We start 2010 with a bag of sea-shells and this bounty of inspiring Street Art images from warm sunny Miami – which was a break from the bitter coldness of BK for a bit. Heartfelt gratitude to Typoe for showing us what’s up and who, together with a dude named Books, has built the one-of-a-kind Primary Flight show on the streets of Miami’s Wynwood District over the past three years during Art Basel.
With a vision that speaks to the next decade of public art, these guys have coordinated with local businesses, galleries, graff/street artists, and the City of Miami to clear the way for what is turning into a global gallery on the street. Without self-aggrandizing rhetoric, these peeps are developing a model for building an art scene while keeping the edge and encouraging experimentation. So far the “collection” doesn’t risk the blanding that can happen when bureaucrats, committees, or self-appointed art critics insert themselves, or when corporate sponsors commodify the spirit.
It’s worth mentioning that this is just one more case of artists revitalizing abandoned blighted areas of the urban landscape, of their own volition, with grit, determination, and vision.
During a whirlwind tour last week of Primary Flight sites (and many others who have jumped into the game) we witnessed a diverse, energetic mix of graff, old-school, art school, graphic design, sculpture, illustration, surrealism… all part of the developing Street Art vocabulary that we’re witnessing in Brooklyn and NYC at large. Thanks to Typoe and Giovana for their kind hospitality and insight.
We hope you enjoy the Dade County Bounty: a past and present explosion of art on the streets of Miami.
After being in development for 13 years, Droo says the new Skewville site is ready to roll!
Actually, that’s not how long it took to build the site – just it’s content. This roll-through left-right scroller is a quick primer for the uninitiated on the history and accomplishments of Skewville and the multiple projects they have embarked on over the last decade plus.
Or, as Ad and Droo say, “If you don’t know – now you know.”
All the round the whirl with Skewville irony
From launching galleries to launching thousands of pairs of their wooden dogs over wires around the globe, to offering shows to their peers and participating in shows internationally, and always adding their smart-aleck commentary about the street art “scene” to the discussion, these brothers have piled a sizeable stack of HYPE.
Complexity and mastery comes with practice. Blah Blah Blah
This must be the place. Skewville actually was a physical location and a lifestyle for the middle class and unfamous.
No strangers to sarcasm, the brothers have conceived and built a number of contraptions to get their message out.
Currently the Skewville Corporation is participating inNuart, a festival in Stavanger, Norway that celebrates the contributions of Brooklyn Street Artists.
Check the Tubeness below to see a piece that MTV Brasil did – After the first minute in Portuguese, Ad DeVille pretty much takes the show!
Vandalog’s RJ Hard at Work on “The Thousands”
His first “Pop-Up” is taking shape this November in London
An open and sincere voice in the street art blog world, RJ Rushmore is a stone cold street art lover. Albeit still in his teens, this guy posesses a maturity and modesty that many of his peers may not develop for another 10 years. More significant; his industry is matching the size of his dreams.
This time the dream is a “Pop-Up” show featuring the big names in street art today, exposing a larger audience to the genre that has captured the imagination of the youth culture.
RJ has been planning the show for many months methodically and feels secure about it’s ultimate success but he is very aware that he is taking a big leap to undertake this labor of love, where most of the work won’t even be for sale.
So far the 40 pieces in the show are from most of the big names in street art – Adam Neate, Banksy, Barry McGee, Jenny Holzer, Bast, Swoon, Kaws, Os Gemeos, Shepard Fairey, Herakut, Blek le Rat and others.
People are jumping into “The Thousands” every day as word spreads, and RJ’s been sorting out the details that come along with this kind of show – Artists, Collectors, Permissions, Love. In addition he’s working on a companion coffee table book to be published by Drago in November with photos and bios and a few guest contributors like Gaia and Panik.
His first exhibition includes some of the better known names and he’s looking forward to doing a future show with more emerging artists, but he’s smart to limit the scope the first time out. “The purpose of my efforts is to bring street art to the attention of a wider art community, and the best way to do that is to take the very best street artists’ artwork instead of all the emerging artists that I might love and think are promising”, says Mr. Rushmore.
