All posts tagged: Faile

BSA “Images of the Year” for 2015 : New Video

December 16, 2015 Artists

Was 2015 the “Year of the Mural”?

A lot of people thought so, and the rise of commercial festivals and commissioned public/private mural programs probably brought more artists to more walls than in recent history. Judging from the In Box, 2016 is going to break more records. Enormous, polished, fully realized and presented, murals can hold a special role in a community and transform a neighborhood, even a city.

But they are not the “organic” Street Art that draws us into the dark in-between places in a city, or at its margins.

We keep our eyes open for the small, one-off, idiosyncratic, uncommissioned, weirdo work as well, as it can carry clues about the culture and reveal a sage or silly solo voice. It also just reinforces the feeling that the street is still home to an autonomous free-for-all of ideas and opinions and wandering passions. For us it is still fascinating to seek out and discover the one-of-a-kind small wheatpastes, stencils, sculptures, ad takeovers, collages, and aerosol sprayed pieces alongside the enormous and detailed paintings that take days to complete.

The main image above is from a vinyl subway advertisement that was high-jacked and we published it in February of this year on our Images of the Week posting. It’s small, personal, and very effective as you can see someone suspiciously similar to Batman is jumping out of the mouth of someone looking awfully similar to Hedwig of “Angry Inch” fame.

Of the 10,000 or so images photographer Jaime Rojo took in 2015, here are a selection 140+ of the best images from his travels through streets looking for unpermissioned and sanctioned art.

Brooklyn Street Art 2015 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo

Brooklyn Street Art 2015 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo includes the following artists;

365xlos43, Amanda Marie, Andreas Englund, Augustine Kofie, Bisser, Boijeot, Renauld, Bordaloli, Brittany, BunnyM, Case Maclaim, Casg, Cash4, CDRE, Clet, Cost, Curve, Dain, Dal East, Dan Budnik, Dan Witz, David Walker, DeeDee, Dennis McNett, Don Rimx, Ricardo Cabret, LNY, Alex Seel, Mata Ruda, Don’t Fret, Dot Dot Dot, ECB, El Mac, El Sol25, Ella & Pitr, Eric Simmons, Enest Zacharevic, Martha Cooper, Martin Whatson, Ever, Faile, Faith47, Findac, Futura, Gaia, Gilf!, Hanksy, Hellbent, Hot Tea, How & Nosm, Icy and Sot, Inti, Invader, Isaac Cordal, James Bullough, Janet Dickson, Jef Aerosol, Jilly Ballistic, Joe Iurato, John Fekner, Le Diamantaire, Li Hill, LMNOPI, London Kaye, Low Brow, Marina Capdevilla, Miss Van, Mr. Prvrt, Mr. Toll, Myth, Nafir, Nemos, Never Crew, Nick Walker, Nina Pandolofo, Old Broads, Oldy, Ollio, Os Gemeos, Owen Dippie, Paper Skaters, Pet Bird, Kashink, Smells, Cash4, PichiAvo, Pixel Pancho, QRST, ROA, Ron English, Rubin415, Saner, Sean 9 Lugo, Shai Dahan, Shepard Fairey, Sheryo & The Yok, Sinned, Sipros, Skewville, Slikor, Smells, Sweet Toof, Snowden, Edward Snowden, Andrew Tider, Jeff Greenspan, Specter, Stray Ones, Sweet Toof, Swil, Willow, Swoon, The Outings Project, Toney De Pew, Tristan Eaton, Various & Gould, Vermibus, Wane, Wk Interact

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

Top 15 Videos on BSA Film Friday From 2015

BSA Film Friday: 01.23.15

Narcelio Grud Mixes Cement and Sprays It

“Narcelio Grud and “Chaupixo” brings us back into the inventive mind of this experimenter – now hand pumping a slurry of colored concrete over a stencil pattern. The results are solid!”

BSA Film Friday 04.10.15

The Reinvention of Normal: Dominic Wilcox

“By doing the ridiculous, something else might come of it,” says Dominic Wilcox, and we couldn’t agree more.

“Just off the wall. And that is what I’ve always encouraged in him.” says Dominic’s dad.

“I had this idea to come up with something creative every day for 30 days,” says the artist.

And this is how we all move forward.

BSA Film Friday: 04.17.15

Gladys Hulot, AKA Hyrtis Animates David Bowie “Life in Mars”

“BSA readers will dig this animation of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars,” Gladys Hulot, also known as Hyrtis, brings Bowie to slink through the cracks and around the concrete underground, dripping with piercing drama, and plenty of distinctive style. The voice here is stunningly replaced with a musical saw, giving the chameleon just one more layer to his multiple identities. Not precisely street art, but Bowie’s ties to the street are undisputed.”

BSA Film Friday: 05.08.15

Shepard Fairey: OBEY This Film

“This is almost a year old but it is also sort of timeless when you see how Shepard Fairey’s continous re-evolving of his philosophies about art and its place in our lives has come to such cogent arguments. It’s a short film, a genuine distillation of the larger themes that we have seen at work in the life and the career and public person.

