All posts tagged: Banksy

Images of The Week: 01.19.14

January 19, 2014 Artists

New York’s Street Art/graffiti/public/urban art scene is poppin’ baby – new shows, new spaces opening up or rumored to be, a new fleet of artists going out to the street doing sanctioned and unsanctioned work, and new debates about what it all means to the scene and who should rush to take credit for each phase or element of it. Answer: all of us, none of us.

Also a renewed and flawed discussion has erupted again, as it periodically does, around the need to have a “critique” around street art. We know that critical observation can be useful for those who are unsure about forming their own opinions, it’s just that we advocate widening that circle of who gets to offer the critique to include, um, everybody.

We also usually trust people on the street to make their own judgements about an art piece and its value or importance in that context. The inner world and material world of art is vastly larger than we can usually imagine and our rush to measure it often hilariously misses the point or the intention of the artist, so let’s take this impulse to judge it with some humility.

In the case of graffiti and Street Art, we all have seen examples over the last half-century where educational or cultural institutions implicitly or explicitly dismiss work on the street until it has been validated by market forces. The caustic undertone of this habitual and snide dismissal can be tied directly to classism, racism, or fear of the unknown. This is a generalization of course, so take it as such, but the neo-liberal cycle of “critical thought” has been too often reserved for the dominant culture or class, and that paradigm is really of no service to any of us anymore.

The folks who put missives on the street do so with a wide variety of motivations, needs, desires, and expectations. They are perfectly happy to have their work judged by the average passerby, and in New Yawk there is never a shortage of opinions, regardless of what school you went to. In the case of art in the streets, those are the opinions that still matter the most.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Ainac, AwerOne, Bluedog 10003, Joan Tarrago, Judith Supine, Kalen Hollomon, Maki Carvalho, Pastel, REVS, Wolftits, and ZAH

Top Image >> Judith Supine is really piling on the winter layers. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wolftits unveiled an astounding sculpture on this unused pedestal in Brooklyn this week – a three dimensional interpretation of the multi-mammaried aerosol character that normally carries the name. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wolftits (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Barcelona’s Joan Tarrago (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ZAH (photo © Jaime Rojo)

REVS (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This is an update from a previous piece that was comprised of a framed empty pack of cigarettes. It is unclear if this is a diss or an update. Also, the word is bills. Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A new campaign of unsanctioned pseudo ads appeared on the NYC Subway recently and have gone undetected for days and days. With subtle replacements of limbs, Kalen likes to reassign gender or simply take peoples pants off. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kalen Hollomon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pastel has a new wall in Buenos Aires (photo © Pastel)

Maki Carvalho suddenly appeared like magic in BK. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This stencil wasn’t signed and while we see resemblances in style and technique from various artists we can’t with certainty establish authorship. Can you help? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

AwerOne in Italy showing a heavy influence by Never2501 . (photo © AwerOne)

Bluedog 10003 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy… is still on New York’s mind (photo © Jaime Rojo)

AINAC (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. New York City. January 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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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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The 2013 BSA Year in Images (VIDEO)

December 18, 2013 Artists

Here it is! Our 2013 wrap up featuring favorite images of the year by Brooklyn Street Art’s Jaime Rojo.

Before our video roundup below here is the Street Art photographer’s favorite of the year, snapped one second before he was singled out of a New York crowd, handcuffed, and stuffed into a police car – sort of like the Banksy balloons he was capturing.

“Among all the thousands of photos I took this year there’s one that encapsulates the importance of Street Art in the art world and some of the hysteria that can build up around it,” he says of his final shot on the final day of the one month Better Out Than In artist ‘residency’ in NYC this October. It was a cool day to be a Street Art photographer – but sadly Rojo was camera-less in a case of mistaken identity, if only for a short time.

Released two hours later after the actual car-jumping trespasser was charged, Rojo was happy to hear the Chief Lieutenant tell his officer “you’ve got the wrong man”, to get his shoelaces back, and to discover this photo was still on his camera. He also gets to tell people at parties that he spent some time in the holding cell with the two guys whom New York watched tugging down the B-A-N-K-S-Y.

