“Gurl, I Just Came For the Sunburn” is the cleverly worded T-shirt design we just conjured, but didn’t see in any of the many stores selling “Miami”-emblazoned memorabilia this weekend. New Yorkers are from a colder climate where sexy college girls are already wearing tight turtleneck sweaters and leggings and handsome boys are sporting corduroy and blazers. Not here in Miami Beach or Wynwood, where less is more, and naked is a matter of opinion.
It’s Carnivale weekend so the streets and hotels are bursting with Brazilian and Trinidadian and otherwise Caribbean influences, including phenomenal costumes, dancing, trap music, and raucous peels of laughter. After some time on Miami Beach surrounded by bathing beauties and dodging freelance vendors selling Pina Coladas, margaritas, marijuana edibles, and other drugs from their backpacks, we caught an energetic and sexy floor show featuring earth-shaking amounts of bouncing beauty and a lip-synching rendition of Megan Thee Stallion’s “Girls in the Hood” that served so much twerking abandon that the fishnet stockings industry ran out of inventory by 3 am Sunday.
Here on the streets this quick sample of shots gives you an idea of the messages and palettes now greeting visitors all over this neighborhood of Wynwood– with some faces lifted from posters so you see how you’re supposed to be stylin’. Call it a survey of local color to ease you into the Miamian week BSA will be sharing with our readers. Bienvenidos!
Our interview with the street today includes Askew One, Atomik, Binho, Claudia La Bianca, Krayzie Bone, Guillermo Zanches, Irene Lopez Leon, Marina Capdevilla, Milu Correch, MSG Crew, Osorno, Pixel Pancho, and Rodo.
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.’ ”
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
LALA Gallery in downtown Los Angeles had a well attended inaugural show last week to realize physically something that had up to this point been a dream for Street Art fan and champion Daniel LaHoda. With names like How & Nosm, Cryptik, Cern, Shepard Fairey, and Dan Witz among others on display (and in the flesh) the gallery welcomed many of the LA Freewalls crowd inside and off the street where they were less likely to wander into traffic – A good move considering the refreshments that many of the clamoring crowd appeared to enjoy as they milled around the gargantuan outdoor rooftop gazing upon the glowing orbs of Cern One punctuating the LA night.
Talented photographer and BSA collaborator Todd Mazer was on hand during the opening and sends some original inside photos for BSA readers to get a sense of the raw industrial space and environment.
It’s not often that a major city gives a spotlight to a graffiti / Street Artist and issues a formal proclamation about it, but that is exactly what happened Saturday in Los Angeles. AskewOne, a native of one of LA’s sister cities, Auckland, New Zealand , was honored by the City as his new mural “Under the Influence” was unveiled as part of the LA Freewalls Project.
“It’s much more likely in this city that a graffiti artist will be arrested than be recognized for positive contributions to the community”, as LA Taco reports, but really when you consider the major inroads that the LA Freewalls Project has made into the dialogue around the value of Street Art in LA’s local politics, it can’t be entirely surprising. It probably helps that the image itself incorporates the American flag into the composition– sort of disarms that whole negative rant that some politicos use when lumping Street Artists together with other social scourges like drug addiction, domestic terrorism, and the Ice Capades, doesn’t it?
“AskewOne is one of the world’s preeminent public artists, and one of the most accomplished contemporary graffiti writers,” says Daniel LaHoda, who spearheads LA Freewalls and who also hosted the inauguration of the new LALA gallery Saturday night with many of today’s best known Street Artist’s work on the walls. According to an official press release, the now famous LA mural moratorium will soon be lifted and “Kamilla Blanche, Senior Deputy for Arts and Culture, and the Director for Sister Cities, is excited about the possibilities to expand Los Angeles’ place as the national epicenter of public art.”
BSA is very pleased to be able to share with you these images of the new piece as shot by photographer Todd Mazer.
