“It took us only 10 minutes to collect all this trash because there was so much of it – including American brands – in the river by this village,” says Icy as he tells us about the trip he and his brother Sot made last month. A gorgeous and historically diverse city of 1.5 million people, Tbilisi reflects art, architecture, trade and culture that have given the Georgian capital a reputation as a crossroads for Europe and Asia.
During their stay with the Art Villa Garikula, a self organized community contemporary art center begun Tbilisi born painter and educator, Karaman Kutateladze in 2000, Icy and Sot did two pieces and an ad takeover that reflect the global problems posed by a consumer culture sold by corporations with little concern for its impact long term.
The brothers were in town as guests of the Nova I Festival. “They were such a wonderful people,” says Icy, “and it was a magical place to work. They do art residencies and have held this festival every summer for the past 9 year where artists go to make installations, sculptures and paintings.” The Art Villa Garikula and its collaborative art community provide exhibition space and a museum facility with more than 300 artworks of contemporary art. They also offer unconventional educational programs based on experiential learning, an artist-in-residence program, and the annual festival.
Often more than a little ironic with their placement, this new sculptural figure is positioned in the midst of the rolling Georgian landscape, Sot says, “we loved the nature and the landscape – it was a perfect opportunity for us to make work about the nature and the environment.”
A second piece not shown here is a human shaped mirror buried in a grassy lot reflecting the sky – but that may appear in a future posting.
Here also we see an ad takeover with the simplest imagery of a free-flying bird trapped beneath a clear plastic water bottle. According the the World Counts website, we only recycle 1 of every 5 water bottles. Guess where the rest goes?
“Its so sad to see how much plastic trash we produce,” continues Icy. “We all should try to use less and less plastic in our life. Every single piece of plastic that has ever been created since the 19th century its still somewhere in our planet.”
Sot adds “Plastic is killing the planet and our health.”
A New Exhibition Marks the 1917 Revolution in St. Petersburg at the Street Art Museum
This spring, a hundred years since the Russian Revolution, a new Street Art inspired exhibition in St. Petersburg may reflect the ambivalence that competing storylines produce in the re-telling of history. A hundred years since the workers movement displaced the Czar and his family following three hundred years of power, the streets don’t look like they will return to the Bloody Sunday of hundreds of workers lying on the pavement, but a certain unruly violence can be sensed in the performances and artworks nonetheless.
“Brighter Days Are Coming”, co-curated by Andrey Zaitsev, the director of Street Art Museum and Yasha Young, director of the Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art in Berlin, brings the voices of 60 current artists with roots in the Street Art/ graffiti practice to discuss that specific revolution or the theme of revolution itself. Largely from Russia and using everything from aerosol to concrete to bricks to bones to smoke, it would appear that the effects of 1917 are even now difficult to resolve.
The Street Art scene is familiar with the schizophrenia of identity and the loosely tossed labels that never exactly fit. Multiple participants and categories of art-in-the-street now apply – perhaps reflective of the multiple individual stations one can occupy in society: citizen/ loyalist/ worker/ owner/ globalist/ revolutionary/ consumer. Awash in the borderless Internet of everything and nothing, it is often the youngest adults for whom Street Art appeals and has currency, an imperfect authenticity you can engage with. Ironically, there may be a way to accommodate these ubiquitous monuments of Lenin and other static heroes in your periphery as you walk by them playing with Pokémon on your digital device. One way is to make them your own.
Clicking “Like” Won’t Do It
There is a struggle today to discern the cultural weight and meaning of visual culture because hierarchies have been flattened and distance is seemingly elastic in our digital experience. Iconic Lenin may mistakenly be reduced to icon Lenin, a simplified button on one’s phone. The digital space can create a sense of intimacy with strangers and yet an odd distance when considering actual lives of peasants, or the fight of the workers, or the struggle of artists for that matter.
