An unusual amalgam of the interactivity of the street combined with the formality of a gallery environment, Magic City opened this fall in a converted factory in Dresden, Germany with an eclectic selection of 40+ artists spanning the current and past practices of art in the street.
With revered culture critic and curator Carlo McCormick at the helm alongside curator Ethel Seno, the richly marbled show runs a gamut from 70’s subway train writers and photographers like Americans Daze, Henry Chalfant, and Martha Cooper to the Egyptian activist Ganzeer, Italian interventionist Biancoshock, popagandist Ron English, and the eye-tricking anamorphic artist from the Netherlands, Leon Keer.
Veering from the hedonistic to the satiric to head-scratching illusions, the collection allows you to go as deep into your education about this multifaceted practice of intervening public space as you like, including just staying on the surface.
It’s not an easy balance to strike – some of these artists have heavy hearts and withering critiques of human behaviors and institutional hypocrisies ranging from 1st World treatment of refugees to celebrity culture to encroaching surveillance on individual rights, government oppression, and urban blight.
Magic City doesn’t try to shield you from the difficult topics, but the exhibition also contains enough mystery, fanboy cheer, eye candy and child-like delight that the kids still have plenty of fun discoveries to take selfies with. We also saw a few kissing couples, so apparently there is room for some romance as well.
“We believe that even the typical city is uncommon, and that the idiosyncrasies that make each city unique are collectively something they all have in common,” says McCormick in his text describing the exhibition. “This is then a celebration of the universal character of cities as well as a love letter to their infinite diversity. The special magic that comes from our cities is germinated in the mad sum of their improbable juxtapositions and impossible contradictions.”
Of particular note is the sound design throughout the exhibition by Sebastian Purfürst and Hendrick Neumerkel of LEM Studios that frequently evokes an experiential atmosphere of incidental city sounds like sirens, rumbling trains, snatches of conversations and musical interludes. Played at varying volumes, locations, and textures throughout the exhibition, the evocative city soundscape all adds to a feeling of unexpected possibilities and an increased probability for new discovery.
Obviously this Magic City cannot be all things to all people, and some will criticize the crisp presentation of a notably gritty series of subcultures, or perhaps the omission of one genre or technique or important artist. It’s not meant to be encyclopedic, rather a series of insights into a grassroots art and activism practice that continues to evolve in cities before our eyes.
For full disclosure, we curated the accompanying BSA Film Program for Magic City by 12 artists and collectives which runs at one end of the vast hall – and Mr. Rojo is on the artist roster with 15 photographs of his throughout the exhibition, so our view of this show is somewhat skewed.
Here we share photographs from the exhibition taken recently inside the exhibition for you to have a look for yourself.
Aiko, AKRylonumérik, Andy K, Asbestos, Benus, Jens Besser, Biancoshock, Mark Bode, Bordalo II, Ori Carino & Benjamin Armas, Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, Isaac Cordal, Daze, Brad Downey, Tristan Eaton, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Fino’91, Ganzeer, Anders Gjennestad, Ben Heine, Herakut, Icy & Sot, Leon Keer, Loomit, MadC, OakOak, Odeith, Olek, Qi Xinghua, Replete, Roa, Jaime Rojo, Skewville, SpY, Truly, Juandres Vera, WENU, Dan Witz, Yok & Sheryo, Ernest Zacharevic.
Curator Carlo McCormick quotes Novalis by way of describing this new exhibit of an eclectic blend of terrific troublemakers, pop-culture hijackers, and show-stopping crowd pleasers drawn from cities all around the Street Art/ graffiti /urban art scene today – and forty years ago. This is a welcoming walk of unexpected intersections that only McCormick and co-curator Ethel Seno could imagine – and pull together as a panoply of street wizardry that acknowledges activism, artistry, anarchy, and aesthetics with a sincere respect for all. It will be interesting to see how this show is viewed by people who follow the chaotic street scene today in the context of its evolution and how they read the street signs in this city.
