All posts tagged: Bortusk Leer

“Cash Is King II” is Rolling In It at Saatchi in London

August 22, 2019 Artists

Now that corporate and global debt has surged to an all-time high, posing unprecedented risk to the value of all money, it’s a sweet and sour nostalgia that drives you into your purse or wallet to pluck out a thin colorful slice of that rumpled paper fiat currency to buy yourself a beer at your local pub.

Bitcoin may be coming, and plastic is fantastic but in some parts of the world, cash is still king. And it rules everything around you.

Icy & Sot. Last Supper Five Dollar Bill (photo courtesy of the curators)

Right now you can see a collection of these banknotes from around the world developed as a series of canvasses at London’s Saatchi Gallery – mutated and defaced and adorned by graffiti and Street Artists, along with a series by Iranian born Aida Wilde, who uses banknotes from Eritrea, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria.

Penny. Picasso Ten Pound Note (photo courtesy of the curators)

Cash is King II, a sequel to last years Cash is King – the brainchild book and exhibition of artists Robert Osborne and Carrie Reichardt, the show opened this week to an appreciative crowd who appeared to really enjoy seeing bills reimagined.

Jef Aerosol. Arts Can’t Buy Me Love (photo courtesy of the curators)

Curators Susan Hansen and Olly Walker share these images here with us and tell us they’re also happy that Ms. Wilde’s sales are going to benefit the Help Refugees organization so they are able to continue their work around the world. Not surprisingly perhaps, “Many of these banknotes represent some of the countries that have seen the highest numbers of people become refugees in recent years,” says Hansen.

Olly Walker. Process shot. (photo courtesy of the curators)

Aida Wilde. And We Walk Eritrean. Process shot. (photo courtesy of the curators)

Al Diaz. Samo Dollar (photo courtesy of the curators)

1 UP Crew. Tag Dollar (photo courtesy of the curators)

Anthony Lister. Zero To One Hundred Real Quick Dollar (photo courtesy of the curators)

Bortusk Leer. Art Is Not Serious (photo courtesy of the curators)

Caroline Caldwell. Oil Money Dollar (photo courtesy of the curators)

John Fekner. Greed Dollar (photo courtesy of the curators)

Cash Is King 2: Money Talks. Opening night. (photo courtesy of the curators)

Aida Wilde’s work will available for sale on the Saatchi website from 2pm on Tuesday the 20^th of August. All proceeds will go to support Help Refugees’ work around the world.

Cash is King II: Money Talks features works of art executed on banknotes, an exhibition curated by Olly Walker of Ollystudio.

Cash Is King 2: Money Talks is currently on view at the Saatchi Gallery in London installed in the Prints and Originals space until September 8th. Otherwise, click HERE to view and purchase available works of art.

BSA Galavanting, The New Year and You

January 2, 2016 Artists

BSA galavanted through the streets last year and here we re-paste our recent newsletter to BSA readers. Sign up for it if you like. Here’s the original.

Happy New Year from BSA!

From Berlin to Norway to Rochester and Mexico, Faile to Swoon to Ron English to Dan Witz and Gilf!, BSA was in museums, galleries, artists studios, at festivals, on panel discussions, on stages, on TV, radio, in theaters, and of course in the street.

Here are some highlights of the some of the amazing things BSA did with you in 2015. We sincerely thank you for your support and send love to you and yours in the new year!

In ’15 BSA Created “Persons of Interest” with UN in Berlin
Brought 12 Brooklyn Street Artists to Berlin with “Persons of Interest” show for Urban Nation Museum (UN)/ProjectM7

Reviews in:
Juxtapoz, VNA, Hi-Fructose, Huffington Post, Butterfly

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The (almost) complete “Persons of Interest” crew courtesy ©Sandra Butterfly

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BSA Presented “On the Radar” in Coney Island
With Jeffrey Dietch’s Coney Art Walls program at Coney Island Museum for Coney Art Walls, we presented 12 artist to watch who are on our radar.

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BSA Presented Faile at the Brooklyn Museum
A beautiful experience to be a part of the FAILE exhibition from its earliest planning stages to its full summer run at Brooklyn Museum, the cherry on top was to host an in-depth presentation and conversation with Faile’s Patrick Miller and Patrick McNeil and BKM curator Sharon Matt Atkins in front of an enthusiastic Brooklyn audience.

