All posts tagged: Bezt Etam

BSA Film Friday: 05.15.20 / Dispatch From Isolation # 54

BSA Film Friday: 05.15.20 / Dispatch From Isolation # 54

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

Now screening :
1. AKUT: “Isolated”

BSA Special Feature: AKUT (plus 37) “ISOLATED”

A thrilling and educational flight through the private studio spaces of artists at home in isolation – what’s not to like? Guess which of your favorite artists studios are included?

“I worked on this film the past three weeks together with 37 artists from all over the globe,” says Street Artist AKUT. The call for response during his own family’s isolation resulted in an astounding 37 artists answering from all over the world.

AKUT, otherwise known as the urban contemporary artist and photographer Falk Lehmann – and founder of the legendary German graffiti collective Ma’Claim and half of the artistic duo Herakut – was suffering from isolation. Usually he’s out with the rest of the big name Street Artists going to exhibitions, festivals, working on commission.

Suddenly in March, stop us if you’ve heard this story, it all went “THUD”.

A social animal, AKUT says he loves the time home with his wife and three kids, but he felt locked out and detached from the adventures of painting that he had become so energized by.

“Those nice little (business) trips to locations at the end of the world, not for money, but for the place you would otherwise never have the chance to travel to, sound really awesome, don’t they?” he asks. “Even if the lift turns out to be a soul catcher, if the material arrives three days later and there was no giant tree in front of the wall on the photos you received beforehand and planed your project with. You start to appreciate the freedom to travel, to go far away from your daily duties at home… You meet colleagues and role models, old and new friends, who you share unforgettable experiences with.”

ISOLATED (part I), an infinite loop to despair

Here’s the idea with the 37 artists who joined in – please take a time laps shot through your studio, that is not longer than 4 seconds – but still challenging, because they had to move really slow and avoid vivid movements. Some artists took recording after recording and it still wasn’t optimal. However, in the end and after some long hours of editing and learnings the finished short film came out as a proof for the principle of mentalism. Sliding through the contrasting and inspiring studios as lively spaces in constant use by the respective artists felt refreshing and very comforting. It symbolizes the connection of all individuals being part of an universal infinite, living mind, in which you don’t necessarily need to check in physically. It’s always out there.

WE ARE ONE INFINITE, LIVING MIND (ISOLATED part II)

Credits

WE ARE ONE INFINITE, LIVING MIND (ISOLATED part II)

short film by AKUT, 2020

Idea and Editing: 

AKUT https://instagram.com/akut_herakut

Camera (participating artists):

@Adnate Melbourne, Australia

@Akut_herakut Berlin, Germany

@AndreasEnglundArt Falun, Sweden

@apolotorres São Paulo, Brazil

@23base Berlin, Germany

@bezt_etam & @nataliarakart Turek, Poland

@cantwo Wuppertal, Germany

@cristianblanxer Barcelona, Spain

@conorsaysboom London, UK

@craola Torrance, California

@daniel_man_codeak Munich, Germany

@spurcus_am Erfurt, Germany

@douglas_greed Berlin, Germany

@drewmerritt Saint Vrain, New Mexico

@hueman_ Oakland, California

@james_bullough Berlin, Germany

@kameahadar Hawai
@kevinledo Montreal, Canada

@kkade_schwarzmaler Bern, Switzerland

@louismasai Margate, UK

@low_bros Hamburg, Germany

@mad_c1 Halle, Germany

@marc_jung_ Erfurt, Germany

@ztm_oruam San Antonio, Texas

@telmomiel Amsterdam & Rotterdam, Netherlands

@mikedargas Los Angeles, California

@natepaints Los Angeles, California

@nunoviegas.pt Quarteira, Portugal

@onurpainting Berlin, Germany

@paola_delfin & @mateusbailon Itajaí, Brazil

@heypatyeah Detroit, Michigan

@rickyleegordon Sri Lanka

@suiko1 Hiroshima, Japan

@wes21_schwarzmaler Bern, Switzerland

@waone_interesnikazki Kiev, Ukraine

@markus_wow123_genesius Bremen, Germany

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Bezt Etam Talks About “Beautiful Mistakes”

Bezt Etam Talks About “Beautiful Mistakes”

A certain unease follows Street Artist Bezt in his creative practice.

