As the Northern Hemisphere is heading into autumn, we bring you two more blasts of summer’s rich jewel tones from central Gothenburg in Sweden. UK Muralist Sophie Mess favors pleasant domestically flowering botanicals and slices them up diagonally in a way you may associate with Berlin’s James Bullough’s portraits or Li-Hill’s sculptures. Decidedly more targeted to the House & Garden set, here Mess creates a decorative mural duo for tourists and shoppers in the courtyard of Magasinsgatan, commissioned by gallery/agency Artscape.
First, he pulls the humble barrier tape away from its original context – which is to provide a visual warning to stay away from a potentially dangerous place. Then he deconstructs the actual roll of tape, turning it from long continuous spans of red and white into a sort of fringe field hanging from cables just above your head.
With the addition of waterfront breezes and your gentle dances beneath, this installation of “Barrier Tape” in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is a fully interactive kinetic and sound sculpture. The 1,600-meter installation is drawing a lot of attention to this location because it is bright and makes a rustling sound reminding you perhaps of leaves. It also brandishes a sense of emergency or danger, but you’re not sure why.
“Inside the piece, the repeated element takes the viewer into a transitory state of disorientation,” says the artist Spy.
“The pieces of tape swing in unison with the wind, creating a wave-like motion throughout the composition and generating an intense, random soundscape.”
SpY would like to thank “r1” for his inspiration and support.
Site-specific installations are sometimes very impactful, especially when they transform space. Street artist and public artist SpY capitalizes on the slow choreography of twenty large discs rising and falling in concert here at the Weapons Factor in La Vega in Oviedo, Spain.
For SpY, every space can be a workshop and laboratory. Seeing this kinetic interplay of the simplest of shapes, their edges catching the crimson light keeps changing and reinventing, a bionic conveyance. Add the soundscape, and it changes again as it meets light patterns while creating new ones.
“Visitors can navigate around and across a living artwork, actively engaging in a unique, multidimensional experience of hypnotic and immersive qualities, marked by the scale of the piece within the imposing space of the warehouse,” says SpY.
Ja Morant, James Harden, Trae Young, Luka Doncic? Yes, they are all premier ball players this season in the NBA. But at the pinnacle of this survey of top athletes, says the sons of the French street artist Tuco Wallach, stands the 34-year-old Stephen Curry.
It’s agreed.
Tuco Wallach. NBA 2022/2023 Tribute. Somewhere in France. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Regardless of your socio-economic status, the street still meets you where you are at, and Tuco put this installation in his neighborhood as a tribute to entertaining athleticism, corporate sport media, and the celebrity heroism that basketball players now focus on. October starts the NBA 2022/2023, says Tuco, and “my two sons are very (very) happy.”
What better way to include home life with his street art than to feature superstar shooter Stephen Curry with one of his signature Teddy Bears?
Tuco Wallach. NBA 2022/2023 Tribute. Somewhere in France. (photo courtesy of the artist)Tuco Wallach. NBA 2022/2023 Tribute. Somewhere in France. (photo courtesy of the artist)Tuco Wallach. NBA 2022/2023 Tribute. Somewhere in France. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Well, it was all going well until you came along, Ian. No offense dude but it’s like you walk around with a cloud over your head. The negativity from this hurricane has left us feeling blue (or grey) all weekend – just murky, moody skies so dark that you have to turn a lamp on to see in your apartment in the middle of the day. And few graffiti stalwarts will go out in this weather to perform aesthetic acts of mark-making, though there are exceptions.
Meanwhile in sunny northern Mexico in the heart of the desert city called Chihuahua, our editor of photography, Jaime Rojo, found a bounty of new stuff in an abandoned factory. He also met a lot of new friends (see this weeks final image.) Que Estilo!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: TCK Crew, Gang, CEN, Grer, Lords, Ickes, Skiee, Esza, Loupe, Rosko, Kosmo, Dementes, KAY, EPC, TCK MEA, and Suly.
One may be able to think and create abstractly, and there is something to admire in that fact. Translating your singular, refracted vision into a 400-square meter mural in a way that supercharges the architecture, the immediate built environment, and the minds of passersby – that requires serious muscle, self-discipline, and a deep commitment.
The Turin-based illustrator and muralist came to Bologna for the local Park Life project – a multi-faceted arts and culture network of festivals geared toward the Millenial and Gen Z demographic – and decided that his theme would be “Carosel” (carousel). In it, he appears to be referencing his own bemused observation of arts, science, pop, and humanities culture from the perspective of an artist who has done a substantial quantity of traveling over these past years.