Aside from The Pope landing in New York at the exact time people were traveling to the show and some microphone difficulties at the beginning of the show, it was a complete and total thrill for us. See the full video on LiveStream here.

What Happened with BSA + FAILE at the Brooklyn Museum?

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Steven P. Harrington, Patrick Miller of Faile (top), Sharon Matt Atkins, Patrick McNeil, and Jaime Rojo (image © by and courtesy of The Dusty Rebel) (@DustyRebel on Instagram)

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BSA Joined Swoon to Inaugurate Her New Heliotrope Foundation
The tenacious and visionary Street Artist grounded her dreams in a formal foundation in 2015, allowing her to pursue even greater reach in her growing projects in New Orleans, Haiti, and Braddock, PA. We were honored to interview her and to help celebrate the official beginning of The Heliotrope Foundation with the help of special guest and board member Kaseem Dean aka Swizz Beatz.

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Callie Curry (aka Swoon), Kasseem Dean (aka Swizz Beatz), Jaime Rojo, Steven P. Harrington inaugurate The Heliotrope Foundation

photo ©Daniel Feral

BSA Hosted Martha Cooper, Bortusk Leer, and Herman De Hoop at Nuart Plus
For presentations from each of the guests and panel discussion on the intersection of “Play” and public space at NUART 2015 in Stavanger, Norway.

Read our published essay for the academic conference at Nuart: “TECHNOLOGY, FESTIVALS AND MURALS AS NUART TURNS 15“

NUART 2015 Roundup: A Laboratory on the Street

Jaime Rojo, Harmen De Hoop, Martha Cooper, Bortusk Leer, Steven P. Harrington at Nuart Plus (©MZM Projects)

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Banksy Does New York Took Us to Theaters Around the World
Good News: The movie got on NetFlix, iTunes, in festivals, and in theaters in cities around the globe
Bad News: People think we have a museum

We Flew Over World’s Largest Mural
Flew by helicopter above the world’s largest mural by Ella and Pitr in Stavanger, Norway with two of our most admired photographers; Martha Cooper and Ian Cox. Thanks Nuart!

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Ella & Pitr © Jaime Rojo

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Ian Cox, Martha Cooper, Jaime Rojo getting ready to fly over Ella & Pitr in Norway (photo selfie ©Ian Cox)

We presented BSA Film Friday Live at MAG Gallery
Under the direction of Jonathan Binstock at University of Rochester Museum the MAG Gallery hosted us during the Wall\Therapy festival.

This is the grassroots sort of festival that rings true to us these days and the down-to-earth volunteers and organizers of this event, along with those of our associates at Urban Nation (UN), made this a highlight of the summer.

WALL\THERAPY 2015 : Surrealism and The Fantastic

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Steven P. Harrington at MAG Gallery for Wall\Therapy (photo ©Jason Wilder)

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BSA moderated 1st panel for 1st event of 1st edition of LoMan Festival
“OMG Is this Street Art?” was the name of our panel with guest panelists Ron English, Gilf!, Dan Witz, and Jonathan Levine.

LoMan Art Festival Launches Its First Blast in NYC

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Ron English, Ann J Lewis, Dan Witz, Jonathan LeVine, and Steven P. Harrington for first LoMan festival event in August (photo ©Rodrigo Valles‎).

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BSA in Berlin Radio Interview with Vantage Point
We talked about Jay-Z, Bowie, Bushwick, the democratization of Street Art, cultural imperialism, the UN and what it is like to bust out a blog seven days a week and still keep your mind and heart open to discovery.
Listen to it here on Vantage Point and Soundcloud:

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▪ BSA completed its fifth year in partnership with The Huffington Post in June 2015 (225+ articles) and was translated in Spanish on El Huffington Post, in French on Le Huffington Post, in Italian on L’Huffington Post, in Korean on Huff Post Korea, in Portuguese on Brasil Post, and in Greek for Huffington Post Greece.
▪ BSA posted every single day and did 23 interviews and studio visits and published articles about street art in 103 cities
▪ BSA was reference or appeared in the media in The New York Times, The Today Show, Le Monde, Agence France Press, German Rbb Tv, Borås Tidning, El Diario, El Heraldo, ArtNet News, Juxtapoz, VNA, Hi-Fructose, and others.
▪ BSA’s Director of Photography Jaime Rojo took more than 10,000 images and we picked 143 as BSA 2015 Images of the Year.