The Thousands will be open from November 18th through the 22nd of November at Village Underground in London. Keep up on the details at the blog for “The Thousands” HERE
Eastern District, a 400sf gallery opened for about a year in Bushwick is looking to extend it’s reach by asking street art veteran gallerists Allison and Garrison Buxton to curate a new show in the ED space next door. Most people know that Ad Hoc Art recently announced it’s downsizing it’s square footage due in their 49 Bogart space and stories of ED’s impending closure have been swirling around also.
Well, this is how neighbors do it in Brooklyn: by reaching out and working together. If either one of these parties had been the snooty white-box types, it never would have worked. But this is an arts community that knows that the resulting strength is greater with two. When asked by ED to partner on shows, Ad Hoc Art happily and quickly accepted the invitation to curate and bring their peeps too. Now they are looking at ways to bring more great shows to ED. That’s very good news for the nascent Bushwick gallery scene, not to mention the artists who get to show there.
And that brings us to today. Garrison says, “AHA & ED have a Bushwick-focused show opening specifically highlighting very local talent from the hood where it all started.” Included are AHA/Bushwick favorites like like Destroy and Rebuild, LogikOne, Michael Allen, Molly Crabapple, Pagan, and Robert Steel”
Ad Hoc Art’s is now planning a fall exhibition featuring the work of Joe Vaux and Gilbert Oh to open in November at Eastern District and more shows planned into the winter, such as veteren British/French street artist Jef Aerosol in January. For now, it sounds like the Ad Hoc extravganza and shenanigans will continue!
Prepare for exciting art extravaganzas and shenanigans in the present and continuing into the near future, for Bushwick and beyond.
SuperDraw Keeps Developing – Now it’s an Iphone App
Remember BSA’s Projekt Projektor last year at the Dumbo Festival, full of new projectionists stretching the definition of Street Art? Remember the projectionists at the end of our Street Crush Show in February?
Then you’ll remember Josh Ott, or SuperDraw. Dude developed an interactive interface for people to project their own art through a project with their iPhones, and at our shows he eagerly transferred it to your phone for free so you could slap your work all over the Manhattan Bridge.
True, GRL keeps setting some of the standards, but we firmly believe that the future of street art may be vibrating in your front pocket right now. There is a whole crop of projectionists and video and multimedia artists that are sharpening their skillz for that Brave New Street Art World as we chase the wheat-pasters.
NYC Graff as Historical Touchstone
International Street Art Stars
Train Writers turned Fine Artists
High Culture/Street Culture Mashups
Corporate Logos and Celebrity Collectors
If that is not enough variety for you, then you have just been spoiled by too many years living in the center of a cultural and media capital.
You’ll be glad the former photo studios, two blocks north of Manhattan’s West Side Rail Yards, are generously spacious because you’ll need headroom to contemplate the variety of messages that Chantal and Brigitte Helenbeck, Parisian gallerists, are bringing to Hell’s Kitchen for a month.
For Chantal, “The street art style and story is distinctly American. It became a global phenomenon”. Her sister Brigitte agrees and asks her to translate to the visitor, “Yes, it is about movement, and color, it is very free and for this we say it is very American.”
Trains, geometric form, fills, and natural beauty on Coney Island (Daze) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Amidst the flurry of 11th hour installations all over this temporary gallery, the sisters say that they see graffiti and “street art” on a continuum with other schools in contemporary art and art history in general. Chantal observes as she looks around the cavernous 12,000sf upper floor at the “Whole in the Wall” exhibition that the kids that used to be “Bad Boys” (and girls) of graffiti back in the 70’s are now warm and friendly adults who are great to work with. Better yet, many continued to develop their skills and have truly become “great studio artists”. “It is important that their talent and recognition is seen and documented with the art world,” she says.
Lee Quiñones at work (photo Jaime Rojo)
A prime example of that observation could be Lee Quiñones, who is busily running up and down an aluminum ladder preparing a 12′ x 14′ canvas that couldn’t be more of a departure from his style back in the days of Sly Stone and Richard Nixon. A subway train writer as a teen in the 1970’s, his later exhibitions and studio work placed him in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum. The piece he’s working on for this show speaks to a sinister, more complex time using animal symbolism so often seen in the 00’s.