1. ROA at StolenSpace “Hypnagogia” (London)
2. Katowice Street Art Festival 4/20-29 (Poland)
3. LALA Gallery Inauguration Saturday (Los Angeles)
4. Herakut “Loving the Exiled” at 941 Geary (San Francisco)
5. Marsea Gives You the “High Five!” at New Image Art Saturday (LA)
6. Erica Il Cane “Una Vita Violenta” at Fifty24MX Gallery (Mexico City)
7. Brett Amory “Waiting 101” at Outsiders Gallery (Newcastle, UK)
8. OLEK in Barcelona with Botero (VIDEO)
9. C215 “About Copyrights” (VIDEO)
10. The Bushwick Trailer (VIDEO)
ROA at StolenSpace “Hypnagogia” (London)
With his current show, now on view at the StolenSpace Gallery in London, ROA will demonstrate how you can be asleep and awake at the same time. His solo show “Hypnagogia” opens today to the general public and offers a dissected view of ROA’s fantastic world of animals and beasts. ROA’s hand crafted book “An Introduction To Animal Representation” by Mammal Press is on sale at The Old Truman Brewery on 91 Brick Lane. Hurry there are only only 125 tomes being offered.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Katowice Street Art Festival 4/20-29 (Poland)
Katowice, a Silesian city in Southern Poland celebrates Street Art with their own Street Art Festival, now on its second year, from April 20 through April 29. The gray, concrete architecture that dominates this town will be imbued with color, shapes and fantasy with the help of this city most prominent daughter, OLEK aided by an illustrious list of first rate of fine and Street Artists including Mark Kenkins, Escif, Boogie, Moneyless, Ganzeer, Ludo, Mona Tusz, Swanski, 0700 Team, Tellas, Dan Witz, Hyuro, M City, ROA, Goro, Kilo, Nespoon, Aryz, 108, Wers, Ciah-Ciah, Etam Crew, Otecki, Razpajzan, Sepe, Chazme, CFNTX Crew, Onte, Jezmirski, Terry Grand, Dast, Impact, Malik, Turbos and Mentalgassi.
For further information regarding this festival click here.
LALA Gallery Inauguration Saturday (Los Angeles)
The West Coast continues to assert itself as a power house in the art world and as a Street Art mecca with the inaugural show of LALA Gallery. A brand new gallery conceived by Daniel Lahoda, the mind and soul and legs of LA Freewalls Project.
LALA’s line up of artists for this first show augurs an auspicious beginning and a successful life which we hope last for a long, long time. “LA Freewalls Inside” is the title of this show and artists included are: Anthony Lister, Askew One, Becca, Cern, Chris Brand, Cryptik, Cyrcle, Dale VN Marshall, Dan Witz, Daze, Dee Dee Cheriel, Evan Skrederstu, How & Nosm, Insa, Jaybo, Kim West, Kofie, Lady Aiko, Ludo, Mear, The Perv Brothers, Poesia, Push, Pyro, Ripo, Risk, Ron English, Saber, Shepard Fairey, Swoon and Zes.
For further details regarding this show click here.
Herakut “Loving the Exiled” at 941 Geary (San Francisco)
Herakut, the indefatigable German collective are a busy duo with an impressive craft and a mastery of the can and paint brushes. Never compromising their artistic output regardless of their environment or medium they set their collaborative standards high with an output rich in earthy colors. Their palette of ores, reds, grays, oranges, blues, browns and yellows give birth to a universe of characters that are fantastic and mysterious and in pursuit of you, the spectator. In San Francisco at 941 Geary Gallery Saturday the reception will be open for the artists and you at “Loving the Exiled”.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Group Show “High Five!” at New Image Art Saturday (LA)
HIGH FIVE! the new group show at New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles opens tomorrow and the artists include Alia Penner, Ashely Macomber, Curtis Kulig, Deanna Templeton, Maya Hayuk and Vanessa Prager.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Also happening this weekend:
Tomorrow, Saturday April 22 will be the last day to see Erica Il Cane show “Una Vita Violenta” at the Fifty24MX Gallery in Mexico City. The gallery will also participate with Erica Il Cane at the Zona Maco Mexico Arte Contemporaneo Art Fair in Mexico City. April 18 – April 22. For further details about “Una Vita Violenta” click here. For more details about Zona Maco, Mexico Arte Contemporaneo Art Fair click here.
Brett Amory solo show “Waiting 101” At the Outsiders Gallery in Newcastle, UK opens today to the general public. Click here for more details about this show.
OLEK in Barcelona with Botero (VIDEO)
Still working on that scarf you’ve been knitting for OLEK’s birthday? You missed it.
We are incredibly proud to announce the opening of LALA Gallery on Saturday, April 21, 2012 where we will be presenting LA Freewalls Inside.
LA Freewalls Inside is a group show featuring over 40 artists who have helped make Downtown Los Angeles one of the biggest and most recognizable public art spaces in the world, including Shepard Fairey, SWOON, HOW and NOSM. Keep a lookout as we unveil the final line-up over the next two weeks.
So spread the word, bring a friend and help us break-in the space for the first of what will be many, many, more events.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