Special thank you to photographer Martha Cooper and Nuart Festival director Martyn Reed for the banner image from this years festival.

NUART 2015 Roundup : A Laboratory on the Street

September 12, 2015 Artists

A roundup today for the Nuart street art/ mural festival in Norway with images of the final walls by this years artists. Now celebrating its 15th year, the mid-sized fjord-facing city of Stavanger has played host to a selection of international and local artists directly or indirectly related to the evolving scene we know as Street Art.

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Again this year the selection of invited participants is varied, potent, and occasionally a smack upside the head – with punk rock graphic designer Jamie Reid leading the way in spirit and on walls. Reid’s inspiration dates to the radical hippie politics and Situationist practices of the 1950s and 60s but he is best known for formation of the Sex Pistols anti-monarchial slash and burn visual identity and for penning their pivotal recording “Anarchy in the UK” – a history discussed in Carlo McCormick’s presentation during the Nuart Plus program.

In tandem with his paste-ups around town and installation at the formal gallery show was the lesser-known street photography of very-well-known graffiti photographer and ethnographer Martha Cooper, who displayed a selection of five decades of children playing on the streets with improvised toys and games – via an automated slide show – as well as an additional one she narrated during our panel on this year’s theme “Play” at Nuart Plus.

Ella & Pitr. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

While neither Reid nor Cooper are thought of as Street Artists per se, their choice as participants gave grounding to the proceedings and is emblematic of director Martyn Reed’s holistic approach to an eclectic programming that mixes up the tributaries and the river in such a way that observers may better have tools to measure the creative flow that we are all witnessing on city walls across the globe today.

As we mark the halfway point of this decade and see the institutional discussions of Street Art taking form while academics try to place it in the canon of art-making and decide upon the nature of its impact, they do it with the knowledge that gallery shows, museum exhibitions, high-profile auctions, individual collecting, lifestyle marketers, and public festivals of many configurations and aspirations are already embracing its relevance. No one can possibly gauge this story in all of its complexity but some will capture its spirit. Being on the street helps.

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

One way to get a pulse on the present is to attend shows like Nuart and witness the diverse stratagems that artists are using to engage their audiences and judge if they are successful at realizing their intentions. With a deliberately mixed bag of thinkers, feelers, documentors, aesthetes, and pranksters culled together for your edification, this show stokes the discussions.

Others may say that the headliners of this year’s Nuart were the French couple Ella & Pitr, whose record-setting 21,000 square meter mural of a young woman in running shorts lying in a semi-fetal position could only be viewed by helicopter across the roofs of a large construction company complex.

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

You could say that Stavanger streets were commanded with greater effect by the simple addition of Spain’s Isaac Cordal and his handmade concrete (or resin) bald businessmen, fifty or so of which he glued into crevices and upon ledges and structural fissures on buildings throughout town. Their sad existential conundrums are ours, even though we are guilting them with all the corrupt actions we are at least a little complicit in.

Arguably the greatest metamorphosis took place with the collection and assembly of local detritus – broken car pieces, old bicycles, tires, even ship buoys. Before you roll your eyes and think of homey craft-inspired planters on front lawns, the likenesses of animals that Bordalo II can evoke with his sculptures is uncanny and a little spooky.

His “stag” deer is meant as a commentary on the loss of natural habitat of the animals at the hands of what we call “development”. The companion piece of a whale overwhelmed by environmental poisoning in the Tou Scene gallery installation proves equally compelling and tragic.

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Harmen de Hoop invited a top economist to perform his installation purely with chalk and a 30-minute lecture on the streets of Stavanger on the subject of option pricing, Dolk bravely experimented with a new abstractionist, reductivist approach that ran counter to the style he is known for, and brothers Icy & Sot were the most currently topical with their portrait of a girl whose distorted visage is that of a refugee boat crammed with people. If Nuart at times feels like a laboratory it may be the perfect analogy for the street experience in cities everywhere.

Have a look at many of the finished walls at Nuart this year. See our essay marking their 15th anniversary HERE.

