All posts tagged: Augustine Kofie

Well-Rounded Compositions from Augustine Kofie: “Rotationships” Opens in SF

March 10, 2022 Artists, Interview, Interviews

ROTATIONSHIPS

A warmly modern and well-rounded direction today from graffiti writer and contemporary artist Augustine Kofie as his sampling mentality pauses over the O, a symbol of lasting inspiration for artists of many centuries, backgrounds, and mediums. Presenting a parallel between these new cuts of commercial pressboard and the relationships he has with expanding circles of people and culture, his influences and techniques of the assemblage are freshly discovered.

Preparing for his new exhibition “Rotationships” opening at Heron this weekend, Kofie likes to discuss his very disciplined approach to nearly obsessively collecting “pressboard, a heavy, multi-ply paper stock used in packaging and office supplies from the 1950s to the 1980s.” Culled from estate sales and flea markets primarily in the LA area, Augustine says he has a respect for the time period as well as the people who collected these modern relics of a genuinely middle-class age that is all but disappearing.

Viewers of the new show will instinctively adjoin with these sleek color palettes and clean diagrammatic renderings of lines, shapes, text. Each repurposed element here is related to its neighbor – chosen and applied in the instinctual way that a DJ isolates and reapplies sonic elements, spoken words, atmospherics, and rhythms when recreating aural compositions. Using these elements in their original state, he pulls and plays the appropriate hues, timbres, and materials from his archive. It’s a system he has developed over time, a meticulously ordered collection which he says is “archived by color palette, thickness, and category in vintage industrial file cabinets.”

Augustine Kofie. Process shot for *“Rotationships”*. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)

Augustine Kofie. *“Rotationships”*. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)

The new player at the front of the show is the never-ending circle, previously having played a supporting role in his graffiti, murals, assemblages, and painting – now standing on its own, whole, balanced, and in charge of everything around it. It’s a solid direction, and a reassuring one, to see this self-made artist who learned how to hone his style from his graffiti forebears, now exploring the possibilities confidently and even coining words, like “Rotationships”.

BSÅ: We often think of you as a retro-futurist because of your distillation of imagery and text and patterns and color templates from mid-century Americana and the way you bring it forward. What do you think fascinates you about those times long before you were born?

AK: I have always had a very materials-driven aesthetic. I can relate that interest in materials from the past with a kind of archaeological or historical inclination, especially towards refuse—the things that histories don’t consider important enough to preserve. Sometimes nostalgia plays a role, but most the time it’s not about personal memories so much as respect for a time period and for the craftsmanship of that time, the respect for materials.

BSA: The focus of this show often revolves around the completed “O” shape – whether oblong, or squashed, or perfectly circular. It’s a family of shapes we don’t usually associate with your compositions of the past. How did it emerge – was it conscious? Was it sudden or gradual?

AK: Rounded corners, partial oblongs and circular forms have always found a way into my street and studio artwork, but they’ve always played a secondary role as a support system for sharper lines and more angular shapes. In this series, the rounded shapes are front and center, while the linear, ghosted patterns that appear in the background and help to construct the foreground are now the supporting cast.

Typically, when I would build a collage background before laying my painting on top, there was always this window of time looking at the work when I would think, ‘I would love to stop right here and leave it as it is, highlighting the varied materials. It took some time to suss out how to do it in a way that would allow the collage to stand on its own, and the circles became the way to do it. They anchor the work in a different way. Circles are also much harder to implement through this kind of collage because of the thickness of the materials, so there is a lot more of my hand in those shapes. Maybe I needed to find a place for that, since usually painting would be the place.

BSA: A central part of your art making is the disciplined process of collecting ephemera and materials and organizing and cataloguing them for future use. Can you talk about why this is so appealing?

AK: In a way, all of my artmaking stems from a deep need to make order out of chaos. Finding and then cataloguing ephemera is a perfect manifestation of that basic urge. It always finds its way back to hip-hop production, to the art of sampling records and plunderphonics, to deconstructing and overlaying sounds of the past to create new compositions and sound. It’s fascinating and limitless, and there is something about a sampling mentality that shapes everything I do. Over time, as I dove deeper into this kind of collecting, I became more knowledgeable of what was out there—what materials were made in different decades, what survived. I’ve also perfected my archiving system, which is part of the pleasure of it all. So I’ve been able to narrow in on my tastes and focus my collection, and all of that made this series possible.

BSA: How do you see your formative graffiti writing career as it continues to evolve into this fine art practice? Can you tell us about a through line that has continued in your work as it has grown in the last two decades?

AK: There’s a strong self-motivation and discipline that comes from pursuing your art on the streets. I didn’t study art in the academic space, but graffiti has its own art history, its own traditions. My through line was always to be respectful of the materials and the work, to respect those who came before, and to build something new, to establish my own space that allowed for creative expansion. I feel that this series does that.

A soundtrack for ’ROTATIONSHIPS’, a solo exhibition at Heron Arts San Francisco, March 12, 2022

For every solo exhibition, the artist creates a soundtrack. The music is assembled as part of the work process, which is both sonic and pictorial. This vaporware like mix blends late 80s ’skinemax’ era soundscapes, including up-cycled sophistso-pop saxophone and lo-fi telefilm intermissions and poignant dialogue relevant to the exhibition theme and tone.

All tracks re-recorded, chopped and mixed by: A. Kofie for 4x4Tracktor
Mastered by &e @ BENDYmusic, Inglewood, Calif.