One sure way to appreciate art is to see it in person, to contemplate while gazing on the expanse of an enormous mural or trudging across the grounds of this plastics factory/ Street Art Museum on the outskirts the former Petrograd – one that was begun by twenty-somethings in love with global Street Art and is heavily populated with them.
Indeed a low-budget looking satirical promotional video for the exhibition posted on the Street Art Museum Instagram page appears as a mocking half-hearted celebration by costumed Russian Millenials and Gen Z’s dancing around a smiley icon cake whose dynamite candle suddenly explodes in a bit of stock video of a fiery Armageddon.
What is the future or past we’re celebrating? Does anyone know? Thanks to the explosion the video feels humorously heavy in the foreboding sarcasm department. Maybe it is just an insider reference to a favorite movie scene or video game. There ARE, after all, three curious Pokémon characters at the kitchen table. The official poster features the cheerful sunshine-yellow Pokémon with lipstick and a full-mouthed smile. Somehow it has more credibility than any human figure, smiling and terrifically positive that the future is bright.
The fourth such large exhibition in this suburban factory campus and its open outside space since the museum received official accreditation in 2012, this season at The Street Art Museum features 60 or so artists from 12 countries who look to the events 1917 for inspiration. As organizers note on the museum website, the topic is being addressed with retrospective shows this year by great museums worldwide including The MOMA in New York, Tate Modern in London, the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, and the Tretyakov Gallery in Russia.
“The main object is the heritage of the Russian avant-garde, whose world-spanning and messianic spirit had a serious effect on the development of contemporary art,” explains the site. For practitioners and fans of the graffiti and Street Art scenes that have evolved in cities globally during the last 50 years, one revolution or another is never far from their mind at all. At the epicenter of history here in Shosse Revolutsii, the Street Art Museum is an appropriate place to at least contemplate the subject.
Large scale installations on walls throughout the compound are complemented by sculptures in open spaces; some of them interactive, others static, still others are reproductions of historic and recognizable figures. Most commanding would be the Lenin. Most remarkable would be the reproduction of The Hermitage.
The recreating of The Winter Palace façade is a guilty delight, one of the 6 buildings of The actual Hermitage that holds the world’s largest collection of paintings only kilometers from here. A world icon of the revolution since being stormed in the fall of 1917, the massive aquatic (or French) blue facsimile of the façade in this museum courtyard provides a haunted, riveting, and admittedly comedic context for everything that passes by it, behind it, before it.
Elsewhere Lisbon based Street Artist Bordalo II has brought his practice of creating an endangered animal with local garbage for his installation of the famous Russian Snow Leopard – an animal now critically endangered, with its numbers estimated by some as 100 or less. One may wonder, certainly these artists do, what animal species will still be here in 2117.
Russian artist Dima Rebus watercolor painted one of his character’s faces on the bottoms of 340 oil barrels by hand as a nod to the mobs of people who gathered together to form the the uprisings of the revolution. He says he has plans to disperse the mob wall, to vanish it at the end of the exhibition, painting each person out one by one with spray paint. Entitled “Life Goes On” the artist says, “Revolutions happen and pass, but life goes on.”
The Italian illustration-style Street Artist name Millo painted one of his imaginary highrise milieus where a giant child is at play in the center of an urban setting. The revolution here is the represented by the ripples of waves passing literally through the character, he says. On social media he describes it this way, “Each planet follows its orbit and all of them are the personification of the revolutions lived by the main figure. The message I want give is to find your personal revolution. When something is getting over is the exact moment to find the strength to revolution”.
French Street Artist Kazy Usclef (above and below) normally draws influences from Futurism and Suprematism so his connection to the Russian avant-garde is a short distance. He also isn’t afraid to touch upon current political sore spots.
In “Rebel Sex Love Resistance,” the two entwined figures are female and one is wearing a balaclava, features that together are perhaps subtle references to the activist art music group named Pussy Riot, famously contentious and Anti-Putin.
During its opening days the exhibition featured ongoing performances by contemporary artists and independent theater troupes, turning the courtyard into a stage and the “Hermitage” into a set.