“Carosel presents a large floating urban agglomeration with intersected architectural volumes that want to give the idea of abstract landscapes but at the same time recall some existing cities,” he tells us. This interpretive lens allows us to read his visual diary if you will.
It also is meant to speak to the diverse audience who comprise the Bologna metropolitan area of about a million people that is home to the world’s oldest university. Of great significance to Etnik’s “Carosel”, it also is home to many immigrant groups and 150 nationalities.
“Bologna is inhabited by people of different ethnic backgrounds, and therefore the artist’s game includes proposing multi-ethnic architecture, textures, and details,” he says. During his creative process, Etnik tells us that he hopes to engage with the viewer emotionally through his intermixing of elements, references, and considered tonality.
“The wall is immersive thanks to the grandeur of the central block that invites the viewer into the façade, making him feel part of it.”
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. INDIGENO – Torino 2022 / Via Il Cerchio E Le Gocce 2. Procez – Berlin Metro Graffiti via Spray Daily 3. The End of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch / The Ocean Cleanup
BSA Special Feature: INDIGENO – Torino 2022 / Via Il Cerchio E Le Gocce
Oh the self-possessed, funky style and ease that the Italians have as they stroll through this video with a dirty soul guitar twang and a punchy drum track laying the backdrop for them. With each of this year’s inaugural INDIGENO Festival artists in Torino giving a brief narrative about their work, the camera pulls, sweeps, floats, zooms and shudders with equal amounts of smoothness and swagger. Hopefully, the mural art lives up to the dramatic presentation. It does.
INDIGENO – Torino 2022 / Via Il Cerchio E Le Gocce
Procez – Berlin Metro Graffiti via Spray Daily
A video postcard from Berlin and their signature yellow public metro trains, each festooned by a different writer against a dark party bass beat. The interspersals of comedic bits of video make it human, or, in the case of two pigeons going at it on a train platform in broad daylight, animal.
The End of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch / The Ocean Cleanup
Let this mark the beginning of the end for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch… Yes, there is the 3rd World War well underway, but we can still focus on positive solutions to human-made problems. Can you?
When it comes to local lace and architecture, Nespoon has you covered.
The Polish street artist has had a very productive year, traveling to Spain, Italy, Sweden, and France – always in pursuit of historical examples of this time-honored and exquisite yet dying art. By enlarging the patterns of people’s needlework – some of it quite honored and revered – she re-lights the candle of interest for the contemporary topography of the city. As one woman’s mission, the sometimes forgotten craft is shared here with a modern audience – the original patterns and designs often created by generations before this.
Today we have the honor and pleasure of sharing many of the 10 murals she painted in several countries in the first nine months of the year – along with her descriptive texts to accompany the works.
“I always paint my murals as in-situ works. Wherever I am, I always research local lace-making traditions. In many cities, lace-making factories operated, in the countryside they were traditional, female lace-making circles. I often find interesting exhibits at the local historical museum. Sometimes I just visit the apartments of seniors living nearby, I always find some lace. Based on such patterns, I prepare a mural design,” says Nespoon.
“In Spain, in Penelles, I painted for the Gargar Festival, near Barcelona. I designed the mural on the basis of a traditional 19th-century ‘mantilla’, a veil used by women there for liturgical purposes, such as weddings and funerals.”
“I came to Halmstad, Sweden, at the invitation of the city council. Swedish lace is very simple, so I decided to approach the design issues differently. I created the pattern of the mural spontaneously by sketching it directly on the wall with my free hand. There was no historical reference here.”
“In Yffiniac, in Brittany, France, in a private historical museum, I found a magnificent Breton ceremonial shawl from the end of the 19th century. A fragment of the pattern became the basis of my design. I painted for the Street Arte en Baie Festival.”
“I found similar inspiration in another Italian city, Stigliano. A woman living near where I worked showed me the lace made by her mother. There I painted for appARTEngo artepublica, the local association.”
“In Mendicino, in the south of Italy, I painted for the Gulìa Urbana Festival. My inspiration was the tablecloth I found in the house of a woman living nearby.”
“Brescia is an Italian city near Venice. It was in Venice that the first handbook for lace making, Le Pompe, was printed in the 16th century. The mural I painted for the LINK Urban Art Festival was based on Venetian lace from the island of Burano.”
Today we speak with Analí Chanquia and Vanesa Galdeano, who are known professionally together as MEDIANERAS. They are originally from Argentina but presently they live in Barcelona; together they have been traveling around the world together for 10 years creating murals. They work as a couple developing a vocabulary of kinetic graphics and androgynous, anamorphosed portraits that are jarring, slickly virtual, and somehow transcendent. Each is of this moment in the environment it is painted, yet reminds us that we are entering a different age of interaction that is not necessarily physical. It is electric, accessible, and oddly, spiritual.