Up close to this canvas, it is an imposing thick dark forest of trees where the sprouting leaves and fallen, swirling fragments are actual dollar bills. Popping forward at you from the center comes the menacing protagonist; a realistic wolf in businessman’s clothing lurking from behind a tree in horn-rimmed glasses, looking at you with a dead-eye stare.
Wolf detail of brand new work by Lee Quiñones (photo Jaime Rojo)
As you talk to Mr. Quiñones, it’s easy to see that he cares deeply about his work, and he spends a great deal of time thinking about it, re-working it in his mind, and relating with it on an emotional level. The metaphor Lee had in mind this time is the children’s story “Little Red Riding Hood” and, as he points to parts of the canvas, you can see the story as it applies to any number of scams and backroom deals that clutter the business pages and Senate hearings these days. You might think of the same connection between financial crisis and the meager options for a teen in New York’s 1970’s while he describes the power brokers that created the current environment. Conspiratorially, he reveals that when the lights are out, the wolf’s eyes actually glow in the dark. He also says this piece is not finished but he’ll know when it is.
“Art is tricky, you know, you gotta look at it a lot,” the Puerto Rico-born painter says, “Then it tells you ‘Stop! Leave me alone! I’m done.’… I talk to my art, I spend time with it.”
“I was thinking of putting Madoff over here”
He contrasts the life and the approach to creative work back in the “wild style” days and now; “My studio is not this big but it’s pretty big so I can step back and take a look at it. When I was painting trains 35 years ago I only had like this much space (holding his hands a yard a part) and I had this big 40 foot (long) train in front of me. …. I had no luxury of looking at it from a distance, or time. But that’s also where I get my nocturnal practice. I can actually stay up four nights without sleep, no problem. And I’ve been up three days now.” A broad smile breaks across his face as he announces this feat of endurance and commitment.
It really DOES grow on trees. (photo Steven P. Harrington)
There is so much exuberance and so much to see at this show that A.D.D. seems like an excellent processing mechanism – Ramellzee’s sculpture on a highly ornate fifteenth century credenza, a French dude in a suit holding forth about the geneology of a chair, Plateus moving briskly across the floor gazing upward at the multiple canvasses and downward upon his high-gloss contorted letter sculptures, Henry Chalfants’ screen prints of miniature trains spread out on some bubble wrap, NYC’s Sharp amiably chatting with Brazillian Nunca (recently at the Tate), stencil godfather Blek le Rat sneaking outside for a cigarette where Blade is showing off the 1972 creme colored roadster he’s restoring, and, quietly, the Banksy rat glances over his shoulder.
The selections of artists for this show are not meant to be comprehensive, as is evidenced by the lack of any number of current European street artists, and almost complete lack of artists from today’s New York. What impact “Whole in the Wall” will have on current “street art” and graff movements is hard to say, but it is an often inventive way of drawing the connections and revealing the threads in a storyline that continues to be told.
Meet you on the Kings Highway! Rammellzee and King Louis mashup (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Martha Cooper prints waiting to be hung (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Okay, who let Sir Duke in the mansion? Don’t let him lick the gold leaf again! (Blek le Rat) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Armed nationalism on Sesame Street (Ikon) (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Henry Chalfant silkscreens Blade (in the show) and many others on these metallic plates that clearly evoke the subway trains of the 1970’s and 80’s. (photo Steven P. Harrington)
Masters from the 1970s NYC graf movement (Blade, Crash, Daze, Jonone, Quik, Lee Quinones, Rammellzee, Sharp) and European art stars (Victor Ash, Banksy, Blek le Rat, Ikon, Sozyone, Plateus) are among 19 painters, sculptors and photographers showing contemporary works in “Whole In The Wall: 1970 – Now”. It’s an unprecedented, museum-quality, 150-piece exploration of street art’s ongoing transition to, yes, fine art. The pieces are all original and rare; many are new.
piece by Sharp courtesy Helenbeck Gallery The show is an ambitious, two-story, 25,000-sf installation on Manhattan’s industrial West Side, juxtaposing street artworks with authentic 17th Century antiques. It will be an unprecedented presentation.
“Whole In The Wall: 1970 – Now”
Friday, May 29 through Saturday, June 27
11:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.; Tuesdays through Saturdays; or by appointment
529-535 W. 35th St. @ 11th Ave. (former Splashlight Studio)
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
