All posts tagged: Elfo

Elfo’s Neo-Dada Butchering Diagram in Turin

July 17, 2021 Artists

Elfo’s furtive and artful wanderings can veer off into the neo-Dadaist fields at times, sometimes wittily so, and textually. The Italian graffiti writer and street artist uses the simplest of devices to capture attention, a reductive and deliberate strategy born of careful consideration girded by impulses to broadcast his view, to be seen and heard.

Elfo. “I’m a Vegetarian”. Inspired by the work of G. A. Cavellini. Torino, Italy. (photo © Elfo)

Here in Turin (Torino) the artist diagrams the messages in a butcherly way – a triangulation of views on class structures, the street-to-gallery continuum, and the tensions separating carnivores and herbivores. Oink!

He says it is “a new ironic artwork” and pays tribute to the late Italian artist and art collector G.A. Cavellini.

Guglielmo Achille Cavellini. *Informazione.* n.d. Cavellini artist file, MoMA Library

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.24.21

January 24, 2021 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Many people in New York and around the world breathed a collective sigh of relief this week when our native son from Queens got on that helicopter with his immigrant wife and
A. left the White House and,
B. flew to Florida.

But for this week anyway, the streets are saying let’s give Biden and Harris and this new administration the congratulations and the honeymoon they deserve. We wish them (and us) the best!

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Anna is a toy, Bastard Bot, CRKSHNK, Elfo, Jason Naylor, Lunge Box, Praxis VGZ, and Queen Andrea.

The meme that won the inauguration based on a photo by photojournalist Brendan Smialowski. Zui NYC brings Bernie out with his mittens. Background by Anna is a toy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

So is the present. Karma Artist in Barcelona. (photo © Lluis Olive)

Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elfo some where in Italy. (photo © Elfo)

TV Boy in Barcelona inspired by Boticelli (photo © Lluis Olive)

That’s Queen Andrea, not QAnon. Also for the record, this is Brooklyn Street Art, not the Boyscouts of America. Although we are easily confused with them often (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 12.06.20

December 6, 2020 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Welcome to BSA Images of the Week.

…and welcome to a December in New York City where shootings have risen 96% this year, the Sugarplum Fairy and Mouse King and The Nutcracker are not going to appear, 24 subway train cars were aerosol bombed in Queens, a Judge ordered the federal government to fully reinstate the DACA program, the Middle Collegiate Church has burned in the East Village in Manhattan, and Red Bull Arts – home of the awe-inspiring Rammellzee show a few years ago, has announced that it is closing in Manhattan.

Looking for a Christmas tree? An accurate barometer of the income gap perhaps, we found two vendors on the streets of Williamsburg who each told us a 6 foot tree this year starts at $150 this year. Later in the neighborhood of Bushwick we saw a collection of 6 foot tall trees for $60 each. In Soho or 5th Ave just double it, or quintuple it.

Also, as an entirely unrelated aside, have you noticed that Noam Chomsky is metamorphosing into Santa Claus? To be fair, Noam is rarely jolly.

Here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring City Kitty, Elfo, Exposure, Easy and Joz, Gak, Giani NYC, Kest, No Sleep, Quality Mending, Raw Raffe, Skewville, TV Head ATX, UFO907, Muk 123, Gen 2907, Oze108, and Unlok.

Quality Mending for Red Art Projects (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Quality Mending for Red Art Projects. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Good to see that 907 crew is masking up! UFO907 in collab with MUK 123 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gen 2907 and Oze108 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Steel Fist Velvet Glove (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It’s metastasized! TV Head ATX (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Told you so… Unidentified artist (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elfo in Italy…the middle of nowhere. (photo © Elfo)

Untitled. Queens, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elfo says “Elite: R.I.P. in 2020” on Walls of Verona

August 5, 2020 Artists

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

That’s the text of a cable sent by the writer Mark Twain from London to the press in the United States after his obituary had been mistakenly published, so the story goes.

Similarly, the “elite” of 2020 may be suitably surprised by this new text piece by street commentator ELFO on the streets of Verona, Italy. Since there are roughly four months remaining to the year, maybe this is a meant to be prophecy, but from what we all can see, the “elite” are getting richer and richer from this pandemic, as well as the custom-tailored “bail-outs” from the right- and left-wing politicians who write the bills.

