Ultimately people respond to graffiti and street art because of the humanity that vibrates from it. You may care deeply, or care not. If it is effective, art on the street will help you to make the connection. New York is blessed this summer to have a particularly deep and wide selection of unsanctioned and sanctioned artworks across the city that is evidence of a mature, vibrant scene full of many voices, perspectives and styles. Even our art on the streets illustrates that New York is a true melting pot.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Dark Clouds, Blek le Rat, Damien Mitchell, Dragon76, TKid170, Banksy Hates Me, Habibi, Laurier Artiste, Blame Blanco, SanekOne, Carnin Paulino, Ruma, and The Postman.
In a sea of street art murals, the simplicity of a hand-rendered text piece may be deceptive sometimes because you may miss its complexity. It is also a brave move to rely upon the minimum of elements and lack of style to create something with weight, or humor.
Elfo (photo courtesy of the artist)
Tuscany-based Elfo preempts your response in this new simple piece, purporting to be an advisory against graffiti. In the process, he draws attention to the fact that anti-graffiti signage on the street is large no different than graffiti. The spontaneity of graffiti is often the source of its power, however, and this hand-rendered piece is anticipatory and contradictory.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Bandaloop. Excerpts from Field. Part II of the multi-year work LOOM. 2. Bandaloop. FLOOD, World premiere. 3. Bandaloop. Redemption Too, at Least Some / A Work-in-Progress Collaboration from DBR and Bandaloop. 4. Bandaloop teams up with BMW to celebrate its headquarters’ 50th anniversary in Munich.
BSA Special Feature: Bandaloop
As you survey the world of breaking (rocking) that blossomed in the Hip Hop era that enveloped graffiti writing among its elements, one may conclude that public performance itself has undergone revolution in the last 4 or 5 decades. A hybrid of rock-climbing, rappelling, parkour and high-flying feats, the vertical dance company has challenged expectations frequently in its battle with gravity – often in view of an awestruck public. This is redefining, reclaiming public space at its finest.
Bandaloop. Excerpts from Field. Part II of the multi-year work LOOM.
Bandaloop. FLOOD, World premiere.
Bandaloop. Redemption Too, at Least Some / A Work-in-Progress Collaboration from DBR and Bandaloop.
Bandaloop teams up with BMW to celebrate its headquarters’ 50th anniversary in Munich.
An air-filled rectangular pointillism with motifs of hatchings and symbology borrowed from folk art and African patterning, his portrait subjects are immobile against a sky of repeated rains. The Italian-born, London-based painter self-named ALO (Aristide Loria) has been on the street art scene here for about a decade, and his style has remained his own.
Alo (photo courtesy of BSMT Space)
He prefers non-permissioned walls and began with smaller, intimate portraits, but in recent years has copped to larger sized murals in this age of the public opus. With roots in European classicism and the painting tradition, he shies away from aerosol in favor of paint brushes. ALO also avoids the common traps of ironic pop art, photoreal fantasy, and other tropes of street art, preferring instead to attempt to talk about humans in stiffly representational folk terms, warmed by smart palette combinations. Now in his second solo show at BSMT, he is trying his hand at landscapes.
“Based on his ongoing research into mankind through portraiture, this new body of work will also feature larger scale canvases and paper works,” says the press release for ‘ELEVEN’, opening this September.
Alo (photo courtesy of BSMT Space)Alo (photo courtesy of BSMT Space)Alo. MIA (photo courtesy of BSMT Space)Alo (photo courtesy of BSMT Space)Alo (photo courtesy of BSMT Space)Alo (photo courtesy of BSMT Space)
Rocking this little neighborhood since 2009, The Welling Court Mural Project in Queens, New York brought a bevy of old skool and new again this summer to add to the collaborative art project that cheers the locals and thrills visitors. By now, you could call it historic, with writers from the OG crowd like Tats Cru, Lady Pink, John Fekner, and Chino giving their best alongside a slew of newbies in the mural art scene. Alison Wallis is the sole director these days, and her roots with the graffiti and street art community go deep, which means a well of trust is involved.
As she scans the list of artists who have given of themselves to this neighborhood for more than a decade in this community project, Wallis writes in the manifesto: “with early career, mid-career, and burgeoning young artists to help foster beauty of all life, peace, and support for all people of any race, belief, and/or sexual identity around the globe.” Once again it is good to see the many ways a community can join together in an evolving and inspiring collective statement that integrates positive social change via the culture of street art.