Medianeras. Cascais, Portugal. (photo courtesy of the artists)
BSA:How many years have you been painting together and where and how did you begin?
Medianeras: We have been painting together for about 10 years. Both Vane and I (Anali) were already dedicated to making works of urban art before founding MEDIANERAS. Vanesa is an architect and has directed a mosaic workshop in the city of Rosario since 2009, a workshop with which they carried out collective mosaic interventions around the city. More than 15 interventions can be found; some are murals others are urban furniture cladding, such as stairs or public benches. In my case, I painted my first mural at the age of 18, but I began to dedicate myself more specifically to urban painting around the year 2011 when I did my Fine Arts thesis. This was a theoretical-practical project called “artist looks for a wall “, which consisted of making murals on walls that the neighbors offered me when they found this stencil that I left as a signature on each work.
We met in 2012 at a mosaic street workshop in the city of Rosario. Vanesa, who at that time was directing the workshop, contacted several graffiti artists to make a collective artwork of mixed techniques. That’s how we met; we began a life of love, travel, and art together. Until today we continue to grow together and enjoy together what we like the most.
Medianeras. Cascais, Portugal. (photo courtesy of the artists)
BSA: Medianeras is your artistic name. Could you please tell us about it? How did you arrive at naming yourselves “Medianeras”
Medianeras: We are a couple in both life and art, and thus our day-to-day existence and our projects capture our mutual growth. We called our duo Medianeras because we cherish the concept and idea of sharing. In Spanish, this means ‘lateral walls,’ which are those shared by neighbors. There’s a difference between walls whose function is to separate spaces, and lateral ones, which, conversely, join them. We maintain that public art, aside from making cities more attractive, proclaims the idea of a place shared by all the individuals who pass through it. We teamed up with the idea of conceiving and creating public art together. At present we are dedicating ourselves to mural painting, but we have also worked on collective mosaic interventions in public spaces.
Medianeras. Morlaix, France. (photo courtesy of the artists)
BSA: Please tell us about your process for creating a mural from the idea to the sketch to the art on the wall.
Medianeras: The creative process is quite long. The idea that we are going to paint takes us more time than the days of painting the mural. We study the place a lot, the points of view, the architecture, and the surroundings; we take into account the culture of the place and the history. We draw the designs digitally, based on the photographs of the wall and its proportions and features.
The ideas to create the projects come mainly from certain characteristics of the town or city, the context, the proportions of the wall – width – height – unevenness – and the possible points of view. We mainly represent portraits, and we try not to necessarily define the gender of who we represent, giving rise to the viewer’s perspectives. The murals that we create considerably modify the urban space. In the case of the paintings that we make, they open a kind of window to artistic representation. However, it is important to remember that despite the fact that these murals are visually imposed, they are still ephemeral interventions in painting, linked to possible changes in the weather or any other.
Medianeras. Morlaix, France. (photo courtesy of the artists)
BSA: Please tell us about your background in art and what you were doing independently before you formed Medianeras.
Medianeras: As a child, I (Anali) loved creating things, drawing, and inventing new objects. I attended different art workshops and studied at the University of Arts in the city of Rosario. While I was studying, I made several murals, and in the last years of my career, I was already doing all the artwork on the street. I also studied digital design, a fact that allowed me to handle 3d tools and have a solid idea about space representation.
Vanesa studied architecture and also fine arts. She always had a predilection for urbanism in general but began to carry out collective urban interventions through a mosaic workshop that she directed after finishing architecture
We are both from Argentina. We grew up in a city named Rosario which is located near the Paraná river. Our country, located in South America, is incredible and beautiful as well as uncertain, unstable, and unpredictable. This makes its inhabitants constantly adapt to different types of changes, whether these changes are economic, political, social, or otherwise. In my opinion, in general, it makes Argentine citizens quite creative in the face of different types of difficulties. We are a society that is accustomed to improvising and adapting quickly.
In relation to our activity, Street art is characterized by appearing in all its forms in various parts of the city in a somewhat uncontrolled and deregulated way. The techniques that are used are those that are at hand depending on the stage that the country goes through. For example, the colors and spray brands that can be found in Rosario are very limited, and that makes the artists or graffiti artists use only the colors that they can find or even mix between the same cans of spray they have. In turn, the high costs of spray paint often lead to the choice of cheaper paints, often acrylic paints or even a mixture of several.
