A French graffiti writer since the 90s, a skillful assistant to many of the big street art names on enormous walls since the 00s and 10s, a student and teacher of both genres, Gris Fluo is slowly coming into the light with his voice and thoughtful technique.
He confidently summons a lively scene on his new wall in Square Henri-Karcher for Art Azoi that flows across this pungent bright red sea on an otherwise dull gris day. The brushwork a bit brutish but intentional, the hand tender, the hues cultivated and cleverly combined, glowing. His skeleton characters are wicked, elongated, in motion, and mirthful – perhaps with more adventures in mind.
“When I make photographs, I often look into the eyes of the people I am witnessing,” says French-American photojournalist Peter Turnley, who recently published these images from his trip to Ukraine from Paris March 7-16. “Their eyes so often say all that I never could with words.”
Turnley spent his time, ten days, alongside Ukrainian refugees. He published his work, photos, and text in Blind Magazine. We wanted to share his diary and highlight his work with you.
“I flew today from Paris to Krakow, Poland, and then boarded a train to Przemyśl on the Polish / Ukrainian border. Already at the Krakow train station, I encountered many Ukrainian refugees that had fled the war in their homeland.
On the train from the airport in Cracow to the train station, I sat next to Liuba, 42, who fled from Zaporozhe, near the site of the Nuclear plant that had been bombed. She explained to me that she felt very guilty to leave her parents there. She is very proud of her husband who has stayed to fight.
At the train station, Vicka, 22, stood with Lidia, her 9-year-old daughter. Liliana and Sofia, from Dniepr, stood together as well.
On the train, Andre, 30, sat across from me. He has been working in Poland and has a wife and a 5-year-old daughter. I asked him why he was returning to Ukraine, and he told me, “I am returning to throw Molotov cocktails to defend my country.”
On the train to the border, Julia, 5, held her pet hamster and rode with her mother Maria, 37. When I arrived in Przemyśl, as I descended from the train, I saw several thousand refugees that had just arrived from Ukraine, boarding a train that was going in the direction of Prague. I walked in the dark up and down the train track next to this departing train. I looked into the eyes of dozens of refugees looking out the train window, waiting to depart for a new world-leaving behind everything they have previously known in life.”
Click HERE to read the complete diary and the photo essay.
Click HERE to read the complete diary and the photo essay.
Peter Turnley
Peter Turnley is renowned for his photography of the realities of the human condition. His photographs have been featured on the cover of Newsweek 43 times and are published frequently in many of the world’s most prestigious publications. He has worked in over 90 countries and has witnessed most major stories of international geopolitical and historic significance in the last 40 years. He has both American and French nationality.
What is a more quintessential activity in New York on a Sunday than to go to the museum? The steps of the Met Museum were crowded despite the cold blustery (spring?) weather. We climbed the steps with Martha to see one of street arts’ best storytellers in the mezzanine of a warm-hued private gallery area. A small collection of peers and friends and fans, adults and children, milled around the taupe linen space for a meet-and-greet that glowed like stained glass Mission table lamp wrapped in copper foil upon a thick oak table.
We were here to look at a new body of work inspired by that time – 30 or 40 small-scale pieces mounted on the wall. “Their paper forms take inspiration from harmonographs, Chladni plates, natural forms such as ice crystals and radiolarians,” said the invite, “as well as traditional textile and weaving patterns, alchemical symbols, and architecture.” Curated by Laura Einstein, she calls these collected pieces “Eidophones”.
She greeted us all, red bubbling ringlets spilling, happy for the reunion, pleased with the new works. Martha was taken with two girls who played on chairs patiently, their mom with one eye trained to them while talking with someone else nearby.
We chatted with a Bushwick artist named Felix who helped hang the show and who showed Martha his taxidermy, Steve talked with Robert Aiola and friend Fabiola about their trip this afternoon to the Hip Hop show at Sotheby’s. Robert was fascinated with a crate of vinyl there from DJ Jazzy Jeff. Faust arrived and interviewed a woman who carried a tablet like a clipboard and looked like a salesperson. All of us got to meet a young painting prodigy of 10 whose mom showed us her paintings on her phone, and then Jaime asked to snap a pic of Swoon before we left.
