Mando Marie, an American artist currently dividing her time between Amsterdam and Portugal, stands out with her unique blend of stencil art and painting. Her work subtly echos themes of childhood nostalgia wrapped in layers that are both comforting and slightly phantasmal. Her latest exhibition, “Take Me Down,” showcased at the STRAAT Gallery in Amsterdam from May 12th through June 23rd, 2024, highlights her as the first female artist to hold a solo exhibition at this venue.
Her artistic style draws heavily from mid-20th-century children’s books, echoing that era’s simplicity and illustrative clarity. Influenced by artists like Eloise Wilken and Henry Darger, Mando Marie integrates vintage sewing patterns and twin imagery to produce a repetitive, mirrored visual effect, creating a naive, intriguing ambiance at play with the childlike forms. This visual strategy not only amplifies the impact of her work but subtly introduces complex themes through seemingly innocent scenarios.
Mando Marie extends her artistic expression beyond the studio into urban spaces, engaging with street art practices that enrich her gallery works. This dual approach enables her to resonate with a diverse audience, appealing to street art fans and fine art collectors. The use of nostalgia serves as a narrative tool in her art, prompting viewers to delve into their memories and question the simplicity of the narratives they recall from childhood. Her exhibitions offer a space where viewers can explore a blend of clarity and depth, bridging the gap between public urban art and the intimate gallery setting.
The exhibition “Take Me Down” is likely to evoke a mix of nostalgia and subtle, enigmatic qualities, reflecting the dual nature of Mando’s work: an engaging visual experience and possibly a cerebral journey.
Mando Maire is at work in her studio. Amsterdam. (photo courtesy of Straat Gallery)Mando Marie. “Boundless”. Mando Marie – Take Me Down. Straat – Museum for Street Art and Graffiti. Amsterdam. (photo courtesy of the gallery)Mando Marie. “The Power of Wishper”. Mando Marie – Take Me Down. Straat – Museum for Street Art and Graffiti. Amsterdam. (photo courtesy of the gallery)Mando Maire is at work on the streets. (photo courtesy of Straat Gallery)Mando Maire (photo courtesy of Straat Gallery)
MANDO MARIE – TAKE ME DOWN
Exhibition Dates: Sunday May 12th – Sunday June 23rd, 2024
Opening Reception: Saturday May 11th 6 – 9 PM. For more details click HERE
A decade ago, spotting a fire extinguisher tag at a high-profile art fair was as rare as stumbling upon a unicorn. These tags, a raw expression borrowed from the rebellious part of street culture, remain one of the few graffiti forms embodying untamed, voluminous fury. Their wild, nearly uncontrollable nature often sends extinguisher tags sprawling chaotically across walls, typically in a burst of illegal exhilaration and complete disregard. Yet, at Scope, something has changed. Here, under the discerning eye of the STRAAT Museum from Amsterdam, New York’s Elle adds it to her graphic vocabulary, confined in a grid. The extinguisher phrase is sweetly an affair of the heart, neatly encapsulated within the structured lines of a painted grid on an outdoor display wall.
In this world (the West, East, North, and South), increasingly sliced by polarized political fault lines, the once rigid boundaries between art and vandalism blur into intriguing shades of gray. Consider hand styles like those of Bisco Smith at this venue – once underground, now they fold into the stylized lexicon of ‘calligraffiti,’ accessible to all. It’s a testament to the evolving nature of art, shattering the dichotomy of rules once as clear-cut as the commandments brought down by Moses.
Take Anthony Garcia Sr., for instance. His story is a narrative of contrasts. Born in Denver, that bastion of Boomer wealth now gasping in the throes of late-stage capitalism, Garcia’s roots are in Globeville, a less privileged neighborhood. He gets street cred for starting as a graffiti writer, then joins a DIY art collective – a move perhaps uncharacteristic for traditional graffiti artists. Garcia’s journey exemplifies the fading of stark black-and-white distinctions.
This year’s walls outside the Scope Fair in Miami vividly showcase this eclectic con/fusion. We see graffiti writers rubbing shoulders with art school graduates, graphic designers, and street artists. It’s a diverse panorama condensed into a concise exhibit. Curated by Hyland Mather and David Roos, STRAAT’s exhibition “Not So Black & White” celebrates this new, complex artistic landscape – where the lines between defiance and conformity, street and gallery, blend into a new, undefined horizon.
Artists include The London Police Hoxxoh, Pref ID, Bisco Smith, Mando Marie, Elle, Valfre, and Anthony Garcia Sr. .
Whether by design or organically grown, we have always gravitated to what we call “Magnet Walls” – those graffiti/Street Art gardens in a town or city that are an open canvas for artists to get up, try out new ideas, experiment with materials, implement a strategy. These walls play an important role in the ecosystem of what we call Street Art or Urban Art. They’re not always explicitly illegal because their reputation draws 10s or 100s of artists to pile on year after year without interruption. The building owners could be allowing the expressions to take place for charitable reasons, more likely just neglect.
The role of these magnet walls is important …and so we are happy to see that while some walls have ceased to exist in some New York neighborhoods in recent years, mostly due to the voracious appetite of developers and the dulling effects of gentrification – “the shack” in Bushwick, the candy factory in Soho to mention just two of them – others are flourishing elsewhere. Today we have many images from a block known as the Great Wall of Savas in Queens.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Aito Katazaki, A Cool55, Amanda Marie, bunnyM, Dirt Cobain, Hektad, JerkFace, Key Detail, Martian Code Art, Pat Perry, Stikman, Thrashbird, What Will You Leave Behind, and WhisBe.
A small poem in the corner reads, “Email me your heart. Then in the morning while we watch the sun rise, kneeling down by the river, the blood drips freely as we wash our hands clean”
Amsterdam rocked the decks this month to celebrate urban contemporary art and street art in the Netherlands with visual and music based events giving artists many platforms to shine.
Graffuturism, a term and movement coined a handful of years ago to describe an intersection of graffiti, street art, and abstract geometry continues to stake out new territory and here were gallery and street exhibitions proffering some of the current practitioners whose work could be described as such.
The 5th Urban Art Festival Amsterdam featured their own collection of Graffuturists from Europe, the United States, and South America including Poesia, the unofficial founder of Graffuturism in a show of works on canvas, prints, drawings on paper, murals and site-specific abstract installations.
Running concurrently was a Stencil Masters show featuring some of the top knife-wielding artists known on the street today along with a few senior early proponents. The diverse program of gallery, street installations and DJs courtesy of the ADE (Amsterdam Dance Event) helped further contextualize the art forms for a wider audience of fans.
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
