All posts tagged: Jonathan Levine Gallery

Clubhouse Chemistry in a Warehouse : BSA x UN BERLIN ART BASEL 2016: Dispatch 4

December 1, 2016 Artists

One of the fantastic parts of Miami’s Art Basel / Wynwood craziness, aside from the colorful drinks and hair sculptures and accidental tripping over almost every Street Artist you have heard of (and many whom you haven’t) is the sheer amount of madhouse chemistry that explodes in your face because of new partnerships and events – like the Juxtapoz Clubhouse in Wynwood opening today.

Olek. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The premier contemporaty and underground magazine and cultural stew from the west coast teams up with New Jersey’s Mana Urban Arts and others this year to take over one of those previously run-down and neglected parts of the neighborhood to create an “immersive retreat”.

Denis McNett. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We got a behind-the-scenes peek at the installations and artworks in advance of today’s opening and were pleased to see that the quality is slammin’ –with sufficiently large installations to create an environment and to stand on their own as fully realized concepts.

So many of these artists can work larger, and many have: Dennis McNett stages fully performances and parades of characters pounding like warriors through streets, for example. Dude, the energy is good.

Denis McNett. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The mix of producers/collaborators at the Clubhouse is contemporary, theatrical, and somehow darkly comic –Jonathan Levine Gallery, Chandran Gallery, MILK Studios, ThinkSpace, and the 1xRun crew – a smartly flipped trip of heavy hitters that relies on the strangely symbiotic and the serendipitous to succeed.

Check out some of the work here and if you are in Miami go to 2400 NW 5th Avenue from December 1-4.

Laurence Vallieres. Detail. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ever at work on his installation. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ever. Detail. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fintan Magee. Detail. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cern at work on his painting. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cinta Vidal. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zio Ziegler. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Scott Campbell. This is is an interactive piece which will involve the public. Mr. Campbell is a tattoo artist and through a raffle willing participants will have the opportunity to have their arm tattooed but they will not know what the tattoo will be until completed. The participants will stick his or her arm, trough the hole in the middle of the installation and Mr. Campbell will be unseen, working on the tattoo on the other side of the wall. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Low Bros. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Swoon. Detail of her installation. Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Adam Wallacavage. Jonathan LeVine Gallery x Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Jonathan LeVine Gallery x Juxtapoz Club House x Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Mana Urban Arts Projects/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Louis Masai. The Art of Beeing. Mana Urban Arts Projects x The Bushwick Collective/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Case Maclaim sketching his wall for Wynwood Walls/Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Please Do! Artist Unknown. Art Basel 2016. Wynwood, Miami. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Film Friday: 08.19.16

August 19, 2016 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. 5 Minutes with Plotbot Ken via ARTE Creative
2. Aerosoul – NYC by Kris Kim
3. Nychos at The Ice House in Jersey City.
4. “Europe” by BEZT (ETAM Cru) in Mannheim

BSA Special Feature: 5 Minutes with Plotbot Ken via ARTE Creative

“I don’t want people to think my images are cool or beautiful. I want to encourage them to think,” says Plotbot Ken in this introduction to the German stencil artist and his work.

The darker themes of war and environmental poisoning occur often in his hand-cut aerosoled works on the street, as well as singular images that also evoke the ghosts inside industrial ruins made with brushes and pens. He says that his work processes the disasters we have created and continue to create because “Doomsday is already here.”

Aerosoul – NYC by Kris Kim

Queens is home to Kris Kim, who spends a lot of time BMX riding and sees a lot of graffiti and Street Art in his neighborhood. He just edited together a video that he shot this past winter and he really captures a sense of poetry and discovery in his own urban environs. “Honestly I’m not a writer but it is something I have a lot of respect for – I get the whole outsider art aspect of it all and definitely enjoy it from a viewer’s perspective,” he tells us.

Nychos at The Ice House in Jersey City.

Nychos put a big heavy metal exclamation point on his New York invasion this summer by hopping the river into Jersey. For the Austrian muralist the experience is a fully immersive performance over a hot week while traffic backs up on its way into the tunnel leading to Manhattan, a gritty urban scene without redemption. His mixing of science and fantasy and dark drama is truer to life than the billboards that drivers run into along this route, and is delivered with total heart and mind engaged.