Ella & Pitr. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Isaac Cordal. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dotdotdot. Portrait of Sex Pistol’s Johnnie Rotten/John Lydon. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Whatson. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Whatson. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Whatson. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Whatson. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pejac did a reinterpretation of “The Scream” by the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch, using a toy truck tire on a paint roller. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. See his indoor installation video here. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevrier. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nafir. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Outings Project. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dolk. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bortusk Leer. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bordalo II. The artist preps the wall in the background. Trash collected from near by empty lots sits in the foreground to serve as the raw material for his work. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The completed wall by Bordalo II. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Harmen de Hoop. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Harmen De Hoop “Permanent Education” from NUART

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.06.15 NUART 2015 SPECIAL

September 6, 2015 Artists

After Stavanger Mayor Christine Sagen Helgø made the official declaration of the opening of the Nuart gallery show at Tou Scene last night the sliding barn door on the ex beer factory moved back to allow the crowd to flow in like a river to see this years collection of art installations in the “tunnels” of the space. This component of the Nuart experience allows a certain degree of curation and idea development that brings you a fuller appreciation of the artists who create murals on the street as well.

Top image above >>> Bordalo II (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pixel Pancho with Bordalo II in the background. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Additionally, and we are telling you nothing secret here, the adhoc crew of technicians and scene creators here are rough and ready; obviously over qualified and with a fair degree of refinement when it comes to helping the artist realize some of their grander aspirations. Artists are encouraged to think big and a number of them have this year, including some who are so capacious they nearly collide or eclipse one another, but visitors this year may feel like the quality and depth of this editions 5-week show just advanced by a length.

Ella & Pitr with Isaac Cordal. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This week’s interview with the street is not actually on the street – but rather a reflection of the direction that the street can take a curated collection of current artists and corollary influencers from years past.

Clearly you can go as deeply or shallowly as you want with this years theme of “Play”. Harmen de Hoop’s video of Thursday’s performance piece on Stavanger’s streets by a renowned mathematics and statistics professor Jan Ubøe, who mystifies the assembled audience while explaining the factors that form our world economy is rather utterly balanced on a jerking seesaw with Bortusk Leer’s incessantly cheery monster diorama.

Ella & Pitr with Isaac Cordal. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

50 years of selected photographs by ethnographer Martha Cooper of children in cities around the world at play with improvised tools and methods are almost matched in impact by Ernest Zacharevic’s slowly tumultous sea waters tossing a child’s paper boat with a handful of kids inside, evoking the current news with immigrants escaping to Europe in dangerous waters. Isaac Cordal’s installation of achingly desperate white-collar men in a desperate diorama is uplifted by Ella & Pitr’s fairy tale giant reaching from the heavens to pick one from a chair.

Sandra Chevrier brings a signature masking of a woman’s visual and olefactory senses, quite alone in the bright spotlight. The iconic ripped shreds and piled irony of Jamie Reid brings the radicalized hippie and punk politics into front and center while Pixel Pancho and Bordalo II each take swipes at the oil economy that dominates our lives while killing others.

Isaac Cordal. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bordalo alone could command the entire space with his found/reclaimed Stavanger refuse that is fashioned into a immensely tragic scene of a spent whale submerged in muck and spouting that black gooey pulp from it’s blow-hole. Icy & Sot next door use their understated humor and biting criticism with a summer tree in a verdant hue captured as soliloquey, first appearing leafy and fluttering from a fan-stirred breeze, then revealed as suffocated by 300 petroleum-based green plastic shopping bags that are caught in its branches.

Finally the painterly abstractions of Futura across half a tunnel are set free, poignantly balancing the symbolic liberty of Martin Whatson’s graffitied butterfly, now cravenly pierced and readied for your private collection.

Isaac Cordal. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

While you can practically smell the brands hovering over quality events like these to hopefully insinuate themselves into – Nuart continues to keep its independence of curation, broadening its branches with the Tou Scene installations and deepening its roots with academic forums and related programming in such a way that its true nature remains. Hopefully it will be to continue this way despite a tightening Norwegian economy.

Yes there was some talk at panels this week about the fact that a 15 year old Street Art mural festival is in itself an institution and anathema to what the graffiti/street/urban art practice may have originated from, but one of the myriad outcomes of pounding away with purpose at thoughtful parallel programming like this Tou Scene show year after year is that you may also develop something uniquely relevant in its own right.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street – this week via the exhibition space of Nuart 2015 and featuring Bordalo II, Bortusk Leer, Dolk, Dot Dot Dot, Ella & Pitr, Ernest Zacharevic, Furtura, Harmen de Hoop, Icy & Sot, Isaac Cordal, Jamie Reed, Martha Cooper, Outings Project, Pixel Pancho, and Sandra Chevrier.

Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Whatson (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevrier with Martin Whatson. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Outings Project (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jamie Reid (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Harmen De Hoop (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bortusk Leer with DotDotDot in the background. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dolk (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nuart Day 5: Flying High in the Norwegian Sky

September 5, 2015 Artists

Live from Nuart as it’s happening folks, and the festival is proving to be a rather impressive small beast at this point – one with multiple heads and legs and hands waving paint brushes, aerosol cans, saws, drills, stencils, spot lights, fans, ship buoys, shovels, ladders, helicopter blades….. What?

Friday began with an helicopter ride to take the full scope of the giant Ella & Pitr roof top mural. Here we see Martyn saying good bye to all of us earthlings. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yes, Martyn Reed gave a healthy scare to a number of guests by inviting them to view the massive Ella & Pitr piece from a helicopter hovering about on Friday in conjunction with a formal dedication ceremony. It’s the only way to truly see it, darling, and that is not simply a clever manner of expression – it is a literal one.

Ella & Pitr. Detail of their roof top mural. More to come. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ground-based mortals may also see these painted red nails on giant hand inside the public art exhibition planned for Saturday night as the French couple have coupled their installation with the radically smaller scaled sculptures of Isaac Cordel, whose balding concrete curmudgeons lurk and mope and sink into the soil around the perimeter.

All three artists were in the audience at BSA Film Friday LIVE at the cinema downtown, which made us feel relieved because their videos were also featured in our show about PLAY. Thanks to everyone who came, including those sitting in the aisles and on the steps: think we need a bigger theater next time!

Detail of Isaac Cordal and Ella & Pitr collaboration in the Tou Scene tunnels. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elsewhere the Outings Project liberated a number of museum pieces on walls here and there around the neighborhood, their unsung regal figures set loose yet rigidly posed on concrete blocks in empty lots. Some malformed and miscreant monsters have also popped up, seemingly over night, on pieces of printed news. They look rather similar to the installation of Bortusk Leer in the beer halls of Tou Scene, but not much like the realistic children on cut-out wood in Ernest Zacharevic’s installation nor Pixel Pancho’s three dimensional robot – a symbol used in many of his large scale murals appearing in cities around the world.

Stay tuned for more images, as we are a bit buried under a wealth of them right now but feel compelled to run outside and gather more while the sun is shining and the paint is still wet.

Tor channels Banksy with Ella & Pitr collaboration.(photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Outings Project brings the masters outside onto the walls and Bortusk Leer’s monsters take an art history lesson. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevrier at work inside the Tou Scene tunnels at work on her collaboration with Martin Whatson. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bordalo II at work inside the Tou Scene tunnels. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura at work on a new outside wall project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bortusk Leer. Detail of his installation inside the Tou Scene tunnels. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic work in progress inside the Tou Scene tunnels. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pixel Pancho work in progress inside the Tou Scene tunnels. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The tractor moving in on the chopper with Martyn on board . (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nuart Day 3 : Picking Up Pace and Sandra Chevrier’s Dramatic Eyes

September 3, 2015 Artists

A fever pitch is possibly overstating the tempo but not by much as Day 3 at Nuart continued to be wet and gray and at times a little windy (not typically good for stencil work by the way). A couple of people have gotten a cold – possibly due to painting in the rain for hours on end, possible due to drinking back at the hotel late into the evening, one cannot be quick to surmise. Regardless, the artists are full of industry and the results are appearing right here before your dramatic and alluring eyes.

Sandra Chevrier. Work in progress. Detail. Aftenblad Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy and Sot moved to smaller figurative works in site-specific locations while arriving artists like Pixel Pancho and Martha Cooper began their prospective projects, his ivy covered mural awaiting a robot of some sort and hers a projection of her child’s play photography from the streets that will be on display at the Tou Scene opening. We’re eager to see what museum quality works will be appearing suddenly on Stavanger walls from Julien de Casabianca of the Outings Project, who’s just arrived with a number of figures who are itching to get outside.

