NUANCE…The Nu Hotel’s Launch of “The Couch Sessions Room”
Designed by Iranian Streetartists Icy & Sot
The Couch Sessions and the Nu Hotel present NUANCE, a creative series of ongoing hotel room installations highlighting the country’s most sought out artists and designers. NUANCE transforms four hotel room walls into blank canvases, allowing a hand selected series of artists the ability to create breathtaking mural designs. Each room project will also be matched with a custom music playlist curated by The Couch Sessions.
Iranian street-art brothers and stencil artists ICY AND SOT kick off the series with an exclusive event on December 7th, 2012 from 6 – 10PM. The event, sponsored by vodka brand Nuvo, will allow the media and the general public access to view the hotel room and meet with the artists.
Hailing from the city of Tabriz in North West Iran, brothers ICY AND SOT continue on their creative crusade to traverse pre-conceived perceptions of traditional Iranian art’s brevity through their highly intricate yet striking stencil artworks. Despite Iran’s cultural flourishing since the 2009 uprisings in Tehran, the challenges faced by creative free expression in the country are a constant struggle for its artists and society today. It is an oppressive force that provokes the Iranian art scene to fluctuate between an inhibited elegance and raw underground energy. This ambiguity is reflected in the vulnerable yet hopeful deep-set imagery of ICY AND SOT’s street art.
Looks like the Yankees could have used Joe Biden last night. “Who is this grandpa man?”, said my homey Ikbar behind the counter at the news stand, irritated that the Vice President has to hog half the cover of the New York Post from Derek Jeter. Guess the Scranton Slugger was knocking them out of the wrong park for some New Yorkers last night.
Also, anybody know why there are 10 TV vans with their saucers rotating on top and kleig lights at the end of their extended electronic probes blinding innocent semi-sleeping commuters walking by the Marcy projects in Brooklyn this morning? Saw Blondy McBlonderwig with perfect teeth and fishbowl eyes shrieking in a trench coat in front of the camera on the way to the M train, safely behind all the “crime scene” tape. Think the news has decided to do a story on the class war?
And now LIVE, here are the important up-to-the-minute stories we’re following for you this hour on WBSA.
1. Bedlam in London
2. Jaye Moon Breaks the Code (NYC)
3. Moniker 2012 (London)
4. John Breiner at Mighty Tanaka (Brooklyn)
5. “Good Guys” in Chicago
6. "Street Art Live" in Da Bronx All Day Sunday
7. SANER "Catharsis" From The Cinema (VIDEO)
8. I Love Paris Volume 5 by kouettv (VIDEO)
Bedlam in London
If you are in London this weekend and are feeling spooky and wild, nevermind that tame Madame Tussard – turn your GPS to “BEDLAM”, Lazarides new group exhibition underground in the Old Vic Tunnels. With artists including Antony Micallef, Artists Anonymous, ATMA,Conor Harrington, Dan Witz, Doug Foster, Ian Francis, Karim Zeriahen, Kelsey Brookes, Klaus Weiskopf, Lucy McLauchlan, Michael Najjar, Nachev, Tessa Farmer, Tina Tsang, Tobias Klein, War Boutique and 3D all of them working on the theme of pandemonium. Inspired by the infamous mental hospital, we were expecting to see Boris Karloff popping around the corner while appreciating scary art that experiments on your brain. Welcome.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Jaye Moon Breaks the Code (NYC)
She’s been constructing on the streets for a year or two, but her main tricks have been in the gallery for about a decade. Street and Fine Artist Jaye Moon has a new solo show titled “Breaking the Code” at the Newman Popiashvili Gallery in Manhattan so you can see where some of this Lego madness came from. Study the numbers and the text and break the code. And don’t forget to hit up Red Hook Brooklyn because Jaye Moon is also an artist in GEOMETRICKS currently on view at Gallery Brooklyn.
For further information regarding this show click here.
For further information regarding GEOMETRICKS click here.
Moniker 2012 (London)
MONIKER ART FAIR is in full swing and open for business until this Sunday. Take a trip to The Village Underground in Shoreditch if you are interested on seeing original works of art by some Street Artists who are moving the conversation on the streets right now. Remi Rough, Penny, Niels ‘Shoe’ Meulman, Ludo, Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada, Hush, C215, Ben Slow are all represented with installations and new works of art.
For further details and a full list of artists and schedules click here.
John Breiner at Mighty Tanaka (Brooklyn)
Not a Street Artist but seemingly always in the street mix – maybe he has a lot of Street Art friends or something because Jon Breiner has been at a lot of events over the last couple of years and we’ve had the opportunity to see his studio work evolve so here’s a shout out. Breiner might be one of those definitely underrated fine artists that you don’t pay much attention to and then BAM!, where the hell did this kid come from? A curator of shows and DJ, Breiner goes deep below still waters; Fastidious in his craft Mr. Breiner’s work gets close and personal, meticulously drawn and painted, portaits with weight intricately real and occasional surreal little stories with plots that are off center. His new show titled “Sooner or Later We All Make the Little Flowers Grow” opens tonight at the Mighty Tanaka Gallery in DUMBO.
