Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Royyal Dog: “Prettier Than Flowers” 2. Shuko & Friends via I Love Graffiti 3. Said Dokins: Resilience, Love, and Subversion
BSA Special Feature: Royyal Dog: “Prettier Than Flowers”
Royyal Dog (Chris Chanyang Shim, 심찬양) is a Korean graffiti writer and street artist from Seoul, Korea. In this video his photorealistic skills are on display in this video from a few years ago, the sunny day reminding us of spring and the promise of warm breezes, sunshine, and new love. The portrait radiates while balancing floral details, traditional dress and messages written in Korean caligraphy
Shuko & Friends via I Love Graffiti
“Spray-painting trains in 2022 still is a very important part of the Graffiti movement,” say the folks at ILoveGraffiti.de, who produced this video on Berlin based graffiti writer SHUKO. Within a minute you can see that SHUKO is active on subway trains and s-trains, a thunderous rush of adrenaline powering the circumspect movements of aerosol-wielding people for a half century. For the last couple of years, Berlin’s trains have been showcasing the work of many artists in heavy numbers and quick succession.
Said Dokins: Resilience, Love, and Subversion
“BLOOP EXPERIENCE is the urban side of BLOOP FESTIVAL Milano. A series of collaboration murals by Said Dokins, Biokip Labs Atelier and the residents of the neighbourhood, Via del Turchino. Hosted by MM.
The word AMA (imperative verb for the word amare: to love) was written of the memories, words and sentences that described the area by the residents.”
No matter the person’s path to get here, few people inside or outside are convinced that the system is just or constructive for the greater good. Here in Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico, artist Said Dokins shares the words and nicknames of people who live in a so-called “supermax” prison in this calligraphic art mural, an ornamented emblem to preserve memories and restore a sense of connectedness.
The muralist says that his work here was only possible with the participation of residents. Listening to people gave him the inspiration and the necessary elements, a painted alloy of memories that acknowledges the many routes that lead here.
Dokins says that dignity is one of the qualities his art seeks to preserve, or build, with the mural he calls Memoria Canera (a space for memory). He says he “gathered phrases, experiences, words used frequently in the prison’s daily life, but also poems, long writings, tales, feelings,” – painted into the composition, retained and preserved on the wall.
Here the sentence fragments, words, letters, all are poured together, forming a new human metal, a combined product that reveals the typical qualities of people and life in a place that can be absent of humanity but which nonetheless is a place where people are living.
“Memoria Canera reflects identity, memory, and life in jail. It’s about the underground culture that emerges in there, from the language, that includes the slang used inside, the nicknames of the people, to the deepest thoughts about confinement and freedom,” he says.
A creative gift to the institution, Said also creates perhaps with the knowledge that many people will rejoin greater society. Our incarceration systems need to take that into account, and ultimately we all are connected no matter the separation.
An earthquake in Mexico City in 1985 reduced much of the Roma neighborhood to rubble, the remaining structures largely empty even now because of their unsafe condition.
“Everywhere there are people living on the street while houses stand empty,” says Spanish artist Aïda Gómez, “This is something I cannot understand. I believe that we are doing something wrong here.”
Aïda Gómez. “Multispecies real state”. Huerto Roma Verde Residency. Roma, Mexico City. (photo courtesy of the artist)
During her art residency in the neighborhood at Huerto Roma Verde at the end of last year, Gómez decided to draw attention to the housing problem in the public sphere using her education in sculpting at Kunsthochschule Weißensee in Berlin; She built a series of multispecies houses that serve to provide shelter from the elements.
“I decided to build some shelters for the squirrels, birds, and insects that inhabit the garden. This way they can protect themselves from the cold, the rain, or raise their babies.”
The miniature structures mimic closely the architecture nearby yet can actually be used as shelter. Her hope is that she can begin a conversation about the possibility of rebuilding badly needed housing for humans as well.
Aïda Gómez. Abandoned house in el barrio. “Multispecies real state”. Huerto Roma Verde Residency. Roma, Mexico City. (photo courtesy of the artist)Aïda Gómez. “Multispecies real state”. Huerto Roma Verde Residency. Roma, Mexico City. (photo courtesy of the artist)Aïda Gómez. Abandoned house in el barrio.“Multispecies real state”. Huerto Roma Verde Residency. Roma, Mexico City. (photo courtesy of the artist)Aïda Gómez. “Multispecies real state”. Huerto Roma Verde Residency. Roma, Mexico City. (photo courtesy of the artist)Aïda Gómez. Abandoned house in el barrio. “Multispecies real state”. Huerto Roma Verde Residency. Roma, Mexico City. (photo courtesy of the artist)
These wheat pastes have been appearing on the streets of Barcelona after about two years of hiatus. The author (is it a collective or a single individual?) calls themselves Casa De Balneario and they are back with spiced bon mots for the passersby: clever drawings executed in a DIY style that make them approachable, quizzical, and a favorite in the streets of Barcelona.