Sandra Chevrier. Work in progress. Detail. Aftenbladet Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevier and her assistant labored with brushes for about 10 hours to complete her new Aftenblad wall despite winds from off the bay – just in time for Thursday’s dedication by the local newspaper, Stavanger’s largest. Bortusk Leer gradually filled his tunnel installation with sculptural and flat childlike/cheerful renderings of people and monsters and Ernest is projecting kids on the walls to begin his similarly juvenile-themed play scene.

Sandra Chevrier. Work in progress. Detail. Aftenblad Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura completed his very large installation and allowed us to shoot some live video of it in process – which we’ll gladly post tomorrow on Film Friday – speaking of which we’re pretty excited about our program tomorrow BSA Film Friday LIVE at the cinema downtown as part of the Nuart PLUS programming where we’ll show video pieces related to this years theme of “Play” under categories of Exploring, Experimenting, and Inventing.

Martin Whatson has been creating a new winged creature and Bodalo II is bringing a horned one to life as the garbage has begun climbing the back walls of the former beer factory and assembling itself into a deer head.

Peering through the garbage bag tree “leaves” is Icy as he attaches the last pieces of green foliage and Isaac Cordal tells us he attached seven new little men on balconies throughout the neighborhood, including a couple on a nearby gas station/carpark overhang – evoking the oil businessmen who are briskly walking through streets here even as the shrinking economy adjusts to lower world oil prices.

Sandra Chevrier… Meanwhile at Tou Scene… Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Thursday starts to really pick up the pace with Nuart Plus programming kicked off by Carlo McCormick, Evan Pricco (Juxtapoz), Harmen de Koop, and Bortusk Leer squaring off for a lively debate (“Should Art Have a Deeper Meaning?”) starting at beer-o’clock sharp (21:30) at a local pub – just after Harmen’s performance/mural “Permanent Education” on the street with Jan Uboe, a Mathematics and Statistics Professor from the Norwegian School of Economics.

After we tally up the numbers we’ll give you a full account.

Nafir. Work in progress. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Watson. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pixel Pancho. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bordalo II. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bortusk Leer. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic has created a work on the wall that mimics a nearby statue “Johanne og Broremann” (Johanne and her little brother) made by Svein Magnus Håvarstein in 1993. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The light appears as the sun peering through the tree at Icy while he works on the installation he is doing with Sot. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A local Stavanger resident watches the action from a secured vantage point. Untitled. Stavanger, Norway. August 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 03.22.15

March 22, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Can we please not talk about snow? Spring, you temptress.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Angelina Christina, Bifido, BiP, Bortusk Leer, C215, Chris Stain, Crummy Gummy, Dan Witz, Dave the Chimp, Ease One, El Bocho, Icy & Sot, Little Lucy, London Kaye, Never, Otto “Osch” Shade, Peter Phobia, Punk Paul, Tuco, and Zid Leon.

London Kaye. So, if you are made of crochet, do you get cold? Also see the Smells tag floating above this little lady. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Angelina Christina, Ease One and Never painted this wall in the Summer of 2014. I really never took a good photo of it due to cars always parked in front. The harsh winter conditions of the New York Winter 2015 made possible for me to take this photo. On a great day like this, as we endure our 154th snowstorm of the season, many of us have low hopes for the spring. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tuco. Manimal Chimp in Switzerland from his “Manimal” series. This image also looks rather like it was shot on the set of a TV show. More on this artist to come shortly. (photo © Tuco Wallach)

We spotted this ceramic sculpture perched on a beam on the platform of the Berlin metro. This is the only one we saw so we are thinking it wasn’t sanctioned art. Who is the artist? That gold crown looks familiar. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Um, personal comment: beauty queens should not smoke. It sends the wrong message to impressionable kids. That is all. Nick Flatt and Punk Paul in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Images of the Week: 06.09.13

June 9, 2013 Artists

Big murals are proliferating at the moment but it is still the domain of the individual street artist to smack up smaller works, stickers, stencils, wheatpastes and the like. We’re featuring quite a few of these smaller personal pieces this week in the mix of some larger ones.

Here’s our weekly interview of the street, this week featuring 1986, Bortusk Leer, ELV, FKDL, Icy & Sot, JR, Martha Cooper, ND’A, Pigeon, Wakuda and XAM.