Lead by curator and theater director Danil Vache, costumed performers appear to take inspiration from specific historical events and themes of radical change, societal rupture, militarism, and the uprising of poor and working class to claim power. Inside and onstage, live performances of poetry, speeches, and music were featured throughout the week.
Additionally there were a few panel discussions and forums like “Simulacrums of Revolution,” where moderating curator/ theatrical producer Mihail Oger spoke in conversation before an audience with guests like American graffiti/Street Art photographer Martha Cooper, Ukrainian artist Pasha Kas; Russian graffiti writer and contemporary artist Maxim Ima, graffiti/public artist Anton Polsky (known as Make), and Urban Nation (UN) Cultural Manager Denis Leo Hegic. Hegic, who spoke before images of the Berlin Wall during his presentation, tells us about his and the UN’s involvement with the exhibition.
BSA:The title of the exhibition is sort of a satiric, sunny reference to a happy future – “Brighter Days Are Coming”, yet it is cast directly under the shadow of the hardship and conflicted relationship Russian’s and all of us have with the past. How did you see the exhibition responding to this dichotomy?
Denis Leo Hegic: The title of the forum “Simulacrums of Revolution” is actually a good supplement to the title of the exhibition itself, since the idea was not to define revolution or to claim revolutionary DNA, but to reflect on what is the “Representation” of revolution on various levels and in our own understanding, in historical, scientific definitions and in the artistic representation.
Hegic points to the age old practice by humans of the falsification of historical events to form a narrative. He also points to “fake winter palace or the fake museum” and compares it to the famous painting “The Storm on the Winter Palais” by Pawel Petrowitsch Sokolow-Skalja as examples of re-writing history. You can almost anticipate that Hegic will transition readily into the topic of “fake news” or “propaganda,” but he takes another damning route instead.
“We can draw parallels to the fakeness of our own representation today – with our own “curated” Instagram accounts, or the millions of selfies we make from flattering angles – this seems to be a considerable part of our daily thought and activities. This is where I see the direct link to the representational powers of every revolution in our own present time.”
He also disagrees with how we characterized the title of the exhibition, “Brighter Days Are Coming.”
“The title should not necessarily be understood as a satiric one,” he explains. “Brighter days are always about to come. The light will inevitably win over the darkness and human optimism will remain a motor that keeps our evolution process in motion. Ironically, our evolution itself might bring our extinction too – but under the assertion ‘Brighter Days Are Coming’ we do continue to live and to hope.”
The museum itself, stationed on the campus of an operating plastics factory and under the directorship of the son of the owner, highlights some of the conundrums of featuring autonomous global public art movements in a time and place where official state messages speak more to loyalty than revolution. For many critics, Street Art belongs in the street, so the very existence of this institution is a non-starter.
Finally it is notable that St. Petersburg itself has very little of what you may call an “organic” Street Art scene – and one does not see Fascist or AntiFa post-Soviet graffiti furiously scrawled here. This appears to be comfortable protected space for debate about theory and history not easily identified by a graffitied or muralled exterior.
But these are only a few of the multiple ironies at play in the organized chaos of today, where the German Goethe Institute and Berlin’s Urban Nation Museum of Urban Contemporary Art are partnering with the St Petersburg Street Art Museum to launch a show commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. For those who do not know at that time Russia and Germany were engaged together with Austria in a brutal and bloody war that killed three million people.
For the sixty or so artists and performers participating inside these factory walls you may also wonder how or if their work has been affected by the work of this Revolutionary era’s giants in literature, ballet, painting, music and movies — people like Serge Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Eisenstein, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Kazimir Malevich. Each of these names became as closely identified with their disciplines as the politically, socially, anthropologically tumultuous eras they worked within.
As in every era, today technological revolutions are affecting all people regardless of nationality or national politics.
