“It was the very first time that I painted on a rooftop!,” says French-Swiss land artists Saype. It was so amazing.”
In a project commissioned for the “Urbain.es” exhibition curated by Magda Danysz, the large scale sprayer appears to be following a thread in Le Parc Barbieux in the south of France. “It was a beautiful opportunity to create an artwork and to create link between people there,” he says.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening:
1. Dyva & Haeck painting on the Molotow traTheo Jansen: Strandbeest
2. AMERICAN DREAM. America’s hidden geography of poverty.
3. Kunle EARSNOT Martins via Juxtapoz Magazine
The Dutch artist Theo Jansen creates new forms of life: impressive skeletal structures that move independently, powered by the wind. The Strandbeests are created with plastic electrical tubing and bring to mind the stages of evolution – especially when exhibited on oceanside. Jansen says his creations have actually moved through 12 periods of evolution.
“By developing this evolution, I hope to become wiser in the understanding of existing nature by encountering myself the problems of the real Creator.”
Currently on exhibition at Kunstmuseum Den Haag, “Theo Jansen, Strandbeesten, de nieuwe generatie” is open until July 3rd.
Theo Jansen: Strandbeest
Matt Black: UNAMERICAN DREAM. America’s hidden geography of poverty.
“I’ve spent nearly all my adult life in a photographic dialogue with the central valley of California, ” he says of the state so rich that it would rank high among countries of the world, if it were a country. But that’s not what Matt Black has been documenting.
Kunle EARSNOT Martins via Juxtapoz Magazine
Sell the product, people. That’s how the world runs. And Kunle is cute, so.
Because the photos from each installation are always so good, here is the latest installment by French-Swiss artist Saype, who is featuring his giant biodegradable landart painting on a floating barge in Venice.
The piece, part of his “Beyond Walls” global human chain, will travel in and around Venice during the Biennale Arte 2022 59th International Art Exhibition. It’s good to see that the artist is still staying true to his commitment to keeping his artworks and his materials biodegradable, unlike so many commercial products sold in stores today by multinationals that end up polluting our air, water, and soil. So many companies try to use others to “artwash” their images these days, so we know a number of artists who are acutely aware of this possibility and actively avoid it.
Almost a year ago, the Jersey City Mural Festival 2021 was launched. We covered it extensively for you here, here, here, and here on BSA.
Poet, urban author, photographer, and longtime NYC messenger Kurt Boone was there too, camera in hand and ready to record the action of the artists getting up on walls and meeting the public. Kurt throws himself into the scene and knows how to navigate while people are enjoying the atmosphere of creativity all around. With his knowledge of the street capturing graffiti, urban cycling, street photography, skateboarding, and busking, you know that his shots are on point.
Instead of uploading everything to a social media platform, Boone asked his friend Anthony Firetto to help lay out his photos to create a book. This is a genuine work of the heart – a self-published hefty book that captures a moment in time, the various players and styles, and a flashpoint in the development of Jersey City as it continues to change.
Congrats to Mr. Boone for putting this together and thanks to him for sharing it with us and BSA readers. See more about Kurt Boone and his impressive work HERE.
Jersey City Mural Festival. Photography by Kurt Boone. © Copyright Kurt Boone
These stormy spring days are full of dark clouds, so it’s time to brighten things up with ‘The Peacock’ mural in Leeds city center celebrating Marching Out Together. Even in these photos furnished by the artist Cbloxx aka Jay Gilleard, you can see how much the new piece can perk up a passerby.
The artist and organizers of this new piece say that the mural means to celebrate and encourage the further inclusivity of LGBTQ+ folks in the fandom and fields of Leeds United Football Club. Since 2017 a campaign has recognized everyone’s right to stand proudly, cheering the team.
“Marching Out Together was founded in 2017 by Andrew Tilly and Drew Harrison, with the support of Leeds United Football Club, to create a safe space for LGBTQ+ supporters, their friends, family, and allies at LUFC’s matches,” says a press release. “The group’s wider mission is to bridge the gap between the LGBTQ+ community and the stereotypically masculine fanbase of football.” Sounds good from here and looks fantastic up there on York Street.
Since the peacock image has been affiliated with Leeds United since about1842- historically playing on a patch called the Old Peacock Ground, it’s a fitting image to breathe new life into.
“The core thematic of The Peacock really is Pride; what is more sassy and full of pride than a peacock?” says the artist Cbloxx, whose work as one half of Nomad Clan has been published here on BSA several times. “Its otherworldly flamboyance, confidence and striking visuals made it a focal point no-brainer. To convey the notion of activism, protest and visibility I borrowed aesthetics from the old coal mining embroidered flags, which echo the typical northern working-class heritage that I so often celebrate in my work.”