One of the first graffiti writers to name themselves after a laptop, ACER got up big on the front of the New Museum this week, which may be one of the most relevant shows they have presented in recent years. Just kidding, he’s not named after a laptop. Police will certainly be after him for this high-profile crossing of the legal line that got more press than Putin for a New York minute, but in terms of graffiti parlance, this got him major fame among peers.
Speaking of crossing the line, national embarrassment Ginni Thomas was accused this week of using her husbands’ influential seat on the Supreme Court as leverage to overturn the 2020 election. But competition for most embarrassing US citizens was very stiff this week. Did you see all those frustrated white guys grandstanding and preening before a black woman, presumably prosecuting a culture war while disrespecting her office and person? These Supreme Court hearings were especially painful for what they revealed. Ted, Josh, Dick,… Lindsay Darling, did you know the cameras were rolling? You know people can watch those for years, right?
Here in New York we have daffodils, shag mullets, and a man nesting in a tree. In street art news, its all about Ukraine and Zelensky, baby.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: CRKSHNK, Sticker Maul, Sara Lynne-Leo, Stickman, David F Barthold, Savior El Mundo, Manuel Alejandro NYC, Home Sick, Georgi Collagi, The Bloom Project, and ACER.
In addition to addressing a common narrative, thematically curated group shows can draw attention to contrasts in style and present something that unified to the visitor. A new women-centered project opening at the end of the month in Roubaix, France, aims to draw similarities and differences among a variety of street artists to create a dialogue about how women are depicted in public space.
Guerrilla Girls. Urbain.Es. Magda Danysz in conjunction with La Condition Publique of Roubaix in France. (photo courtesy of Magda Danysz Gallery)
Using new and borrowed art pieces, curator and art dealer Magda Dansyz fills a 15,000 square foot exhibition space at La Condition Publique, a culture factory that inhabits an historic former wool and cotton processing facility and is now a venue for artistic creation. “I have been working for a year now about the place and representation of women in the public space through the light of street art practices,” she says about Urbain.es and the nearly 30 artists whose work is here.
They span perhaps 40 years of street practice from risk-taking activists to self-promoters leveraging activism as a brand builder, to more subtle artworks in the public sphere that raise incisive questions about perceptions of women in society.
YZ. Empress Ozoua, 2022. Urbain.Es. Magda Danysz in conjunction with La Condition Publique of Roubaix in France. (photo courtesy of Magda Danysz Gallery)
“In a variety of forms, the exhibition presents in situ works, original art pieces lent by the artists or private and public collections, as well as documentary testimonials retracing historical urban performances,” says a text from the organizers. Exciting highlights include the inclusion of works by true old-school billboard activists like the Guerrilla Girls who for decades have been confronting art institutions for systemic sexism, the 1970/80s NY graff writer Lady Pink who painted trains in a male dominated subculture, and Yseult YZ Digan, whose painterly depictions of women represent a quieter tribute to the strength and steel of women that appears through many cultures, often overlooked.