California’s Augustine Kofie is in a New York “State of Mind” at Hashimoto

April 13, 2021 Artists

It really is primarily about your State of Mind, says LA-based painter Augustine Kofie about his battle with art and quarantine during this last year.

Augustine Kofie. “Disbelief System”. Hashimoto Contemporary. (photo courtesy of the gallery)

“The pandemic was a stop, an interruption, a loss of control,” he says – and points to the incomplete cycle symbols that appear throughout his new collection of paintings. Normal life, in its circular wending, was interrupted time and again, along with all our typical expectations.

His warm abstractions on canvas and upon large walls have always been human – with deep roots in graffiti and hand rendering – ‘overspray, tape blocking, detailed handwork, deconstruction, and draftsmanship drawn from architecture,’ says the PR statement from Hashimoto Gallery in New York where this new exhibition will open.

“My feelings are in the brushstrokes,” he says, “the movements, the process of repeatedly adding and taking away, the layers of time it took to complete these paintings.”

Augustine Kofie. “Enlighten Moment”. Hashimoto Contemporary. (photo courtesy of the gallery)

Augustine Kofie. “*Pyle Driver”*. Hashimoto Contemporary. (photo courtesy of the gallery)

Augustine Kofie process shot while painting “Weight”. Hashimoto Contemporary. (photo courtesy of the gallery)

Augustine Kofie. “Weight”. Hashimoto Contemporary. (photo courtesy of the gallery)

The gallery will be open by appointment only. In order to ensure the health and safety of visitors and staff, please note that masks are legally required for entry.
The exhibition will be on view from Saturday, April 17th to Saturday, May 8th.

For further information about the exhibition, to view the whole collection of works and for prices click HERE

To schedule an appointment, please click HERE.

“The Art Of The Mural: Volume 01” Captures a Moment

May 10, 2016 Artists

Murals hold their own place onstage in public space today for a variety of reasons that we discuss regularly on BSA. From grassroots and public, to private and corporate, we have watched the genre professionalize as Street Art festivals and other initiatives are often coupling artists with brands and are selling canvasses through the organizers galleries. Today we have the first of a promised four-part book series by Art Whino gallerist and organizer of the Richmond Mural Project in Virginia, Shane Pomajambo, that features many artists he has worked with in the brand new “The Art of the Mural”.

Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Featuring more than fifty current graffiti/Street Artists, the survey pays special attention to the show-stopping eye candy that commands attention for these nomadic painters who are developing their craft before an ever larger and more appreciative international audience.

Culture critic and curator Carlo McCormick, who writes the introduction to the Schiffer published hardcover, notes that this mural renaissance is quite unlike the US government funded New Deal era mural programs that produced “hundreds of thousands of murals for schools, hospitals, post offices, housing projects, and various government facilities”. And he’s right, these are emanating from a different place entirely.

Antony Lister. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

The world-traveling media-soaked artists, of which this collection is subset, have had vastly more exposure to corporations and branding perhaps than, say, arts institutions, and a sophisticated self-handling is often on display with artists ever more savvy in their choices of style and content.

A greater percentage are now entering into private collections, galleries, and museums thanks to unprecedented platforms for huge exposure on the Internet, and their public works are adding rich character and dialogue to our neighborhoods and public spaces.

Curiot. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

With academia, art critics, and auction houses all grappling with the rightful place of these artists in contemporary art and society at large it will be instructive to know the history and their lineage, content, context, and patronage. One has to agree when McCormick says that all of these “are helpful for us to consider in looking at and understanding the artists’ walls of today.”

This collection of talent is strong, with many of the mid-large names that are at play in this generation of painters whom are primarily born in the 1970s and 80s. In their work is a cultural appreciation for modern graffiti history as they now channel it along with formal training, art history, advertising, and a multitude of media. With few exceptions, it’s a tight list of artists, the images are riveting (though uncredited to their photographers), and the brief introductions by Pomajambo contain just enough biographical information and artist’ quotes to ground the story and give it context.

“As with everything I do,” says the Queens, New York native Pomajambo, “I always question and observe, and as we reach critical mass with murals I felt compelled to create this project and capture a moment in time.”

Evoca 1. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Fintan Magee. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Miss Van. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

MOMO. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Onur & Wes 21. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Telmo & Miel. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Tone (Robert Proch). Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

All photos of the spreads by Jaime Rojo

The Art of The Mural: Contemporary International Urban Art. Volume 01 by Shaen Pomajambo. Schiffer Publishing. Atglen, PA. USA.

Participating Artists
Amose, Arraiano, Augustine Kofie, Axel Void, Bezt (Etam Crew), Chazme 718, Chor boogie, Clog Two, Curiot, Cyrcle, DALeast, Decertor, Dface, ETNIK, Faith47, Fintan Magee, Hense, INTI, Jade, Jaz, JR, Kenor, Lister, Logan Hicks, Low Bros, Meggs, Miss Van, Momo, Mr Thoms, Muro, Natalia Rak, Nosego, Onur, Pener, Reka, Robert “Tone” Proch,Ron English, Rone, Sainer (Etam Crew), SATONE, SEACREATIVE, Sepe, Smithone, Sten Lex, Stormie Mills, Telmo Miel, Tristan Eaton, TWOONE HIROYASU, Vhils, Wes21 and Zed 1

