Madrid’s Art Week – who would believe that it could actually happen? And to prove it, we have the 5th Anniversary of Urvanity defiantly strutting from one end of the COAM headquarter to the other. Taking its original inspiration from graffiti, post-graffiti, surrealism, pop, and that broadly applied “Urban Contemporary” tag, Sergio and the Urvanity team have persevered this year again.
Where others have failed, Urvanity has succeeded and grown and even matured – with more than 25 national galleries and others from as far away as New York, Brussels, and Bogotá. This is not about fanboys and big unsubstantiated claims, Urvanity drives for quality, and it shows.
The talks this year revolved around high-caliber artists, gallerists, architects, and curators of projects that have made new pathways and invariably give you insight and inspiration in equal measure. BSA has been proud to sponsor this thinking-persons fair, along with the artists and creators; we even hosted their talks a couple of years ago and loved the folks we met there.
Here are a few images of fine art works evolving from the street practice of a number of artists whose names you may recognize.
To see the complete list of galleries and the artists exhibited with the available works click HERE
His years of eclecticism are melting now into digitally influenced abstraction on Grip Face’s new mural in Palma de Mallorca’s Pont d’Inca neighborhood in the Balearic Islands.
With this pastiche of modern impressions, Grip Face finds a common aesthetic; one that rises from his own histories in skateboarding, graffiti, and street art to evolve this new entry into something he calls his Obstacles Series. This mural in particular is entitled “Les Obstacles génerationnels” (Generational Obstacles). Oh yes, you’ve heard of those.
The artist says he’s not feeling
very optimistic about the future at the moment and that his attitude has crept
into his new mural, where Grip Face generates a visual dialogue about the future.
Perhaps he will feel more optimistic once all the parts of this puzzle come together.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. WK Interact in NYC by Fifth Wall 2. Rub Kandy & Biancoshock: “All the Lights” 3. Not Rented To Humans: Grip Face 4. Elrow’art: Kaos Garden with Okuda San Miguel and Paco Osuna
BSA Special Feature: WK Interact in NYC by Fifth Wall
“It was some sort of freedom,” says WK in this retrospective of NYC locations that he tries to recall with original photo in hand overlaying the original city spot. For some of us, the memories of all of these spots are sufficient, as the city was different then – perhaps more wild and dirty. For WK, the stories and the memories continue to evolve.
Well shot and edited, its a mature way to let the artist speak and evocative of his current manner.
Rub Kandy & Biancoshock: “All the Lights”
In the face of sexy new machine-learning and Artificial Intelligence
– and the auxiliary tales related to art-making, perhaps this video is a way of
preserving the authentic feeling of human discovery in its unglamorous
basicness. Not to overplay this, but this conceptual piece is a meditation on
the underwhelming mechanized aspects of industry, a blatant taunt of banality
in the midst of high gloss unrealness.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conceptual mundanity of the
Italian urban artists Rub Kandy and Biancoshock,
who here demonstrate how to create electricity with a generator in an abandoned
industrial space. It’s a marvelously underwhelming demonstration of the means
of production. To “jazz” things up they throw in intermittent blasts of pop-star
banality as well, sprinkled with blinky graphics.
…Turn up the lights in here baby Extra bright, I want y’all to see this Turn up the lights in here, baby You know what I need Want you to see everything
Not Rented To Humans: Grip Face
First, they look like run down sheds, these new wooden
structures in high weeds – possibly stopped mid-construction, perhaps during
the last economic downturn. Here the missed opportunity of housing, suddenly
coupled with the found opportunity of art exhibition!
“There’s
something both bizarre and magical in abandoned places,” writes Grip Face in
the description of this video. “The course of time invades them, colonizes
them, makes it into its own. The invisible imprints impregnate the walls and
the experiential trace of past inhabitants slips through the cracks like winter
would through a badly insulated window.”
Elrow’art: Kaos Garden with Okuda San Miguel and Paco Osuna
A warmup video for
multi-disciplinary artist Okuda San Miguel and dj/producer Paco Osuna and their
creative intermingling of avant-garde aesthetics with electronic music to
create their vision of ‘The Garden of Delights’. The premiere of the artistic
partnership of Ink and Movement and elrow will be on September 28 at Amnesia
Ibiza. Here’s a taste of things to come!