“I get bored very fast so I try not to repeat myself.” Not an Achilles heel exactly, this need to experiment and learn, as many artists who are stylistically or thematically in a rut could benefit from that affliction.

In New York recently for a brief show entitled “Beautiful Mistakes” at Spoke Art in cooperation with Thinkspace in Manhattan’s Lower East Side , the Polish neo-realist appears to thrive on trying new things – including this solo career he’s embarked on after seven or so years painting in tandem with Sainer as one half of the very popular Etam Cru.

Bezt Etam. “Beautiful Mistakes”. The artist is pictured here looking at his self portrait. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Our styles were really separate but when we started we began to blend in – it was kind of natural. We didn’t talk about it,” he says of the friend he met when they were both art students at University of Łódź.

“There was a point with Sainer when we met we kind of knew – like best friends who kind of understand each other on some level. And the goal was always to do a good piece. It is never about me or about him. It was always to do the best thing on the wall,” he says as he describes a collaborative style that was born out of both artists desire to find a common style and to learn from each other.

Bezt Etam. “Beautiful Mistakes”. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“To do that we had to kind of resign from our own kind of “super styles” and mix them together, if that makes sense. It was a slow process but we got to the point where everyone thought that only one person was painting. But still after so many years we can both see the differences.”

His new canvasses stand still, portraits primarily, with often singular figures caught in a moment contemplating in an eerie series of twilights and meditations. A master of light, he talks about his ongoing challenge to understand it and to reveal structure with it.

Bezt Etam. “Beautiful Mistakes”. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“You use the lights of the first figure as a shadow,” he says of a woman who faces you against a backdrop of ornate patterning, evocative of wall paper from a large old house. “I like to feel the structure of the face and so I like to see the shadow and the lighting on the face, how the face is built.”

He points to a darker figure in front of a brightly heraldic architectural background. “The colors on his shirt and his jacket are the shadows from the background. It’s kind of a trick that I like to do with the painting because the person pops out and blends in at the same time. It’s hard to explain and it is easier to show when I am in the process.

Bezt Etam. “Beautiful Mistakes”. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bezt explains that really he just wanted to paint the background but realizes that many of his fans will also appreciate a figure – which he gets bored with.

Sometimes a portrait is actually the means to an end, rather than the focal point, just so he has the opportunity to paint something new. “For example the painting with the woman and the daughter piece, that one with the house. I wanted to paint the trees! I had a night photo of the trees and I said ‘Okay, I need an idea so I can paint the trees.’

Bezt Etam. “Beautiful Mistakes”. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I did another piece for a big show in Germany that has a big fallen tree. Basically I saw the tree when we were driving and I was with Natalia, my girlfriend, and we just jumped out and I took the photos. And again, I needed to find a concept for a painting where I could include that image of the tree. Sometimes you just want to learn something – to try something new.”

Bezt Etam. “Beautiful Mistakes”. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

He pauses for a moment in front of a painting and you realize that the shape of his head is mirrored in it, and actually the painting is a self portrait. And then you see the small white rat –a moniker that has been occurring in Etam Cru and Bezt pieces over this last half-decade or so.

“It’s like a spirit animal. I don’t like to paint rats. I think that I can’t really paint a good mouse and I’m always trying to do my best. It’s never perfect. There is always something wrong with it. But I add it as a sort of friend or a spirit animal. If the person is alone he always has some company.”

“Years ago when I was painting girls I was always adding a bird, so like the rat is a boy thing. But I have started to mix things and I add the rat to wherever the character is. It’s an animal that is quite small so it doesn’t take much space to add to the piece and it kind of adds some warmth.”

