All posts tagged: David Kramer

BSA “Images Of The Year” for 2017 (VIDEO)

BSA “Images Of The Year” for 2017 (VIDEO)

Of the thousands of images he took this year in places like New York, Berlin, Scotland, Hong Kong, Sweden, French Polynesia, Barcelona, and Mexico City, photographer Jaime Rojo found that Street Art and graffiti are more alive than every before. From aerosol to brush to wheat-paste to sculpture and installations, the individual acts of art on the street can be uniquely powerful – even if you don’t personally know where or who it is coming from. As you look at the faces and expressions it is significant to see a sense of unrest, anger, fear. We also see hope and determination.

Every Sunday on BrooklynStreetArt.com, we present “Images Of The Week”, our weekly interview with the street. Primarily New York based, BSA interviewed, shot, and displayed images from Street Artists from more than 100 cities over the last year, making the site a truly global resource for artists, fans, collectors, gallerists, museums, curators, academics, and others in the creative ecosystem. We are proud of the help we have given and thankful to the community for what you give back to us and we hope you enjoy this collection – some of the best from 2017.

Brooklyn Street Art 2017 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo includes the following artists;

Artists included in the video are: Suitswon, Curiot, Okuda, Astro, Sixe Paredes, Felipe Pantone, Hot Tea, Add Fuel, Hosh, Miss Van, Paola Delfin, Pantonio, Base23, R1, Jaune, Revok, Nick Walker, 1UP Crew, SotenOne, Phat1, Rime MSK, Martin Whatson, Alanis, Smells, UFO907, Kai, Tuts, Rambo, Martha Cooper, Lee Quinoes, Buster, Adam Fujita, Dirty Bandits, American Puppet, Disordered, Watchavato, Shepard Fairey, David Kramer, Yoko Ono, Dave The Chimp, Icy & Sot, Damien Mitchell, Molly Crabapple, Jerkface, Isaac Cordal, SacSix, Raf Urban, ATM Street Art, Stray Ones, Sony Sundancer, ROA, Telmo & Miel, Alexis Diaz, Space Invader, Nasca, BK Foxx, BordaloII, The Yok & Sheryo, Arty & Chikle, Daniel Buchsbaum, RIS Crew, Pichi & Avo, Lonac, Size Two, Cleon Peterson, Miquel Wert, Pyramid Oracle, Axe Colours, Swoon, Outings Project, Various & Gould, Alina Kiliwa, Tatiana Fazalalizadeh, Herakut, Jamal Shabaz, Seth, Vhils, KWets1, FinDac, Vinz Feel Free, Milamores & El Flaco, Alice Pasquini, Os Gemeos, Pixel Pancho, Kano Kid, Gutti Barrios, 3 x 3 x 3, Anonymouse, NeSpoon, Trashbird, M-city, ZoerOne, James Bullowgh, and 2501.

 

Cover image of Suits Won piece with Manhattan in the background, photo by Jaime Rojo.

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Spring / Break 2017 : This Years’ Times Square Show in Corporate Office Space

Spring / Break 2017 : This Years’ Times Square Show in Corporate Office Space

Braving the crowds at the 2017 Spring/Break show means meandering the floor plan of former corporate offices and encountering the daydreams of artists who usually work as temps here. After traversing the un-grand lobby and showing your ID, this high-flying glass and steel Times Square fantasy flips the lights on the funhouse as soon as the doors open to Greg Haberny’s elevator bank installation of hundreds of rough wooden sculptures dangling overhead while a hardcore soundtrack rams you through the glass doors to the reception area.

Greg Haberny. Detail. Curated by Ambre Kelly . Andrew Gori . Catinca Tabacaru. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This curator-focused show never allows you to be bored, ensuring an alternate-world full of possibility, often delivering on its promise, sometimes fooling you. Like a beehive of compartmentalized activities and scenarios playing out in a fractured psyche, you find comedy, fluid sexuality, bejeweled fantasies, a satiric art-factory performance, D.I.Y. cardboard set design, light illusions in closets, wide photographic vistas, costumed performers, photo shopped hyperfantasy, Basquiat photos by his ex-roommate, and fully immersive environments like a live barbershop delivering dramatic haircuts with multi-screened secret surveillance in the backroom – tracking movements and conversations here and on the street below.