Shout out to the folks at Mana Contemporary and Jonathan Levine for making this possible.

“Europe” by BEZT (ETAM Cru)

A quick view of Polish illustrative muralist BEZT from the ETAM Cru on his own in Mannheim, Germany creating a piece he calls “Europe”.

Nychos Slays in New York : IKONS Revealed as Never Before

June 29, 2016 Artists, Interview

“Scientists, psychologists, surgeons…in the end we’re all driven by a similar curiosity.”

This month has been a whirlwind in New York for Austrian Street Artist /fine artist /illustrator named Nychos and he’s made quite the iconic impression. Anchored by a show that opened last weekend of canvasses and illustrations at Jonathan Levine Gallery in Chelsea named “IKON” and assisted by a co-branded sculptural event with the Vienna Tourist Board, the surreal dissectionist didn’t rest there.

In the weeks leading up to and after these events he also managed to hit a number of walls in Coney Island, Bushwick, and Jersey City…oh and he knocked out a box truck as well.

Nychos. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In addition to pulling out an astounding sculpture of Sigmund Freud looming over a couch that drew a crowd to the foot of the (also iconic) Flatiron Building at 23rd and 6th, the afterparty and reception featured Dominic Freud, the great grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis, who surmised that if he were alive today he would definitely have wanted to put Nychos on his couch.

Indeed the you may wonder about the mind of this sharp-knifed artist who has decided to diverge from the realm of slicing open animals and fantastic creatures to taking apart cultural and pop-cultural icons for his fascinating painted science experiments.

Nychos. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With a free hand on the can and rarely a sketch, and an athletic kineticism that verges on dance, this artist is fully in his zone, at times delivering what one important art world figure described to us as a “virtuoso” performance, even when he’s de-boning Ronald McDonald. Among his new subjects on walls and canvas are included such recognizable figures as Batman, Darth Vader, Mickey Mouse, Elvis, Marilyn, Motörhead’s Lemmy, and the Statue of Liberty.

Yes, it is grotesque, and yes, some of these subjects were actual people. Additionally, there is a comical dark side in it’s glossy finish and stylized splash, with perhaps a greater critique of consumerist entertainment culture and more than a touch of sadism. This is the pretty gore that is familiar to an un-shockable generation raised by vampires. You know who you are.

Nychos. Coney Art Walls 2016. Coney Island. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We asked the celebritic internist to talk about his work and his prodigious program across NYC and he gave us an inside look at the heart and mind of Nychos.

Brooklyn Street Art: You like to open things up and look inside. Would you consider yourself more of a scientist or psychologist?
Nychos: I consider myself an artist. But yeah, the question is justified. Scientists, psychologists, surgeons…in the end we’re all driven by a similar curiosity.

Nychos in collaboration with the artist Lauren YS for The Bushwick Collective. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Usually you depict primarily factual arrangements of organs and systems – but you also include a huge amount of movement and activity and emotion! How do you feel? How does a viewer feel?
Nychos: People who see me paint often tell me that it’s like watching an entire performance, so you could say the movement is not only in the piece or only me, it’s a synergy of both. I feel like the viewer can recognize these (e)motions in the finished piece as well.

Brooklyn Street Art: Is this work intellectual or emotional? Or both?
Nychos: Both. In my eyes, a creative process always includes intellectual and emotional content. Both aspects are fuelling each other. At least that’s what I see in my work.

Nychos in collaboration with the artist Lauren YS for The Bushwick Collective. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: We associate your work with the animal kingdom, but you are slicing Sigmund Freud open here in New York – What will we all be studying?
Nychos: I’d suggest you tell me afterwards. I can only say that “Dissection of Sigmund Freud” and my exhibition “IKON” at Jonathan Levine Gallery are a good way to announce that I’m going to set a focus on human anatomy in the future.

Brooklyn Street Art: Does Ronald McDonald actually eat his own food or is mostly whole grains and salads and fresh wheat-grass juice.
Nychos: Good question. I’m gonna ask him when I see him next time.

Brooklyn Street Art: OneTeas, Ron English and Banksy have all bashed McDonalds a number of times with their work – why is that brand so hateable?
Nychos: Well, I’d say McDonalds is just the embodiment of all these fast food chains, so the criticism does not only refer to this specific brand, but to all of them. McDonalds just made a damn good job with burning this weird clown into our brains and with it the bitter taste of today’s dining culture.