Bezt Etam. “Beautiful Mistakes”. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

 

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“Major Minority” ; The Great Gathering of a Tribe

“Major Minority” ; The Great Gathering of a Tribe

Poesia and EKG Talk to BSA about an Audacious Survey

A new show organized by Poesia, a San Francisco based graffiti artist and founder of the site Graffuturism, pulls together one hundred or so artists from eighteen countries with the goal of mapping one constellation in the cosmos – a global survey of urban artists that hopes to articulate a body of aesthetics he’s calling Othercontemporary. And why not? Audacity and vision are qualities these times call for and if successful could lead to a clearer understanding of the trends, techniques, practices, and narratives underlying what has been happening on the streets for the last half century.

 

 

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Kwest (photo © Brock Brake)

With New York artist/historian/semiotic explorer EKG as a guide, the two have been synthesizing their findings and discovering the genuine firing of synapses that indicate they are uncovering the electrical impulses that have made graffiti / street art/ urban art feel so completely relevant to the last two generations. A “Major Minority” hopes to chart the course for the third.

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Mags (photo © Brock Brake)

 

Poesia invites you here to take a look at some of the pieces that will be on display, as shot by Brock Brake. Brooklyn Street Art asked Poesia and EKG about the survey and to make some conjecture about the way forward.

Brooklyn Street Art: Each generation and movement is defined and labeled by its participants, peers, and observers. In your treatise on this moment and this collection of artists you say that Stefano Antonelli coined the term Othercontemporary to perhaps set it apart from Contemporary. Why does this term sound appropriate to you?
Poesia: I had initially used the term Neo-Contemporary. After a brief discussion amongst some peers Stefano mentioned this term – it seemed the most accurate out of the terms being discussed. I feel it’s important because it starts a conversation about something other than contemporary art, and describes rather bluntly our separation from contemporary art, yet defines the contemporary nature of our art form. I have grown tired of comparing what we do to contemporary art, maybe this term will get people talking about something more present.

 

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Slicer (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: Take a guess and swing the bat wide, why has the established art world taken so long to give recognition to the urban artist?
Poesia: Canonization usually takes place long after the genuine moments of art movements, or when they are at their peak. Its no different even in today’s Internet era, even with all the information at their fingertips academics won’t ever understand why a 12 year old child and a 50 year old adult writes on walls. Its easier to make use of their MFAs by extending the reach of the contemporary art conversation than it is to look at society and to try to understand the writing on the walls.

 

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Hellbent (photo © Hellbent)

Brooklyn Street Art: Has something happened in the last 5-10 years that has caused so many urban/street/graffiti artists to make more geometric and abstract work that usually avoids the organic, figurative, and pop? Any idea what is driving it?
Poesia: It’s a culmination –  one of those things where maybe all the right ingredients are there and it happens.

Graffiti, being an abstract art form in its nature, lends itself to pure abstraction. Experimentation with the letterform usually takes place more with color and shape than it does conceptually or from a representational perspective. Additionally with the birth of Street Art it opened up the playing field a bit. Artists now were forced to compete visually with representational imagery on walls. It has allowed many artists to leave letterform and the rectangular space of a piece or even “wild style”. The horizontal rectangle was replaced with the square or vertical rectangle – that also pushed for the evolution of the artist.

 

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Silvio Magaglio (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: What will a viewer begin to realize when looking over the constellation of works in this show?
Poesia:
That painting is alive, and urban art seems to be the most relevant embodiment of this. This post-historical art form seems to be sending a message that there is something left in the visual image and its power. The goal was to show the widest spectrum possible from figurative to minimal in the area of Urban Art and I think we accomplished that.

 

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Silvio Magaglio (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you speak about the “unique participatory and non-exclusionary nature” of urban/street/graffiti art practices?
EKG: Graffiti/Street Art (here defined as the public surfaces they affix themselves to, the container superseding the content, the medium as the message) is a broadcast channel that will not exclude anyone who wants to participate. Anybody with a passion to be seen and heard can broadcast on the graffiti/street art wavelength, as long as they are driven to take the risk of breaking the law in order to make their aesthetic statement.