The Iranian Street Art duo who currently live in Brooklyn, Icy & Sot, steer clear of the politics of nations in their installation by building a wall – itself overlaid with political overtones – but here it is intended as a metaphor for protecting privacy. By bricking up the periphery of a bathtub, the brothers contemplate “No Privacy”, an occurrence enabled by our complicity (and obliviousness) to being tracked and followed by strangers via our smart phones.
“The bathtub and shower are everyone’s private place,” they tell us. “In this installation, even though we built a wall around the tub there is still no privacy because there is a smart phone playing music nearby, enabling some entity to always watch or listen to you.”
A Final Word
By focusing this large exhibition at its original epicenter organizers are bound to strike nerves and inflame passions and, although Russians don’t appear to be exactly celebrating the centennial, the opinions about who deserves blame and credit for the events that unfolded are all over the map. Which is why, perhaps, curators looked far for new takes on the topic.
“First and foremost this exhibition was meant as a representation of a broad international scene,” says Denis Leo Hegic as he talks again about the perspectives artists here bring to the topic of revolution. “The artists curated by the UN were all coming from different countries, bringing different ideas of portrayal and embodiment of revolutionary experience. The starting point of this revolution in 1917 did not stop at national boarders and claimed to be an international or even global movement.”
“Similar this is probably the most direct, democratic and largest global art movement today so the choice to bring international guests, with their own historic and different national backgrounds and their individual talents and approaches to creation – these were the most valuable contributions to the exhibition and the audience.”
Our sincerest thanks to Martha Cooper for sharing these photographs with BSA readers! We really appreciate all that she does and who she is to so many.
Krys has been doing graffiti since 1985 and is one of the pioneers of graffiti in the Soviet Union. He was inspired when he first saw the American documentary “Hip Hop and Its History” when he was 14 years old. Basket and Max are also pioneers of graffiti in the USSR.
The Street Art community donates time and art to a program that keeps teens out of jail in New York. An annual auction overflows with work by today’s Street Artists.
With the precision indicative of her architect training Rachel Barnard describes the art/criminal justice project for youth that she founded five years ago – which keeps growing thanks to artists’ help, community involvement, and an evermore engaged criminal justice system.
“Alternative Diversion,” she calls it, this court-mandated art program that prosecutors can offer to New York teens as a sentencing option instead of incarceration or doing community service.
“What we’re talking about here are 16 and 17 year-olds in Brooklyn who have been arrested for things like jumping the (subway) turnstyle or having a small amount of marijuana on them or petty larceny,” Barnard explains in a new video for YNY.
“Say you get a misdemeanor record at 16,” she says “What that means is that you’re less likely to get employment, even though you are more likely to be poor and need employment more than most other 16 year-olds.”
Each year the programs called Young New Yorkers (YNY), which Barnard founded, work directly with these youth to redirect their route in life, to provide guidance, foster self-analyzation and to set productive goals for the future.
To some observers it may sound ironic that Street Artists, many of whom have done illegal artworks on walls throughout New York City, are the principal artists pool who are donating their time and talent here to the fundraising auction in lower Manhattan.
With high profile names like Shepard Fairey, Daze, Dan Witz, the Guerrilla Girls and Kara Walker on this years list of artists donating to the auction, the program boasts a cross section of established and emerging Street Artists, graffiti artists, culture jammers and truth tellers who heartily support this program that since 2012 has given more than 400 city youth a second chance.
But then we think more about the history and psychological/anthropological makeup of the Street Art scene and it makes perfect sense: What segment of the arts community has such a rich history of activism, self-directed industry, challenging the norms of society, using public space for intervention – and a penchant for consciousness-raising?
Even after 50 plus years of youth culture in love with graffiti and Street Art these artists and their practice are seen as outside the proper curriculum of many universities with art programs and museums have arduous internal debates about supporting exhibitions that are dedicated to Street Art and graffiti specifically.
This is precisely the kind of marginalized movement/ subculture that has necessarily thrived often with little encouragement or funding – overcoming the barriers to success that more institutionally recognized art movements don’t encounter. In fact, many have gone to jail for what they do.