BSA Images Of The Week: 04.10.16

April 10, 2016 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring 3rd World Pirate, A Pill NYC, Anglo, Augustine Kofie, Balu, CB23, City Kitty, Icy & Sot, Jerk Face, Jetski, LX One, Solus, Swiz, and WK Interact

Our top image: A warring door by WK Interact. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

WK Interact (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This dude lived in Williamsburg before all this happened. Balú (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And this dude lived in Williamsburg only two summers ago. The wifi still has his name on it. Balú (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. Subway ad take over. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

That’s one way to shine his buttons. 3rd World Pirate (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie in Marrakech, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Solus looking up for guidance. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LX ONE in Marrakech, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

CB23 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swiz in Marrakech, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot offers some words of comfort to Stikman. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty and friends. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Anglo . Jetski (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A Pill NYC is just frothing at the mouth to see the consumers move in. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jerk Face (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. SOHO, NYC. April 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA “Images of the Year” for 2015 : New Video

December 16, 2015 Artists

Was 2015 the “Year of the Mural”?

A lot of people thought so, and the rise of commercial festivals and commissioned public/private mural programs probably brought more artists to more walls than in recent history. Judging from the In Box, 2016 is going to break more records. Enormous, polished, fully realized and presented, murals can hold a special role in a community and transform a neighborhood, even a city.

But they are not the “organic” Street Art that draws us into the dark in-between places in a city, or at its margins.

We keep our eyes open for the small, one-off, idiosyncratic, uncommissioned, weirdo work as well, as it can carry clues about the culture and reveal a sage or silly solo voice. It also just reinforces the feeling that the street is still home to an autonomous free-for-all of ideas and opinions and wandering passions. For us it is still fascinating to seek out and discover the one-of-a-kind small wheatpastes, stencils, sculptures, ad takeovers, collages, and aerosol sprayed pieces alongside the enormous and detailed paintings that take days to complete.

The main image above is from a vinyl subway advertisement that was high-jacked and we published it in February of this year on our Images of the Week posting. It’s small, personal, and very effective as you can see someone suspiciously similar to Batman is jumping out of the mouth of someone looking awfully similar to Hedwig of “Angry Inch” fame.

Of the 10,000 or so images photographer Jaime Rojo took in 2015, here are a selection 140+ of the best images from his travels through streets looking for unpermissioned and sanctioned art.

Brooklyn Street Art 2015 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo

Brooklyn Street Art 2015 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo includes the following artists;

365xlos43, Amanda Marie, Andreas Englund, Augustine Kofie, Bisser, Boijeot, Renauld, Bordaloli, Brittany, BunnyM, Case Maclaim, Casg, Cash4, CDRE, Clet, Cost, Curve, Dain, Dal East, Dan Budnik, Dan Witz, David Walker, DeeDee, Dennis McNett, Don Rimx, Ricardo Cabret, LNY, Alex Seel, Mata Ruda, Don’t Fret, Dot Dot Dot, ECB, El Mac, El Sol25, Ella & Pitr, Eric Simmons, Enest Zacharevic, Martha Cooper, Martin Whatson, Ever, Faile, Faith47, Findac, Futura, Gaia, Gilf!, Hanksy, Hellbent, Hot Tea, How & Nosm, Icy and Sot, Inti, Invader, Isaac Cordal, James Bullough, Janet Dickson, Jef Aerosol, Jilly Ballistic, Joe Iurato, John Fekner, Le Diamantaire, Li Hill, LMNOPI, London Kaye, Low Brow, Marina Capdevilla, Miss Van, Mr. Prvrt, Mr. Toll, Myth, Nafir, Nemos, Never Crew, Nick Walker, Nina Pandolofo, Old Broads, Oldy, Ollio, Os Gemeos, Owen Dippie, Paper Skaters, Pet Bird, Kashink, Smells, Cash4, PichiAvo, Pixel Pancho, QRST, ROA, Ron English, Rubin415, Saner, Sean 9 Lugo, Shai Dahan, Shepard Fairey, Sheryo & The Yok, Sinned, Sipros, Skewville, Slikor, Smells, Sweet Toof, Snowden, Edward Snowden, Andrew Tider, Jeff Greenspan, Specter, Stray Ones, Sweet Toof, Swil, Willow, Swoon, The Outings Project, Toney De Pew, Tristan Eaton, Various & Gould, Vermibus, Wane, Wk Interact

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Augustine Kofie Remixing Deep Cuts in “Inventory”

November 25, 2015 Artists, Interview

Newly re-mixed and sampled soulful works by Augustine Kofie are featured in the “Inventory” show that just opened here in New York at Jonathan Levine this weekend. No, he’s not looking through his storeroom of canvasses and clearing out old year-end inventory, the name refers to the “controlled hoarding” Kofie goes through to amass the muscles and skin of his 45 degree compartmentalized grid pieces.

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

He may be a crate-digging cultural magpie when collecting packaging and office supplies and jazz records and science journals that span a half century, but when he lays it down in shades of ochre and rust, golden rod and walnut, steel grey and maple, stuttering birch and enameled persimmon the rational leafing of text and texture all makes reassuring orderly, nostalgically spun and sampled sense.

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And then there is the patch of seafoam sky, the deciduous limbic form that is not strictly geometric, the shock of hot tomato cheeks… the speckled face of a cat-eyed Doe sunnily perched in her modest bathing suit, or the closely-shorn dome of a white glove architect bending lithely toward his tilted graphite rendering. These are the human elements that anchor the shifting planes, grounding the piece, adding warmth, with good reason.