Alexis Adler’s photos of her room mate Jean-Michel Basquiat. Curated by Jane Kim. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo by Jaime Rojo)

While the aesthetic/mythic/pop culture influences are Diluvian and flattening our traditional hierarchies in this information age, shows like this also highlight our level of distraction – and test your ability to edit. It’s not as libertine or scummy as you would expect from a Times Square show in a what looks like a former den of lawyers, but then Times Square is not the flawed and blinkered glam and muck and whirl that it once was. Although who knows what lurks behind those brightly Disneyesque and moldy fur costumes…

Here is a pile of laundry from one perspective. From another it is an anamorphic portrait of activist Hellen Keller. Noah Scalin. Curated by Dawne Langford. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Noah Scalin. Curated by Dawne Langford. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ask Jane Dixon, whose “Male Nourished” paintings of men and their dicks fill an office and overlook the action on the street below. She says she is rather celebrating men’s continuous love affair with their genitalia and portrays them as nearly obsessive relationships.

Jane Dickson. Curated by Michelle Loh. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dixon knows these scenes better than most since she and husband Charlie Ahearn made their own Times Square home movies out the window and overlooking the street action in this famous nexus when gangs beset passersby, drugs were not delivered to your door via text message, arcades were dark  rooms full of pinball machines, and hookers and Johns were just “locals”. Dixon is also an alum of the famous “Times Square Show” mounted with 100 artists in 1980 in a massage parlor on 41st and 7th Avenue. The show later became regarded as a turning point in New York low/hi art and uptown/downtown culture with a list of young artists who became well known in certain circles; Tom Otterness, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kiki Smith, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf, Nan Goldin.

Jane Dickson. Curated by Michelle Loh. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For a moment you can forget the high rents that have driven most of these artists out of Manhattan and into the crowded lofts of Brooklyn, Queens, even Jersey. Quirky, searching, forcefully unique and hoping for a break. The excitement among these 150 curators and 400 artists is palpable on opening night and you want these visionaries to succeed, and indeed they do through this dark lookingglass. Many themes continue out to the street, and for a few boisterous moments this chaotic labyrinthine in fluorescent glow mimics the streets below.

Lee Quinones takes a US propaganda ad which he salvaged from the Brooklyn Navy Yard and adds modern military bombing of Babylon as a backdrop. Curated by Sara Driver. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lee Quinones. Detail. Curated by Sara Driver. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A barbershop in the front, a surveillance room full of screens in the back. Curated by Eve Sussman . Simon Lee. Barbershop. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cate Giordano creates an apartment of papier mache. Curated by Suzanne Kim. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

Michael Zelehoski. Curated by Che Morales. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

David Kramer. Curated by Ambre Kelly . Andrew Gori. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist, writer, publisher and jazz saxophonist Noah Becker does a self portrait against a backdrop of Basquiat. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Curated by Carole Vobe playfully displays that great leveling force of death. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tamara Santibañez and a monochrome hand-drawn teen bedroom from the 1980s. Curated by Justin De Demko. Spring / Break Art Show 2017. NYC, 02-2017 (photo © Jaime Rojo)


Check out Spring/Break 2017 March 1-6.

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WAGMAG Benefit Tuesday – Supporting Brooklyn Artists for a Decade+

This Tuesday night the annual benefit with work donated by 100+ artists will keep WAGMAG free for everyone. The local art guide started around the same time as the current street art explosion did in the early 2000’s – and the handy guide existed solely as a way to get the word out about openings at art collectives and galleries in the then-artist-neighborhood of Williamsburg. While gentrification has chased most of the artists out of Williamsburg now, Brooklyn continues to boom with some of the freshest ideas and talents and WAGMAG’s maps help you to find shows in 15 neighborhoods all over the borough.