In Argentina, there are fewer formalities to intervene in the public space, and this has resulted in a somewhat more spontaneous, less regulated, more experimental urban art, perhaps even more sloppy. However many times we lack the necessary materials or budgets to make murals of large formats.
Although it is an activity that is penalized, we could venture that as there are problems of another kind, more urgent and important, urban art remains somewhat more out of the main focus. In this sense, we appreciate that freedom of expression is not expressly controlled, often allowing experimentation and growth of various artists on the street. We grew up in this context, where through dialogue with neighbors in our beginnings we were able to carry out our works. It can be said that we learned to paint on the street itself.
There was always something that called both of us to create public art. We even met each other working on the Street. The objective that we always shared was to make street art for everyone, whether in mural format, urban intervention, or mosaic because we believe that it is the right place for MEDIANERAS. We consider that public art is the most honest way to create our artworks and that anyone has access to them. It is art for everyone. Medianeras was born with a shared desire to move and create our artworks in different places and for everybody.
Medianeras. Morlaix, France. (photo courtesy of the artists)
BSA: The moment you paint on a wall on a building you’re immediately transforming the building and how the building is perceived by the people on the ground. How do the possibility of doing an intervention on any given building inform the theme and the execution of your work?
Medianeras: Our murals center on the representation of gender in its vast diversity. Although the works vary according to where they are located and how they are viewed, one of their standard features is faces whose gender is not necessarily distinct. Our theme corresponds closely to our way of thinking about gender. Throughout our education, we are taught what a man does and what a woman ought to do. However, in both our case as well as that of a broad range of human beings, gender is something that can change and be unable to adapt to this binary imposition. We want our works to convey the message of a broad concept of gender. We believe that once the rigorous distinction between men and women comes to an end, we will see the development of freer social relations and generations of people who are less concerned with what they should be and more attentive to what they could be.
In other words, we believe that by breaking these rigid and constrictive molds, we can overcome certain forms of discrimination, as well as roles imposed on us from the outside. Our works reflect individuals, poetically and visually transformed, who often struggle to break out of the molds in which they find themselves.
These molds are the architectures where they are found. That is why we like to make holes in the spaces, like breaking down the walls.
Medianeras. La Bañeza, Spain. (photo courtesy of the artists)
BSA: How do you view context when doing a mural? The context here includes not only the architectural structure that you are using as canvas but also the neighborhood where the said structure is located, as well as the city and indeed the country.
Medianeras: Before starting a design we try to inform ourselves as much as we can about society and the place such as the wall where we are going to paint the mural. In this research, we investigate the customs and characteristics of the culture and its history. We also make a virtual tour of the areas where the wall is located through google maps. This tool allows us to obtain some possible perspectives of the place. With a set of data that includes colors of the environment, the architecture of the place, or even stories, among many others, we create a sketch that is adjusted specifically for that particular surface (wall). That sketch can only be represented on that site since we think about it in relation to the architecture and the points of view from which it will be observed. Through our representations of diverse individuals, we convey an idea of inclusion and conviction about the ideals we stand for.
Medianeras. La Bañeza, Spain. (photo courtesy of the artists)
BSA: You are not afraid of color and geometry in your work. Your murals have almost a tri-dimensional depth, is this technique informed by your previous experiences in art making or was it born out from merging your talents together?
Medianeras: Both. We have enough knowledge to be able to bring to painting what we projected in the initial idea. Through the years, we have combined our styles in such a way as to arrive at what we currently do. Each project is a new challenge to integrate portraits into architectures, which are different in each case. We believe that we can achieve great complexities in the representation of depth thanks to the unification of our knowledge, both geometry and color and drawing.
We like to use the technique of anamorphosis. From one angle, one sees images of faces while, from another, one sees the distortion of these faces—the images reveal that they are illusions, something we believe is real, but that is not necessarily so. This is why we study the area around as well as the points of view from which the wall will be perceived: the image is conditioned both by the wall on which it will be displayed and the environment it is in.
Medianeras. La Bañeza, Spain. (photo courtesy of the artists)Medianeras. La Bañeza, Spain. (photo courtesy of the artists)Medianeras. Lecce, Italy. (photo courtesy of the artists)
Just in time for considering Halloween costumery that evokes fantasies of alter ego, BSMT Gallery in the creative hub of North East London gives you a push, encouraging you to explore the possibilities.