“I’m making beats,” he says as he rests with a short glass of amber spirits on Levine’s modernist office couch as the first guests flow into the gallery out front, “and those are records I’m pulling samples from.”

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Like a studied and somatic DJ and collagist, Kofie’s segue is not limited to the auditory, and he continues to spin the metaphor when describing the visual building process for his vintage futurism. “When you are using a drum machine people are saying that it is without a soul – but I’m trying to make this electronic beat music using samples. The way I’m manipulating and maneuvering the curation of certain things – some are very focused but the majority of it is very serendipitous, off the cuff. A lot of things that I begin to do end of being covered up for of the sake of the design.”

We’ve hit on something: a cocktail of Coltrane, Marvin Gaye, Cypress Hill, Kandinsky, Eames, mid-century modernism, rusty rocket ships, Edward Murrow, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cornel West, and Bill Nye the Science Guy and suddenly the West Coast mixologist is at the controls. “You have to go into the process like a hoarder who ultimately knows that you will have to let things go,” he says of the sharply natural math at hand.

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“The thing looks very technical and very precise but there is a lot of fun, soulful play happening in the beginning. In order to get it on there I do have to cut up these shapes and forty-five degree angles so I can get everything in – and then see what comes up.”

“I like throwing in some of the graphical elements; portrait and people’s faces – that happens when I use the thinner paper. For this collection I’m using mostly pressed-board and packaging, which doesn’t have that many portrait graphics unless it’s a record cover I found. Literally I have a box of things and I’m sifting through. I’m like “I need this horn!”… Or Herbie Mann might have a flute that I need instead. There is a lot of picking and going through it. I enjoy that crate-digging kind of process. What ends up popping up is mostly kind of serendipity.”

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The exhibition allows you to see a miniature version of his workshop in LA that gives stage to the inventory of found objects, ephemera, and texture, and you get a sense of the purposeful tranquil stirrings that are always at play. In tandem with the gallery show of paintings and collage he has done his first big New York wall – actually in New Jersey with Mana Contemporary.

No matter the scale, Kofie’s work is close-up and personal and he sits easily with you peering at the details. “Large wall- small collage; It’s intimate in both sizes. It’s just the approach of it, the thinking that goes behind it.”

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Again he is creating in the moment. “For the wall in Jersey I had an initial idea before it but when I came to the wall and saw it, saw the space, looked around and I even put my back to the wall and took a look out and around and saw… Also the colors, working next to Shepard’s piece – I didn’t want it to look misplaced.”

“So I had to change everything up. Sometimes you have to go in a little blindly.”

He talks about time constraints, malfunctioning tools, and recalibrating his approach to fit the new environment. Luckily, his first decade as a serious LA graffiti writer came in handy.”Yeah a lot of the old can control tricks came out on this wall. There are some tape points, and I’ll use twine – I mean I could have brought a laser thing, I’ve done that before. I didn’t want to deal with it and I didn’t want to project the piece. I really liked the spray.”

Give him the tools and the right inventory and there will be music.

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie mural in Jersey City, NJ for Mana Urban Arts Projects. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For more information about Augustine Kofie Inventory at Jonathan Levine Gallery, click HERE.

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This article is also published in The Huffington Post

50 Ways to Map The City, Per Street and Graffiti Artists

January 21, 2015 Artists, Interview

D.I.Y. Cartography in the Rawest Section of Somerset

Street Art is intrinsically bound with its neighborhood and location in a city. Context and placement are key, establishing its relation to a place. So when a Street Artist is asked to create art about mapping a place, it is fascinating to see how they perceive it and with what manner and medium they present it.

In a new exhibition opening in London this month, the time honored study and practice of cartography ventures into the conceptual as well as the physical, and we find that for many artists the street is as much about poetry and perception as it is about aerosol and wheat-pasted paper.

Petro’s sculpture on the left with Gasisus sculpture on the right. Aryz, Ron English, Malarko, Augustine Kofie, on the background wall. Filippo Minelli on the right wall. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

“Mapping the City”, now going up at the Somerset House presents the work of 50 artists whose roots lie in creating work for the urban space, one defined by paved streets configured by planners and traversed by citizenry. More than this the artists here broaden the job description of cartographer to one who captures energy, movement, emotion, imagined storylines and life paths.

With ubiquitous smart phones at the ready we increasingly find that mapping the world has become a given, removing some of its mystery. The tracking of GPS is joined by the physically surveying Google machine and countless public/private war/profit apparatus that have been loosed across and above the skin of the globe to trace all roads and streets, quantify topography, measure depths – even gauge the volume of rivers and density of forests.

Installation process shot. Gasius sculpture on the foreground. Installers working on Petros’ sculpture. Aryz, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Malarko, Augustine Kofie, Shantell Martin, Husk MitNavn on the background wall. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

And then there are the people. “The city is a living entity,” says Rafael Schacter, curator of the show from the arts organization A(by)P, who sees the city as something far more than a clever configuration of lines. “The city changes every day, every hour of the day. It is constantly modifying itself. And it is fully alive in the way it reacts and responds to our actions. It is endlessly fascinating in the same way humans are. They can be exhausting, they can be destructive. But they contain endless possibilities too.”

