Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. Herakut: Masters Of Wrong from Eric Minh Swenson
2. Shark Toof by Koncrete
3. HM Heads – Copenhagen. Spray Daily
4. Gary Stranger. The London Wall. Global Street Art
BSA Special Feature: Herakut: “Masters Of Wrong”
HERA + AKUT=HERAKUT – a back-to-basics introduction to Herakut today, since new fans are joining the fold and need to become acquainted with a duo that has been on the street around the world for years and has been moving into galleries for a while also.
Here at the white box Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles for their “Masters of Wrong” show it is a different view entirely from the street surely, including paintings evenly spaced across white walls as well as an area for a more immersive environment.
Outside, “The wolf that wins is the one you feed” is the Cherokee wisdom they paint on the side of the local high school, and in the commercialization of the Street Art world, we see this enmeshed dichotomy more daily.
Let the softly kinetic paddling of the marimba escort you through their political and social commentary, now more overt and obvious and satirical than ever, as they show you their new show and their new works for exhibition and for sale.
Shark Toof by Koncrete
Good to hear the story directly from the LA artist about the deliberations that go on when creating the image. It is interesting to see what the construction is, and how skillfully Shark Toof integrates his formal painting training into the vocabulary of graffiti and the street. His sharks are pleasantly realistic and scary and comical all at once – how is that possible?
HM Heads – Copenhagen. Spray Daily
And for those of you who are bored with the legal walls, here is a collection of videos of aerosol train pieces that appear to be largely illegal and immense. HM Heads in Copenhagen lead the tale with stealthy crawling through the weeds on hands and knees up to the locomotive over a dramatic/thoughtful guitar duo of anxious plunking and low wailing. After finding a suitable location between parked trains and some testing of the aerosol valves, the outlining begins in a deliberate and planned lay of lines and fills. The lyrics begin and within the first few lines the vocalist says “I have lost the will to live”.
Shortly thereafter a wall of scourging guitars builds and the camera shot gets shakey – and the shot quiets down again for some smooth linework and polka dots. Aside from the blurred faces and the jaunty, somewhat tentative movements of the painting crew, you would not have reason to think that this is done without permission. Is it? The video ends with a very long sequence of trains pulling into stations – crisp modern cars with colorful outcroppings of characters and letters, sometimes complete cars. The volume hikes upward, the Prodigy starts talking about smacking their bitch up, corks are popped and the furtive busting through fences increases as the unfettered aerosol continues.
Gary Stranger. The London Wall. Global Street Art
And we end this weeks collection with Gary Stranger from the MSK Crew doing this completely legal mural on something called The London Wall, a rotating art gallery that has works related to, you guessed it, London.