moscow Metro train with ARTMOSSPHERE co-founder Sabina Chagina and previous biennale curator Christian Omodeo. Add this to the references of the modern graffiti tradition of painting messages and images on trains throughout cities globally and the painted Soviet Agit-Trains of the 1920s, and the thematic interconnectedness here will require a map.

Christian Omodeo, Sabina Chagina, and Shepard Fairey on the Moscow Metro. Artmossphere Biennale Moscow 2018 . (photo © Vasiliy Kudryavtsev)

The inscription on the mural reads: “Art should be distributed everywhere” and while trains and planes still distribute the goods and the people everywhere, it is a new set of electronic and computer engines that can distribute the information and aesthetics everywhere today. Perhaps Fairey is reminding us that if this communication freedom of expression becomes limited we can risk the creation of a narrow form of tunnel vision.

“I believe that the mural in a public space is just as powerful a means of influencing minds and spreading artistic ideas as the replication of my posters. Therefore, in the work there is a printing press, it symbolizes, relatively speaking, the monumental propaganda in the modern sense. The work is named in an ironic way: after all, art expands, rather than narrows, our view of the world,” Fairey says of the new mural.

Shepard Fairey. “Tunnel Vision”. Artmossphere Biennale Moscow 2018 . (photo © Vasiliy Kudryavtsev)

Shepard Fairey. “Tunnel Vision”. Artmossphere Biennale Moscow 2018 . (photo © Vasiliy Kudryavtsev)

Shepard Fairey. “Tunnel Vision”. Artmossphere Biennale Moscow 2018 . (photo © Vasiliy Kudryavtsev)

Shepard Fairey photogrpahed here with Artmossphere co-founder, the lovley Sabina Chagina. “Tunnel Vision”. Artmossphere Biennale Moscow 2018 . (photo © Vasiliy Kudryavtsev)

Shepard Fairey. “Tunnel Vision”. Artmossphere Biennale Moscow 2018 . (photo © Vasiliy Kudryavtsev)

Shepard Fairey. “Tunnel Vision”. Artmossphere Biennale Moscow 2018 . (photo © Vasiliy Kudryavtsev)

Force Majeure: The Art of Shepard Fairey by Zane Meyers and Chop ‘Em Down Films

The project is launched with the collaboration of the creative group ARTMOSPHERE, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the RuArts Foundation with the support of the Italian gallery Wunderkammern.

With the participation of the Moscow Department of Transport, the show continues outside the museum venue in the urban space. The building is located at 12, Mytnaya Street.

Our sincere thanks to Vasiliy Kudryavtsev for sharing these exclusive photos for BSA readers.
Click on the link below to see more of Vasya’s work:

https://www.facebook.com/vasiliy.kudryavtsev

 

 

 

 

 

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Hyland Mather. Street Assemblage and his Scupture at Artmossphere 2018, Moscow

Hyland Mather. Street Assemblage and his Scupture at Artmossphere 2018, Moscow

August 28, 2018 ,

BSA is in Moscow as curators of 50+ international artists in the Artmossphere Biennale 2018 for its 3rd edition called Street Art Wave. Till the end of the month we’ll working with a stellar cross section of people involved with Urban Art/Street Art/Graffiti at curious and fascinating intersections. We’re meeting with Street Artists, academics, collectors, gallerists, museum curators, organizers, and thoughtful pontificators of all sorts in studio, on the street, behind the scenes, and on display. Come with us!

Amsterdam resident Hyland Mather (street name X-O) is a hybrid of outside artist, Street Artist, muralist, sculptor, exhibition curator and gallery owner. Recently he also become owner of an apple orchard in Portugal, so perhaps you’ll add “farmer” to the list. This unique cobbling together of interests and art practices is often emblematic of the eccentric art practices that can be found on the street today, somehow tangentially related to the mark-making of graffiti and fine art studio practice at the same time – yet rather unclassifiable.

Hyland Mather at work at Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mather’s drilled, stacked and strung 3-D works on the street tend to be monochromatic in palette with geometric patches of white paint. Part assemblage, part outsider art, possibly art brut, elements of craft maker, some Louise Nevelson, a dollop of Caldor.

For his sculpture at Artmossphere’s OFFLINE exhibition he collected pieces of discarded wood, metal, glass, even string from Moscow streets and refuse bins and began to lay them out to find their commonalities and begin the process of assembly.

Hyland Mather. Process detail. Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I’m the kind of guy that mothers move their strollers across the street to avoid when they see me,” he says only half-joking when describing the practice of salvaging refuse for his painting-sculptures. “I look like a fucking crazy person when I’m collecting the materials and dragging the stuff through the street,” he says.

“But when the neighborhood people see you working and your earnest attempt to turn their trash into something great they are more supportive.”

Hyland Mather. Process detail. Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Here the work has turned into something more fulsome and possibly interactive, an elevated stage and  block of wood pieces and screws and string and rusted metal that may look like an invitation to enter.