It’s this same immersion into street life that draws artists to create in public, and knowing how to accept and embrace its evolution is what brings the veterans back. MOMO literally painted many streets in one continuous line that formed the letters of his nom de la rue in a 2006 tag that spread across the bottom of New York’s central island and it is presented as a map in this show.

Brooklyn Street Art: One of the artists in your show, MOMO, created an enormous tag in Manhattan – although it was only legible when the route was retraced upon a map. Is he crazy?
Rafael Schacter: He is crazy. A crazy genius. Although you still can see the marks he made on the streets of Manhattan years after he painted it! He recently re-walked the route and re-mapped the existing line. As I said; Crazy. Genius.

MOMO “Tag Manhattan” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

“Retracing the tag line was cool,” MOMO tells us. “What I noticed is how much new sidewalk cement has gone in – a lot of the line was eaten up by that,” he says, observing that a city is anything but static and often regenerative. “It is interesting how quickly a city replaces all of its cells,” he remarks about the ongoing repaving that characterizes the city. Were there more changes MOMO noticed in the 7 years between tagging? Yes. “Other stuff, like all the shiny new developments that are making Manhattan look like a mall.”

While there are some commonalities among the selected artists who are participating in this project, there is quite a variety of approaches to the street, as Schacter invited Street Artists, graffiti artists, public artists, designers, painters, illustrators, and billboard jammers. He says the multiplicity of interpretation was an intentional decision.

“For us, the most important thing was to have the whole range of artists we love and who are producing work in the public sphere included in the exhibition. As such, and as you say, it really is a very wide variety of artists, from graffiti bombers to conceptual artists, from muralists to urban explorers. With all of them, however, the crucial element within their practice is the public sphere, the richness of the city and urban space. This is the line that goes through all of their work, even if they may at first seem widely different.”

Chu. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Chu, an Argentine Street Artist and muralist whose colorfully painted four paneled abstraction remixes and jumbles the lines and shapes and removes all text, his map is meant to communicate the kinetic nature of street life. “I tried to create a map of Buenos Aires marking my usual movements around the city. I am used to moving around it a lot, from one side to other, and sometimes it is really chaotic and stressful. However it is also really where I get a lot of inspiration.”

A viewer of Chu’s graphic representation may be reminded of map making software and apps – possibly because of his graphic design training and his work as an animation director and illustrator in the digital sphere. He says that his digital art experience has grafted onto his vision of the physical street, “especially because I am working with layers and some of my choices of shapes come from that experience.”

Even as a painter, you can see the influence of the digital design world in Chu’s map. He says that when he thinks of city streets, he does see in his mind an aerial view of them from up above, but there is much more.

“My artwork for the exhibition is a kind of aerial abstract view of the city,” says Chu, “When trying to understand the city street more mentally, I believe today, it is something more complex than it was before. It is like some kind of constellation or hypertext thing that grows up in all directions, with axis and tons of layers.”

CHU “Buenos Aires” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Housed in a section of Somerset House that has been closed off from the public for 150 years, the new exhibit is also its first and most visitors will never have hiked through the still unpolished space. It seems like the perfectly shabby cream-colored raw environment that graff writers and Street Artists might feel comfortable making art for. “It’s in the process of happening,” says Schacter as the team moves around him and up ladders to place the maps and straddle patches of exposed wall. According to Rafael, even the ceilings of the 18^th century rooms are being restored to their original splendor, “with Yak Hair in the plaster!”

Brooklyn Street Art: Will people need to follow a map to find this show in the new wing of the Somerset House?
Rafael Schacter: Ha! Kind of. Our space hasn’t currently even got a name as it’s so new – and so old at the same time. We’re going to make big wooden arrows to make it clear but we kind of hope people get lost too, and then eventually find us!

Detail of Gasius sculpture on the foreground. LA artist Cali Thornhill De Witt displays his flag pieces in the background. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

Brooklyn Street Art: Not all participants strictly adhered to the realm of cartography in the conception or execution of their map. Brad Downey appears to have drawn a face. Imagine what you would have gotten if this was a show about clouds.
Rafael Schacter: You’re right – the responses to our call for work has been super super varied. But that’s exactly what we wanted – that variety of work. We didn’t want just one understanding of the call, which was simply “map your space”. Brad’s work is about finding visuals within maps, whilst others have tried to find maps within visuals! It is all simply about a different appreciation of space from the one we see in the top down, topographic, scientific standard.

Brad Downey. Face (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

The Brooklyn Street Artist Swoon contributed one of her iconic images of a woman whose entire form is filled with what appears to be kutis and stilt houses along winding streets from top to bottom. Based on the Thai capital Bangkok, it is an example of the inner world Swoon is known for creating, reflective of a character’s history.

Installation process shot. Swoon. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Brooklyn Street Art: It is always interesting to see a Swoon portrait that contains the city and the streets within the body of the subject, isn’t it?
Rafael Schacter: There’s a great quote from Swoon about her work being about the desire to more carefully examine the “relationship of people to their built environment”. Her work here is a prime example of this, a work in which the body and the city become inexorably intertwined – the experience, as she says, “of becoming part of the fabric of the city” visually mapped out.

Installation process shot. Chu, Isaurao Huizar, Swoon and Mike Ballard. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about the film/s you have discovered and will be showing that fall in with the theme of map-making?
Rafael Schacter: The films we’re going to be showing are by a filmmaker named Marc Isaacs. They’re both set in London, both exploring the lives of “ordinary” Londoners. It is a very bottom-up, grass roots understanding of people’s lives. That is exactly what we’re looking to do in the show – to explore the subjective and the hidden nature of the city.