Uniquely, Young New Yorkers continues to build its partnerships with artists, teachers, lawyers, volunteers and several agencies within the criminal justice system, including criminal and community courts, the District Attorney’s Office and the Legal Aid Society. The program’s art shows mounted by graduates are frequently attended by members of the justice system as well and art becomes a facilitator of strengthened community ties.
BSA has supported YNY every year since its first auction benefit and this year is no exception. Please go to Paddle 8 to see the items for sale or better yet, go to the auction in person. We stopped by while they were hanging the show yesterday and we were able to take a few shots for you to see what’s up for grabs.
Young New Yorkers Silent Art Auction Honoring Actor and Activist Michael K. Williams
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
548 West 28th Street
New York, NY
6:00 VIP hour with Michael K. Williams (Star and Super Star Tickets)
7:00–10:00 party (Regular tickets)
Here is the first public look at the new print by Icy & Sot which they made especially to aid the programs in Haiti and Braddock, Pennsylvania for Heliotrope Prints. The limited run print will be released this week, April 6th at a pop up show opening in Manhattan and we hope you can come.
Icy & Sot “Unforced Hijab” (image courtesy of the artists)
True to form, the Iranian brothers challenge conventions with the personal and political, creating a new piece that their growing and ardent fan base will appreciate. Taking a stance about the religious/cultural garment that many women around the world wear is common today, especially with Westerners derisively rejecting it as a sign of women’s suffrage – or worse yet, deception. Icy & Sot take a deliberately opposite approach, regaling the maligned hijab with spring colors and flowers.
Like their stencil works on the streets of Brooklyn, Iran, across the US and Europe, Icy and Sot don’t always take the easy road, preferring to use their voice to challenge systemic social/political/environmental injustices and hypocrisies. “Unforced Hijab” combines this activism with their ever increasingly more sophisticated technique and taste level for direct communication.
We asked I&S about this new piece for the Heliotrope benefit.
BSA:Can you tell us about the image you have chosen for this new release? Icy & Sot: “Unforced Hijab” depicts that the Hijab can be a beautiful thing for someone if it’s not forced.
BSA:Do you have a special connection with the people of Haiti or Swoon? Icy & Sot: We have always been huge fans of Swoon’s work and we admire her projects that help communities. We see that she is always caring for others.
BSA:How do you see the role of an artist in relation to addressing socio-political / humanitarian issues in the world? Icy & Sot: Art definitely can contribute to change in society, especially public art because it has more and diverse views. We believe that the role of the artist is to advocate for the freedom and the hope of the general public. We think the artist is to raise awareness about the issues happening in their time
BSA:Many art fans are excited to buy prints of their favorite artists – have you made many prints in the past? Icy & Sot: Yes we have had numbers of print releases in the past.
BSA:What new project are you looking forward to this year? Icy & Sot:It’s going to be a busy year. We are looking forward to some group museum shows that we will be part of. We are also excited about our next solo show in November at Thinkspace gallery in Los Angeles.
We are honored that Icy & Sot agreed to participate in this show with us and pleased that they are part of this great effort.
WHAT: Swoon x Heliotrope x BSA Pop-Up Opening Reception WHEN: Thursday, April 6 at 6 PM – 9 PM
WHERE: 88 1/2 7th Avenue, between 15th & 16th St., New York, NY
Heliotrope Prints Fundraiser Curated by Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo, Brooklyn StreetArt
Join us for the opening of our pop-up exhibit, featuring newly released sketches by Swoon Studio and limited edition prints by six world-renowned street artists:
Hello and happy Saturday to you! Hope you are finding time to relax and to do some laundry and maybe bake some cookies or go out and paint or see some art today. We’re starting the day with an egg and cheese on a roll and a large coffee from the local deli – and thinking about how lucky we are to be curating a small print show for Street Artist Swoon next week. We hope you will be able to come by and support her and her team, our team, your team – next week in NYC.