What’s everybody looking at? Jaime Rojo’s favorite image of the year at the very end of the Banksy brouhaha. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Now, for the Video

When it came to choosing the 112 images for the video that capture the spirit of the Street Art scene in ’13, we were as usual sort of overwhelmed to comb through about ten thousand images and to debate just how many ‘legal’ versus ‘illegal’ pieces made it into the mix. Should we include only images that went up under the cover of the night, unsanctioned, uncensored, uncompromised, unsolicited and uncommissioned? Isn’t that what Street Art is?

Right now there are a growing number of legal pieces going up in cities thanks to a growing fascination with Street Art and artists and it is causing us to reevaluate what the nature of the Street Art scene is, and what it may augur for the future. You can even say that from a content and speech perspective, a sizeable amount of the new stuff is playing it safe – which detracts from the badass rebel quality once associated with the practice.

These works are typically called by their more traditional description – murals. With all the Street Art / graffiti festivals now happening worldwide and the growing willingness of landlords to actually invite ‘vandals’ to paint their buildings to add cache to a neighborhood and not surprisingly benefit from the concomitant increase in real estate values, many fans and watchers have been feeling conflicted in 2013 about the mainstreaming that appears to be taking place before our eyes. But for the purposes of this roundup we decided to skip the debate and let everybody mix and mingle freely.

This is just a year-end rollicking Street Art round-up; A document of the moment that we hope you like.

Ultimately for BSA it has always been about what is fresh and what is celebrating the creative spirit – and what is coming next. “We felt that the pieces in this collection expressed the current vitality of the movement – at least on the streets of New York City,” says photographer and BSA co-founder Rojo. It’s a fusillade of the moment, complete with examples of large murals, small wheat pastes, intricate stencils, simple words made with recycled materials or sprayed on to walls, clay installations, three dimensional sculptures, hand painted canvases, crocheted installations, yarn installations etc… they somehow captured our imaginations, inspired us, made us smile, made us think, gave us impetus to continue doing what we are doing and above all made us love this city even more and the art and the artists who produce it.

Brooklyn Street Art 2013 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo includes the following artists;

A Dying Breed, Aakash Nihalini, Agostino Iacursi, Amanda Marie, Apolo Torres, Axel Void, Bagman, Bamn, Pixote, Banksy, B.D. White, Betsy, Bishop203, NDA, Blek le Rat, br1, Case Maclaim, Cash For Your Warhol, Cholo, Chris RWK, Chris Stain, Billy Mode, Christian Nagel, Cost, ENX, Invader, Crush, Dal East, Damien Mitchell, Dase, Dasic, Keely, Deeker, Don’t Fret, The Droid, ECB, el Seed, El Sol 25, Elbow Toe, Faile, Faith 47, Five Pointz, Free Humanity, Greg LaMarche, Hot Tea, How & Nosm, Icy & Sot, Inti, Jilly Ballistic, John Hall, JR, Jose Parla, Judith Supine, Kremen, Kuma, LMNOPI, London Kaye, Love Me, Martha Cooper, Matt Siren, Elle, Mika, Miss Me, Missy, MOMO, Mr. Toll, Nychos, Okuda, Alice Mizrachi, OLEK, Owen Dippie, Paolo Cirio, Paul Insect, Phetus, Phlegm, Revok, Pose, QRST, Rambo, Ramiro Davaro, Reka, Rene Gagnon, ROA, RONES, Rubin, bunny M, Square, Stikki Peaches, Stikman, Swoon, Tristan Eaton, The Lisa Project 2013, UFO 907, Willow, Swill, Zed1, and Zimer.

Read more about Banksy’s last day in New York here and our overview of his residency in the essay “Banksy’s Final Trick” on The Huffington Post.

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Eye on London Street Art : Spencer Elzey in Europe

November 23, 2013 Artists

For the first week-long “residency” on BSA, Spencer Elzey has been sharing his experiences and Street Art photos from his recent trip to Europe. Today we finish with London, a polished and presentable collection of some of the current scene from the streets.