Brooklyn Street Art: Who will be doing an artist talk about the project?
Rafael Schacter: We’re really excited about this. Our artist talk will be featuring Eltono, Filippo Minelli and Caleb Neelon. Again, a real diversity of artists and a diversity of backgrounds. Each of them have a great understanding of the public sphere and we’re excited to see what they will present.

Brooklyn Street Art: Given worldwide mapping and its ubiquity on devices we must ask this: In the future, will it be possible to get lost?
Rafael Schacter: I hope so! As the artist Itso said, and I paraphrase, true places can never be mapped.

Installation process shot. El Tono working on his sculpture. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

El Tono. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

Installation process shot. Herbert Baglione on the right. El Tono on the left with EGS on the background room. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Installation process shot. Remed. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Installation process shot. Sixe Paredes on the left. Filippo Minelli on Center. Remed and OX on the right background room. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Installation process shot. Detail of Filippo Minelli’s map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Sixe Paredes with Detail of Filippo Minelli’s map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

Detail of Cleo Peterson map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

“Mapping The City” Opens tomorrow for the general public at Somerset House in London, UK. Click HERE for schedule of events, hours, directions and other details.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

108 (Italy)	Aryz (Spain)
Augustine Kofie (USA)	Boris Tellegen (The Netherlands)
Caleb Neelon (USA)	Cali Thornhill Dewitt (USA)
Chu (Argentina)	Cleon Peterson (USA)
Daniel K. Sparkes (UK)	Egs (Finland)
Ekta [Daniel Götesson] (Sweden)	Eltono (France)
Erosie (The Netherlands)	Filippo Minelli (Italy)
Gold Peg (UK)	Graphic Surgery (The Netherlands)
Herbert Baglione (Brazil)	Honet (France)
Horfee (France)	HuskMitNavn (Denmark)
Ian Strange [Kid Zoom] (Australia)	Interesni Kazki (Ukraine)
Isauro Huizar (Mexico)	Isaac Tin Wei Lin (USA)
James Jarvis (UK)	Jurne (USA)
Ken Sortais [Cony] (France)	Les Frères Ripoulain (France)
Lucas Cantu (Mexico)	Lush (Australia)
Malarko (UK)	Martin Tibabuzo (Argentina)
Mike Ballard (UK)	MOMO (USA)
Nano4814 (Spain)	Nug (Sweden)
OX (France)	Pablo Limon (Spain)
Petro (UK)	Remed (France)
Remio (USA)	Roids (UK)
Ron English (USA)	Russell Maurice (UK
Shantell Martin (UK)	Shepard Fairey (USA)
Sixe Paredes (Spain)	Susumu Mukai (Japan)
Swoon (USA)	Tim Head (UK)
Vova Vorotniov (Ukraine)	Will Sweeney (UK)

Mapping the City
22 January – 15 February 2015
Somerset House, New Wing
Admission: Free

Contemporary cartographic art by international street and graffiti artists to be the first exhibition in Somerset House’s recently opened New Wing

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

A Preview Of “Mapping The City” at Somerset House (LONDON)

January 15, 2015 Artists

Until you get lost in a city, you really do not know its true nature. And possibly your own.

Only at the moment of realization that you really have lost your way, your bearings, your inner compass, however temporarily, do you get a genuine sense of a place and your place in it. What are these buildings, who are these people, what is that smell, why is that horn honking, is there a bathroom nearby, do I have any money, what do I do? Perhaps even “who am I?”. No, you’re too confident and self assured for that.

We’ve trekked through New York City thousands of miles by now, worn out many shoes, taken countless wrong turns, and been lost numerous times. It’s part of the adventure really. Especially in the 80s when it was all new to us; cacophonic and crazy and perplexing, unnerving, and seemingly neverending. Now, even with GPS on the phone it is completely possible to get lost. And if you are not lost, you know it is your responsibility to keep your eyes open for someone who is. It’ll happen.

This week we’re excited for London folks who get to look at a map, fifty of them actually. Curated by Rafael Schacter and his collaborative arts organization named A(by)P, Mapping the City is an ingenious little bit of inspiration and conceptualizing of our sense of place.

Who are these maps created by? Street Artists of course, as well as others from the graffiti art scene.

And these wildcats have taken many liberties with the assignment of “please make a map”. So many in fact that some of these maps would get you lost even further if you were to consult them. But there is plenty to be learned from them nonetheless. These maps may provide valuable insights into the highways and byways of some of these artist’s brains, now that you think of it, you beguiling detective.

The inaugural exhibition opens the New Wing of Somerset House – a wing that has been closed to the public for a century and a half, or roughly the time you have to wait for a cable repair person to come to your apartment. Rafael and his team are busy installing maps right now for the January 22^nd opening, and we will have great “install” images and an interview with him next week for you to enjoy. But for right now, have a look at these examples of cartographic excellence from an international array of established and emerging artists for Mapping the City.