Artistes I Artists Yseult YZ Digan, eL Seed, Guerilla Girls, Maya Hayuk, Icy and Sot, Invader, Mark Jenkins et Sandra Fernandez, JR, Kubra Khademi, Lady Pink, Madame, Miss.Tic, Miss Van, Mode 2, Robert Montgomery, Eko Nugroho, Obvious, Quik, Edmond Marie Rouffet, Magda Sayeg, Saype, Swoon, T-Kid, Aya Tarek, Amalia Ulman, Zevs
Icy & Sot. Emancipate 2020. Urbain.Es. Magda Danysz in conjunction with La Condition Publique of Roubaix in France. (photo courtesy of Magda Danysz Gallery)Swoon. Dawn and Gemma 2014. Urbain.Es. Magda Danysz in conjunction with La Condition Publique of Roubaix in France. (photo courtesy of Magda Danysz Gallery)Mark Jenkins & Sandra Fernandez. The Secret, 2022. Urbain.Es. Magda Danysz in conjunction with La Condition Publique of Roubaix in France. (photo courtesy of Magda Danysz Gallery)Mark Jenkins & Sandra Fernandez. The Secret, 2022. Urbain.Es. Magda Danysz in conjunction with La Condition Publique of Roubaix in France. (photo courtesy of Magda Danysz Gallery)Mark Jenkins & Sandra Fernandez. Urbain.Es. Magda Danysz in conjunction with La Condition Publique of Roubaix in France. (photo courtesy of Magda Danysz Gallery)
URBAIN.ES
Exposition collective sous le commissariat de Magda Danysz Group Show curated by Magda Danysz
Du 31 mars au 24 juillet 2022 From March 31st to July 24th, 2022
Click HERE for more information and a complete preview of the artworks.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. SpY Reflection 2. One Minute of Dance Per Day March 20, 2022: Danse 2623 – Nadia Vadori-Gauthier 3. The Moon Lady. Michelle Obama Mural in Chicago by Royyal Dog
BSA Special Feature: SpY ‘Reflection’
“In ‘REFLECTION’, SpY makes use of such common elements of street furniture as convex traffic mirrors that are used in surveillance and security, to present this hypnotic kinetic sculpture in movement.
Made up of 20 convex traffic mirrors, this kinetic sculpture generates a replicated universe that evolves with the different variations of movement and position of the spectators through reflection. SpY explores the spectators’ relationship with their own reflection and environment, multiplying and expanding their privacy and intimacy among them all.
SpY “Reflection”
Nadia Vadori-Gauthier: Une minute de danse par jour. Bois de Vincennes. It’s the spring equinox. The first day of the astral year, a day of celebration of Mother Earth and her flowerings. Dancing with Lucas.
One Minute of Dance Per Day March 20, 2022: Danse 2623 – Nadia Vadori-Gauthier
The Moon Lady. Michelle Obama Mural in Chicago by Royyal Dog
This is a picture of former First Lady Michelle Obama wearing a hanbok” says artist Royyal Dog of his mural in Chicago.
Assemblage and collage don’t get much attention in the street art scene, let alone the graffiti scene, perhaps because these art-making techniques will not typically trigger police sirens and lights. You may be thoughtfully arranging a composition of found wood and metal elements from a nearby dumpster on the derelict wall of an abandoned building at 11 pm for no apparent reason – but that hardly reeks of vandalism. There’s no wild tagging scrawl, no aerosol cans, no bubbles, no drips, no silver fill, no dramatic fence-jumping. For that matter, this kind of work can look like fence-mending. Now that you think of it, assemblage and collage-making may be precisely an ideal vehicle for subversion.
Hyland Mather has been pounding together assemblages on the street for more than a decade – a gathering of the discarded of society into new relationships, new families. He’s been scanning the city horizon and collecting for a while – doing it so long that sometimes he feels like he may be a hoarder, but this search and rescue operation continues apace. His collections of objects are more like orphans given new homes, not discarded but simply lost. Whether drawn from city margins, dumpsters, post-industrial heaps, each element is adorned and joined with others. Maybe it is just an extension of the Western world’s consumerism of the last half-century, but perhaps it is also an inclusive practice of making sense from the chaos, finding great value and beauty in the discarded.
Now dividing his time between living in Portugal and in Amsterdam, and curating for STRAAT museum in Amsterdam, the Denver artist also collects and represents other artists and creates street-based artworks in many cities – a unique blending of elements, roles, and families that further evolves his profile. Here in a hotel lobby at the center of a Jersey City arts center revival, his found elements are appropriate; moving and mobile and newly combined and interconnected in an act of his ongoing global/local travels.