John Breiner. Detail. (image courtesy of the gallery)
For further information regarding this show click here.
“Good Guys” in Chicago
Wanna know who “The Good Guys” are? Head over to 2381 Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago where The HOTBOX MOBILE GALLERY new group show will open tomorrow showcasing local talent of Chicago born and raised Street Artists including, Left Handed Wave, Brooks Golden, Clam Nation, Don’t Fret, Espir, Nudnik, Lucx and Nice-one.
For further information regarding this show click here.
“Street Art Live” in Da Bronx All Day Sunday
This Sunday the Sermon is at The Bronx and the Minister is SinXero.
Showing brotherly love New York style, a group of Street Artists including Army of One/JC2, Fumero, ADAM DARE, TONE TANK, Elle Deadsex, ENX, Choice Royce, Royce Bannon, See One & Danielle Mastrion, VEXTA, Mike Die, KID Lew, & ZIMAD, as well as, SinXero (SX) & colleague Bayoan will gather at Graffiti Universe for “Street Art Live”. An event to honor Iranian brothers and Street Srtists Icy & Sot.
It’s a Sunrise Service so just stay up Saturday night >> The event begins at 5:00 am until the whole block at Graffiti Universe is completely painted.
For further information regarding this event click here.
Also happening this weekend:
The Kosmopolite Art Tour in Amsterdam, brought to you by Aerosol Bridge Club began on Wednesday and will continue until this Sunday at the MC Theater in Amsterdam. Big mural live painting with appearances from local and international artists with tons of side events. Click here for more details regarding this event.
Monsieur A the French artist is in Mexico City for his solo show “André Saraiva” at the Anonymous Gallery. This show is now open to the general public. Click here for more details about this show.
Low Brow Artique Gallery goes soft brow with Dickchicken’s solo show “The Penis Mightier Than the Sword” opening tonight in Brooklyn. Click here for more details about this show.
Mad One and Neely II are hosting “Sticker Phiends” in Tempe, Arizona opening tomorrow. This annual sticker feast attracts a huge following of national and international sticker artists and fans. Click here for more details about this event.
Our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adeline, Cost, El Sol 25, JM, Joseph Meloy, Keely, LMNOP, Mr. Toll, No Sleep, NohJColey, Sanpaku, Sheryo, Smells, ICY & SOT, Shie Moreno,The Cretin, The Yok, and Werds.
Sanpaku gan (三白眼) or Sanpaku (三白) is a Japanese term that means “three whites” and is generally referred to in English as “Sanpaku eyes”. The term refers to the iris being rather small, so that it only covers about two-thirds or less of the vertical axis of the eye; e.g. delineate an eye into four portions; the iris would only occupy one portion of the divided four sections; thus leaving the other three in white, hence “three whites”.
When the bottom of the white part of the eye, known as the sclera, is visible it is referred to as ‘Yin Sanpaku’ in Chinese lore. According to the myth, it represents physical imbalance in the body and is claimed to be present in alcoholics, drug addicts and people who over consume sugar or grain. Conversely when the upper sclera is visible this is called ‘Yang Sanpaku’. This is said to be an indication of mental imbalance in people such as psychotics, murderers, and anyone rageful. Stress and fatigue may also be a cause.[1]
People with sanpaku eyes may also be feared to be prone to violent or disordered behaviors.[citation needed] There is no evidence for this belief, however.
John Lennon mentioned sanpaku in his song “Aisumasen (I’m Sorry)” from the 1973 Mind Games album. It is also briefly referenced in William Gibson’s Neuromancer, as well as in Michael Franks‘ 1979 song “Sanpaku”, and in The Firesign Theatre‘s piece “Temporarily Humboldt County”.
DUUUUUUUDE, it’s Fun Friday! We changed the sign today. Looks fresh right?
1. ICY & SOT “Made in Iran” (NYC)
2. Barry McGee at Berkeley (CA)
3. BORF Solo in Newcastle (UK)
4. “Klimpt Illustrated” at Lazarides (London)
5. Lush Does “Shitty Drawings in New York City”
6. Shepard Fairey Does “Americana” (LA)
7. Dabs & Myla: Artists Driven (VIDEO)
8. CYRCLE “Beautiful Disaster” (VIDEO)
9. ALL STYLES Dance Battle at Postmasters Gallery in NYC (VIDEO)
ICY & SOT “Made in Iran” (NYC)
Two Street Art brothers, Icy & Sot, born in Iran and encouraged by their parents to pursue their dreams and aspirations have ventured outside their country and landed in New York, their first foreign trip, their first international city, their first art show in which they were able to attend. “Made in Iran” is now open to the everybody at the Open House Gallery in Manhattan.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Barry McGee at Berkeley (CA)
The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) mid-career survey of San Francisco based artist Barry McGee. From the press release: “Using a visual vocabulary that borrows elements from comics, hobo art, sign painting, and other sources, McGee’s work addresses a range of issues, from individual survival and social malaise to alternative forms of community”. This exhibition is now open to the general public.