Nychos. A drone surveying the progress of the mural at The Bushwick Collective. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos. The Bushwick Collective. Brooklyn, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos. “Dissection of Sigmund Freud”. Vienna Therapy. Manhattan, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos. “Dissection of Sigmund Freud”. Pictured here with Jonathan LeVine. Vienna Therapy. Manhattan, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos. “Dissection of Sigmund Freud”. Vienna Therapy. Manhattan, NY. June 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos. “IKON”. Jonathan LeVine Galler. Manhattan, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos for Green Villain. Jersey City, NJ. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nychos IKON is currently on view at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Manhattan. Click HERE for more details.

A ROA Diary Update in Pictures

April 16, 2016 Artists

A ROA update today – with many exclusive photos here for BSA readers with personal pictures taken and selected by the artist himself.

The Belgian Street Artist, whom we long ago christened as an “Urban Naturalist”, has quite defined the category. He’s well traveled and well regarded. He can’t seem to stand still; Borders for him are an imaginary nuisance – or at least he would love them to be. By his own admission he is most at ease while up high on a boom lift battling a wall, or making friends with it.

ROA. BukRuk. Bangkok, Thailand. 2015 (photo © ROA)

From highly commercial and corporate sponsored events to respected grassroots driven or socio-politically rooted organizations with whom he works, ROA brings the animal world into the conversation, sometimes tragically and other times comically. In an inter-connected view of the world and its various natural systems we somehow blind ourselves to our neighbors in the animal category. ROA makes sure that their voices are being considered in enormous and more subtle ways, giving them center stage and first billing.

Here are new pieces from Hawaii, New Jersey, Tahiti, Copenhagen, Italy, Denmark, Coney Island, Australia, Puerto Rico, Arkansas, Harlem (NYC), Bangkok, Dubai, and Belgium. Our sincere thanks to ROA for bringing us on this massive and glorious tour with him so far.

ROA. Ødense Harbor, Denmark. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Perc Tucker Regional Gallery – Townsville City Counsil. Townsville, Australia. 2015 (photo © ROA)

“Thanks Tegen for dancing in front of the Crocodile and Turtle”

ROA. Perc Tucker Regional Gallery – Townsville City Council. Townsville, Australia. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Jersey City, NJ. Jonathan LeVine Gallery – Mana Contemporary. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Vieques, Puerto Rico. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Just Kids Residency. San Juan, Puerto Rico. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. The Unexpected. Forth Smith, Arkansas. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Surface with Soren Solkaer. Copenhagen, Denmark. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Monument Art. El Barrio. East Harlem. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Festival ONO’U. Tahiti – Papeete. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Coney Art Walls. Coney Island, Brooklyn. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. POW WOW 15. Hawaii. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Muratista. Sadali – Sardinia, Italy. 2015 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Dubai Walls. Dubai. 2016 (photo © ROA)

ROA. Chrystal Ship Festival. Ostend, Belguim. 2016 (photo © ROA)

Dan Witz Paints Skinheads, Slam Dancing, Erotica

April 4, 2016 Artists

Because you can’t get your fill of angry white men from all the Donald Trump rallies this spring, painter and Street Artist Dan Witz is presenting Mosh Pits, Raves and One Small Orgy at Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York. The paintings further capture the freneticism of clan-like gatherings of nearly entirely caucasian youth in the “hardcore” subcultures of punk and alternative music.

Dan Witz. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rebellious, provocative, warm, sensual, rhythmic, chaotic and violent dancing as depicted in these hormone-infused scenes are easily as erotic as the de-clad coitus-seeking scene makers in the Bosch-Bruegelian mass of bodies. Ecstacy abounds often and which view is more orgiastic depends entirely on you.

One question among many; if this is a small orgy, how many participants are in a large one?

Dan Witz. Brite Nite 2, Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Byronesque 3, Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Mosh Pit Study (Jets), Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Sick of It All, Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Small Orgy, Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Scrum 3 (System of a Down), Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Scrum 1 (King of Hearts), Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Scrum Study (The Flash), Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz. Very young “collectors” spotted on opening night… Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Dan Witz solo exhibition “Mosh Pits, Raves and One Small Orgy” is currently on view at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in NYC. Click HERE for more information.