(full list of artists at the end of this posting)

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

108 (Italy)	Aryz (Spain)
Augustine Kofie (USA)	Boris Tellegen (The Netherlands)
Caleb Neelon (USA)	Cali Thornhill Dewitt (USA)
Chu (Argentina)	Cleon Peterson (USA)
Daniel K. Sparkes (UK)	Egs (Finland)
Ekta [Daniel Götesson] (Sweden)	Eltono (France)
Erosie (The Netherlands)	Filippo Minelli (Italy)
Gold Peg (UK)	Graphic Surgery (The Netherlands)
Herbert Baglione (Brazil)	Honet (France)
Horfee (France)	HuskMitNavn (Denmark)
Ian Strange [Kid Zoom] (Australia)	Interesni Kazki (Ukraine)
Isauro Huizar (Mexico)	Isaac Tin Wei Lin (USA)
James Jarvis (UK)	Jurne (USA)
Ken Sortais [Cony] (France)	Les Frères Ripoulain (France)
Lucas Cantu (Mexico)	Lush (Australia)
Malarko (UK)	Martin Tibabuzo (Argentina)
Mike Ballard (UK)	MOMO (USA)
Nano4814 (Spain)	Nug (Sweden)
OX (France)	Pablo Limon (Spain)
Petro (UK)	Remed (France)
Remio (USA)	Roids (UK)
Ron English (USA)	Russell Maurice (UK
Shantell Martin (UK)	Shepard Fairey (USA)
Sixe Paredes (Spain)	Susumu Mukai (Japan)
Swoon (USA)	Tim Head (UK)
Vova Vorotniov (Ukraine)	Will Sweeney (UK)

Mapping the City
22 January – 15 February 2015
Somerset House, New Wing
Admission: Free

Contemporary cartographic art by international street and graffiti artists to be the first exhibition in Somerset House’s recently opened New Wing

Jaybo Monk’s Maiden Voyage to The East Coast

July 8, 2014 Artists

Today we go to Boston to see a show at the Museum of Fine Arts, where painter and artist Jaybo Monk is painting live for the summer party benefit. The Berlin based Monk has deep roots in Street Art and graffiti but now describes himself primarily as a painter who loves the process even more than the end result. An artist who is not afraid of changing his style, many of his paintings feature a shattering and fragmenting of reality, placing his dis-formed figures on planes and pulling them apart and recombining them, evoking for us the work of artists such as Francis Bacon, Anthony Lister, and even Egon Schiele.

While in Massachussetts he coordinated/collaborated/ worked with photographer Todd Mazer, who organized for him and El Mac to paint live at the fundraiser and both artists, along with Augustine Kofie, contributed works to be auctioned for MFA’s benefit. You may recall the collaborative Conversations show that Monk did with Kofie in 2012 which truly enhanced the work of both artists.

While visiting The City on a Hill Monk also had a solo show Traces of Nothing at The Boston Button Factory and practiced his collaborative in-the-moment style with hosts and other artists on the scene for a couple of other events. “Since I moved to Boston it’s been very important to me to create a dialog here with artists I met in Los Angeles,” explains Mazer, who shares with BSA readers some images he shot of Jaybo’s visit and tells us about some of the activities and people on the scene.

“This was Jaybo’s first visit to the East Coast and I had been talking to him about coming out here and he was into it,” says Mazer. “It was also really important to us both that he got a chance to link up with the Boston art community so we got to spend time with artists like Caleb Neelon, Kems, and Dana Woulfe – and I was glad that he got a chance to collaborate with Kenji Nakayama.”

In addition to taking part in SOWA First Fridays, where people got a chance to see a room full of unfinished works in an open studio environment, Mazer helped organize a well attended pop-up solo show at Liquid Art House entitled Sole Delay. Mazer says Jaybo exhibited a few new works from his studio in Berlin as “quite a few pieces made completely in Boston.”

“Jaybo worked in the SOWA art studio of artist Adrienne Schlow who along with Matt Greer, Kenji Nakayama and my sister Allison Mazer helped make the day-to-day tasks, challenges and missions possible,” says Mazer. Listening to his descriptions and seeing the rhythmic poetry of the lighting and composition of his photos, you know that Mazer was at ease with his subject, perhaps because the subject is at ease with himself.

The pop-up show had a relatively short timeline for preparation and the team was working up until the opening bell to prepare the space. Luckily, Boston crowds are fashionably late to an opening so they could catch their breath. “It felt a little quiet and I was thinking ‘maybe I rushed things too much’ but then people kept coming and coming and coming and I was like ‘Yeah Boston!’” says Mazer.

The shows were a big success, but for Mazer, it was the collaborative open-studio environment that really showcased the qualities of this artist that he relished the most. “Witnessing Jaybo’s process has so often left me mesmerized, anguished and inspired by his fleeting envelopements, so it was really special to create an environment where others got to experience how much of a razors edge his work lives on,” he says.

Jaybo Monk solo exhibition “Traces of Nothing” is currently on view at the Boston Button Company and will be up until July 14.

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“Three the Hard Way” Sneak Peek with Kofie, Bruno, and Inscoe

November 7, 2013 Artists

Traditional letterforms are melting and straightening and refracting and layering and abstracting and slicing into geometric forms tonight in Portland Oregon as “Three The Hard Way” opens with men who came up through graffiti and embraced a new enthusiasm for this modern visual vocabulary.

Hard in this case doesn’t refer to their individual dispositions but it may refer to the amount of effort and skill they each have put into building a body of work, and a point of view. Naturally it also name-checks Hard-Edge painting and the surety and confidence you have to have to make choices in your art.

So here you are, some fresh images of some of the new works on display tonight by Augustine Kofie, Jerry Joker Inscoe, Christopher Derek Bruno, three artists whose large scale works on the street have taken different directions over the last decades but now all have led to this one place.