He calls the two-part installation his “Ocean of Being.” If their shapes, symbols, textures, and relationships are biographical, the stories are subterranean. Curated by DK Johnston for The Arts Fund, Mr. Mather tells us that it is an installation of two significant works named Viking Frolic Bar and Black Bottom/Foggy Eyes, “paired together for the first time as a massive installation of assemblage and collage.” Wood, acrylic, aerosol, objects, paper, canvas, frame; all gathered and working alongside, in tandem, in a constructed harmony unified by a calmed, natural palette and tied together with string, a “geometric component floating lightly above”.
Additional works completed in situ and for other projects are on display- gallery works and works on paper from what he calls his ‘Emblematum’ series.
“These text-based pieces use imagery harvested from the pre-war (1930’s) Dutch magazine, Panorama, and post-war (1950-1960) photography from period photo journals,” his description says. He was aiming to “create a dreamlike collage behind ambiguous but uplifting slogans like the project title, ‘Ocean of Being’.
BSA spoke to Hyland Mather about his work, his influences, his strings, and his new indoor exhibition.
BSA:Is this your first project in the USA after two years of the Covid Pandemic? If so how did you feel being able to travel again to execute your work as an artist?
Hyland Mather (HM): Actually, I guess you could say I was lucky, I had a bit of a ‘golden ticket’ in terms of travel documents during the height of the pandemic with a European residency permit and a US passport. I did a bunch of large mural projects in the States in 2020 and 2021 and was in Philadelphia for an exhibition at Paradigm last July. I will say it was an odd combo of super easy and super eerie traveling when the planes and airports were nearly empty.
BSA:“Ocean of Being,” which is the title of your exhibition, does it refer to seeking balance, silence, meditation? The oceans are vast, and one can imagine being in the middle of them in complete silence, but not necessarily at peace since they can be turbulent and dangerous.
HM: You’re pretty right on about this. I took the title from a Hindu idea, Brahman Ātman. Where Brahman represents the unfathomable, immeasurable vast ocean of space, consciousness, and time and Ātman represents a tiny sample, or a water droplet in that ocean. In the Lost Object installations, the objects in the install are a small sample representing a vast ocean of discarded objects that are around us everywhere, all the time.
In the text-based works on paper, the collage backgrounds under papercut slogans make a kind of balance, where the slogan itself is like a cup of water and the collage underneath represents a vast ocean of imagery associated with the words. The string paintings, Linea Pictura paintings, are also related to the Brahman Ātman meditation where the soft, loose, abstract backgrounds form the ocean upon which the crisp floating lines hover over…like a droplet of water in the air when waves collide.
BSA:Is your predilection for using found objects in your art purely as art materials or are you being conscientious about the environment by creating as much as you can with discarded objects?
HM: This is an awesome question, and I think about it a lot. In the beginning it was never about the environment, it was purely meditation and aesthetic. However, over time, especially working with recycling centers and junk yards when collecting materials, I’ve come to really see what’s going on with waste and it is, and I mean this sincerely, insane.
I remember once going into the recycling center at the University of Oregon and seeing a huge industrial size hospital style laundry basket just filled to the brim with old CD’s. The woman who ran the program was in shambles…she just pointed at the CD’s and said something like, ‘We’re a conscientious university town and there is just no way we can even begin to put a dent in how much recyclable trash there is even in our community’. It was pretty sad to see this front line activist super disheartened.
I do have this dream project to work with some major player like Amazon, Ikea or Walmart to create a partnership where I make things with the mountains of stuff that they destroy when people return things. I just can’t wrap my head around how their PR departments would spin that … first they’d have to admit how much stuff is destroyed.
Hyland Mather. Emblematum Parvus Series. Exhibition Ocean of Being in collaboration with The Art Fund and Canopy. Jersey City, NJ. (photo courtesy of the artist)
BSA: What’s is the process for your text-based series? Do you come out with the text first then you find the images for the background? Or is it the opposite?
HM: The text works (Emblematum) are about wide ideas expressed in simple language. An expression like ‘Under The Sun’ has so many possibilities for interpretation…like a pretty day at the beach, or wild flowers on the prairie, or something darker like desertification, or inmates busting up rocks. Almost always it’s the text first, then the collages underneath, but the collages themselves are often fun to compose separately. It’s an enlightening exercise digging through old magazines and gauging the temperature of culture from a time period that is not so far in the past.