The city has long played host to a rolling panoply of urban art and artists and is a prime example of the professionalization of the practice featuring a greater absorption into the culture and economy at large with galleries, museums, shops, and paid tour guides all joining in. The upshot is you will see some of the best examples of talent and it may at times seem all quite combed over and generally safe for a general audience. Not that there isn’t dynamism and risk taking, and you will still find unsanctioned work to be seen inside and outside of the tourist hotspots.

Sweet Toof and Roa (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Hosting the Olympics last year brought a self cleansing of much of the organically grown graffiti and Street Art, and the chilling effect of living in an electronically surveilled society with cameras nearly everywhere will undoubtedly be sited to when historians look at the nature of art on the streets from this era.

“London had a lot of Street Art but it felt more corporate and organized for the masses,” says Elzey of his time walking through Shoreditch, Brick Lane, Hackney, Bethnal Green, and Camden. “In the week that I was there I walked by around five Street Art tours.”

Sweet Toof (photo © Spencer Elzey)

“Most of London’s street art is confined to these places – The other areas that I explored around London all seemed pretty clean. This may have been due to the fact that there are security cameras everywhere,” he says. An international first world city, London usually is a destination for the international “circuit” of Street Artists whose names tend to reappear on lists of the various street/graffiti/urban art festivals that now pop up in global cities from Lima to Łódź and Living Walls to Nuart to Upfest and the recently ended FAME.

As with any art form that begins as transgressive and underground and evolves to be adopted by the dominant culture, at times the whole scene begins to resemble the commercial and institutional interests it once mocked or attempted to subvert. “London is great but felt more catered to the bigger players and had the most street art in commissioned form (by the various Street Art organizations), which is good to see some amazing work but cheapens the art a little,” he says.

In the images he shares with BSA readers today you can see the really strong work that is throughout those neighborhoods as many of the artists consider strongly what they will do – and it results in some quite striking pieces. As always, you want to keep an eye on London. Surely it will keep an eye on you.

Miss Van and B. Schu (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Otto Schade (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Shok 1 (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Gnasher (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Alexis Diaz (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Ben Eine (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Cranio (photo © Spencer Elzey)

For The Love Of Dog (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Banksy (photo © Spencer Elzey)

A sculptural installation by D*Face (photo © Spencer Elzey)

ROA (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Swoon (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Guy Denning (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Urban Solid (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Sokaruno (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Vinie and Reaone (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Anthony Lister (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Finabarr DAC (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Phlegm (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Faith 47 (photo © Spencer Elzey)

El Mac (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Conor Harrington (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Klone (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Dal East (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Dscreete (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Insa (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Martin Ron (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Jana & JS (photo © Spencer Elzey)

Christian Nagel (photo © Spencer Elzey)

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Aerosol Texting: The Power Of Words on City Walls

November 13, 2013 Artists

Brief Analog Messages on Walls Ape Our Digit-driven Discourse

Whether satire, slogan, or soliloquy, the anonymous street scribe shapes our experience while we walk through the city.

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Boffo or blustery, a piece of poetry can sling or sting your unsuspecting heart as you round the corner or look above your head and a rallying cry will bring color to your cheeks or dread into your head. A well-crafted counterpoint can clearly confound and a cleverly flipped script will turn up your lips, but no-one can crack some cryptic confessionals or meandering non sequitors that pop and squirm under your quizzical gaze.

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Whether cute or contentious, the hand-rendered words that we daily see on walls throughout the city are all speaking to us in a cooly comforting lo-fi handwritten way across the bricks and mortar, but somehow they often obey a 140 character limit too. Mercifully brief, as if targeted to our hurried pace and tightly tailored for the twitter-brained among us, these textual communications are looking for a more general audience, but an audience nonetheless.

And here we are.

Today we look at a kaleidoscopic collection caught by photographer Jaime Rojo, cobbled together here for you.

Rambo (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Love Me (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

3tt Man (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

B.D. White & Jilly Ballistic (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bagman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pesk ACK (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gilf! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Enzo & Nio (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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BSA on PBS to Talk About the Current Street Art Scene

November 4, 2013 Artists

We recently had the honor of being on the PBS Newshour series with reporter Tracy Wholf, who we toured around New York City with to check out new work on the streets and to put it in perspective for viewers who have been bombarded with Banksy news lately. Here is a video of the four minute story aired nationally Sunday on PBS and a link to the slideshow survey of images by Jaime Rojo on the PBS website.