Shot by a guy whose primary focus up until this point was nearly exclusively about skaters and skate culture, Brett Novak says he was pleasantly surprised to learn that Fairey was likeable and had a lot of good information to impart. “I was not aware at how incredibly inspiring Shepard would turn out to be.”

BSA Film Friday: 05.15.15

Kinetoscope: Angelina Christina x Ease One

“Slab City is sometimes billed as an isolated desolated off-the-grid sort of place in California so it was an adventure for Christina Angelina and Ease One discovered the remains of this abandoned water tank and transformed it into a circular mural. They call it The Kinetoscope.”

BSA Film Friday: 06.05.15

1010 Creates a Crater in Paris

“And you thought New York had potholes? Be careful in Paris!”

BSA Film Friday: 06.12.15

Born and Bred: The Rise of Street Art in Bushwick

“It’s all about Joe! While you were looking for a brunch spot or a beard wax or simply at your navel, Joe took an opportunity to connect artists with walls and did more for the “scene” in Bushwick than an L Train full of pilgrims ever could. He cleared the way for a slew of local and international artists and writers looking for an opportunity to exercise their creative speech and courted the press with his local native personal story so often that you can imagine a Netflix series will be next.”

BSA Film Friday 07.17.15

Roma Street Art Tribes as Captured by Dioniso Punk

“Disorderly, discordant, and richly chaotic, these two videos are centered around the Italian street art paintings and artists whom you will recognize from our earlier postings on community/gallery organized urban art programming – but within the context of historical art publicly displayed, peoples movements, patronage, fascism, the classics.

Dioniso Punk allows everyone to talk – neighbors, artists, organizers, curators, public philosophers, elected officials, psychologists, sociologists, entrepreneurs, posers, professors, historians, students, an opera singer, the petite bourgeoisie, international visitors and hapless puzzled opinionated locals.”

Part I

Part II

BSA Film Friday: 08.21.15

(RE) Prisma by Narcelio Grud

“The ship Mara Hope, stranded for 30 years on Iracema Beach alongside the Brazilian city of Fortaleza, received a benediction of more color in July thanks to Street Art interventionist and experimenter Narcelio Grud. A mistake in 1985, the ship has become a monument over time, a symbol of the history of the fishing industry, and after so many years a symbol of personal history for people who have grown up with it.”

BSA Film Friday 09.11.15

Hitnes. The Image Hunter / Voodoo Duck

“At the Pine Island Audubon Sanctuary in Corolla, NC, The Image Hunter discovers the importance of duck decoys in Currituck County.”

BSA Film Friday: 10.16.15

Welcome To America Owen Dippie by Erin Dippie

“A nice homemade video this week by New Zealand painter Owen Dippie’s talented wife Erin, who documented his trip to New York and LA. Without the hype this gives you an idea what it is like to be a tourist here, and it is good to see the experience through the eyes of a loving partner.”

BSA Film Friday: 10.23.15

FAILE: “Wishing On You” Times Square 2015 NYC

“We debuted this video by Priest Fontaine live for the Brooklyn Museum audience with Faile and actual chills went up people’s spines. No lie. Now you can see it too here online Capturing the current Times Square as county fair with mountains of screens flashing images around the Selfie Stick Forest, all corporate creepy and still sleezey – Fontaine evokes the magic that Faile is, as well as the pure industry that it takes to make their art work. Also good to remember that it was a hot and humid overnight installation that started at 8pm and ended around 10 the following morning.”

What Happened with BSA + FAILE at the Brooklyn Museum?

BSA Film Friday: 11.06.15

Your Tour Through Dismaland with Butterfly and Lars Pederson

“The views are sadly hilarious, pure sarcasm and commentary on issues and behaviors. If Street Art is meant sometimes to hold a mirror to us as we pass by, this is a genuine funhouse of mirrors at every turn. Of course, this isn’t Street Art – its site-specific contemporary art – and many of the artists are street artists, but not all. Butterfly and Pederson discuss the installations as they encounter them and the viewer feels at though they have gotten a true sense of the wonderful world of Dismal.”

BSA Film Friday: 11.13.15

Ugangprosjektet 2015 in Drammen, Norway. A Film by Selina Miles

“UGANG2015 in Drammen, Norway had two weeks of murals from Street Artists and graffiti writers in late August. A relatively new event curated by local graffiti artist Eric Ness Christiansen (Eazy), the program is already slamming. A small town of 70,000 about 40 minutes from Oslo, they know how to take care of details, including inviting the inimitable Selina Miles to come and shoot it. Any questions?”

BSA Film Friday: 12.04.15

Brandalism Takes Over Bus Stops to Counter Cop21 Misinformation

“Here is a brief intro video about Brandalism’s answer to UN COP21 – and the first of what will surely be more videos about this massive effort by 82 Artists from 19 different countries to take back public space and the public dialogue about climate change from those who are skillfully employing misinformation and bending laws to enable them to continue making money at all costs.”