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James Marshall DALEK “The Redistribution of Destruction”

January 23, 2016 Artists

A quick look at new works by James Marshall aka Dalek for his show, “The Redistribution of Destruction”. His bright colors and geometric op art is bent through the lens of Murakami and yet glows occasionally with the hallucinatory play of light that Turrel can emanate.

These new pieces are more minimal than we are used to seeing from Dalek and perhaps indicate a comfort with minimalism, and all the courage that implies.

Impeccable, precise geometry, crisply rendered forms, all radiating energy. Please step into the light.

Dalek (photo © Jaime Rojo)

James Marshall DALEK “The Redistribution Of Destruction” is currently on view at Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Click HERE for more information.

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Interesni Kazki Pull You in With “Sacred Gravitation”

January 16, 2016 Artists

Ukrainian duo Interesni Kazki are as understated in person as they are fantastic in their illustrative paintings. Aleksei Bordusov and Vladimir Manzhos may offer insight into their process and thematic development when prodded, but they prefer that you travel within the stories they have created unencumbered by their perceptions.

Interesni Kazki “The Last Day of Babylon” (AEC) Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Their new show, “Sacred Gravitation” at Manhattan’s Jonathan Levine Gallery plunges viewers into an open window of gods and monsters using a pungent and crisp graphic neo-psychedelia style that recalls rock double album covers of the 1970s and fully rendered computer animation worlds in the early 2000s. On the other side of these large looking glasses are tales told with allegory and metaphor, of blindness and revelation, politics and corruption, eternity and memory, suffering and transformation, conflict and guile, the natural world and the spiritual one.

Interesni Kazki “Spark Of Life” (WAONE) Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Not fully mythic nor folkloric, theirs is a unique contemporary style that welcomes and escorts the viewer instantly to enter, much like their large scale murals on city walls in Eastern Europe, the US, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere over the last decade and a half. Showing a genuine evolution and mastery of technique, this paintings in person create such a sense of dimension that you may long for your arms to be transformed into wings to more fully explore.

Interesni Kazki “The Great Colonizer” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Interesni Kazki. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Interesni Kazki “The Genesis” Detail. (AEC) Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Interesni Kazki “Temple of Time” Detail. (AEC) Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Interesni Kazki. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Interesni Kazki “Sacred Gravitations” is currently on view at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Manhattan. Click HERE for further information.

Faith47: “Aqua Regalia”, Mundane, Sacred

November 28, 2015 Artists

The mundane is made sacred in the full-wall alter created at the back of Jonathan Levine’s gallery for the first solo New York show by Faith47. Small collected ephemera is displayed in groupings of signs, cards, documents, family photos and hand painted works by the South African artist whose work on the street is large scale and at times haunting, holy.

Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As the name of the show indicates Aqua Regalia – Chapter Two is a continuation of her 2014 London exhibition at Moniker Projects and elsewhere in the show you see the artist experimenting with collage of found objects alongside of paintings on wood and canvas. Opening on a night when Manhattan was enjoying a near continuous inundating downpour, the water washes and dream-like sequences, symbols and forms were only enhanced. With references to the sanctified and the dirty politics of being human, the Aqua regalia (royal water) here is in the hands of a medium, channeling spirits with a sense of the mystic and disarming with plain truths.

Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Detail. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” Detail. Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Manhattan, NY (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faith 47 “Aqua Regalia” is open for the general public at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Manhattan. Click HERE for details.

Augustine Kofie Remixing Deep Cuts in “Inventory”

November 25, 2015 Artists, Interview

Newly re-mixed and sampled soulful works by Augustine Kofie are featured in the “Inventory” show that just opened here in New York at Jonathan Levine this weekend. No, he’s not looking through his storeroom of canvasses and clearing out old year-end inventory, the name refers to the “controlled hoarding” Kofie goes through to amass the muscles and skin of his 45 degree compartmentalized grid pieces.

He may be a crate-digging cultural magpie when collecting packaging and office supplies and jazz records and science journals that span a half century, but when he lays it down in shades of ochre and rust, golden rod and walnut, steel grey and maple, stuttering birch and enameled persimmon the rational leafing of text and texture all makes reassuring orderly, nostalgically spun and sampled sense.