Our special thanks to Tracy and her team – it was a total pleasure to hang out and work with you.

Check out the screen show here:

BSA Images Of The Week: 11.03.13

November 3, 2013 Artists

Banksy. His last piece in NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Alone In Cell with Banksy Thieves and Car Jumper

No, you can’t make stories like this up. Sounds like a tabloid story right?

Many had just photographed the two twenty-somethings as they scaled a ladder to cut down Banksy’s final installment of his New York “residency” in front of a growing audience of hecklers and fans underneath. Now the photographer, reporter and co-founder of Brooklyn Street Art Jaime Rojo found himself freed from his handcuffs (and shoelaces) to sit in a Queens jail cell on Halloween with the very talkative and nervous young guys who were discussing how their plan hadn’t panned out.

Only one day after BSA published “Banksy’s Final Trick” here and the Huffington Post, the enigmatic British Street Artist kicked in just one more treat for NYC in a plastic candy wrapper spelling out his moniker like a stylized throw-up, and Rojo was privy to more bon mots than he had planned.

Surprisingly, the art sites that had been breathlessly “covering” the events blow-by-blow somehow blew this story as the well known ubiquitous Street Art photographer and author was apprehended by police under their noses – taken by the arm as he photographed the bundle of Banksy balloons being stuffed into the back of their official van.

Luckily the mix-up was swiftly cleared as a case of mistaken identity that the chief lieutenant confirmed when he poked his head in the police car to look at Rojo and told the officer “You have the wrong man”. Apparently somebody had jumped on top of a car and damaged it while the accused thieves were yanking Banksy and the crowd swelled below, and the auto acrobat had worn a cap similar to Rojos. Moments after it was clear they had the wrong guy, the presumed right guy landed on the back seat next to Rojo.

Two hours later at the precinct, our photog was freed by the fairly friendly officers and he walked back to the now-deserted Queens site and hopped on his bike to continue looking for new stuff to photograph – but not before sitting in a cell with the accused Street Art thieves and an assumed car jumper while Banksy’s last October surprise slowly deflated into a curious pile of expensive plastic.

31 days of mischief went by and this anonymous Street Artist had mounted a full-scale multi-part series of installations in the public sphere and presumably has now left town. Meanwhile they’re saying the French artist Invader got popped the night before Banksy’s last balloon tag showed up. His new tiled characters started appearing on Manhattan’s Lower East Side just this week. You can read more about it here.

Aside from that, not much excitement happened here on the Street Art scene.

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Banksy, Cost, ENX, Invader, Mika and Swoon.

Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy. SOLD! $615,000. Banksy purchased the painting on display at the Housing Works Thrift Shop in Manhattan while here for the ‘residency’. After painting the figure sitting on the bench and returning to Housing Works it sold for this incredible price – with all the proceeds going to help people living with AIDS/HIV. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NOT Banksy. Artist Unknown. This piece appeared on the last day of Banksy’s NYC Residency. His official page is not claiming authorship of it. But we’re going to wager a slice of pizza that his is his too. Let’s see what happens. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mika (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Invader (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Invader and the Ho Ho Florist. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Invader (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Invader . Cost . ENX (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown(photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist who wishes to remain anonymous. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Queens, NY. October 2013. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Banksy’s Final Trick

October 30, 2013 Artists

A Genuine October Surprise for New York Street Art Friends and Foes Alike.

In a series of communiqués beamed from his website, the global Street Artist Banksy gave graffiti and Street Art followers a near daily jolt of mystery and mouse clicking that had people looking at every street scene as a possible Banksy by the time it ended. While few can confirm the exact level of involvement the actual artist had in the five boroughs, if any, none will deny that the Banksy brand underwent a major “refresh” this month that again put his name on the lips of those who had begun to forget him and many who had never heard of him.