For further information regarding this exhibition click here.
BORF Solo in Newcastle (UK)
Detroit native BORF has traveled to England for his solo show “Walls Are Two-Sided” at The Outsiders Newcastle. With this new body of work, Borf illustrates the derelict aspect of Detroit and elevates the decay to art by zeroing in on a detail of the building’s peeling and corroding facade and transporting that vision on to the canvas. The result in the words of the press release is: “Rothko talked about wrestling with opposing and competing elements to eventually discover an equilibrium, what he called a pocket of silence” says BORF. “For this show I was fighting through layers of ambivalence and opposites: graffiti as youth expression and Rothko as adult expression; the art market and property rights; education and improvisation, youth and adulthood.” This show is now open.
For further information regarding this show click here.
“Klimpt Illustrated” at Lazarides (London)
Gustav Klimt the famous Austrian painter is turning 150 years old and The Vienna Tourist Board has teamed with The Lazarides Gallery in London to give Klimt street creed in the hopes that younger audiences will start following him on Twitter to gain knowledge on the secrets of his longevity and hopefully on his craft as well. To this effect curator Sydney Ogidan tapped nine international artists to take inspiration from some of the master’s most iconic masterpieces and create their own paintings. The opening reception for this show “Klimt Illustrated” is tonight at Lazarides Gallery in SOHO.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Lush Does “Shitty Drawings in New York City”
We thought we noticed a change in the air when the Australian storm called LUSH landed on these shores. Well here he is, likely to offend a few uptight prone-to-nose-bleeds stiffs and even more likely to amuse a lot more of us loose New Yorkers. LUSH has been madly working on a series of drawings/illustrations for his show “Shitty Drawings In New York City” opening Saturday night at the Klughaus Gallery in Manhattan. Half political cartoons/ half comic book with a blunt appreciation of the mechanics of the male and female reproductive organs, LUSH’s commentary on social, political and popular culture can be right on the spot. Dimwits need not apply.
For further information regarding this show click here.
Shepard Fairey Does “Americana” (LA)
Shepard Fairey needs no introductions at this point in his career or this point in our dang blog. One can always be certain to find him busy at work and getting involved in as many projects as he can humanly fit in his schedule. Mr. Fairey is constantly looking for inspiration and finding it often in popular culture that is around and accessible to all of us. For his new show “Americana” opening tomorrow at the Perry Rubestein Gallery in Los Angeles the artist has created a new body of work inspired by the songs of the great artist-musician Neil Young. Shepard has found material for his canvases in the songs of Mr. Young new album “Crazy Horse”.
Iranian Street Artists Step Into New Territory as they prepare for US Debut
Born in the 1980s and early 1990s, Iranian Street Artists Icy & Sot are equally fans and loyal students of all the stencil techniques that have characterized the western scene in the last decade. What’s fascinating in this story is that, despite creating work on the street since 2005, neither brother has been able to attend their own gallery show in person outside of Iran until this week in New York.
With a new sense of freedom and some new works for “Made in Iran”, the self taught Tabriz-based artists are riding the momentum that will take this show to Amsterdam, Berlin and Milan. The gallery work on display is similar to the variety of styles they have experimented with in streets of cities like Tehran, Paris, Turin, Istanbul, and even the rural Mazichal forest in Northern Iran. Thematically they wrestle between oppression, celebrity, freedom, war, and daring to dream.
Hitting the well promoted New York opening will be an eager audience of curious fans who have been waiting to see in person the svelte guys who have become a bit of an Internet sensation because of their origin, and because being caught painting in Tehran is more severe than most illegal street artists in the west would care to imagine. “The worst thing in Iran is that when you get caught they will stick so many labels to you that are not even related to it, such as Satanism, for example, and you can be accused of political activities,” described Icy in a recent interview with BSA.
And that sort of harsh official penalty probably explains at least part of the reason why they are happy to be in New York, where they are doing many legal walls in this city that has given birth to a new generation of Street Artists in the last decade or so. Visiting with the brothers this week in the studio as they prepared new work for the show, their excitement to be here is evident.