McCormick, in his customary self-effacing humor, expects there to be some shit flying – as anyone who is involved in this scene expects from the hard-scrabble rebellious margins and subcultures that this art-making interventionist practice rises from. There also are a growing and coalescing mini-legion of scholars and academics who are currently grappling with the nature and characteristics of this self-directed art-making practice rooted often in discontent – now organized inside an exhibition that is ticketed and sold as a family friendly show.
In his descriptions of the public sphere, the writer, historian, author, and cultural critic McCormick often refers to graffiti and street artists messing with “contested space”. It’s an apt description whether we are talking about the public space in high-density gleaming metropolises or the bombed-out grid-less and polluted quagmires of human fallibility and urban un-planning that dot our globe; all public space its nature is contested.
Here is a place used by many artists to protest, agitate, advocate, or deliver critique – and many of the artists in this exhibition have done exactly this in their street practice, often pushing limits and defining new ones. Dig a little into many of the individual story lines at play here and you’ll see that the vibrant roots of social revolution are pushing up from the streets through the clouds of propaganda and advertising, often mocking them and revealing them in the process.
Ultimately, this Magic City experience is an elixir for contemplating the lifelong romance we have with our cities and with these artists who cavort with us within them. “Our Magic City is a place and a non-place,” McCormick says in a position statement on the exhibit. “It is not the physical city of brick and mortar but rather the urban space of internalized meanings. It is the city as subject and canvas, neither theme park nor stage set, but an exhibition showcasing some of the most original and celebrated artists working on and in the city today.”
BSA curated the film program for Magic City with a dynamic array of some of the best Street Art related films today presented together in a relaxed environment. In this video hosted by Andreas Schanzenbach you get a taste of the works that are showing that we draw from our weekly surveys on BSA Film Friday. Over the last few years we have had the honor of presenting live in-person to students and scholars and fans an ever-evolving collection of videos that speak to the spirit experimentation, discovery and culture-jamming outrageousness of urban interventions, graffiti and Street Art. The BSA Film Program at Magic City presents a survey of some of the very best that we have seen recently.
Magic City artists include: Akrylonumerik, Andy K, Asbestos, Ben Heine, Benuz, Biancoshock, Bordalo II, Brad, Downey, Dan Witz, Daze, Ernest Zacharevic, Ganzeer, Henry Chalfant, HERAKUT, Icy & Sot, Isaac Cordal, Jaime Rojo, Jens Besser, Juandres Vera, Lady Aiko, Leon Keer, Loomit, MAD C, Mark Bode, Martha Cooper, Oakoak, Odeith, Olek, Ori Carin / Benjamin Armas, Qi Xinghua, Replete, ROA, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, Skewville, SpY, Tristan Eaton, Truly, WENU Crew, Yok & Sheryo
The BSA Film Program for Magic City includes the following artists: Borondo, Brad Downey & Akay, Ella + Pitr, Faile, Farewell, Maxwell Rushton, Narcelio Grud, Plotbot Ken, Sofles, Vegan Flava, Vermibus
Some behind the scenes shots days before the Premiere
“The special magic that comes from our cities is germinated in the mad sum of their improbable juxtapositions and impossible contradictions,” says curator Carlo McCormick when talking about the new show opening in Dresden, Germany this week in a former engine factory called Magic City : The Art of the Street.
Along with curator Ethel Seno and a creative team (full disclosure, BSA is part of it) McCormick is evoking an interstitial city that rises from the streets in many urban centers globally. Whether it is graffiti, Street Art, urban interventions, detournement, adbusting, or myriad cultural refinements, artists and activists are commonly, sometimes radically, altering the city and our experience of it.
By engaging some of the best visual and intellectual examples of the whole current scene with a full knowledge of our recent past, Magic City lays out a route for you to appreciate the individual and a sense of the cumulative. It’s bold and somewhat romantic move to look for magic in the Graffiti / Street Art / Urban Art scene. Some may argue that it consists of nothing less.