Thanks to this masterful marketing campaign billed as a month-long “residency” on New York’s streets, many thousands were talking about him daily on the street, on television, radio, social media, in galleries, studios, office cubicles, art parties, and the mayors’ office. By effectively combining the sport of treasure hunting with humor and populism, each new cryptic appearance of something-anything gradually conditioned some grand art doyennes and the plainer mongrels amongst us to drool on command and lift a leg in salute to the curiously still anonymous artist and the team who helped him pull it off.

The first Banksy of the ‘residency’, buffed shortly after it was painted, immediately began the rumors and conjecture. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Like fans of a good crime mystery, New Yorkers gamely tossed many theories into the air with chattering conjecture as to his motivations, his choice of locations, his messages, his meanings, and of course his identity. Clearly fifty percent or more of his identity in the popular mind is tied directly to his anonymity, possibly because of our desperate desire to still believe that someone can be an anonymous globe-trotting vandalizing provocateur in an increasingly surveilled world. Frankly, we don’t really want to know. The day we find out the true identity of Banksy, you might as well pull the beard off of Santa Claus too.

The bigger story of this nearly household name is not that he has re-called the enthusiam of the mid-2000s Street Art scene that spawned a million stencils, or that his themes are often clever, occasionally saccharine, rarely transgressive and reliably populist. After the fog of this months’ hype clears we find that he has reminded us why we fell in love with Street Art in the beginning and how to take back the public square for ourselves and to re-frame the very streets we walk on.

Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The “Better Out Than In” show was a welcome reprieve from the government shutdown, our skyrocketing rents, and $25 museum admissions. There was no velvet rope and no snotty door person pawing through an iPad to not find your name. It was daily, participatory, and even this generation of unpaid interns could afford it because it was free. With a certain Pavlovian pride we became so primed for fresh Banksy news that was pushed out at semi-rhythmic intervals from his website that many of us began seeing Banksy’s where they weren’t as we visited parts of our city we didn’t even know.

After all, the newest Banksy could be just about anything. His month-long street show included sculpture, live performance, live ants, puppetry, canned music, live music, screaming stuffed animals, costumed actors, complex displays, one-layer stencils, a pissing dog, a patient priest and the Grim Reaper driving in a bumper car to the sounds of Blue Oyster Cult. All of it was tweeted, texted, posted, printed, videoed, and otherwise relayed to clans and groupies across devices, platforms, screens and ecosystems in real time. Some people even had the new works tattooed, which shouldn’t be that surprising since this is a vandal whose deeds actually raise the value of property.

Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The first global art movement has again been rocked by one of our first global Street Artists and he seems to have a multitude of interests, doesn’t he? Even now we half expect a Banksy finale that includes a Broadway musical dancing and singing through Times Square with sailors and sex workers and shop keepers and cat burglars and masters of industry locked arm in arm, high-kicking and hoofing it up the Great White Way.

As always New Yorkers feel gloriously entitled to their opinion and to sharing it with you. Tweets have ranged from enthusiastic and congratulatory to acidic and dismissive, or bored. Some homegrown graffiti writers and Street Artists have shown a particular xenophobia toward the invading Brit that you’ll charitably characterize as “local pride”. Others have expressed a happy spirit of solidarity with the guy without feeling like he ate their lunch.

Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The installations and performances created a circus on the street with groupies, fans, and opportunists standing 8 deep to gander, while some entrepreneurs charged some cash to view them, professors of all sorts held impromptu “classes” to explain the works, a few restorers removed damage from the works, and some seized them altogether.

Admirers posed in front of their newfound Banksy with family and babies and dogs for cell phone shots while tense professionals with heaving backpacks full of long lenses darted and shot the event from every conceivable angle. In one Alice in Wonderland scene in Brooklyn, admiring bystanders tackled to the ground a tagging vandalizer who stopped by to vandalize the vandalism with an aerosol can and stood guard in a circle around him, as he lay motionless while someone called the police.

No longer asking, “Who is Banksy”, many strolling New Yorkers this October were only half-kidding when they would point to nearly any scene or object on the street and ask each other, “Is that a Banksy?” And truly, what better global brand can claim to have triggered this thought in someone’s mind by not actually doing anything yourself?