And then there is the patch of seafoam sky, the deciduous limbic form that is not strictly geometric, the shock of hot tomato cheeks… the speckled face of a cat-eyed Doe sunnily perched in her modest bathing suit, or the closely-shorn dome of a white glove architect bending lithely toward his tilted graphite rendering. These are the human elements that anchor the shifting planes, grounding the piece, adding warmth, with good reason.

“I’m making beats,” he says as he rests with a short glass of amber spirits on Levine’s modernist office couch as the first guests flow into the gallery out front, “and those are records I’m pulling samples from.”

Like a studied and somatic DJ and collagist, Kofie’s segue is not limited to the auditory, and he continues to spin the metaphor when describing the visual building process for his vintage futurism. “When you are using a drum machine people are saying that it is without a soul – but I’m trying to make this electronic beat music using samples. The way I’m manipulating and maneuvering the curation of certain things – some are very focused but the majority of it is very serendipitous, off the cuff. A lot of things that I begin to do end of being covered up for of the sake of the design.”

We’ve hit on something: a cocktail of Coltrane, Marvin Gaye, Cypress Hill, Kandinsky, Eames, mid-century modernism, rusty rocket ships, Edward Murrow, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cornel West, and Bill Nye the Science Guy and suddenly the West Coast mixologist is at the controls. “You have to go into the process like a hoarder who ultimately knows that you will have to let things go,” he says of the sharply natural math at hand.

“The thing looks very technical and very precise but there is a lot of fun, soulful play happening in the beginning. In order to get it on there I do have to cut up these shapes and forty-five degree angles so I can get everything in – and then see what comes up.”

“I like throwing in some of the graphical elements; portrait and people’s faces – that happens when I use the thinner paper. For this collection I’m using mostly pressed-board and packaging, which doesn’t have that many portrait graphics unless it’s a record cover I found. Literally I have a box of things and I’m sifting through. I’m like “I need this horn!”… Or Herbie Mann might have a flute that I need instead. There is a lot of picking and going through it. I enjoy that crate-digging kind of process. What ends up popping up is mostly kind of serendipity.”

The exhibition allows you to see a miniature version of his workshop in LA that gives stage to the inventory of found objects, ephemera, and texture, and you get a sense of the purposeful tranquil stirrings that are always at play. In tandem with the gallery show of paintings and collage he has done his first big New York wall – actually in New Jersey with Mana Contemporary.

No matter the scale, Kofie’s work is close-up and personal and he sits easily with you peering at the details. “Large wall- small collage; It’s intimate in both sizes. It’s just the approach of it, the thinking that goes behind it.”

Again he is creating in the moment. “For the wall in Jersey I had an initial idea before it but when I came to the wall and saw it, saw the space, looked around and I even put my back to the wall and took a look out and around and saw… Also the colors, working next to Shepard’s piece – I didn’t want it to look misplaced.”

“So I had to change everything up. Sometimes you have to go in a little blindly.”

He talks about time constraints, malfunctioning tools, and recalibrating his approach to fit the new environment. Luckily, his first decade as a serious LA graffiti writer came in handy.”Yeah a lot of the old can control tricks came out on this wall. There are some tape points, and I’ll use twine – I mean I could have brought a laser thing, I’ve done that before. I didn’t want to deal with it and I didn’t want to project the piece. I really liked the spray.”

Give him the tools and the right inventory and there will be music.

For more information about Augustine Kofie Inventory at Jonathan Levine Gallery, click HERE.

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This article is also published in The Huffington Post

A Visit With ROA Readying for “Metazoa”

April 4, 2015 Artists, Interview

It’s unusual to capture a ROA inside. He is usually running free outdoors with the wildlife, climbing walls over multiple continents, perched within the industrialized margins of cities and rustling around the overgrown brush of rural regions.

By his own account ROA favors the hard to cover pockmarked and scarred surfaces, preferably outside and large in scale when possible. But once in a while you will find his animal kingdom in the more rarified environs of the whitebox, if only briefly before he hops a plane to Denmark to paint a tower.

For his first solo show with New York’s Jonathan Levine Gallery, ROA has managed to domesticate himself for a few weeks to restrict his activities in a New Jersey studio with discarded cabinets, doors, metal shelves, and a stack of vinyl platters. The platters of course are for spinning on his improvised temporary sound station, newly discovered and freed from crates at music stores in New York.