BSA Film Friday: 10.23.15

October 23, 2015 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. 3 Minutes in Brooklyn
2. NUART at 15 on 2015
3. Vegan Flava: Arms Factory in Lisbon
4. FAILE: “Wishing On You” Times Square 2015 NYC
5. Sandra Chevrier. The Aftenblad Wall
6. Winter is Coming, All My Single Ladies

BSA Special Feature: 3 Minutes in Brooklyn

Bruno Maltor at Votre Tour Du Monde recently came to Brooklyn and made a short video of his experiences here. It’s a huge borough (2.6 million inhabitants) and he got just a little taste but he did manage to hit DUMBO, Bushwick, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, downtown, the Botanical Gardens, the Brooklyn Museum, caught some performers on the subway, and Damien Mitchell painting a mural. Ah Brooklyn, you heart breaker, you love maker, you land of a million dreams and possibilities.

NUART at 15 on 2015

A splendid melange of words and images from this years Nuart festival in Norway, its 15th.

Vegan Flava: Arms Factory in Lisbon

“The roof and walls of every factory will molder away by rain and wind.” Vegan Flava discovers a former arms factory in Lisbon and does a tribute to pain and suffering of the people who were killed by its’ industry.

FAILE: “Wishing On You” Times Square 2015 NYC

We debuted this video by Priest Fontaine live for the Brooklyn Museum audience with Faile and actual chills went up people’s spines. No lie. Now you can see it too here online Capturing the current Times Square as county fair with mountains of screens flashing images around the Selfie Stick Forest, all corporate creepy and still sleezey – Fontaine evokes the magic that Faile is, as well as the pure industry that it takes to make their art work. Also good to remember that it was a hot and humid overnight installation that started at 8pm and ended around 10 the following morning.

What Happened with BSA + FAILE at the Brooklyn Museum?

Sandra Chevrier. The Aftenblad Wall

A special project the organizers of Nuart did with the local newspaper, this is the inaugural piece by Sandra Chevrier.

Winter is Coming, All My Single Ladies

What Happened with BSA + FAILE at the Brooklyn Museum?

September 29, 2015 Artists

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)

Yes, it was a big deal for us so we want to share it with you. A few years after we introduced Faile to the Brooklyn Museum we have been blown away by the success of their exhibition Savage/Sacred Young Minds all summer long, as well as the long lines of people who have flowed through both of their immersive environments (Temple, and Deluxx Fluxx with Bäst). Under the guidance of curator Sharon Matt Atkins, Vice Director, Exhibitions and Collections, the museum has again produced a relevant, modern and dynamic show that brings in the street and resonates strongly with the local Brooklyn community and academics as well.

You must have seen (or been a part of) the ocean of people here one night in July when Swizz Beatz and Faile celebrated art and art-making with many of the youth who gave birth to this current Street Art movement in New York. A central tenet of this encyclopedic museum for the last decade and a half has been to produce exhibits and events that involve the community, that are relevant and impactful and the audience at our event in the auditorium attests to the success of exhibitions like Faile’s in this respect.

Patrick McNeil installing Deluxx Fluxx this spring at the Brooklyn Museum (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Following their work on the street since the late 1990s when Faile began making Street Art, we didn’t actually get to meet them in person until many years later, but we’ve always admired their tenacity and risk-taking and experimentation with their work. The crowning event for us was to interview them on the stage of the museum with the show’s curator Sharon Matt Atkins and to introduce some new people to them live and online; along with a bunch of stalwart longtime fans, collectors, gallerists, art students, and journalists.

The pre-show began with some collaged video of commercials and TV/movie excerpts inspired by Faile’s personal history as youth growing up in the 1980s. Our presentation momentum hit a few speed bumps at the beginning because of microphone outages and we almost lost the rhythm but eventually we got it back and we had a great time with the guests and the audience members, who were so astute and amazing and articulate in their questions and during the conversations we had later with them at the reception.

Our sincere thanks to Ms. Matt Atkins, Patrick McNeil, Patrick Miller, Director Anne Pasternak and The Brooklyn Museum for hosting us, Alicia Boone the Adult Programs Manager for helping put it all together, previous Director Arnold Lehman for his support, as well as Brooke Baldeschwiler, Shelly Bernstein, Emily Annis, Radiah Harper, Patrice Capobianchi, Matthew Branch, Osaro Hemenez, Robert Nardi, Tim, Emily Liebowitz, Paul Bessire, Meryl Cooper, Fatima Kafele, Lauren Zelaya, Margo Cohen Ristorucci, Sally Williams, and all of the staff and folks at the museum with whom we have been working with over these past few years and Chris Jordan, Doc Gregory, and Ray Cross. It is an honor and a privilege to be a Brooklyn neighbor and a part of The Brooklyn Museum family.

Faile’s show closes October 4th! Hurry!