That is an astounding last trick, and not one that many will ever lay claim to.

Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy. The white beard was added by someone. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy’s truck diorama. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy didn’t fear the Reaper. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Banksy scene (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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BSA Images Of The Week: 10.27.13

October 27, 2013 Artists

This weekend Halloween began early, and with Banksy leading the way on Friday night, it looks like there will be more tricks in store before the end of October (Thursday). Another surprise came when Swoon took her turn at the Houston wall. As of right now, everyone is keeping their eyes open for what will happen next. Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Banksy, Blanco, HDL, JR, London Kaye, and Swoon.

Top image>>> The Grim Reaper at the wheel in this performance attributed to Banksy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy. Live music was provided. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Blanco (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR collaboration with Martha Cooper. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

JR collaboration with Martha Cooper. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

London Kaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

HDL. “Insectivorous” Detroit, 2013. (photo © Steve Coy)

HDL. “Brand Take Off” Detroit, 2013. (GIF © Steve Coy)

HDL. “Brand Take Off” Detroit, 2013. (photo © Steve Coy)

Swoon and Groundswell collaboration in progress at the Houston Wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon’s “Thalassa” at the Houston Wall. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon’s “Neenee” at the Houston Wall. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon at the Houston Wall. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn 2012. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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BSA Images of The Week: 10.20.13

October 20, 2013 Artists

The leaves in Central Park are aflame and so are the passions of Street Art fans (and artists) this week in New York where the general public is now conditioned to be on alert for a near-daily announcement of a new Banksy installation nearly anywhere in the city. It can be a stencil, a sculpture, a performance, a rolling truck gallery, or a canvas suspended from the Highline – but don’t worry about finding it – it will be announced on the website first…

Lead image above >>Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Banksy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We’ve tried to keep it all in perspective and not slavishly cancel life to run out and capture the latest installation, but the buzz is unavoidable and we get sucked in. It is now taking on some air of a circus, complete with barkers and clowns and otters flapping their flippers (and lips). As a branding “re-fresh”, it’s been a very successful campaign so far with news reportage, Instagramming and re-tweets, crowds assembling at a moments notice to snap images of and/or with the work, and we even found vigilante fans tackling vandals who are vandalizing the vandalism. You can’t engineer that sort of irony. Now an elected leader or two are talking about trying to capture the president of Banksy Inc. LLC – which would send a clear message to all Street Artists that this really is the best way to market your work.

Meanwhile there are many other Street Artists and fine artists in general who are still at work on the streets of New York, and you may even give their content, quality and placement more praise than some from this Banksy campaign. We’ve always celebrated the creative spirit however it is expressed and invariably find some of the greatest work is done by people we’ve never heard of, or barely know much about. At a time where large media is consolidating and the individual voice is being marginalized and commodified, we find this to still be an amazingly democratic practice of joining the conversation, if imperfect and confusing. And New York doesn’t stop just because one new guy is getting a lot of attention – Hell, we barely notice when Obama or the Pope or even the Queen of England visits – she’s just one queen after all and we have the entire neighborhood of Chelsea.

So here is our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Banksy, Bifido, Cali Killa, Dede, Don Rimx, El Kamino, El Sol 25, JC, London Kaye, Meres, Nepo, Pastey Whyte, Shin Shin, and Shiro.

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Images Of The Week: 10.13.13

October 13, 2013 Artists

Welcome! Now Go Home! That’s what Tony Carapachio at the corner deli used to say about all the foreigners moving into the neighborhood. Sounds like a lot of the comments being directed at Banksy by locals, although their voices are primarily drowned out by clicking iPhones.

The pie is big enough for everybody, and in a city where 176 languages are spoken by kids in our schools, we can probably handle new voices on the street. Our Banksy-related favorite development this week was the small pack of entrepreneurs who were selling access to his stencil on a wall in East New Yawk for $20 a pop. Nice! They’re not the first or the last who will endeavor to profit from his work.

Also this week came the definitive news that 5 Ptz in Queens will be razed in favor of a new condo development. It is privately owned and has transformed into a graffiti holy place over the last decade and a half, and while you could see the final outcome being something like this, many had held out hope that it would be preserved or saved by a rich Robin Hood sort of character – like Jay Z or even Banksy.