And what a strong show it is! We’re honored to present six world-renowned Street Artists who each have established clarion voices of their own in the last decade or so – on the street and in more formal settings, with inspiring, sometimes breathtaking work. Additionally we know that each one of these artists hasn’t forgotten why they started doing work on the street and each have a deep connection to helping others – which is the real way of keeping it real.
Starting Monday, one by one, we’ll reveal each of the the new prints from works by Case Maclaim, Li-Hill, Faith XLVII, Miss Van, Icy & Sot and Tavar Zawacki (aka Above) for this brand new edition of Heliotrope Prints. You will have the first look! In addition to the prints Caledonia Curry AKA Swoon will present a new series of her hand drawings from Haiti – a selection you will totally dig.
Have a good Saturday! Sending love from Brooklyn.
WHAT: Swoon x Heliotrope x BSA Pop-Up Opening Reception WHEN: Thursday, April 6 at 6 PM – 9 PM
WHERE: 88 1/2 7th Avenue, between 15th & 16th St., New York, NY
Heliotrope Prints Fundraiser Curated by Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo, Brooklyn StreetArt
Join us for the opening for our pop-up exhibit, featuring newly released sketches by Swoon Studio and limited edition prints by six world-renowned street artists:
Brooklyn Street Artist Swoon has traveled to hot, hopping Hong Kong recently to create the façade for the tramline with HKwalls, a program of customization for the historic public transportation cars in the city center that has included also Portuguese Street Artist Vhils with HOCA, and during Art Basel this year a site specific tram from Hong Kong artist Kingsley Ng.
Not surprisingly, as is the custom of Street Artists everywhere, the wheat-pasting romantic portraitist introduced a number of her friends to the streets of the Incense Harbor city among its myriad winding cobblestones, wending staircases, and wiley alleyways.
The experience of a local is perhaps to discover this new entity on a wall suddenly, a figure so full of presence and personality as if it may speak to you. As an international traveler the experience may be to be greeted in a foreign land by a friendly familiar face.
In our case, that same face greeted us again in the entirely scrubbed austerity of the white cube of a Parisian art dealer, nested as it was among a honeycomb of other white boxed and illuminated beneath a vast white canvas on a pier by the Ferris Wheel.
We meditated lightly on this topic of the gallery on the street – commercial gallery – museum gallery continuum during our Images of the Week wrap up this week. It is an unusual position that Street Artists’ occupy and one that introduces topics around speech, advertising, commercialism, and traditional graffiti practices of getting up and marking one’s name.
And now we muddy those waters once again, by telling you of a BSA-curated show of new prints that will benefit the Heliotrope Foundation when it debuts next week in New York. Swoon’s Heliotrope non-profit is literally building community, homes, shelter, and helping people become teachers in Haiti. (more at end of posting)
By donating our efforts along with the donated talents of 6 world-renowned Street Artists; Miss Van, Tavar Zawacki (Above), Li-Hill, Case Maclaim, Faith XLVII, and Icy & Sot, we encourage others to contribute to Heliotrope and to buy a custom new print from these artists. We’re proud to curate for this project, to be associated with these great artists, and to provide a platform for everyone to make these connections.
Additionally, Swoon herself will release new drawings from Haiti.
SWOON X Heliotrope X BSA : A Benefit for Heliotrope Foundation
curated by Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo, co-founders of BSA
Opening Event: Thursday, April 6 from 6-9pm.
Beats and refreshments provided.
Location: 88 ½ Seventh Avenue (between 15th & 16th St.)
in Chelsea, New York
Pop-Up Exhibit runs April 7-9 from 11am – 6pm daily
We had a chance at Spring this week, and then it blew away. We’re back to the Antarctic for a few days.
NYC was inundated by art fairs as well, which was swell. Volta, Scope, Clio, Spring/Break – which was surprisingly not political or contentious, given its rather outsider status. Fair talk was glum, attendance was actually light at times, and most people where blaming you-know-who.