Brooklyn Street Art:New York has a very large Street Art and graffiti scene with many participants. What is it like to be part of a large scene, compared to cities like Tehran? Sot: It is perfect to be in such a large Street Art scene. There isn’t much going on in the street art ”scene” in Iran, really. It’s an underground movement mostly in Tehran and Tabriz.
Brooklyn Street Art:Would you characterize your work on the street to be political, social, or primarily artistic? Icy: In our opinion Street Art itself is a kind of political art, because it says something directly to the people. Sot: Yes, we are communicating our visions to the people with walls.
Brooklyn Street Art: Often your subjects have their vision obstructed or blinded entirely. What blindness are you referring to, and whose? Icy: Most of them are about what’s happening to us and around us. For example, the last time we got arrested they just covered our faces with a red cover, which is similar to a piece we have done in the past called “Blindness”.
Brooklyn Street Art:Looking at your work, one can see similarities stylistically and thematically to many of Street Art’s well known stencilists like Banksy, Nick Walker, Jef Aerosol, Blek Le Rat, Chris Stain, C215 and others. How does a Street Artist differentiate their work from what has come before them? Icy: Everyone borrows from the past. Banksy, for example, based his technique and style on Blek Le Rat, who is considered the godfather of Parisian graffiti art. Blek really pioneered both stenciling and the image of the rat that Banksy later emulated. The important thing is that you are creating your own ideas. Sot: We have tried different styles of stencil but our works right now are mostly black and white and come from our own ideas. Stencils are our way to communicate our visions to the people.
Brooklyn Street Art:Capitalism, the war machine, freedom of the press, the police state, distribution of wealth – are these the kind of themes that are now universal? Sot: Yes they are universal now, even in Iran, probably because of access to information. Because of the lack of entertainment available, Iranian youth spend a lot of time on the Internet, although there’s lot of cyber censorship.
Brooklyn Street Art:Why put your work on the street? Why not stay in the gallery? Icy: Because the streets are for everyone but the galleries are limited and all we want is to communicate our visions to the people.
Icy and Sot’s first solo show in the US titled “Made in Iran” opens Thursday August 23 at the Open House Gallery in Manhattan. Click here for details on this exhibition.
Here is our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Andrzej Urbankski, Dyke, False, Icy & SOT, Indigo, Jeice 2, Karma, Love Me, Nick Walker, Rambo, and Sorta. Somehow we’ve assembled a rather eclectic collection for you that includes some black and white billboard images by Jaime Rojo that are more on the graffiti tip, as well as new images from Baltimore, Berlin and Spain.
Speaking of black and white, we’ve noticed that quite a few artists are limiting their palettes to something more monochromatic lately. Have you noticed that too? It’s also kind of cool to see these new pieces from the Iranian Street Artists Icy and Sot, who have their first solo show coming up shortly in New York.
Klerkx Art Agency (Amsterdam, Holland) and Neverheard Inc. (Brooklyn, NY) are proud to announce: MADE IN IRAN, the highly anticipated New York debut of the young Iranian street artists (and brothers): ICY AND SOT.
MADE IN IRAN is a groundbreaking display of the internationally acclaimed street art duo, featuring new stencil works and site-specific installations. The exhibition will be open to the public from the 23rd to 25th of August at Openhouse, 379 Broome Street. An opening reception will be held on Thursday the 23rd of August from 6 to 9 PM with a live musical performance by the Iranian punk rock band Yellow Dogs (facebook.com/theyellowdogs).
Hailing from the city of Tabriz in North West Iran, brothers ICY AND SOT continue on their creative crusade to traverse pre-conceived perceptions of traditional Iranian art’s brevity through their highly intricate yet striking stencil artworks. Despite Iran’s cultural flourishing since the 2009 uprisings in Tehran, creative visual expression is still a constant struggle for its’ artists and society today. It is an oppressive force that provokes the Iranian art scene to fluctuate between an inhibited elegance and raw underground energy. This ambiguity is reflected in the vulnerable yet hopeful deep-set imagery of ICY AND SOT’s street art.
Using western street art approaches, the artists’ polarized themes of love and hate, war and peace, and hope and despair are manifested into the spectral faces of the innocent.
ABOUT ICY AND SOT:
ICY (born 1985) and SOT (born 1991) are stencil artists, skaters, best friends and brothers from Tabriz, Iran. ICY AND SOT started their professional career in 2008. They have made paramount accomplishments in Iranian urban art culture, creating an international buzz by playing it anyway but safe. Their prolific stencil work can be seen on the streets of Paris, Turin, Sao Paolo, New York and many other international cities. The brothers have been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications throughout Iran, Europe, South America and the US. Following New York, MADE IN IRAN will be making its way over to Amsterdam, Berlin and Milan.
In conjunction with the exhibition, American Iranian musician Ali Eskandarian will be performing an acoustic set in the gallery’s garden on Saturday, August 24th at 5 PM.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