Perspicere. Alter Ego. BSMT Space Gallery. London, England. (photo courtesy of the artist)
The beauty of opening the field of street art up to nearly anyone to join means that today’s “urban contemporary” scene also embraces those with formal art-school education and commercial art industry careers – sometimes delivering a fusion of street and modern aesthetics that are eye-popping. In the case of ‘Alter Ego’ opening on October 7th, you get to see portraiture that is varied as the practice, each selection presenting personality, character, and life in the post-industrial, knowledge-worker, surveillance age.
Alexander Chappel. Alter Ego. BSMT Space Gallery. London, England. (photo courtesy of the artist)
A meditative survey in the search for meaning, these profiles offer varied lenses through which one can gaze, backed by bonified painting talents. The results are distinctly human, and interpretive. As a collection the group show reflects this moment, this extended network, this Western society on the cusp of economic hardship and expanding war; the last moment before all the rules change again.
Artists include Aches, Alexander Chappel, Ange Bell, Angela Ho, Belin , Ben Wakeling, Caryn Koh, Edwin, Guy Denning, Jose Luis Cena, Joseph Loughborough, KMG, Pang, Panik, Perspicere, Stephen Anthony Davids, and Sweet Toof.
Ange Bell. Alter Ego. BSMT Space Gallery. London, England. (photo courtesy of the artist)Aches. Alter Ego. BSMT Space Gallery. London, England. (photo courtesy of the artist)Panik. Alter Ego. BSMT Space Gallery. London, England. (photo courtesy of the artist)
BSMT Space. ‘Alter Ego’ will run from October 7th through to October 30th. 529 Kingsland Rd, London, E84AR
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! It’s Fall Y’all !
If you know us, it’s a Mexico-Brooklyn fusion. Just one of the endless combinations you discover when you truly explore New York, where we speak 700 languages and dialects.
It is no surprise that graffiti, its style and aesthetic, spanned many of the world’s cities and cultures over five decades – as does street art today. You’ll see similarities this week between pieces we just caught in Chihuahua, in the north of Mexico, and NYC, in the North of the USA. The styles recognize history, but there is definitely a youthful vibe out there and here.
Shout out to the Brooklyn (now LIC) street art duo Faile for opening Deluxx Fluxx in the underground of Manhattan’s Webster Hall this week. Thursday night’s opening was full of fans, admirers, friends, and collectors – with Patrick Miller walking the line outside on the sidewalk to greet patient guests who were waiting to get in. Wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling Faile, the new club is eye-popping with fluorescent image making and graphic design in the Faile vocabulary – and yes, there are new video games that are digital eye candy with a sense of irony and humor. Miller told us that the new version of their classic kiosks would hopefully also provide a platform to other artists – an open inclusive attitude that only comes from street artists who actually believe in community. With a stage for performances, a DJ HQ, smoke, and lasers – it is going to be an instant New York classic house to escape into.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Donut, Muck, Maze, Diez, Imok, Ollin, Griz, Tee, Derk, Bonk, Retos, Merck, and TCK.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. “Gilded Darkness” Fondazione Nicola Trussardi 2. Edoardo Tresoldi. Monumento. Procuratie Vecchie. Venice, Italy. 3. How To Make A Concrete Bike. Via DIY 4. Britain’s Long Goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II. via The New Yorker
BSA Special Feature: “Gilded Darkness” Fondazione Nicola Trussardi
“An Omni-comprehensive, multimedia spectacle,” says Massimiliano Gioni of Nari Ward’s ‘Gilded Darkness’ now on display at Centro Balneare Romano in Milan. The artistic director and the artist speak about the new exhibition that is on view until October 17th.
It’s part of an ongoing opportunity for artists to conceive of and build their sculptures and other installations in an environment that blends seamlessly into street culture, says Gioni.
“We rediscover forgotten or hidden places in the neighborhoods of Milan and invite artists to intervene in these very charged and unusual spaces. The center is a complex of buildings dating back to the 1920s; a very beautiful mixture of metaphysical architecture and rationalist and modernist architecture,” he says.
“Monumental architecture is a composition that neglects function in order to ritualize a thought by means of a three-dimensional work. The history of peoples is that of a hereditary flow of rhetorical figures which continuously recur in cycles; they redefine their own meanings and establish symbolisms that we have not only learned to read but which, generation after generation, we have absorbed as a sort of latent language of the collective unconscious.”
How To Make A Concrete Bike. Via DIY
Questions answered. That’s our job here. You were dying to learn how to make a concrete bike. You’re welcome.
Britain’s Long Goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II. Via The New Yorker
The largest funeral in modern memory, this week people said goodbye to the Queen
Elfo is a graffiti writer and social commentator whose work intentionally sidesteps traditional notions of style or technical lettering. This …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