Like 8 million other people every year, we walk with you today to look at art and flowers along the High Line. A mile and a half long, this elevated linear park, greenway, and rail trail converted a New York Central Railroad spur on the west side of Manhattan in New York City into a calming, serene, generous natural hideaway above many streets.
The public art program features a rotating supply of general audience works and you are never quite sure what you will find. More impressive perhaps is the botanical aspect of this experience, which grounds visitors, assuring us somehow that all that crazy stuff we experience on the streets is just one aspect of our beautiful city. Don’t take it all too seriously. Knowing that this park is open and available to all New Yorkers is one of Manhattan’s greatest gifts.
Good to see pioneer stencil artist Blek le Rat on the streets of New York again last week for the first time in the US since Covid, according to his charming partner in crime, Sybille.
This time he’s on a bit of a whirlwind tour – first in Cleveland at Graffiti Heart with the local celebrity arts facilitator Stamy Paul and a collaborative show with NYC graff legend Taki 183. With various adoring coterie and cameras in tow, Blek hit NY in high style – putting up a brand new street stencil portrait of Richard Hambleton in both Manhattan and Brooklyn, the first gig courtesy of Wayne and Ray at LISA Project – another with TKid 170 joining on a collabo. As is part of the tour, Taki 183 was nearly everywhere Blek was, with visitors like Cope2, Mike 171, and Martha Cooper scattered about.
The main event was spread over a few days as the relatively new New York gallery vaguely named West Chelsea Contemporary dedicated nearly the entire space to the first solo show here by the French street artist whom Banksy acknowledges was in the game long before the famed Bristolian came on the scene. In a back gallery West Chelsea showcased some other related talents like Hambleton, Al Diaz (SAMO), and new-gen Phoebe.
With gallery openings on a few successive nights, it was a steady river of graffiti and street art fans, peers, collectors, merchants, and choice figures from New York’s urban cognoscenti coming by to pay respects and show Blek a New York welcome again. Next stop Austin, where the gallery has its 20+ year flagship, to host Monsieur Rat for a new exhibition—and, without doubt, a few new adventures.
Robert Vargas starts us off this week with a compelling trio of faces, or sides of one character. In each case she has been silenced. “Painting my “STOP” mural is a call to action to stop our #Indigenous sisters from going missing and murdered. The red hand over the mouth is the symbol of a growing movement that stands for all missing sisters whose voices are not heard.” The streets are speaking. Will we hear them?
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Royce Bannon, Jason Naylor, Praxis, No Sleep, JPO, Le Crue, Hiss, Slow Boil, SKJ 171, Mike 171, D. Brains, Dan Alavarado, Panic Rodriguez, and Robert Vargas.
The storied, busy, festive Spanish city of Valencia lies about an hour south of Fanzara, and the difference between the two could not be more pronounced. One of many across the country, this small town has been aging, shrinking in population, a shadow of its former charming self. Since the Fanzara Miau Mural Festival began about a decade ago, that direction has been slowly reversing, with an infusion of murals all over town.
The tourist trafficked has become notable, and that youthful demographic once again wanders through the winding streets, greeting old timers and taking photos of the murals and of course, posing for selfies in front of them.
The artworks are quite varied, with street artists now often formally trained studio professionals and those working in the advertising and commercial art industries. Thankfully the feeling remains free spirited, and many artists appear to await inspiration for their subject matter until arriving, preferring to be inspired by their new environment and creating something that initiates dialogue with their surroundings.
From the classically figurative to naïve, illustrative to photorealistic, the natural world to daily life, the common thread is thoughtful and considered work that is far from the hype of other street art festivals – and safely far from commercial gloss.
Today we have new photos from the 2022 edition by frequent contributor Lluis Olive Bulbena.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Black Power in Hair: Babybangz 2. Hair on Fire – Emergency on Planet Earth 3. Land Graffiti or Grass Graffiti? Why Split Hairs? Saype via Arte.tv 4. When Hair Bands Wandered the Earth – “Hot for Teacher” – Mutoid Man
BSA Special Feature: Black Power in Hair: Babybangz
“In a documentary by Juliana Kasumu, a group of Black women gathers at Babybangz salon to discuss natural hair, the impact of gentrification in New Orleans, and their personal journeys toward self-love.”
All bow to the power of hair.
Black Power in Hair: Babybangz
Emergency on Planet Earth
A new exhibition featuring artist from the graffiti/street art spheres is drawing attention to the fragile moment humans are in as we are reaping the harvest of years of abusing the Earth. The show presents 12 different spaces in situ to address different environmental issues of our day. This is a time of emergency on Planet Earth.