Over the last few weeks about 40 artists have been installing brand new pieces and environments in the long wide factory space in advance of the grand preview this weekend. Here are some process shots of the building of a Magic City.
People’s Street Art preferences can be very hard to predict. On social media we can reliably tell you that opinions are unreliable. Murals that we are sure you’ll love fall flatter than a one-sided pancake. Conversely, that piece we were tepid about? – Up the charts faster than a Kardashian in search of a camera.
With that in mind we thought you might like to see how the top social platforms sorted out the shots of 2015 by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo.
We surveyed the number of “Likes” and shares his images received on Instagram, and Facebook in 2015 and based purely on the numbers, here are the Top 15.
No. 15 : Os Gemeos in Manhattan
Brazilian twin brothers Octavio and Gustavo are Os Gemeos and this year they began popping out of walls – and that’s not all! See the original posting here :
Looks like we picked a winner when BSA curated Iranian brothers ICY and SOT onto this Berlin facade of the Urban Nation. Following the theme of our “Persons of Interest” show there in March with some of Brooklyn’s finest Street Artists, the brothers reflected the fall of the Berlin Wall in the face of this Brooklyn-based woman. Look for a release of their book by Lebowski Publishers with an essay by BSA telling the story of the Tabriz-now-Brookyn-based ICY and SOT to be released in Spring 2016.
Surreal illustrationist Alexis Diaz has been making brains stretch and stand up and clap with his murals from Miami to Hawaii to Lodz, Poland this year, continually impressing with his meticulous and tight cross-hatching skills, wildly wide imagination, and his uncanny ability to collaborate stylistically with other artists. This relatively small piece by him in Manhattan turned heads for months and earned this pic lots of attention via BSA.
Essentially a live shot of the last frame for a stop -action mural video (featured on BSA Film Friday: 11.06.15) this image got a lot of traffic probably because of it’s perceived political critique of the Republican Party – but the artists say that they weren’t even familiar with US politics when they made it.
“Dian is a street artist from European art label Life is Porno. In 2015, he decided to do a series of stop-frame stop frame animations around Europe and the world. This time he turned a building in Brooklyn, NYC into his animated reality. And grew an elephant from his mushrooms…
(The) whole animation was spray-painted, without any computer animation. The Bullshit sign was installed by a legendary fusion artist Shalom Neuman.”
“The Spanish Street Art duo Pichiavo brought the antiquities and modern day graffiti together last week on a soaring multi-story wall in Borås, Sweden,” we wrote of this multi-story mural that appealed to many readers this September. It’s the sort of formula that works again and again for these guys, most recently in Miami last week.
Participating in the same small festival (Borås “No Limit)” as PichiAvo above, the artist Dal East captured the imagination of BSA readers with this soaring wingspan painted high upon a five stepped modern facade building across from a textile university campus.
The first of two entries by Kiwi Owen Dippie on our Top 15 list for 2015, this merging of Raphael’s Madonna with Haring’s radiant baby snapped people out of their stupor with the unconventional paring. A fan of both artists, Dippie’s mural reminded us of Haring’s flirtation with Christian “Born Again” fundamentalism before he decided to be an out gay man in the 1980s – at a time when the so-called Moral Majority was ready to send gays to be quarantined because of the AIDS crisis. This three story mural by Dippie is still vibrating with the tensions he encompassed in this one powerful composition.
Outside of this Lithuanian Street Artists’ typical wheelhouse, its the irony of this piece that contains his DNA. Capturing the same commercial advertising linguistic that Street Artists typically lampoon, the text based riff clearly draws the connection to the appreciation for hand-style that originally marked a “style” revolution in graffiti. Maybe it was this timeless “instant classic” quality that drew so many fans on Instagram and Facebook.
The French couple were in the town of Stavanger to create the World’s Largest Mural so comparatively this was just doodle on the back of an envelope for Ella & Pitr, but something about it struck a chord with you this September.