Review of BSA at Brooklyn Museum with Faile on artnet news
Street Art Duo FAILE Urges Fans to Make a Statement at the Brooklyn Museum – Amanda Thomas

Also read our review of the BKM exhibit when it opened:
Holy FAILE! ‘Savage/Sacred Young Minds’ at Brooklyn Museum

See Part II of the interview with Faile on Livestream

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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BSA LIVE with FAILE at Brooklyn Museum Today – Live Streaming 7pm EST

September 24, 2015 Artists

Join Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo, co-founders of BrooklynStreetArt.com In Conversation with Patrick Miller and Patrick McNeil of FAILE today at the Brooklyn Museum.

The event will be moderated by Sharon Matt Atkins, who is the organizer of FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds and Vice Director, Exhibitions and Collections at Brooklyn Museum.

This is a great opportunity for you to take on their expansive exhibition before it closes. The museum will stay open until 10:00 pm. In addition to learning more about their art and their history if you are one of the lucky ones you might bring home a FAILE silk screened tote bag home. There will be a makeshift silk screen shop by Bushwick Print Lab with a DJ duo Chances With Wolves playing music and a cash bar.

Click HERE for further information

LIVE STREAMING LINK BELOW:

https://livestream.com/BrooklynMuseum/failebsa

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.23.15

August 23, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Such a pleasure and honor to give a tour to Brooklyn Museum members yesterday – mainly because of the mixture of people who traipsed through Brooklyn streets with us: older, younger, academic, street smart, curiosity seeking, students, teachers. The questions and observations helped push our perspectives wider.

Good to be schooled by someone who knew a lot about REVS & Cost, and to learn that LMNOP may have chosen her name with QRST’s in mind. Who knew? It was also great to describe the linotype process as it pertains to Swoons’ practice – and only a block later to discover an original carved plywood version of a linotype drilled to a wall by TipToe!

It was especially refreshing was talking with the woman who had not heard of Banksy or Faile or JR but thought she had heard of Swoon – and to see her write these names in a small book for further research. Sometimes we think all this Street Art stuff is such a big deal, then that “perspective” thing kicks in.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Dain, DeeDee, Don Rimx, Elbow Toe, Faile, Gilf!, Klone, LMNOPI, London Kaye, Myth, Os Gemeos, QRST, Rae, Royce Bannon, She Wolf, and TipToe.

Top image above >>> QRST (photo © Jaime Rojo)

London Kaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown with Bast on top. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tip Toe didn’t just put a printed poster up. He put the actual printing device with which you make the posters. This could indicate that he wants you to bring your own paper and ink! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Myth had his text crossed out -originally it said “Bovine lives matter! Go Vegan”. The cartoon image stayed. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Myth quotes Lenin here: “Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”(photo © Jaime Rojo)

Myth has the Venom character quoting the feminist Lucy Parsons, “Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

She Wolf (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Klone (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dee Dee (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don Rimx “La Rumba” in Little Havana, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rae is back on the street sculpture tip, a little bit pop this time (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Looks like Elbow Toe gave Royce Bannon some flowers. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile does a piece from their series about native peoples coming to reclaim lands. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gilf! going for a conceptual timepiece that recalls names of Americans shot by police, with reference to how often it occurs. This is one of two recent time pieces. The other contains high profile nationally known names that have sparked protests – this one has names that are more recent but we didn’t recognize them or understand their significance till we started Googling. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LMNOPI depicts Indira, a child who works in a marble quarry with her parents near Katmandu. The same image was also featured in her Welling Court mural this year. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A child soldier forced into conscription in Myanmar by LMNOPI (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Os Gemeos (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dain (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Times Square, Manhattan. August, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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FAILE “Wishing On You” At The Flashy Crossroads of NYC

August 18, 2015 Artists

FAILE Takes Times Square with Giant Prayer Wheel. Come Give it a Spin!

A folk-art pagoda sitting quietly in the basin of a valley richocheting with electronic propaganda and consumption worship, the newest public piece by Brooklyn’s street art duo FAILE has a few mysteries to reveal to the river of tourists flowing around it and through it. You may need a place to pray in this land of fake Muppets, Three Card Monte and thong-strung patriotic painted ladies. “Wishing On You” draws on European, Asian, and American forms and culture, a tribute to traditions, myths, and big screen adventure.

Faile. Process shot at their studio in preparation for their Times Square installation in NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Covered with images evocative of Times Square’s racier past and American dreams flooded in commercial fonts and appetizing invitation, this new rotating piece may remind you of their other prayer wheels and whet your appetite for their current enormous and interactive solo show at The Brooklyn Museum till October 4th. Try to rotate this hunk of pop and pulp and you’ll need a strong woman to help, but when you do, something glittering will surely happen. Promise.

Faile. Process shot at their studio in preparation for their Times Square installation in NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A marathon of preparation, here you can see some behind-the-scenes production shots leading up to the 12+ hour installation that began at 8 Sunday night and continued through the morning in time for the Faile Unveil at 11 am in 90 degree weather yesterday.