Dryly hand-written and accompanied by stiffly simple renderings recalling mid century ads or propaganda posters, these are gentle critiques of our self-deceptions, our pop-consumer culture bromides, our willingness to overlook the unpleasant truth of our slowly warming pot of water. They look at assumptions regarding surveillance, work conditions, civil liberty, and our economic shift downward and pose a question indirectly: How did we settle for this?
Norwegian curator, producer, social activist, and street artist VLEK aka Arne Vilhelm Tellefsen, has joined the street chorus in the west that vilifies Vladimir Putin in myriad ways. His new stencil in Stavanger, home of the NuArt Festival, takes the symbol of the Russian Matryoshka Doll or nesting doll to a public-facing wall to illustrate his idea of the Russian leader who has directed the military to invade Ukraine.
In this progression of unveiling what he imagines is inside the man, VLEK posits that there is a hand grenade at the very center. He calls his piece “Deep with the soul.”
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week. The streets are reflecting this moment in New York this week as artists are showing their colors. Or Ukraine’s colors, rather. Hard to sleep through the night when you know that Gotham is on the hit list if this Russian invasion turns nuclear, hard to process the idea that a cold war is never far from a hot one, despite activists best efforts for all these decades. Hard to believe that sanctions won’t damage many more people than the intended targets. Hard to believe that money-printing is never discussed in the news as THE creator of this inflation and much more inflation to come.
Let’s do everything we can to de-escalate this war, this perpetual specter.
And thank you to the street artists who are keeping the conversations alive. Also this week, new works from F**kin REVS !
Remember to Set Your Clocks Ahead One Hour Today.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Adam Fujita, Fuckin REVS, Below Key, Sticker Maul, Sara Lynne-Leo, Hek Tad, Gold Loxe, Mike Raz, Smetsky Art, Hear Eye Am, Equalist, Liagam, and Mitya Pisliak.
Lithuanian born street artist and fine artist Ernest Zacharevic has been living in Penang for a while now and entertains himself in studio when he’s not launching enormous outdoor interventions. Without boundaries, the mind is free to conjure and consider, even stare at the sky atop your favorite animal friend.
Ernest Zacharevic. “It’s a Sign”. Archival Pigment Print on 350gsm, 100% Cotton, Hahnemuhle Museum Etching Paper. 2021. Released by Cultprint.Co
Ernest is in his early 30s but we can’t help think that sometimes his painted children are at least one-part inspired by his inner life as a child. Taking a fun poke at the cattle crossing signs he sees in the countryside of Malaysia, the artist has created this young kid searching the sky. In all probability it’s a sign that he’s discovered up there in the sky, or in the tree, or on the telephone wire.
This new print is the richest, thick cotton paper stock we’ve run into in a while and he’s now released a series of 180.
Ernest Zacharevic. “It’s a Sign”. Archival Pigment Print on 350gsm, 100% Cotton, Hahnemuhle Museum Etching Paper. 2021. Released by Cultprint.Co Ernest Zacharevic. “It’s a Sign”. Archival Pigment Print on 350gsm, 100% Cotton, Hahnemuhle Museum Etching Paper. 2021. Released by Cultprint.Co
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Yoko Ono / Imagine Peace 2. Ogryz in Poland: Graffiti TV 3. Bikismo From Tost Films
BSA Special Feature: Yoko Ono / Imagine Peace Digital Billboard Campaign
You wouldn’t know it by the continuous bombing that the US has been doing over the last 20 years or that Russia has been doing in Ukraine for the last 20 days or so, but it doesn’t have to be this way. We refer to a January article about it in Salon that says the US drops an average of 46 bombs a day, and they are not the only ones who are talking about this. They refer to the “December 2021 New York Times exposé of the consequences of U.S. airstrikes, the result of a five-year investigation, was stunning not only for the high civilian casualties and military lies it exposed, but also because it revealed just how little investigative reporting the U.S. media have done on these two decades of war.” Why don’t most of us know about this?