His pensive and looming old men and women from Morroco have been made into a book recently, but ECB made this guy in dirty old Brooklyn this year and photographer Jaime Rojo caught it a day after heavy rains provide this reflective moment. Read more about ECB’s portraits of working folks in : The Trades: Street Artist ECB Traces Morocco’s Faces
Nearing 20 years in the game, the Spanish Street Artist Okuda is always a pleaser with his rich-hued pop surrealism and geometrics that mimic the man-made urban environment. Here his organic forms in a New York doorway pop out from the dim grayness of the streetscape.
One of the current crop of photo-realists that are drawing so much attention, Ma’Claims’ meditation is often on hands. This one may have had additional appeal on Social platforms because of it’s combination of skin colors and its appearance during the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” marches in cities across the US.
The Bristol-born Mr. Walker has a soft spot for New York and this placement outside a pizza parlor of his iconic bowler-hatted avatar made a lot of connections for viewers on Facebook who shared this image like crazy last winter.
A commercial wheatpaste project with The New York City Ballet, their principal dancer the ballerina Lauren Lovette, a documentary called LES BOSQUETS, and a real estate developer, this image of a woman flying through the air to kiss Manhattan’s sky was so riveting that it continued to ricochet JR’s image across digital devices for months after we posted it.
No. 1 : Owen Dippie “Ninja Renaissance Masters” in Brooklyn
With 1.1 million shares across our Facebook page, this merging of four Renaissance master visages and the 1990s Ninja Turtles masks leap-frogged every other image we posted this year, and busted peoples’ brains open. The New Zealand based Dippie was killing it this summer in Brooklyn before heading out to the West Coast, but this trackside trick continued to draw visitors long after he headed back to his homeland, and his pic wins 2015 decisively. See the original posting here : Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Donatello Spotted in BKLN : Owen Dippie Lies in Wait
Among the various events at this years’ Miami madness called Basel were the multiple projects that intersect with Street Art in the Wynwood District. Walls of Change brought new large scale murals and installations from fourteen international artists who have all done art in the streets at some stage of their career and represent some of the better known as well as a few up-and-comers.
The corporate sponsored program curated by real estate CEO Jessica Goldman Srebnick of Goldman Properties also debuted The Wynwood Walls Garden, a new space that cleverly added instant height to the scene by stacking shipping containers on top of each other.
Our thanks to Todd Mazer for sharing these fresh images for BSA readers to see what new pieces captured his eye at the installation. The invited list of artists includes Case (Germany), Crash (USA), Cryptik (USA), el Seed (France), Ernest Zacharevic (Singapore), Fafi (France), Hueman (USA), INTI (Chile), The London Police (UK), Logan Hicks (USA). Pichi & Avo (Spain), Magnus Sodamin (USA), and Alexis Diaz (Puerto Rico).
Urban Nation (UN) and Iceland Airwaves Festival Create Mural Program
Sound and vision are inextricably bound in the modern music canon, with inspired visuals leading our auditory imaginations at least since Toulouse-Lautrec’s depictions of Moulin Rouge orchestral and singing talents. Later illustrators were important for ushering us into the jazz era with snappy collage and geometrics for album covers and the birth of rock and roll expanded and shaped popular album-oriented daydreams. With every subsequent genre and subgenre of music from pop to rap to metal to disco and EDM, static and video artists continue to visually augment, interpret, define, and expand upon the music that we listen to.
This autumn in Iceland an equally inspired program pairing of 10 Street Artists with 10 musicians for the Airwaves music festival brought Reykjavik new murals from a mix of local and international artists. Since Iceland is the new Brooklyn, you’ll like to see how Berlin’s Urban Nation (UN) is precisely on top of something hot and icy with these eye-popping murals inspired by pace-setting modern sounds.
“I love music,” says UN Director Yasha Young as she describes the process that she and Iceland Airwaves’ Grímur Atlason and Henny Frímannsdottír went through to select music for their 1st edition of Wall Poetry. “We started to play our favorite bands from the lineup to each other, researched their album art, read their lyrics in great depth and watched all the video footage we could find,” she explains. “After that we decided who we thought would be interesting to approach for such a creative adventure. I know the artists I work with very well so it was more about listening to them and defining in more detail what the their individual ideas were for this project. The main goal for me was to pair them with the right collaborative partner musically and visually.”