Tweet from @ajayjapan 11 Oct “I wish Banksy would save 5 Pointz while he’s in town. #banksytotherescue“

and @xblaze23 11 Oct “It would be dope if Banksy did something at 5 Pointz considering the end is near. #banksyny“

You may remember our photo essay from earlier in the summer about 5 Ptz. The good news is that they say the new space will set aside 10,000 square feet for graffiti.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Case MaClaim, Christian Nagel, Dase, Dasic, Effy, El Sol 25, Ever, Seed, Tristan Eaton, Zed1.

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Images Of The Week: 10.06.13

October 6, 2013 Artists

New York was rattled by uncertainty and worry this week as all eyes turned to Washington to witness the forced governmental shutdown that was prompted by a undeniably deep resentment toward the governed. How dare the people try to protect their health and pocketbook against the vulturish free market – one that has left tens of millions of our neighbors without medical care? As a collective punishment we are now nervously marking one week without a working government.

Launched parallel with the shutdown was the startup of a new Street Art/digital campaign by a global patron saint of the 2000s repositioning on New York streets in the 2010s. Through a website about his own secret/public spraying, Banksy is creating a sort of funhouse reinvention; A winking campaign of digital manipulation of friends and detractors alike. Circumspect humor and treasure hunts have triggered a bit of a circus – and we are willingly parlaying the details and conjecture across social media with hashtags and photos and exclamation points. Reviews of the work itself range from tepid to thrilled but the sugary buzz of near daily revelations have given these events a feeling of an October surprise. If the brand can sustain interest for the the entire announced “residency” of one month it will indeed be an accomplishment, as New Yorkers are voracious consumers of culture and attention spans mimic that of the tsetse fly.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring B.D. White, Banksy, Blind Eye Factory, Cost, Specter, Holymafia, Judith Supine, Knarf, Mike Shine, Nychos, and Zed1.

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BSA Film Friday: 09.13.13

September 13, 2013 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening: Joe Caslin on Achill-Henge in Ireland, Canemorto with Borondo in Bologna, Italy .

BSA Special Feature: Joe Caslin
on Achill-Henge in Ireland

BSA Film Friday this week brings you exclusive photos and film documentation of the new “collaboration” of an Irish Street Artist and a renegade real estate developer. For the next chapter of his socio-political Street Art project “Our Nation’s Sons”, artist Joe Caslin has an unmatched choice for a venue – an illegally constructed concrete sculpture called Achill-Henge.

Banksy had Toilet-Henge, in Nevada Jim Reinders created Carhenge, and this unauthorized 30 column, fifteen foot high tribute to Stonehenge has been under threat of demolition since it was erected one November weekend two years ago unilaterally by property developer ‘Anglo Avenger’ Joe McNamara, according to news reports.

A perfect spot for graffiti and Street Art, right?

Enter Joe Caslin, the recently graduated illustration artist who completed his public awareness campaign “Our Nations Sons” that we shared with you earlier this year on the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland. The contentious discussions that surround the existence of the massive sculpture as well as the fact that it is still standing makes it a superb location to wheatpaste the images of young men whom Caslin believes are callously demonized within Irish society. “It is a really controversial site which is loaded with opinion and as such was very important to the subject matter of my drawings,” says the artist.

Mr. Caslin and his small team, at least one of which is a participating subject of the campaign, have just completed a full installation on the walls of this poured concrete Achill-Henge high atop the wind-whipped hills overlooking the ocean.

The installation continued late into night and there were of course a number of technical issues to overcome but today BSA readers get to see exclusive photos of the project – along with a pretty stunning professionally shot video just released of the full installation.

See our piece on “Our Nation’s Sons” on The Huffington Post.

CANEMORTO with BORONDO in Bologna, Italy.

And on an entirely different tip, the wild and wooly lowfi classical Canemorto continue to impress with their raw wit. Why aren’t more people talking about Canemorto? This new stop action video by El Pacino features a collab with Borondo in an abandoned building with a soaring roof. Also, idiot sounds.

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