“This show is dedicated to my home country, Ukraine, says Aleksei Bordusov, aka AEC Interesni Kazki’ from his place of exile in Spain. He’s been preparing for his show “Victoria,” which opens tomorrow in Vienna, Austria, at the AG18 Gallery.
“Ukraine was brutally attacked by Russia on February 24th,” says the artists who studied in Kyiv at the Academy of Fine Arts. “The war is going on. No end in sight. And every day we learn of new atrocities and crimes that Putin’s troops are committing against my people,” he says. “The title of the exhibition ‘Victoria’ represents what I believe in and wish for Ukraine.”
A muralist and fine artist who is known by many people for his works on the streets worldwide for the last decade – he prefers now not to think of himself as a “street artist,” says his press release. Indeed, his developed skills and aesthetic milieu are not often represented in the global street art scene. There simply isn’t a lot of old-school surrealism that makes it to the street unless it is flashy and with a commercial slickness. His work is of such quality and content that it’s now more often been compared with the surreal canon of Bosch, Goya, Dali, Riviera, and Moebius – here in Vienna, others mention Rudolf Hausner.
Whatever your passion, psychological or carnal, something is stirred in these canvasses – triggering the myths of your religious training perhaps, or the musical storytellers of 1970s post-psychedelia, or perhaps by looking at war told about and mediated on social media postings in your pocket. His figures are “heavily stepping forward, powerful, making their way through a mad world.” Maybe these mis-figures and their pungent palettes appear more familiar and make more sense today.
The new show opens tomorrow, and AEC says he will also be signing copies of his new book “Mythgazing.” Still, his feelings of utter displacement are only compounded by the normalcy of an art opening at a beautiful gallery. He’s named the new show “Victoria” because “it represents what I believe in and wish for Ukraine: Victory of the creation over destruction, good over evil, truth over lies. The Ukrainian people are defending themselves and fighting against pure evil.”
Annagasse 18
1010 Wien, Vienna
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week.
Happy Easter! Sameach Pesach! Ramadan Mubarak! It’s a rare year when all three of these holidays are happening at the same time. It’s a religious trifecta that you can see playing out on the streets of New York. What a rich tapestry we wrap ourselves with in this beautiful city.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Rambo, Winston Tseng, JJ Veronis, Bastard Bot, Sam Durant, Paoli Pivi, Curb Your Ego, Guerra Paint, and WASP.
Recently we brought you coverage of Shepard Fairey’s newest work for the Djerbahood project on the island of Hara Sghira Er Riadh in Tunisia. A gradually-building project curated over the last decade or more by the Tunisian-French owner of Paris’ Galerie Itinerrance, Medhi Ben Cheikh, there must be nearly 200 artists from 30+ nations represented here now.
As each year passes we become more aware that the collection represents an era, a vast survey of a time when street art was graduating to murals worldwide. Some of these artists have risen in prominence in the street art/contemporary art world, while others have declined, or have shifted their attention to something else entirely. In that respect, Djerbahood is an archive for all to investigate and analyze.
Sensitive to local cultural values in terms of content, the various expressions of creativity may not follow one aesthetic – but they invariably are complemented by the predominant white stucco walls that define this pristine haven for street art murals. While some have aged quite beautifully, others have shown the passage of time and the elements, gently weathering the overall aesthetic.
The project is documented in a beautifully edited and printed book, which we reviewed here.
To reacquaint you, below are a few selections from the project:
To reaquaint you, below are a few selections from the project:
Click HERE to learn more about the project.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening:
1. Dyva & Haeck painting on the Molotow train.
2. THIS IS INDECLINE: A Showreel
3. Edoardo Tresoldi: Opera
On this episode of Graff TV the featured graffiti writers are Dyva and Haeck who paint the Molotow train.
Graffiti TV 100: Dyva & Haeck painting on the Molotow train.
THIS IS INDECLINE: A Showreel
Now see kids, this is what they call a showreel. That’s when they put together their greatest hits and play a screaming apocalyptic metal soundtrack over top of it all.
Edoardo Tresoldi: Sound Installation for Opera
The political caricature is a treasured form of public discourse that still holds as much power as it did when we relied on the printing press. Able to express sentiment and opinion without uttering a syllable, the artist can sway the direction of conversation with skill, insight, and humor. Artist Robbie Conal has built a career from visually roasting the most sebaceous of our various leaders in the last few decades, often bringing his posters to the street and installing them in advertisers’ wildposting manner.