“With paintings in and around Reykjavik the artists had time to complete their walls in time for the 10 day music festival in November, drawing the attention of fans and locals who were interested in the artwork that is impacting their daily experience of the city. The musicians were asked to provide the street artists with a song, lyrics or poetry especially chosen or written for this project,” says curator Frímannsdottír on the site. “The visual artists were provided a city wall as surface for the large scale work.”
Artist and musician collaborations for Wall Poetry include:
We spoke to Yasha Young about the first year of Wall Poetry and the challenges of mounting a project like this:
Brooklyn Street Art:How important is the visual aspect of music to you? Many people may not always make that connection. Yasha Young: To me it is so very important. I am a visual person to begin with but I think that it is vital as an individual who works with and for artists to work across genres and with as many different creative aspects as possible to be able to create one lasting and meaningful overall experience.
I remember buying LP’s for their cover art and the stickers and zines that came with them. I remember Buzzocks’s and The Ramones buttons and the silk printed posters by the Sex Pistols that came with the LP if memory serves me correctly. I think about The Rolling Stones “Some Girls” sliding cover and the art for Pink Floyds ‘The Wall’ and the “Led Zeppelin III” album with its rotating cover art that you could interact with.
And of course music videos became huge productions; actually they are little films that often connect with you on an even deeper level and enhance your experience of the music. Videos were launch pads for creative careers and massive innovations; for example Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’, ‘Cry’ by Godley and Crème, Gorillaz’ ‘Clint Eastwood’, Radiohead’s ‘No Surprises’, and my all-time favorite song and visuals combination was Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit’. Of course as we speak I’m thinking also about Iceland’s Björk and her video for ‘ Human Behaviour” and John Grant and Tate Shots collaboration… I could go on and on.
(Young, continued) In my career I’ve had the great pleasure to be part of making album art happen for bands, such as KORN’s ‘Untitled’ for example. I worked with many bands on that creative level and it only deepened my connection and convictions when it came to art and music. Today we have a one-click behavior for experiencing streaming music that almost reminds me a little of when video killed the radio star. There is an essential part of the experience that is fading and we feed it with the “instant buy”.
I believe that we are losing more than ‘just’ the record store and the poster art or album cover. We are losing an essential and lasting connection that came with the purchase of the record or CD but was established long before; the multi-faceted creation of the entire visual aspect. You became part of a creative baseline and connected to the music through the visual work. Reading the lyrics as audio poetry on the back sleeve or the LP or interacting with the music and the art made it a much more lasting and impressive experience in my view. This is just the surface of what I think and would like to explore even further and on a deeper level next year when we return for the 2nd edition of Wall Poetry.
Brooklyn Street Art:What inspired you to start the project? Yasha Young: I am always inspired by new opportunities to bring together different artistic genres and unusual or challenging – but always exciting – new venues. I had been visiting Iceland Airwaves for many years and finally decided last year to find walls and spaces and to connect with the Iceland Airwaves crew.
My idea was to visually prolong the reach of the music and bring it onto the walls through well-conceptualized and executed art pieces. In a way I wanted to re-connect two entities that have always been vital and necessary for each other in a public space, with music and art spilling out of the concert venues onto the streets and into the lives of people.
It was almost like we were going to extend the music, with the core idea being “We paint the music you love to hear”. Once that was established as the core of the project I very quickly had an idea of which visual artists would be not only be a great fit for the city and the project but also who would be able to work in rather unusual and unknown conditions – namely, the Icelandic weather, and I say this with great fondness for those wild and unpredictable skies.