Perhaps that’s why Thursday’s opening of Trumpomania was packed and rather sweaty, although when you have 30 countries and 30 artists represented, you will probably fill the place. Even so, the energy was palpable, and guests freely “voiced their concerns”, as your high school guidance counselor might say, about a seemingly corrupt cabal that is practicing shock and awe on/upon the country daily.
One portly fellow at the show with a perspiring red face, beige cardigan, overcoat, and a backpack possibly containing an anvil, accosted us forcefully with champagne flute in hand to nearly yell for 10-12 minutes straight about Russians, cabinet heads that want to destroy their departments, Goldman Sachs, Exxon, the wall, book burning, impeachment, recusals, Jewish cemetery vandalism, teleprompter scripted calmness, possible alzheimer’s, and general viciousness. It was a Greatest Hits album minus the catchy hooks and clever phrasing – but with all the drums and guitar solos. (For you kids, an album was this flat wax disc that contained 9 songs you didn’t want and 1 song you did… oh never mind.) Just before he ignited into flames or triggered the heart attack which appeared to be imminent, we were mercifully interrupted and led away to look at OLEK’s pussy
art and Icy & Sot’s crocheted barbed wire fence piece.
Out on the streets of New York and elsewhere, artists are nearly yelling as well with their text based and figurative Street Art work. There appears to be no rest right now, and everyone is losing sleep or fighting or shaking their heads or “finding healthy strategies to achieve a sense balance” in a chaotic gritty abrasive beautiful city that somehow keeps racing forward no matter what the hell is going on.
City that never sleeps? We hear that.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Ann Lewis, Beast, BustArt, El Sol 25, Empty Boy, Epic Uno, Felipe Pantone, Icy & Sot, Jerk Face, King, Koralie Supakitch, Mikael Takacs, Nico Panda, OLEK, Sen2, Smells, Stinkfish, and UFO 907.
Demonstrating once again that when you are an artist the world is your oyster for creativity, Street Artists Icy & Sot play on a popular folk myth that if you hold a seashell to your ear, usually a conch shell, you will hear the sound of the ocean. The rush and the resonance of swelling and crashing waves upon the sand is captured and forever transmitted by the open cavity of the seashell. In this small conceptual video piece the brothers take you to the beach with a new friend to gather seashells and hold them up to your ear.
20+ years of graffiti under his belt, Abik is getting abstract.
It’s third in a series of programs he has led and this one will feature work by many of the next generation who are coming to the streets and canvasses with alternatives to the figurative as well as the wild style – sort of a “no wave” approach to walls.
“The name of the event – NWO as New WALL Order – plays with the illuminati & conspiracy theories’ tagging to ironically highlight new horizons of our post-graffiti scene via the signature-wallpaintings,” says Marco Contardi, an Italian free writer and curator.
Previous editions of NWO included artists like 108, 2501, Giorgio Bartocci, CT, Eleuro and Ufocinque, as well as then Abik, Alfano, Alberonero, Aris, Giorgio Bartocci, Centina, G.Loois x Domenico Romeo, Luca Font and Sbagliato Collective.
Call it post-graffiti, or graffuturism, but these guys hope you’ll appreciate the gesture.
Always good to get to Berlin to see what waves of text and pattern and outrage and snark and myriad metaphor are more-or-less relentlessly rippling across buildings and empty lots. The rippling effect was swelled by 4 days of rain, which makes windows streak with rivlets and wheat-pastes peel from the top, leaning forward and down and toward their demise, often sticking to themselves, halved and horrid in the process.
Nonetheless we got a lot of work done, seeing artists, urban gallerists, and of course the labyrinthine interior of the ‘secret’ project that is no secret any longer, the five floor Berlin HAUS, a former bank building in a well trafficked part of the city that is swarmed every day and nearly every night with graffiti writers, professional painters, Street Artists, illustrators, and the like – mainly, if not entirely, Germany based artists doing elaborate installations throughout.