Faile on the skids. Process shot at their studio in preparation for their Times Square installation in NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don’t tarry if you want to see this carved wood reminder of snake oil salesmen, saucy iniquity, and occasional divinity at NYC’s crossroads. “Wishing on You” is a limited run till September 1.

Join BSA In Conversation with Faile at Brooklyn Museum on September 24th.

Faile. Process shot at their studio in preparation for their Times Square installation in NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile.”Wishing On You” In collaboration with Times Square Arts. Times Square, NYC. August 17, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Patrick Miller and Patrick McNeil of Faile.”Wishing On You” In collaboration with Times Square Arts. Times Square, NYC. August 17, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile.”Wishing On You” In collaboration with Times Square Arts. Times Square, NYC. August 17, 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faile “Wishing on You” a collaboration with Times Square Arts is currently on view at the Times Square Plaza on Broadway Plaza between 42nd and 43rd Streets. This exhibition will be on view until September 1st, 2015.

9 Year Old Interviews Faile in the Deluxx Fluxx Arcade

July 16, 2015 Artists

Summer interns are younger than ever this year in NYC!

Thought you would like to see this video that Huffpost made last week as the FAILE show was about to open. Literally it was the day before the opening and behind the scenes people were running around like cats at a rocking chair convention. But you wouldn’t know it by the calm and friendly demeanor of Patrick and Patrick as they show 9 year old interviewer Ada Donnelly how to play the games and make sure she gets the inside story on the Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. The concept is genius! Read the full story HERE:

And here’s a pretty complete run-down of the show we did for the opening o f ‘Savage/Sacred Young Minds’

Holy Faile ! “Savage/Sacred Young Minds” at Brooklyn Museum

July 8, 2015 Artists, Interview

FAILE may be a religious experience this summer at the Brooklyn Museum, but only one of the hallowed installations is called Temple. The seedier, more dimly lit venue will surely have the larger number of congregants by far, bless their sacred hearts.

Celebrating the duality and appropriation of words, slogans, and images has been the baliwick of the duo since they first began hitting Brooklyn streets at the turn of the century with their stencils and wheat-pastes on illegal spots and neglected spaces. In FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds, their new attention commanding/refracting exhibit organized by Sharon Matt Atkins at the Brooklyn Museum, these guys pour it on, compelling you into a complex panoply of possible re-imaginings of meaning that reference pop, pulp, myth, art history, 50s sci-fi, 60s advertising, comics, punk zines, consumer culture and their own pure artistic and branded fiction.

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For fans of this collaboration between artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, Savage/Sacred is a joyride swerving through the visual vocabulary and terminology they’ve been emblazoning across walls, doorways, canvasses, stickers, sculptures, prayer wheels, wood blocks, paintings, prints, toys, and a museum façade in their steady ascendance from anonymous art school students and Street Artists to a highly collected top tier name in contemporary art.

Offering you a full immersion and opportunity for titillating interaction, this show provides an unambiguous sense of the industry that is backing the Faile fantasy. Throughout their work and your imagination and assumed role, you may be villain, distressed damsel, wolfman, fairey, vandal, wrestler, hot-rodder, madonna, whore, supplicant, avenger, surfing horse or simply an arcade hero who is whiling away windowless hours punching buttons, popping flippers and pumping Faile tokens into tantalizing art machines.

FAILE. FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Central to the formative Faile story is an image of the teenage Patricks piecing together clues about the world in these dark dens of possibility and teenage angst, awash in fantasy, aggression, testosterone and communal alienation.

Miller talks about the arcade atmosphere with a certain reverence, “All through Middle School, especially on the weekends, you’d just get dropped off at the mall and be there all day. There is something about the idea of this being a somewhat sacred space as a teenager in arcades. They are sort of a “Candyland” – a magical space mixed with a little seediness. You had kind of a large age range in there. You could get in trouble if you wanted but through the video games you could live out these crazy fantasy experiences. Historically arcades have been like that – very much with the Times Square notion. They’ve always had that connection to an underbelly of things.”

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Do you think New York is still seedy?
Patrick Miller: It seems like it is getting harder to find, in a way.
BSA: So really you might say that this is a public service, this installation.
Patrick Miller: There are so many young people who have never had this experience today. Not only are we trying to share what that was like, it is something that shaped the way we are inspired as artists and the way we make imagery, the way we make icons. The roots of video-game culture are there and now that has sort of bled out today – but also we’re interested in the shared experience because so much of the video game experience is now mobile or is just had on your couch, I think people have forgotten that there used to be these places were you congregated to do this.

For the 5^th public offering of FAILE BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade and the first in a museum setting, Faile extends the scope and adds a handful of new NYC-centric scenarios to the mix and again partners with fellow Brooklyn street artist and spin-cycle collage mutator-in-chief BÄST, whose stylistic counterplay alerts undercurrents of tension with a punk-naïve primal hand painting and humoristic Dada collaging.