I have a lot of old Dutch Panorama magazines from the 1930s and 1940s that I found behind an old book store in Amsterdam. Panorama was comparable to Cosmo or something like that… it’s crazy to look at one from say late 1939 or early 1940 and there is absolutely no temperature of the war that was already raging in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and in a few short months would overrun the Netherlands as well, yet it’s still just ads for toothpaste and puff pieces on fishing.
Hyland Mather. Emblematum Parvus Series. Detail. Exhibition Ocean of Being in collaboration with The Art Fund and Canopy. Jersey City, NJ. (photo courtesy of the artist)
BSA: In your Linea Picture series one experiences the rigidity of the string and the beauty of the geometry but at the same time the soft yarn plays with the soft brushed, curvilinear work on the canvases. How would you describe this dual personality?
HM: This is such a flattering description, thank you. I’m happy with this work. This is the newest part of my practice and I feel like it’s taken me many years to arrive here. I’m not sure I can say it much better than you just did. String has been a tool I use in my work for a long time. I love how delicate it is and yet when stretched taut how precise it is. It’s kinda fetishy. The abstract painterly backgrounds are super meditative for me to make and put a great deal of peace into me as I’m working on them, but as artworks these pieces don’t feel complete for me until the string components are added, and a balance is achieved. I also really enjoy the shadow casting that the floating strings have on the surface of the canvases.
Ocean of Being is a project by artist Hyland Mather (@thelostobject), hosted by Canopy Hotel of Jersey City. The exhibition is curated by DK Johnston, founder of The Arts Fund.
The human-built city has at times been called a jungle, but the concrete and steel environment flatters itself if it really thinks so. The intelligence and beauty present in the natural plant world far outstrips our modern cityscape, centuries after its origination. At least a few artists have been bringing it back to us in murals over the last few years, introducing a calm, lyrical serenity that dives way beneath the conscious, touching our roots.
The young Italian painter Fabio Petani has been reintroducing a natural agenda to cities across Europe for less than a decade – in a way that only a scientist, botanist, and naturalist with a design sensibility could. What is genuinely original is his subtle re-interpretation of the formal conventions of botany, introducing them to a modern urban audience without lecturing – and rising far beyond purely decorative presentations.
In the first hardcover-bound collection of works called Spagyria Urbana, the Dinerolo-born, Turin-trained Fabio Petani impresses with scale, scope, and sensitivity. More impressive possibly is the ease with which he can command his scientific interests and his ability to infuse his works with warmth, into rather artisanal renderings of art.
The book gives sweeping vistas of his large-scale works as well as many small and personal details about his development as an artist and the tight brotherhood of Italian street artists who invited them into their fold, first as an assistant, later as a peer. With outstanding scholarship and imaginary descriptive phrasing, lead essayist Alessandra Loalè brings the artist and the work into context, instilling a greater appreciation in the reader.
The duality of Petani’s combined and complementary styles is captured eloquently and instructively as analogous to the natural forces of life. “The abstract stroke of his first artworks gives way to a further realistic approach in the creation of the compositional layout, which results in a progressively more articulate combination of simple graphic elements,” she writes “a symbol of a logical conscience which brings order to the whole structure – and botanical subjects.”
“The latter is represented in more recent pieces in two guises: a pictorial reinterpretation, defined by brush strokes and specks of color, and a more realistic graphic approach, which hints towards the typical etchings featured in botanical illustrations, enriched by the meticulous descriptions of thoroughly researched details that are proper to each species.”
In an age of awakening to our true impact on the natural world, it is perhaps more surprising that many 20 and 30-something urban artists are not drawing our attention to its power, intelligence, and inherent beauty. Petani brings the urban passersby straight to the source unflinchingly and with all the respect Mother Nature deserves.