Brooklyn Street Art:How did you choose the lyrics? Was it a difficult process? Yasha Young: Actually I only picked the bands and visual artists. It was more about creating and encouraging the connection between both of these groups to get their beautiful creative minds talking together. Once connected they picked songs and talked about their choices in depth. I was a bystander, a very curious fly on the wall and following the process was simply amazing. To read the exchanges and feel the moment the spark ignited – that moment to me is, and will always be, what marks true curatorial success and is key to all collaborative creative projects.
Brooklyn Street Art:Were there any challenges along the way? Specifically regarding logistics.. Yasha Young: ( laughs ) Yes! Many many many – but less in the actual execution of the vision and more in the daily production. For example the wind picks up and the mechanical lifts start swaying in the wind like a leaf. It was “Safety first” of course so we had to stop working immediately. Often the rain can be surprising and torrential and water runs down the walls like little waterfalls washing all the hard work from the night before off the wall again. But these artists are professionals and in my job the goal is to work as innovatively as possible – always finding or inventing new methods and finding other options.
It’s part of the journey and it can actually be fun. For my stubborn mind the only factor that will always be in way is time – we have not found a way to stop it or make more of it.
Lithuania’s Ernest Zacharevic transformed the shadow of an earlier building into a personal photo book.
“It’s inspired by the song ‘I Miss You’ by Dikta,” says Ernest. “The image has the same sadness and nostalgia in the photographs that I felt in the piano track song. The work is my imagining of all the past scenarios that could have happened in this old heritage house, physically and emotionally being taken down and rebuilt.
It’s more about memory because after I spoke to a lot of locals they were very nostalgic about how Reykjavik used to be, not so keen on how modernized it has become.”
Rounding out the Thanksgiving week here as people think back on what they have to be thankful for in New York and across the US. Despite the class war on the poor, near-weekly proof of systematic racism and extremism, gun violence that feels out of control, and 3 songs on the top ten by Justin Beiber, we have to admit that all is not lost – and we still have a pretty strong union of cool people who actually love our neighbors and multi-cultures and are willing to show it every day.
The art we see in the streets continues to evolve; People like Gilf! are combining experimentation and activism in the public sphere while others are looking for ways to address a variety of social/political ills, – meanwhile many artists now seek and secure legal spots to put up their work, use hash tags and Instagram as marketing directly to collectors, advertisers are mimicking street art to promote brands, and Wynwood in Miami is preparing to showcase some of the flashiest displays of sponsored murals and participants yet during Basel next week.
There is a rising chorus of horrified detractors who say an organic grassroots art form is being commodified. It’s not political enough! It’s narcissistic! It’s all privileged white kids who don’t appreciate the true roots of graff culture! Calm down everybody, we can handle this. There is room for all ya’ll, like they say down south.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Ai Wei Wei, Dee Dee, Ernest Zacharevic, Gilf!, Gum Shoe, Himbad, Invader, Isaac Cordal, Jilly Ballistic, Le Diamantaire, Osch aka Otto Schade, Ouizi, Sipros, and Swoon.
The Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic has completed his fourth collaboration with a photograph by Martha Cooper. Well executed in this New York location, Ernest is drawing inspiration from Ms. Cooper’s photographs of children at play on New York’s Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1970s.
This is the harvest season when all the fruits of Street Artists labor are on display for everyone to admire – and just before the frost transforms all the leaves and turns the grass brown and your cheeks red, it is time for you to go outside with your camera. There is a new talented crop of artists on the street that has been maturing these last few seasons and of course there are the perennials on display as well. New York in the autumn is always dramatic; the perfect stage to unveil new productions, new art shows, new movies, new musical compositions, and new standards being set. If the pickings for this weeks BSA Images of the Week are an indication, Autumn is at full peak right now, pure splendor.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Billi Kid, City Kitty, City Rabbit, Danielle Mastrion, Dee Dee, Elbow-Toe, Ernest Zacharevic, Hiss, Kai, Myth, Olek, Phoebe New York, Pixote, Sean9Lugo, Spider Tag, Tom Fruin, Tony De Pew, WK Interact, and You Go Girl!