With the briefest of texts, slogans, or twisted nicknames, he reveals the underbelly as a face, dropping expectations into the sewer. If it were as simple as a political party, one might try to dismiss his work as only partisan. But Conal’s work functions more as an ex-ray, and frequently the resulting scan finds cancer.
In this newer book by author G. James Daichendt, EdD, who has written previously about Kenny Scharf and Shepard Fairey and in The Urban Canvas: Street Art Around the World (Weldon Owen, 2017), Conal is thoroughly recorded, examined, and explained. A street artist, among many other things, Daichendt calls Conal an “LA fixture and someone who is universally respected for the passion and vitality that he has brought to his work as an artist and teacher for several decades.”
Chapters of Conal’s interests and opinions are thoughtfully compiled and laid out, the artist seemingly never out of a fresh supply of political figures to skewer. As an object lesson, his practice is what draws him near and dear to the part of the street art community who uses the streets to communicate, advocate, and rebuke the hypocrisies in culture and politics
“I vividly remember the first time I saw Robbie Conal’s art because it felt like the exact thing I was meant to see but didn’t realize it until I experienced it,” says Shepard Fairey in his foreword. In his description, one can see that this artist has influenced Fairey, among others, but particularly.
“From that moment of discovering Robbie’s work forward, I had a clearer vision of what art could be… A poster on a corner utility box caught my eye … it was an image of Ronald Reagan on a bright yellow background with bold type that said CONTRA above and DICTION below. Then, a block later, I spotted another one. Now I was on the lookout, and the Contra-Diction posters seemed to be on every corner,” Fairey says. “This Contra-Diction poster spoke to me as a communiqué from a truthful voice of the people.”
High praise indeed.
ROBBIE CONAL / STREETWISE. 35 YEARS OF POLITICALLY CHARGED GUERRILLA ART. By G. James Daichendt. With a foreword by Shepard Fairey. Published by Schiffer Publishing LTD. Atglen, PA
David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards curate “Quiet as It’s Kept”
Write poetry.
That is our best-recommended strategy to experience the Whitney Biennial. The stanza, the spaces, the rhythms, the waves. They all coalesce in the black space and the white space. And one need not keep this quiet.
The country has been in an ongoing grinding recession since 2008, heading toward depression. Institutions steadily attacked; the wealth steadily stolen. You can see the US here, in these installations, videos, paintings, sculptures, and photography.
Even when you don’t look, you see stressed-out workers balancing on a highwire, the frayed net below. The emptiness of consumerism, the backwash from decades of wars, the contemplation of chaos. Here is history and here is the future, quiet as it’s kept.
The Whitney Biennial is now 90 – an institution, possibly. Discussed, reviled, admired; this one often is stunning. Collaborative curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards have chosen quality in these 63 artists, have endeavored to know their collection of artists and can shake the viewer. Brooding, raw, slick, contemporary displacement is displayed. Frayed. Portrayed.
Can’t Go? Sign up for the virtual tour HERE.
Learn more about the Biennial and the curators HERE
A small selection of the participating artists are here:
The Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet as It’s Kept is currently on view at the Whitney Museum in NYC. Click HERE for tickets, hours and directions.
“In a democratic society, a person’s job is a basic tool for civil and economic progress,” says Italian street artist Biancoshock. “What progress can there be if the world’s jobs do not produce emancipation, growth, and gratification?”
Heavy questions.
His repurposing of heavy blocks of concrete as delivery boxes here is called “Heavy Meal.” He says his point is to highlight the unrecognized burdens that delivery people of today are carrying thanks to sophisticated software. He describes situations of ever-higher pressure, lower wages, and an overall feeling of precariousness.
Increasingly across Europe and the developed world, he says, “food-delivery riders are dictated to by algorithms that extend the control and distribution functions – to become inaccessible, authoritarian and categorical.”
JUST NEET
Milan, 2022
“The algorithm imposes a path, rhythms, distances to be bridged (those between the rider and the consumer) and other unbridgeable ones (those between the rider and the management of the company that produces the algorithm and the goods to be delivered).”
These huge traffic blockers make idea canvasses for the installation artist, who adopts the logos of well-known European food-delivery brands and slightly alters them for artistic effect. To see the growing number of protests against these companies by employees, you see that more sophisticated technology is lowering the standard of living for many of us.
“The need to survive in this system transforms young people, students, and the unemployed into ‘new generation slaves,’” says the artist.
SLAVEROO
Milan, 2021
Old stone, new slavery.
Some delivery brands in the news:
Glovo riders go on strike as European gig workers rise up
Just Eat, Deliveroo and UberEats delivery drivers to walk out in Belfast
Deliveroo unveils plans to pull out of Spain in wake of ‘rider law’
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BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