When someone illegally transmits a signal on a public surface, aka a wall or monitor, there is no editorial hierarchy, no censorship board, no review panel, and no proofreaders. It is an individualistic and anarchistic means of expression. In order to transmit your mark, you don’t have to pay anyone, you don’t have to ask for permission, you don’t have to take a vote, you don’t have to take into account anyone else’s approval or opinion about your message.

At heart, graffiti/street art are visual civil disobedience, no matter the initial conscious intention of the mark maker, although a combination of action and intention can make the mark more meaningful to the receiver once they learn more about the broadcaster.

 

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Vsod (photo © Brock Brake)

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Vsod (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: “Illegal” and “transgressive” are two root words that reappear in your discussion of the collection. Did this movement germinate from anti-establishment sentiments, marginalized populations?
EKG: Doing anything illegal can be considered transgressive, but, more specifically for this discussion, illegal aesthetic manifestations are a minor infrastructural irritant that accrue a massive semiotic tumescence of cultural weight.

Currently incarcerated under the simplistic and myopic legal category defined as vandalism, aka criminal mischief, illegal aesthetic manifestations should instead be interpreted as more of a cultural statement than actually being a debilitating crime that selfishly and meaninglessly attacks a particular individual or society as a whole, as has been promoted by institutional authorities protecting the status quo.

The Original Writers discovered that Graffiti was a powerful means to: express rebellious dissatisfaction on political, economic, societal and cultural levels; define one’s identity as a powerful entity that was omnipresent, by proxy omniscient; delineate physical and semiotic territories that were theirs as opposed to their foes or society at large; connect with other members of their age group to form alternative communities of like-minds; and gain recognition with their peers and the public overall.

Like the seers who were channeling the oracles of our time, the old school original writers instinctually discovered an art form that continues to engage and challenge our global culture. Fifty years later the movement is still kept alive inside and outside by practitioners of all ages, styles, and intentions. Graffiti is no longer perceived as merely vandalism perpetrated by megalomaniac antisocial teens, but a positive and powerful cultural change agent practiced by conscious objectors of all ages.

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Drew Young (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: Specifics please: please place an artists name next to each of the following word whose work comes to mind.

Poesia: Okay, here are examples.

Activist: Boniface Mwangi
Idealist: Moneyless
Geometric: Nawer
Minimal: Christopher Derek Bruno
Expressionist: Jaybo Monk

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Askew (photo © Brock Brake)

Brooklyn Street Art: Sometimes it appears that the street is providing the stage for an explosion/implosion of all other historical art movements coalescing and deconstructing and recombining and mutating before us. Perhaps it’s because the street is reflecting society and we are all drinking from the Internet River. Maybe we’re witnessing a true globalism. You can say the movement on the street has roots in graffiti, and we would agree. But is it even possible to make sense of what is happening right now?
Poesia: I can only be a participant in this moment and hope to engage the conversation in real time versus when it won’t matter anymore. I think Urban Art is one of many emerging art forms that have been bubbling on the surface for a while now. As the generation shift takes place we will be accepted at the moment when we are irrelevant, as so many art forms before us. This makes today more important than tomorrow. I don’t know if I have the capability to make sense of it all, but I appreciate every second of it.

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Bezt Etam (photo © Brock Brake)

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Vincent Abadie Hafez Zepha (photo © Brock Brake)

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Thiago Toes (photo © Brock Brake)

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Sat One (photo © Brock Brake)

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Katre (photo © Brock Brake)

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Sowat (photo © Brock Brake)

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Gilbert1 (photo © Brock Brake)

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Gilbert1 (photo © Brock Brake)

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Dem189 (photo © Brock Brake)

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Bom.k (photo © Brock Brake)

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Borondo (photo © Brock Brake)

 

“A Major Minority” opens this Friday, March 14 at 1AM Gallery in San Francisco, CA.

Click HERE for more details on this show.

The Full Essay “A Major Minority” Group Exhibition by Poesia and EKG can be found HERE.

The interview answers from EKG were edited for length – please see his full responses on his Facebook page HERE.

We would like to thank Brock Brake for his excellent photos of the art and to Poesia and EKG for their thoughtful and insightful answers to our questions.

 

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