Fabio Petani “Spagyria Urbana”. Torino, Italy. 2021. Texts by Alessandra Loale. Layout by Livio Ninni with translation by Mauro Italiano.
From the wilds of Penang, where the psychotropic art duo Yok & Sheryo are living, comes this new print – which was also released as an animated NFT. “An ode to the beautiful tropical paradise lifestyle that The Yok and I have been living for the past 2 years,” says Sheryo, and you can see the relaxed mirth and trouble-making that normally accompanies their characters. “Sooooo here it is,” says The Yok, “our ‘gм ραяα∂ιѕє’”.
Yok & Sheryo. “GM Paradise”. Archival Pigment Print, Hand Deckled Edges on 310gsm, 100% Cotton a-cellulose Hahnemühle German Etching Paper. 2021. Released by Cultprint Co.
Done in collaboration with @cultprint, each is signed, and the APs are hand-embellished with gold leaf.
Archival pigment print, Hand Deckled Edges on 310gsm, 100% cotton, a-Cellulose Hahnemühle German etching paper, 50 x 70 cm, edition of 80, signed, numbered, and includes a certificate of authenticity.
French visual artist Jeanne Varaldi is more urbanist than artist perhaps, but her new collaborative work with Paris streets and the L’association Art Azoï skillfully incorporates both interests. She says her abstract mural is composed of urban signatures and elements that are inspired directly by the urban surroundings. Literally she is referring to the incorporated map of the area and nearby crosswalk in her new composition.
“These urban elements seem to fragment and decompose and invite us to look at the city as a constantly changing playground,” she tells us on a chilly spring day. “Yellow and orange markings that are inspired by those on construction sites also appear here.”
A crisp new wave ode to 1980s graphic design and dusty pastel templates, Varaldi’s affinity for retro is spiced by the freehand elements of graffiti that keep the work lively. “The mural uses urban markers to invite everyone to better see and appropriate them.”
It’s officially Spring here today – the Spring Equinox beginning in the Northern Hemisphere will be at 11:33 am. Outside of the city, away from the glare, people will be able to glimpse Mars, Saturn, and Venus. The geese have been heard honking on the river, kids have been heard screaming on the playground, aerosol cans have been heard spraying under the bridge.
We’re relieved to glimpse fresh creativity on the streets – a sure sign that people are responding to their lives in a productive visual expression. As citizens of the Precariat, the opportunity to offer unfiltered artistic expression often requires a gatekeeper to approve it. When you are a street artist, you regularly circumvent the taste-makers and the influencers, hoping to reach people directly on the street. This week we found a number of unfiltered images and messages on New York walls and felt like these works are just as fresh as crocus popping through the soil, just as relevant as the blooms pushing through branches on trees. Here we have new shots from Jersey City. These are signs of Spring!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Beau Stanton, UR New York, 1010, Chupa, Blaze, Melski, The Cupcake Guy, SAMO, Acro, Sory, Niceo, Mona Caron, Cheez.
Speaking in his abstractly modern visual language, artist Clément Laurentin creates this curvilinear winter ode to our permanent state of precariousness. In cooperation with Art Azoï, an important street art association in Paris which manages a number of walls in the city and pairs them with artists, Laurentin tells us that he chose the palette in December to complement the natural elements here on the terrace of “Les Plateaux Sauvages”, a theatrical and artistic center.
The blues hues of hard cold times can still be rewarding despite their nature, and Laurentin says he keeps his mind and spirit in balance when creating – even if a piece like this one alludes to the “fragile mental architecture” we build our lives upon. A gifted painter, he’s equally gifted describing his process and intention.
“I never sketch a wall before starting it,” he says, “I improvise the drawing directly on the wall on the first day. I like the idea that you can’t remove any piece of the composition without making the whole composition collapse. Every part has to be in the right place so that the whole thing can stand.” “In every artwork, I like to bring an oniric /surrealistic atmosphere to the piece; in such a tough and materialistic world, I want my work to be some kind of an inner life window,” he says, “a place where you can escape the time you’re looking at it.”
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