Across the street in the under-construction UN museum space the scene was a “secret dinner” for 100 thrown by Director Yasha Young to stir up the buzz for the inaugural exhibit in September as well as take stock of the hundreds of artist locally and internationally who have been part of the UN before the doors even open. In attendance were artists, graffiti writers, arts writers, photographers, academics, cultural organizers, supporters, elected officials, a spare ambassador or two, all lined up to hear of few speeches, a video or two about programming – and eat off plates designed by 100 or so artists.
But the real story of course was the stuff we found on the streets – legal and illegal, a bit of dashed text and time intensive murals. Berlin doesn’t stop surprising you, and regardless of rain that completely drenched us, we didn’t care frankly.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: 1Up, Alaniz, Berlin Kidz, BoxiTrixi, C215, Crisp, Damien Mitchell, Dave the Chimp, Don John, Eins92, Fink 22, Gilf!, Icy & Sot, K, Missing Girls, Priznu, Rinth-WLNY, Sozl35, Telmo & Miel, and Various & Gould.
We have a lot to show you this week of art from the street, museum, and studio. This horrid and chaotic political environment is proving to be fertile soil for the growth of politically themed works by artists everywhere.
We start todays’ posting with the image above created with the simplicity of a mirror held up during a recent demonstration as if to say, “this is what America looks like”, by the artists “Icy & Sot”. The people who is reflected back to the camera appear in stark contrast to the nearly exclusively white, male, ultra-rich cabinet he has selected as his advisors.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Chor Boogie, EC13, Homless, Icy & Sot, JPO Art, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Love Breeds Love, Shepard Fairey, UNO, and Wayne.
First thing to know about the new piece in Lisbon above is that the Street Artist who made it, UNO, has a phobia with birds. The second thing is to know that if you see a crow flying overhead in Lisbon, some people will tell you that it is protecting the city. The belief is a remnant from a 12th century story that says the beloved Saint Vincent was buried in Sagres, where his body was protected by crows. When his body was moved to Lisbon by the first King of Portugal, D. Afonso Henrique, it is said that two crows accompanied the body. This is why the flag of Lisbon has a ship and two ravens on either side with the motto “MUI NOBRE E SEMPRE LEAL CIDADE DE LISBOA” (the most noble and always loyal to the city of Lisbon) .
By festooning foreboding razor wire with decorative flourishes of welcome, Icy & Sot invert a symbol of exclusion and fear. The effect is shocking in its embrace of joy and color and life; the surreal visual combining two opposing views of a border that uses their contrast for unusual illumination.
In fact the brothers say this recent intervention in Miami is to address the surreality that we have been plunged into by forces who would divide us as citizens with fear-mongering, the ban on travel from majority Muslim countries and the presentation of a huge barrier wall across the southern boarder as a panacea.
Icy & Sot reliably put their finger into the wound to see how deep it goes. As artists they have also learned that a little truth goes a long way, especially when it’s an ugly truth. Maybe that explains the flowers. They tell us that because the constant flow of bad news about immigration and the government actions they weren’t able to focus and work on their future projects for a couple of days but instead they just wanted to make works in response to those actions.
“This country couldn’t have been great without its immigrants,” they tell us in a statement. As recent immigrants themselves, they feel the topic very personally. “It’s not fair that one persons decision can affect the lives of so many people inside and outside the country – we are some of those people who have been affected. We came here as immigrants and what we have accomplished here we couldn’t have accomplished anywhere else but its sad that we don’t feel the same anymore.”
Of their new art piece, they say, “Barbed wire has long been connected to crimes against humanity. A person trying to pass through or over barbed wire will suffer discomfort and possibly injury,” they say of the razor coil that often entangles a those who attemp to cross it. “In our piece we change the barbed wire into flowers, which is a metaphor for welcoming people at the borders.”
“We wanted to show how beautiful it could be to imagine a world without borders.”
“It’s surreal to be on the south side of the US border,” we said last week about being in Mexico. Sorry to report that it may be even more surreal on this side.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