Top image > JR and Martha Cooper. French photographer JR blew up Martha’s vintage photograph taken in The Bronx in the 70’s. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Culture Fix Presents: Bortusk Leer “Monsters in New York” (Manhattan, NYC)

June 3, 2013 Afghanistan, Artists

Bortusk burst onto the street art scene in 2007 with naively spray painted and marker penned psychedelic monsters and characters. These characters have become a common sight on the streets of London, Amsterdam, Barcelona and countless other European cities. They have made their way around the globe by air, sea and land to far flung places such as India, Australia, Cambodia, New Zealand and of course the good old USA, (where they have popped up in New York, Seattle and Alaska to name but a few.)

http://monstersnyc.com/show/

4816/Asa Gallery Presents: Maoma & Bortusk Leer “23rd Century Gods” (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

May 20, 2013 Afghanistan

Maoma and Bortusk Leer
Saturday 8th of June we have a BIG OPENING of the duo show of MAOMA & BORTUSK LEER. opening at 15:00

Bortusk Leer has arrived in Amsterdam!!
the 5,6 and 7 october

Fresh off the back of solo shows in London and Milan. The worlds favorite top hat wearing, cane twirling, comedy loving Slovenian, is set to shake up the Amsterdam Street art scene.

Famed for pasting his bright coloured, infantile monsters on walls throughout the world. As well as the Childrens BBC Street monsters series.

This three day – Pop-up show sees Bortusk return with a mix up of Paintings, Sculptures and indefinable Artworks that are designed to perform one simple function…

To make you Smile!

Duo exhibitio of MAOMA & Bortusk Leer

London Street Art Part II: Shoreditch Dispatch

November 16, 2011 Artists, Features, London, On the Street, U.K.

When you hit the street in search of street art, it helps if you keep you eyes AND mind open. On his trip to London for the Moniker Art Fair last month, photographer Geoff Hargadon had time to trek the East London neighborhood of Shoreditch and was usually surprised by what he caught. Old stuff like Fauxreel’s father on a ladder, and fresh new work going up before his eyes by Dabs and Myla next to Word to Mother.

Here he captures what he liked and what moved him regardless of how old or new it was. This is what Street Art is all about anyway – an ongoing conversation on the street that tells you as much about the artist as contemporary society. In a city that values it’s oldest architecture and its revered historical legacy, there is still plenty of room for the newest voices in the public sphere; even if officially unsanctioned, it is still permitted to ride a while. Sometimes, it is even invited.

The tagging conversation here is colorfully chaotic, a continuous piling up and covering of messaging with new messages and signatory statements. (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

A splash of colour on Turville Street incorporates the natural elements of the urban environment into the scene . (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

By Don. (photo © Geoff Hargadon)

See Geoffs pics from last week in London’s Bricklane : A Few Shots of Street Art at the Moment

Bortusk Leer and Sticking Bubblegum Up Your Nose

June 2, 2011 Artists, Events, Features, Gallery, Interview, London, Street Talker Interview

Street Artist Bortusk Leer’s smiling and devious characters drawn and colored with a childlike mind continue to make people on New Yorks’ streets smile. As previous artist neighborhoods like Williamsburg are overrun with helicopter moms jogging behind strollers, the professional parents taking their progeny to playdates probably think the wheatpastes are the Universe’s welcome to their bundles of joy.

Actually, Bortusk’s demented and happy monsters predate many of the new arrivals and his googly eyed crew is now in many cities around the world, and more often these days galleries too. Mr. Leer sure gets around with these unruly companions who have a disarming way of bringing the hype all down a notch to the simple joys of swinging mindlessly on the monkey bars and giving Billy Blickstein a wedgy and pulling Danisha’s hair and sticking bubblegum up your nose.

On the occasion of his solo show now on view (extended to June 26) at Tony’s Gallery in Shoreditch, East London’s Don’t Panic conducted an interview with the artist and along with his answers they give us a good view of the multicolor mad man installations:

“I get to Bortusk’s playground just as the rain starts to fall. An Oompa Loompa lets me in through the main gate and guides me across the psychedelic courtyard. I take shelter under the peppermint trees and wait for my maniacal host to arrive. The walls are lined with weird, nu-rave creatures; a colourful assortment of monsters and mismatched porcelain dolls, watching through beady, fluorescent eyes as I wait for their master…“

Click here to continue reading the interview and to see more images

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