If you are looking for a neighborhood that is analogous to what the Lower East Side of Manhattan was like in the 1970s, you have to go to the outer part of the outer boroughs because very few working class everyday people can afford to live on the island anymore. When photographer Martha Cooper was shooting with black and white film in those days the LES was more or less a bombed-out scene of urban abandonment and municipal decay.
Drugs were prevalent, so were gangs, police were not. Nor were jobs, opportunities or parks that kids could safely play in. Cooper was interested in capturing the games that kids devised, sometimes out of the most common items that were available – like giving a ride to your brother by commandeering his stroller around the sidewalk at top speed.
Lithuanian Street Artist Ernest Zacharevic is sitting cross-legged on a sidewalk in Bushwick, a neighborhood in Brooklyn that is rapidly changing – at least that’s what real estate interests have banked on. On a typical weekday you will see many families struggling to keep the bills paid, more carefully selecting food and household items from the stores along Broadway and Graham Avenue and Metropolitan than in previous years – many just balancing their payments, others falling behind. Here on a graffiti tagged wall Zacharevic is painting with brushes to bring Cooper’s 37 year old photo from Manhattan to life in Brooklyn.
As he has done in Malaysia principally and in selected other cities in Europe, Zacharevic is creating street art that includes a sculptural aspect that pops his portraits out from the wall, bringing the street scene closer to you, somehow closer to life. The image of children at play is integrated with its surroundings, a scene that may be repeated in the flesh here on the sidewalk while you watch him carefully checking his source image and replicating with brush.
In this second of three installations he is creating in New York using Cooper’s photos, Ernest is an unassuming figure and completely focused on his work as the car horns honk, brakes squeal, and the elevated train rumbles inelegantly overhead. In fact, most people walk by without taking note of his work and few stop to ask a question, so integrated is his small scene with the surroundings.
Great weather for hiking, tossing a football, checking out stoop sales, spray painting, and if you are an orthodox Jew in New York, building a sukkah. On the Street Art tip Shepard Fairey’s new show opened and you can read his interview with RJ at Vandalog here, Lithuanian Ernest Zacharevic began his series of projects to come with Martha Cooper , two frenchmen named Boijeot Renauld have arrived to build furniture and sleep on it across sidewalks of NYC, BSA is hosting FAILE at the Brooklyn Museum this Thursday for a talk (you’re invited), and Pope Francis is scheduled to hit Central Park on Friday. Otherwise, just another ho-hum week in dirty old New York.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring A Pill NYC, Andres Flores, Art is Trash, Dale Grimshaw, Emilio Florentine, Ernest Zacharevic, Martha Cooper, Frump, IAC, Kid Fly, Norman Kirby, Love is Telepathic, Muckrock, Ramen, Solus, WhisBe, and You Go Girl!
This Sunday’s Images Of The Week seems to have an overriding theme which wasn’t really planned. It just happened.
A preponderance of stencils, many of them miniature and most placed without permission are here for your consideration. Some of the pieces have been on the walls for years while others are fairly new. After a few days admiring large murals in Norway and Sweden, these little missives are sweet.
Futura also came back to New York from Norway just in time to hit the hallowed Houston Wall yesterday and Martha Cooper is hanging there as well, so you will want to check that out! Martha and John Ahearn just opened their new dual show Thursday called “Kids” at Dorian Gray on the LES, which we thought was dope.
Also in town are Ernest Zacharevic, who will be working on a special project, David Walker has been seen poking his head into things, and Vermibus is popping up here and there on bus shelters with his dissolved portraits. A number of artists and fans are in NYC for the Brotherhood show at Jonathan Levine curated by Yasha Young, and of course Shepard Fairey has his first New York show in five years coming up this week with all new work on exhibition at Jacob Lewis Gallery called “On Our Hands”. As in blood, yo.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring APosse, Dolk, DotDotDot, Dotmasters, Ella & Pitr, Hama Woods, Isaac Cordal, JPS, MIR, Nafir, the Outings Project, Strok, Martin Whatson and TREF.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