“The CARES Act Sent You a $1,200 Check but Gave Millionaires and Billionaires Far More,” says this headline from Pro Publica about the rescue plan that helped the common people. This piece and many others say it was a bonanza for the “elite” in the US.

Any prediction for the HEALS act, which has a TRUST act inside it?

“This year because of the pandemic and protest situation I think the ‘elite’ is dying,” Elfo tells us. We’ll believe it when we see it.

“MORTE AL L’ ESTETICA” Elfo Is Done With Aesthetics in Florence

March 3, 2020 Artists

Enough with all these damn murals!

ELFO. MORTE AL L’ ESTETICA!!! Florence, Italy. (photo Grabriele Masi)

Enough with these figurative studies, these needless sucklings of the romantic ego, these thick gilded frames, these meanderings of hue and saturation and volume and texture and drapery, these idyllic landscapes and soul-wrenching faces and kinetic geometries, these soaring flawed metaphors of grandiosity realized in succulent and fulsome lustful blood red, swollen and bruised purple, capacious blue, auspicious goldenrod.

In fact, death to aesthetics. In Florence, no less.

Elfo intends to scrawl upon the walls of the cityscape like a desperate inmate who has lost his will, peaking briefly upward to the wan grey, drained of all expression. His rant is gestural, harried and blunt.

All caps, it reads MORTE AL L’ ESTETICA!!!

The best translation is, I think, “F**k Aesthetics,” he tells us.

ELFO: The Most Boring Things in Street Art

January 22, 2020 Artists

You’ve probably already seen this wall by Elfo so its probably a boring topic. But we also enjoy his self-deprecation – after all he is marketing this wall to us to display digitally. Who knows if it’s even real. It’s better than just another portrait of 2Pac.

ELFO Has a Romantic View of Florence

September 24, 2019 Artists

Suppose it is not so insulting for someone to say that you tend to take a romanticized view of things. Frankly, the world could use a lot more romanticism, and less of the callous, obtuse, horror please.

ELFO may be projecting his rose tinted view upon this abandoned and degraded building in Florence, Italy, but then again his lo-fi naïve lettering tells us he is in on the joke too – he’s just playing with you.

And what a romantic view it is, don’t you think?

Examples of romantic views of Florence from Google Images

Elfo: The Negation of the Image in the Age of Images

July 13, 2019 Artists

The last time we talked about the Italian artist Elfo he was playing with Duchamp and ranting about fake news – in his lo-fi anti-style text rolled across a wall. As is his style, the Italian text maker likes to leave cryptic witticisms on public and private property as he wends his way through the urban cityscape.

Looks like he found another wall to treat in a contemporary context, leaving one of his insider quips where few are likely to see it. Good thing we have a photo. Then again he’s negated the photo in this age of insta– consta– photo making. What is one to do – not post it?

Duchamp Is Fake News : ELFO

Duchamp Is Fake News : ELFO

April 15, 2019 Artists, Interview

The Italian textual conceptualist and urban/suburban public space instigator ELFO has lodged his complaint on a wall against the misinformation that forms our perceptions. The humorous one-off screed caught our attention so we asked him about this low-fi textwork that seems decidedly Duchampian, with a nod to Magritte’s pipe.

Elfo. Verona, Italy. April 2019. (photo © Elfo)

BSA: Duchamp challenged conceptions of the art world with his “readymade” pieces and many a critic called him a fake. Your commentary references the “fake news” meme favored by the right wing news and politicians. How did you make the connection?

ELFO: Currently my work is returning to this message. I want to speak of the world and the history of art in ironic and contemporary way using contemporary terms. I chose Duchamp because his artwork changed the world of art. Duchamp is perfect because he played with fake identity and the critic system rendered him as a fake. He changed the rules of art, for me and many artists.

BSA: What role should art play in this world of “fake news”?

ELFO: In this world of fake news, art probably is a big fake – if it does not reflect society as a mirror.

BSA: Do you think art should always reflect our society like a mirror?

ELFO: The problem is not fake news in this world – it’s the human brain. Art must speak about serious issues like pollution for example. This is the next subject I’ll address since I have been looking at it for a long time.

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