Let’s disincentivise war and make it completely unappealing for those who profit from it. And as Yoko has been saying for decades, Imagine Peace. Her new campaign of digital billboard messages are in London, New York, Melbourne, Seoul, West Hollywood, Berlin, Milan… As you listen to the atmospheric sounds on this video of her billboard in Piccadilly Circus in London, it’s surprise the number of American accents you hear, and the traffic sounds don’t sync at all with the action on the street. Obviously it is not meant to be a documentary, rather an aspirational idea.
Yoko Ono / Imagine Peace
Graffiti TV 097 Presents: Ogryz
Despite the chilly winter weather graffiti writer Ogryz from Białystok, Poland dedicates his time and skills to a fresh new wall, here captured by Graffiti TV.
Bikismo From Tost Films
Tost Films perseveres in the genre of graffiti/street art/mural video documentary making – taking their cues from the talent. In this video featuring the wildly talented Bikismo, a more comedic fun-loving aspect of the creative process is on display.
“The jewel of the Caribbean, representing wherever you are.”
A warmly modern and well-rounded direction today from graffiti writer and contemporary artist Augustine Kofie as his sampling mentality pauses over the O, a symbol of lasting inspiration for artists of many centuries, backgrounds, and mediums. Presenting a parallel between these new cuts of commercial pressboard and the relationships he has with expanding circles of people and culture, his influences and techniques of the assemblage are freshly discovered.
Preparing for his new exhibition “Rotationships” opening at Heron this weekend, Kofie likes to discuss his very disciplined approach to nearly obsessively collecting “pressboard, a heavy, multi-ply paper stock used in packaging and office supplies from the 1950s to the 1980s.” Culled from estate sales and flea markets primarily in the LA area, Augustine says he has a respect for the time period as well as the people who collected these modern relics of a genuinely middle-class age that is all but disappearing.
Viewers of the new show will instinctively adjoin with these sleek color palettes and clean diagrammatic renderings of lines, shapes, text. Each repurposed element here is related to its neighbor – chosen and applied in the instinctual way that a DJ isolates and reapplies sonic elements, spoken words, atmospherics, and rhythms when recreating aural compositions. Using these elements in their original state, he pulls and plays the appropriate hues, timbres, and materials from his archive. It’s a system he has developed over time, a meticulously ordered collection which he says is “archived by color palette, thickness, and category in vintage industrial file cabinets.”
Augustine Kofie. Process shot for “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)Augustine Kofie. “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)
The new player at the front of the show is the never-ending circle, previously having played a supporting role in his graffiti, murals, assemblages, and painting – now standing on its own, whole, balanced, and in charge of everything around it. It’s a solid direction, and a reassuring one, to see this self-made artist who learned how to hone his style from his graffiti forebears, now exploring the possibilities confidently and even coining words, like “Rotationships”.
Augustine Kofie. Process shot for “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)
BSÅ: We often think of you as a retro-futurist because of your distillation of imagery and text and patterns and color templates from mid-century Americana and the way you bring it forward. What do you think fascinates you about those times long before you were born?
AK: I have always had a very materials-driven aesthetic. I can relate that interest in materials from the past with a kind of archaeological or historical inclination, especially towards refuse—the things that histories don’t consider important enough to preserve. Sometimes nostalgia plays a role, but most the time it’s not about personal memories so much as respect for a time period and for the craftsmanship of that time, the respect for materials.
Augustine Kofie. “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)
BSA: The focus of this show often revolves around the completed “O” shape – whether oblong, or squashed, or perfectly circular. It’s a family of shapes we don’t usually associate with your compositions of the past. How did it emerge – was it conscious? Was it sudden or gradual?
AK: Rounded corners, partial oblongs and circular forms have always found a way into my street and studio artwork, but they’ve always played a secondary role as a support system for sharper lines and more angular shapes. In this series, the rounded shapes are front and center, while the linear, ghosted patterns that appear in the background and help to construct the foreground are now the supporting cast.
Augustine Kofie. Process shot for “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)
Typically, when I would build a collage background before laying my painting on top, there was always this window of time looking at the work when I would think, ‘I would love to stop right here and leave it as it is, highlighting the varied materials. It took some time to suss out how to do it in a way that would allow the collage to stand on its own, and the circles became the way to do it. They anchor the work in a different way. Circles are also much harder to implement through this kind of collage because of the thickness of the materials, so there is a lot more of my hand in those shapes. Maybe I needed to find a place for that, since usually painting would be the place.