“I think habitually I kind of make things that are sort of fort,” he says, and you can certainly envision this new piece cradled in the limbs of a tree with a ladder hanging down to the ground. Although there are a lot of holes in the walls…

Hyland Mather. Process detail. Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Well, it doesn’t look like it would be very protective.
Hyland Mather: Yeah, even in a shantytown this would not be a desirable dwelling, right? Any kind of exposure to the weather would be a disaster here – including mosquitoes.

BSA: How do you decide on the shapes and the forms? Is it about geometry?
Hyland Mather: Obviously it depends on what I find in the streets. Some times it becomes more organic just because these are the shapes I have to begin with. Between organic or geometric I don’t know if I have a real preference but I do like simple geometries.

BSA: Are the works that you leave on the street meant to stand the test of time?
Hyland Mather: They are meant to interact with time. It is a collaborative effort between myself and nature over time.

Hyland Mather. Process detail. Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hyland Mather. Process detail. Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Hyland Mather. Process detail. Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hyland Mather. Process detail. Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Hyland Mather. Process detail. Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hyland Mather. Process detail. Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hyland Mather. Process detail. Vinzavod for Artmossphere Biennale 2018. Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

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Lucy McLauchlan / Pablo Harymbat. “OFFLINE” Process At Artmossphere 2018, Moscow

Lucy McLauchlan / Pablo Harymbat. “OFFLINE” Process At Artmossphere 2018, Moscow

August 27, 2018

BSA is in Moscow as curators of 50+ international artists in the Artmossphere Biennale 2018 for its 3rd edition called Street Art Wave. Till the end of the month we’ll working with a stellar cross section of people involved with Urban Art/Street Art/Graffiti at curious and fascinating intersections. We’re meeting with Street Artists, academics, collectors, gallerists, museum curators, organizers, and thoughtful pontificators of all sorts in studio, on the street, behind the scenes, and on display. Come with us!

This year’s biennale is directly inspired by our collective reactions of dissatisfaction to our daily experience of being invaded by digital content and all the artists have been charged with reclaiming a creative life “OFFLINE”. Two of the Street Artists invited to exhibit here in Moscow, Pablo Harymbat of Buenos Aires, Argentina and Lucy McLauchlan of Birmingham, UK, return to hand making tools and techniques that are distinctly separate from the digital.

Naturally, a self-imagined and eclectic DIY practice like graffiti and Street Art is born from such ingenuity and both artists showed us their custom created wooden/hardware tools with a definite degree of pride and delight.

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Typically associated with a fluid curvilinear geometric formation of her expression on huge murals and canvasses, McLaughlin comes to Artmossphere with a true-to-nature technique by literally printing canvasses with trees. Using local Moscow trees on the street and in the 1,000-hectare Khimki Forest that lies within the city (said the third largest in-city forest and ecosystem in the world), Lucy and her small team used a custom-made trough on wheels to cart her acrylic paint around to reach the trees.

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“It was such a good trolley that the great team of Artmossphere built for me! It went off the road on the dirt track,” she says as she shows us the multi-brush contraption she used to add the paint across a film on the surface of the bark before wrapping the tree with her linen canvasses. The resulting patterns and masking with white echo her usual geometric interpretations of rhythm and energy, but being so close to natural systems has had a strong effect on her and in comes across in this temporary studio in an architectural art university.

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I think I’m always following the abstract way from the direct form,” she says. “Here literally I’m stealing the organic form directly instead of letting it try to go through me and come out in my own way. Here I am putting it directly into the work – which I feel like I’ve been trying to do for quite a long time. I feel this kind of fits for the theme of OFFLINE.”

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lucy McLauchlan at the studio. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Similarly, Mr. Harymbat is known for his interpretations of energetic impulses and electricity-like tubes of banded color that course quickly across his murals and canvasses in organically, optically challenging and pleasing ways.

Pablo Harymbat at Vinzavod. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Here Pablo is using the handful of days that are leading up to Thursday’s opening of the exhibition to illustrate a process of creation and recreation with a wheel-shaped multi-brush tool that has a handle in the center like a warriors’ shield. Sweeping across the freestanding arch shaped wall in a full-body fluid gestural way, he captures the outlines for his multi-colored liquid energy tubes and fills the new shapes with paint capturing the evolution for a future stop-action video.

Pablo Harymbat at Vinzavod. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We have the opportunity to see the creative process as it plays out, each swing and swoop recorded by eye and hand, flooded with energetic hue with the warmth of humanly attentive intimacy. Absent is the rumbling of the street here deep in the earth where this exhibition space once sheltered perhaps hundreds of thousands of bottles of wine. Using these custom handmade wooden tools Harymbat is continuously in a tactile relationship with his materials as well as their resulting artworks.

Pablo Harymbat at Vinzavod. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pablo Harymbat at Vinzavod. Artmossphere 2018 “Offline” Moscow. August 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Click on the link below for more details about the opening of this exhibition:

OFFLINE: The 3rd Artmossphere Biennale Of Street Wave opens this Thursday August 30th at Vinzavod in Moscow.

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