Lucky folk in Portland will meet all three if they go tonight. Congratulations to the curator who possesses an architectural sensibility, Sven Davis, for creating this sharp focus on dimension, form, composition, and space. This trio smartly soars.

Breeze Block Gallery presents:
Three The Hard Way: Augustine Kofie / Jerry Joker Inscoe / Christopher Derek Bruno

Three-person exhibition curated by Sven Davis

Breeze Block Gallery
Portland OR.

November 7 – 30, 2013

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Augustine Kofie “Circulations” Wall In San Francisco

October 7, 2013 Artists

Clearly operating on a different plane, graffiti writer and Street Artist Augustine Kofie continues to steadily evolve his studio practice even while hitting the occasional wall. One of the artists we featured in our Geometricks program last year, the draftsman has since been featured in his first non-US solo show in the spring at the new Open Space gallery in Paris and he just ended his most recent solo show at White Walls gallery in San Francisco.

While there preparing for “Structurally Sound”, Augustine mixed up some custom buckets of paint to realize a new mural in the Tenderloin District. Ever a conservationist, he incorporated the original Patek-Ecklon signage from the 1940s into an abstract composition, which along with his unerring palette and sharp eye, updated the landmark into his signature retro-futurist vision.

Our special thanks to photographer and BSA collaborator* Brock Brake for sharing these images with readers of Kofie installing the new wall.*

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Galerie OpenSapce Presents: Augustine Kofie “California Soul” (Paris, France)

May 20, 2013 Afghanistan, Artists

Augustine Kofie
Vernissage en présence d’Augustine Kofie, le samedi 25 mai de 16h à 20h à la galerie Openspace – 56 rue Alexandre Dumas, Paris 11ème

Infos pratiques :

GALERIE OPENSPACE
56, rue Alexandre Dumas, Paris 11e
Du mardi au samedi, de 14h à 20h
M° Alexandre Dumas (L2) ou Rue des Boulets (L9)

AUGUSTINE KOFIE – VERNISSAGE DE L’EXPOSITION ‘CALIFORNIA SOUL’

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Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Antony Lister. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Curiot. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Evoca 1. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Fintan Magee. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Miss Van. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

MOMO. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Onur & Wes 21. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Telmo & Miel. Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Tone (Robert Proch). Shane Pomajambo The Art of The Mural Volume 01 Foreword by Carlo McCormick. Schiffer Publishing. 2016

Our top image: A warring door by WK Interact. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

WK Interact (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This dude lived in Williamsburg before all this happened. Balú (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And this dude lived in Williamsburg only two summers ago. The wifi still has his name on it. Balú (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown. Subway ad take over. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

That’s one way to shine his buttons. 3rd World Pirate (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie in Marrakech, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Solus looking up for guidance. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LX ONE in Marrakech, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

CB23 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swiz in Marrakech, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swiz in Marrakech, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swiz in Marrakech, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swiz in Marrakech, Morocco. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot offers some words of comfort to Stikman. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty and friends. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Anglo . Jetski (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A Pill NYC is just frothing at the mouth to see the consumers move in. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jerk Face (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. SOHO, NYC. April 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie Inventory. Jonathan Levine Gallery. NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Augustine Kofie mural in Jersey City, NJ for Mana Urban Arts Projects. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D.I.Y. Cartography in the Rawest Section of Somerset

Petro’s sculpture on the left with Gasisus sculpture on the right. Aryz, Ron English, Malarko, Augustine Kofie, on the background wall. Filippo Minelli on the right wall. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

Installation process shot. Gasius sculpture on the foreground. Installers working on Petros’ sculpture. Aryz, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Malarko, Augustine Kofie, Shantell Martin, Husk MitNavn on the background wall. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Chu. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

CHU “Buenos Aires” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Detail of Gasius sculpture on the foreground. LA artist Cali Thornhill De Witt displays his flag pieces in the background. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

Brad Downey. Face (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Installation process shot. Swoon. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Installation process shot. Chu, Isaurao Huizar, Swoon and Mike Ballard. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Installation process shot. El Tono working on his sculpture. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

El Tono. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

Installation process shot. Herbert Baglione on the right. El Tono on the left with EGS on the background room. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Installation process shot. Remed. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Installation process shot. Sixe Paredes on the left. Filippo Minelli on Center. Remed and OX on the right background room. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Installation process shot. Detail of Filippo Minelli’s map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © courtesy A(by)P)

Sixe Paredes with Detail of Filippo Minelli’s map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

Detail of Cleo Peterson map. “Mapping The City” Somerset House. London, UK. (photo © Rafa Suñen)

Augustine Kofie “Overcast Angeles” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

CHU “Buenos Aires” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Will Sweeney “Cabott Square” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Brad Downey. Face (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Caleb Neelon “Pickerville” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Shepard Fairey “Berlin Tower” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Jurne “Covalence” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Mike Ballard “The Ultra Poet” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Goldpeg “London is Burning” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Cleon Peterson “The Return” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Aryz “Map” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

OX “Paris” (photo © courtesy of A(by)P)

Jaybo Monk. Working at a SoWa Studio in Boston. (photo © Todd Mazer)

Jaybo Monk. Working at a SoWa Studio in Boston. (photo © Todd Mazer)

Our special thanks to photographer and BSA collaborator* Brock Brake for sharing these images with readers of Kofie installing the new wall.*