Augustine Kofie. “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)
BSA: A central part of your art making is the disciplined process of collecting ephemera and materials and organizing and cataloguing them for future use. Can you talk about why this is so appealing?
AK: In a way, all of my artmaking stems from a deep need to make order out of chaos. Finding and then cataloguing ephemera is a perfect manifestation of that basic urge. It always finds its way back to hip-hop production, to the art of sampling records and plunderphonics, to deconstructing and overlaying sounds of the past to create new compositions and sound. It’s fascinating and limitless, and there is something about a sampling mentality that shapes everything I do. Over time, as I dove deeper into this kind of collecting, I became more knowledgeable of what was out there—what materials were made in different decades, what survived. I’ve also perfected my archiving system, which is part of the pleasure of it all. So I’ve been able to narrow in on my tastes and focus my collection, and all of that made this series possible.
Augustine Kofie. Process shot for “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)
BSA: How do you see your formative graffiti writing career as it continues to evolve into this fine art practice? Can you tell us about a through line that has continued in your work as it has grown in the last two decades?
AK: There’s a strong self-motivation and discipline that comes from pursuing your art on the streets. I didn’t study art in the academic space, but graffiti has its own art history, its own traditions. My through line was always to be respectful of the materials and the work, to respect those who came before, and to build something new, to establish my own space that allowed for creative expansion. I feel that this series does that.
Augustine Kofie. “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)Augustine Kofie. Process shot for “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)Augustine Kofie. “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)Augustine Kofie. Process shot for “Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)Augustine Kofie.“Rotationships”. Heron Art. San Franciso, CA. (photo courtesy of the artist)
A soundtrack for ’ROTATIONSHIPS’, a solo exhibition at Heron Arts San Francisco, March 12, 2022
For every solo exhibition, the artist creates a soundtrack. The music is assembled as part of the work process, which is both sonic and pictorial. This vaporware like mix blends late 80s ’skinemax’ era soundscapes, including up-cycled sophistso-pop saxophone and lo-fi telefilm intermissions and poignant dialogue relevant to the exhibition theme and tone.
All tracks re-recorded, chopped and mixed by: A. Kofie for 4x4Tracktor Mastered by &e @ BENDYmusic, Inglewood, Calif.
An updated version of his initial “Stay Melty” collection a half dozen years ago, street artist Buff Monster expands and shares with you more of his studio production, paintings, sculptures, murals and ever growing industry of collectibles in this photo book, a candy-coated volume of eccentricities that capture this moment in an artists’ evolution.
Carlo McCormick’s original text perseveres here as well, most possibly because it still captures so much of the dedicated madness that is Buff, afloat upon the detritus that demarcates our late capitalism era in dirty old New York. McCormick sagely comments on Buff’s take on “a realm of magical thinking in contemporary visual culture where a very few rare artists like Buff Monster can invoke alternate realities as palpably believable and emotionally transformative.”
You can see it in his American roots; Hawaii, Los Angeles, NYC – somehow you think he may be in Japan someday as well. For those who look upon this sweetened world full of comedic episodes as perhaps smooth sailing, the author shares a hint of the scene from behind the curtain.
“All the long and tiring days in the studio are worth it when I see the imagery resonate with a growing number of supporters. I’m fully committed to my work, often sacrificing other areas of my life in pursuit of creating the best expressions of these ideas. In spite of all the frustrations and setbacks, I’m still the same optimistic guy from Hawaii, driven to make colorful, honest and uplifting work and share it with the world.”
“I share this poster with you – so if you like it you can download it for free! We have a lot to do, but here we are all together working every day for change.”
“I am blessed to have wonderful women in my life who inspire me, help me, and above all, make me laugh a lot,” she says.
Taking the current Western hysteria regarding Vladimir Putin into truly Hollywood/graphic novel territory, a Baltimore based father and daughter team Mike and Daniela Kirby chalk it all up to wild-eyed evil.
The new fantasy styled scene positions the pure, innocent and unarmed Ukraine beauty rests upon the tongue of a diabolical president of Russia who is finally delivering on his promised response to NATO’s encroachment – with a well-armed military that is now destroying the country with weaponry. They even include nuclear warheads.
Calling themselves “Murals of Baltimore” Mike and Daniela say they wanted to create a public work on Broadway Square in Fells Point to express their position on the invasion, even if they knew their hard work would eventually be washed away by early spring rains.
“No one paid for this or sponsored it. We just winged it and tried to help as best we could. The mural was made with soft pastels,” he says. “It took 7 days to complete with about 60 hours of labor.”
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