The brainchild and labor of love of Brooklyn artist and gallery owner Daniel Aycock in those early years, WAGMAG now is run by Daniel and his artist wife Kathleen Vance. Together they own the Front Room gallery and regularly work with most of the players on the Brooklyn art scene, keeping it real and accessible. They are also big Street Art fans and have allowed the walls on the front of their gallery to be painted and pasted many times over the years by a parade of Street Artists.

Street Artist Noah Sparkes donates work to the WAGMAG Benefit (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In celebration of all the good work they do to enable artists to receive exposure for their work, and to encourage you to go to their fundraiser Tuesday, BSA talked with Daniel and Kathleen about WAGMAG and Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Street Art: How long have you been in Williamsburg?

Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance: WAGMAG, started in 2001 as W(illiamsburg) A(nd) G(reenpoint) M(onthly) A(rt) G(uide). Eventually the demand for listings in other neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn made it necessary to expand to include all of the art districts in Brooklyn. Then we dropped the Acronym and became WAGMAG, Brooklyn Art Guide.  We now serve the communities of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Bushwick, Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill, Cobble Hill, DUMBO, Fort Greene, Gowanus, Greenpoint, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Red Hook and Williamsburg.

Brooklyn artist Scott Chasse donated this piece “Keep Smiling” to the WAGMAG Benefit.

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you describe what WAGMAG is?
Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance:
It’s a free monthly art guide that promotes art venues and exhibitions in Brooklyn with a free listing service of art exhibitions and events, with locations and times, community maps and critical reviews.

Art venues are listed in community networks with adjoining maps and alphabetical listing of exhibitions updated monthly and circulated throughout New York. Guest writers present recommendations of exhibits to visit, with critical reviews for additional reference. WAGMAG, a Brooklyn Art Guide, is online at wagmag.org and in print with a free 16-page printed guide that is circulated throughout New York and surrounding areas.

 

Street Artist Gilf! donated this piece “Empower Equality” (62/200)  to the WAGMAG Benefit

Brooklyn Street Art: You have had street artists on your wall outside the gallery like Noah Sparkes, C215, Nick Walker. How do you look at street art in Brooklyn? 

Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance: The offices of WAGMAG are in The Front Room Gallery in Williamsburg, in a building that has historically been a fertile ground for street artists.  We love the public access to art, made available 24hrs, 7 days a week by street artists, which is unexpected,  sometimes challenging, and innovative in process and placement.

Street Artist Chris of the collective Robots Will Kill donated this piece “We are 138 ” to the WAGMAG Benefit.

Brooklyn Street Art: Are there any Street Artists donating to the WAGMAG benefit this year?
Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance:
Yeah, absolutely. We have Chris (RWK), LOL,  Gilf!, and Noah Sparkes.

Brooklyn Street Art: Why is Brooklyn such a vibrant lively place for artists to work and live?
Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance:
Brooklyn has been a magnet for artists for decades. The availability of studio space and relatively lower rents creates an oasis outside of Manhattan – making it into a huge artists’ mecca.  Brooklyn builds strength from its communities – which have a friendly and open attitude that fuels creativity and expands the boundaries of art-making today.

Here’s a piece in Bushwick Chris (RWK) did a couple of years ago (photo © Jaime Rojo)

WAGMAG benefit committee member and artist David Kesting was doodling the rules on a piece of paper during one of the organizing meetings and he came up with the de facto WAGMAG Benefit guide!  Good job David!  This makes it so much easier to understand how the benefit works. (© David Kesting)

Brooklyn Artist Ward Shelly is one of the better known names who have contributed art to the WAGMAG benefit. This print is called “the History of Science Fiction” (© Ward Shelly)

Street Artist LOL donated this “Love Soldier” to the WAGMAG benefit and will be happy to install it for you (photo © LOL)

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See a full list of the artists works and purchase tickets here:

The WAGMAG Benefit will be at The Boiler (191 North 14th Street) in Williamsburg. Additional info is at www.supportwagmag.org

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