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Can you describe the working dynamic with Faile and BÄST?
Patrick Miller: We’ve always been really inspired by BÄSTs work because we start from a similar place but we end up totally differently.
BSA: Yeah the end result is very different
Patrick Miller: Ours are probably more structured and narrative.
Patrick McNeil: I think over time we have tried not to step on each others’ toes. He generally controls the half-tone territory and we control the line-drawing territory.
BSA: So his are more photography-based and yours tend more toward the illustration.
Patrick McNeil: Yep
Patrick Miller: I think the work comes from the same place but his is just turned up to “11”.
Patrick McNeil: Yeah his is more put into a blender.
Patrick Miller: But that has always been what makes us work well together, the styles mix and marry really well and they kind of bring the best out of both.
BSA: And he has become even more abstract recently – more lo-fi outsider artish…., although you guys have delved into children’s coloring books for inspiration as well
McNeil: I think BÄST would like to call it more “outsider art”.
BSA: Why has it been important to keep Deluxx Fluxx a Faile-BÄST collaboration over the last five years thoughout its various iterations?
McNeil: We started this project as a collaboration and we’ve been collaborating with BÄST for fifteen years. We’ve always enjoyed working with him because we just love the friendship and we love the product of our collaborations. I think having the opportunity to be at the Brooklyn Museum and to do it together with him is really special.

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Twenty-two in all, the custom designed variations on arcade video and pinball games from the 1970s and 80s alert competitive urges and quests for domination alongside more mundane tasks like alternate side of the street parking and completing atypical digital art-making sessions where “winning” is defined entirely differently.

Social, sexual, comical, criminal, and environmental concerns all pop and parry while you nearly mindlessly and repetitively punch buttons and fire guns at herky-jerky 2-D motion graphics that transport you to the hi-charged arcade experience rumbling in malls and sketchier parts of town before the Internet. Get a taste for those darkened caves where you racked up points while quarters were sucked from your pockets; you are the favored hero at home in this seductive lair, surrounded by an ear pounding audio-musical triumphalist barrage of hypnotic hormonal victory and id-shattering explosions.

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The adjoining cavernous black-light illuminated fluorescent foosball room is papered with mind-popping illustrations derived and sutured from comics, pulp and smarmy back-pages advertising that once stirred secret desires. Walking in on this teen temple you may feel like looking for dirty magazines sandwiched between mattresses; surely a hyped up juvenile would choose these alternating graphic “floor tiles” in radiation yellow, sugar coated pink and neon orange, giving your footsteps a spongey depth perception test on your way to a round of table football.

The floor-to-ceiling hand painted posters took four people six months to complete, both Patricks tell us, and they all compete for your attention, each a narrative re-configured and augmenting secret storylines, myths, and plenty of white lies.

FAILE’s Patrick Miller demonstrates an art experience where you rip posters off the wall to reveal yet more Faile posters underneath, which you can rip further. FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Somehow it is here in the day-glo madness that we see the closest approximation to the original Street Art experience passersby had in the early 2000s with Faile’s work when they were still a trio that included artist AIKO and in those years just after her departure. These are the bold, familiar graphic punches thrown in a direction you weren’t expecting and can make you laugh.

FAILE’s Patrick McNeil demonstrates how to tag subway walls before the “Bast Ghosts” come after you. FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In a media- and advertising-saturated society our tools of discernment and reason are compromised, deliberately so. Faile is recognizing some symptoms of this compromise and is examining the stories and the narratives that are told, crafting their own dramatic nomenclature from the pile. You might say that their stories are melding with an idealized simplification of North American white dude history, a heroic paranoid absolutism that lays bare the prejudices behind it.

A simple survey of words illustrates the perspective: prayer, bitch, horse, rainbow, sinful, Jesus, warriors, forbidden, Indian, hero, poison, brave, strong, boy, guilty, pleasure, bedtime, cowboys, hotrods, savage, gun, trust, stiletto, tender, hotel, confessions, fight, wolf, saved, girls, lies, vanity, inexperience, restless virgin, innocent, willing, heartbreak, torment, stories.

These are Faile stories, reconfigured with a slicing knife down the middle of the belly, an idiosyncratic collaged pop/pulp style that owes as much to the Dadaist Hannah Höch and pop collage originator Richard Hamilton as it does to Lichtenstein’s sense of storybook romance and Warhol’s repetitive emotional distance.

FAILE. The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In the book accompanying the exhibit, Sharon Matt Atkins, Vice Director for Exhibitions and Collections Management, who organized the exhibition, says the presentation of the arcade in a museum setting “highlights how the present work relates to the art of the past and expands our expectations of the use of public spaces dedicated to art.” Here, she says, “Deluxx Fluxx’s arcade machines, which are simultaneously sculptures and functioning games, may call to mind Surrealism, Dada, and Fluxus, as well as the enigmatic boxed assemblages of Joseph Cornell.”