“I have filled a lot of holes in my collection,” he says as he scans this sudden new trove of vintage records that span genres across the last 50 years or so. They keep him great company. Of course he knows he’ll have to ship them home to Belgium, and they aren’t quite as light as mp3 files. At the base of the turntable he has them arranged in groupings: Rock, Blues and Jazz, Hip Hop and Reggae. Somehow it feels good to know that these new metazoan have come into existence while The Velvet Underground or Nina Simone or Screaming Jay Hawkins or Easy-E were laying down the soundtrack.

This studio at Mana Contemporary has been a godsend and refuge during these freezing cold weeks – made more shocking since he had been in Honolulu just before flying here. But needless to say the lack of outdoor distractions has assisted the artist to focus on these new installations – 15 or more – that go on display at JLG.

With the help of a couple of fellow Street Artists ROA has been scouring Jersey City for discarded cabinets and scraps of wood to use as canvasses, or sculptures. The most successful find, he says, happened the first night where he ran across a cache of old office wooden cabinets that were all in a pile and ready to be trashed.

Within the spoils he found a very old wooden key cabinet with doors and brass hinges. That made him happy. Unfortunately the rest of the scavenging has been a bit tough due to the inclement weather – freezing temperatures and snow. Now that spring is emerging he paints with ease across the wooden assemblages and checks his original sketches as he goes.

Finally they are ready to go, and ROA says he’s a little anxious as he packs up his new pets to be shipped the eight miles to the Chelsea gallery. Once they are gone he can make no more changes so he wants to make sure they are finished. There is also a slight chance that he may have grown attached to one or two of them as well. When they are carefully packed and picked up by the art handlers, ROA is relieved, glad they are out of his hands, hopefully to migrate into new worlds. Given the number of times we have featured and followed his work over the years, we’re confident that most of these animals will find homes soon.

Here are some shots that capture the moment when some of the larger pieces were getting packed, and only certain details of them. Enjoy.

ROA “Metazoa” Opens April 4, 2015 at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Click HERE for details.

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BSA Film Friday 03.27.15

March 27, 2015 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :

1. Kashink in Miami and her OUTSIDE / INSIDE project
2. Hold On, Just Going to Post This Letter – Почта России
3. Nuart 2014 via Hypebeast TV
4. Tost Films: Emigrantes en Yola
5. ROA teaser for Jonathan LeVine Gallery “Metazoa”

Kashink in Miami and her OUTSIDE / INSIDE project

Experimenter and Street Artist hailing from France, Kashink observes the absurd and reports what she has found. A brainy badass, Ms. Kashink uses vivid color, cartoon, and calculated critique to a scene, whether scripted or organic. Part painter/ part matinee idol, Kashink helps us to question the paradox of our art and creativity classification systems.

Hold On, Just Going to Post This Letter – Почта России

A social experiment with Russian post office boxes, here is a simple way to discourage the remaining 5 people who still mail letters.

Nuart 2014 via Hypebeast TV

A nice recap of the events at Nuart via HypeBeast.

Tost Films: Emigrantes en Yola

ROA teaser for Jonathan LeVine Gallery “Metazoa”

“ROA views the beaver, the state animal of New York, as a metaphor for the idea that nature has the ability to reclaim itself. The recovery of the beaver in New York City after it was previously thought extinct is exemplary of how humans and animals affect each other and reflects the artist’s interest in how animals evolve within urban landscapes.”

Anthony Lister is Power Tripping In NYC

June 28, 2014 Artists

Street Art A-Lister Mr. Anthony Lister is up and around the hood this past week or so with some fresh aerosol and automatic madness. The Brooklyn-Brisbane based contemporary artist is also opening at Jonathan Levine Gallery tonight for “Power Tripping”, a serpentine slicing of the status quo.

Using techniques of so-called adventure painting has been de rigueur in the street art practice for it’s history, and Lister has been incorporating new elements as they occur throughout his processes as well. For “Power Tripping” he’s making a more deliberate charge at it and promises to impale some of the dark spirits alive in our age of ascending raw capitalism, free of law and in love with might. We’re guessing there will be a superhero or two.

Check out these new adventures spotted around town recently as shot by Jaime Rojo.

Anthony Lister’s solo show “Power Tripping” opens today at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Click HERE for more details.

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