Saype Documentary via Arte.tv
Hot for Teacher – Mutoid Man
It’s about time for Back-To-School shopping! It’s also time for bad attitude and unrequited misdirected hormones for your teacher, courtesy of heavy metal. Check out Gina Gleason on guitar!
Click HERE to learn more about Generation Equality Forum.
There are a few walls you remember over the years, and this one in Borås, Sweden stays fresh in our minds from our trip there in 2015 for the NoLimit Festival (@nolimitboras), originated by the fantastic Shai Dahan, an artist who brought street artists from around the world to this beautiful city and established it as a destination for art. That year we were blown away by the multipaneled wingspan of a wildly rendered “sky dancer” as described by artist DALeast – poetic, stunning, and fearsome all at once, its ferocity was made nearly kinetic by the chopping of panels that separated the canvas into separate slices of sky.
DALeast. Artscape Festival 2020. Borås, Sweden. (photo courtesy of Artscape)
Today we have images of a newly revisited image painted by DALeast on the very same slotted visage. “As far as I can remember, this could be the first time I painted the same wall twice,” he says about the new rendition on the city’s university library. So loved was his original, the city asked for him to come back and as part of the currently running Artscape Festival, the artist created a brand new version. He says that the new version of the mythic bird in flight has changed, perhaps reflecting his own personal changes.
“I decided to create a continuing version of the same sky dancer that’s soaring up and transforming through two stills,” he says. “The image changes through time as well as the artist. Although it appears that I haven’t done as much external work in recent years, I sense that by not doing much, I am actually doing a lot for change. At least the old habit is peeling off. While this new piece continues to call for the openness that sparked a decade ago, the gap between subject and object is becoming softer and blurrier; edges are merging into one another. The elements keep transforming and dancing through the space, becoming the space.”
It is not rare anymore, but certainly it is still unusual for street artists to take their talents in search of a barn in the countryside. Berlin’s Johannes Mundinger departed the big city this summer to do exactly that, calling his project “Feldforschung” (Field Research). It is a witty title for an unconventional artist who routinely splits reality into juxtaposing painted screens – sometimes patterns, closeups, textures, cut-outs and samples of nature all sitting in their frames next to or over top of one another.
Johannes Mundinger. Feldforschung. Waltersbrück. Hessen, Germany. (photo courtesy of the artist)
“In the motifs, I am inspired by the stories of nearby residents or the owners of properties,” he says. Like the most successful street art in an urban environment, context matters. “I take cues from what I learn about the building, its use, and the environment it is in.” But these are abstractions, so one does not worry if the original inspiration was a cow or a stalk of grain- you are permitted to interpret.
“I don’t want to paint beautiful half-timbered houses or wooden sheds. I like these simply plastered concrete blocks – windowless, in the middle of nowhere,” he says.
Johannes Mundinger. Feldforschung. Waltersbrück. Hessen, Germany. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Another departure for a street artists – getting permission is recommended in rural areas, if for no other reason than it is rather hard to run away and hide in a doorway or create a clever escape through the streets. Here Mr. Mundinger had to approach farmers directly to ask permission to paint their building, and not everyone was very excited to see him there and rejected his offer, even though he brought photos of his previous works.
“While it was still somewhat easy to find the venues it was harder to find the owners, he says. “I needed to ask neighbors, land registry offices, even the mayor. The hardest part though is to convince the owners to be open for this experiment, having their property painted. Most aren´t, but some were cool and open..” Eventually he had success, and he worked steadily to avoid getting distracted by the sound and movement of natural life going on around him.
Johannes Mundinger. Feldforschung. Waltersbrück. Hessen, Germany. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Gazing upon these new summer works in situ, they may seem incongruent, or they may look like they were naturally meant to be there. Transforming buildings that had such different purposes also contributed to the experience. For Johannes it has been an opportunity to consider his practice in an entirely new frame, so to speak.
“I like showing my work in environments far from established exhibition venues or big cities,” he says. “I’m hoping to bring some unexpected perspectives to viewers.”
“The two walls in NRW (North Rhine Westfalia) were organized by Eva Rahe, who also took some of these photos. The buildings had been built as cow shelter and milking parlor. Most small farmers now don´t have cows in the fields anymore and a lot of the barns were abandoned and in danger of being destroyed. One such barn was saved through the intervention of a local hunter; he discovered that it was home to a little owl and asked the owner to not to take it down. So it became shelter to lots of little animals and insects.”
“Here we see that photographer Rahe discovered two lovely visitors on the roof.”
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