FAILE. Temple. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Similarly, the signature Temple project has not been presented in its entirety in museum settings previously, and it feels like it is a bit of inspired genius when you are standing in its shadow beneath the soaring sky light at the Brooklyn Museum. The full scale church in ruins was presented out of doors in Praça dos Restauradores Square in Lisbon in conjunction with Portugal Arte in 2010. Echoing its surroundings in Lisbon, the Temple here is also a willful remix of the epic and the rather lesser so.

Culture-jamming at its height, it’s a punk subversion in ceramic, marble and iron that simultaneously genuflects and gives the finger to antiquity and to our soulless consumer culture. By casting reliefs of stylized font-work, romance novelette themes, and ads for call girls in puzzling non-sequitors, the Temple ridicules vapidity while honoring connections to age-old themes, sort of humbling all involved. Here again Faile is questioning the received wisdom of art history, religious customs, and tales of great societies we’ve learned to be reverent of, or maybe just questioning our true knowledge of history altogether.

FAILE. Temple. “Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” Brooklyn Museum, July 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

During the last months while it was being unpacked and assembled we heard the Temple also called a tomb, a mausoleum, a chapel – the differences shared by their ties to the architecture and sculpture and tiled mosaics and ceramic under one roof. The roof in this case is destroyed – possibly because it caved in or because it was ripped off by an angry god who said, “You have missed my point entirely!”

In any case it is a formidable structure allowing meditation, reflection, confusion. In an act of ultimate bait and switch, Faile has deliberately played with what you are supposed to be paying attention to, substituting the associated original intended and inferred meanings of a religious institution and its power. You approach with reverence, looking perhaps for an allegorical means to access the transcendental, but expected symbols have been supplanted by the shallow relics of a culture you may have intended to escape.

Ultimately Faile is not unlike a lot of the world’s great religions; Comforting, reassuring, challenging, mysterious, inpenetrable. Sometimes you have the feeling that there are other people who understand it much better than you. Oh, ye of little Faile. Lean not upon your own understanding. Failes ways are not necessarily our ways. Whether these words and narratives are written by man or handed down from a higher power, why sweat it? It’s a holy good show.

With FAILE: Savage/Sacred Young Minds the Brooklyn museum is once again meaningfully invested in the present and jumped ahead in the examination of what clearly is the first global grassroots art movement, giving the stage to the current century’s voices of the street – perhaps because it has engaged with the city’s artists and communities.

With an enormous new Kaws sculpture in the lobby, Basquiat’s notebooks and Kehinde Wiley’s exhibition in the same year, Faile adds an important voice to the local/global narrative and to the dialogue about the appropriate role of art in the public sphere and major institutions in the cultural life of the community they a part of.

“Faile: Savage/Sacred Young Minds” at the Brooklyn Museum will open Friday, July 10th. Click HERE for further information.

This article is also published on The Huffington Post

BSA Film Friday: 06.26.15

June 26, 2015 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. THIS IS NOW – Endangered Species
2. David Walker in Nancy, France
3. Phnom Penh Murals with Cambodian Urban Art Institute
4. A Primer – The FAILE BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade
5. Drunken Collaboration with Sr. X and Zabou

BSA Special Feature: THIS IS NOW – Endangered Species

Endangered species have been called attention to by Street Artists in recent years, most notably ROA and his large murals around the world, but even Brooklyn local QRST has pasted his paintings of endangered frogs on streets as commentary of our negative effects on entire species, continuously messing with ecosystems and now possibly threatening our own existence.

This short film focuses on a campaign by artist Louis Masai Michel working on the streets of London as part of a funded campaign with Synchronicity Earth, who “support on-the-ground conservation action and creates spaces for cognitive dissidence, working alongside artists, young people, conservationists, activists, film-makers, scientists and enlightened business-leaders to co-create a world in which all life is valued, regardless of economic ‘worth.’”

David Walker in Nancy, France

David Walker just created this mural in Nancy, France to support his current show with Galerie Mathgoth. Not a strict adherent to the École de Nancy , Walker has a craft of his own with aerosol cans that actually bring features and expressions to a life-like quality, all the while eschewing traditional tools of the painting trade. Shout out to Karl’s beard.

Phnom Penh Murals with Cambodian Urban Art Institute

French artists Théo Vallier and Chifumi were invited to gather Cambodian and International graffiti artists to create murals on Phnom Penh’s walls this April and this video gives a good summary of the events. On the streets were new works and collaborations by Chifumi et Théo Vallier, Peap Tarr & Lisa Mam, Tones, David Myers, Koy, Venk, Eltono, and Alias 2.0.

More information of this event sponsored in part by the Institute Francais HERE

The FAILE BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade – A Primer from Miami Beach 2013

If you are wondering what you will see opening July 10^th at the The FAILE BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade and throughout the summer at The Brooklyn Museum, here is a good primer from an installation of it they did in Miami Beach in 2013. We’ve seen the new installation that Faile and BÄST are currently preparing for you, and we can tell you that it is like this, but MUCH MORE.

Video Directed By: Priest Fontaine
Shot By: Noah Carlson & Priest Fontaine
Edited By: Priest Fontaine
Music By: Seth Jabour

Drunken Collaboration with Sr. X and Zabou

They say that this is based on a true story, and one you may have heard of before. We’re not sure if they are advocating alcohol abuse or against it , but it’s always a cheery surprise to hear The Dead Kennedys, isn’t it?

BSA Images Of The Week: 06.21.15

June 21, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Summertiiiiiiiiiiimmme, and the living is eaaaaassssssyyyyy. Yessir, today is the first day of Summer here in New York and the longest day of the year – which means you can take a nap under a tree in the park or on your towel at the beach and still have plenty of time to play when you wake up. There are abandoned buildings to explore, murals to paint, wheat-pastes to stick, interventions to engineer, stencils to cut, selfies to snapchat, potato chips to eat, beer to swig. That couch by the window is calling me even now, the big temptress, as she does so often on these languorous days, induced by the heat. But I will not heed her siren song.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bezt, Buff Monster, Dain, Dee Dee, Faile, Fra. Biancoshock, Free Humanity, Gold Loxe, Li-Hill, Natalia Rak, Okuda, Old Broads, Phoebe, Sophia Hirsch and Johannes Mundinger, and Simon Vazquez and Sebastien Waknine.

Fra Biancoshock’s new installation in Vilnius, Lithuania features a speed checking camera refashioned in the fashion of an Instagram camera. He calls it #picoftheday (photo © Fra Biancoshock)

Sophia Hirsch and Johannes Mundinger installation at the former prison ‘JVA Magdeburg’ in Magdeburg, Germany. (photo © Johannes Mundinger)

Simon Vazquez and Sebastien Waknine interventions in an abandoned hotel someplace in Northern Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Simon Vazquez and Sebastien Waknine interventions in an abandoned hotel somewhere in Northern Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

Streets at the Table for Artists Ball at Brooklyn Museum

April 15, 2015 Artists

Five years into it, The Brooklyn Artists Ball has become a glittering spectacle that speaks to the traditional, the contemporary, and the beat on the street. This years greatest hits collection not only features new elaborate installations by three of Brooklyn’s celebrated Street Artists of this century, Swoon, Olek, and Faile, the custom created environments from equally charged modern thinkers like Jennifer Catron & Paul Outlaw, Fernando Mastrangelo, Duke Riley, SITU Studio, Dustin Yellin and Pioneer Works all speak to the undeniable emergence of the Brooklyn influence on the contemporary art scene.

Man of the hour amidst an explosion of color; This Dr. Arnold Lehman cut-out from the museum’s photo archive will be displayed in multiples and will probably be the visual element that generates the highest number of selfies. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The sky-lit Beaux-Arts Court hosts the dinner that serves as fundraiser, exhibition, and aesthetic theme park, with each artist or collective given tables to adorn and transform. With the guests touring the tables, meeting the artists, watching the awards ceremony and placing bids on the live auction, some guests may forget to eat. This crescendo of course is a celebratory tribute to the museums’ retiring director Arnold Lehman, who effectively has opened the doors to wider audiences and welcomed participation and collaboration during his nearly 20-year tenure – boldly taking risks and diplomatically shepherding the enormous institution into a contemporary relevance envied by some and which now routinely makes guests and patrons enthusiastic, engaged, and dare we say it, proud.

Here are some behind the scenes preparations for the dinner that will honor Lehman and artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Takashi Murakami, and Kiki Smith. In addition to the dinner there is a temporary exhibition of 125 exceptional works of art collected during Lehman’s tenure and a full-on dance party with more installations and which is curated by Fool’s Gold, the independent record label based in Brooklyn. We visited the museum early in the week to catch up with the artists as they were creating their tables – below are shots of the works in progress. None of the tables were completed yet so the images reflect the tables in process.

Swoon’s display includes the original models used for many of her projects, including these two for her Submerged Motherlands exhibit last year at The Brooklyn Museum (photo © Jaime Rojo)

People dining at this Swoon table will see maquettes of the three boats she sailed with merry Brooklyn anarchists across the Adriatic to triumphantly arrive at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Brooklyn’s Olek is transforming two tables with her signature crochet vocabulary to incorporate elements paying homage to honorees Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kiki Smith and Takashi Murakami.

Brooklyn’s Faile illuminate: Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller have a concept for their tables that includes turning them into giant light boxes where patrons are going to dine while looking at iconic film from their silk screen work. Street art followers will recognize many of these images from their work on the street.

Z Behl’s table is a multi-part female trickster and her chariot – is one of three tables being presented by Pioneer Works/Dustin Yellin.

Brooklyn’s Duke Riley, whose waterborne performance projects around New York have frequently landed him in trouble with the authorities, will send some guests out to sea. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tickets for the Ball are sold out. There are still tickets available for the Dance Party.

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