All posts tagged: Monstfur

BSA Images Of The Week: 05.20.18 / Colombia Special

BSA Images Of The Week: 05.20.18 / Colombia Special

May 20, 2018 ,

BSA-Images-Week-Jan2015

You guys watch the royal wedding yesterday? We got the highlights, enough to make us cry. Not everyone is happy about these things, but then they see the hats and feathers and let it all go.

Of course we wish the very best to the beautiful couple.

Great week in Colombia this week as we had the pleasure of hanging with the likes of Ben Eine and D*Face, even if we couldn’t keep up with the drinking games and late night graffiti runs. Someone has to be responsible! From Cartagena to Valledupar to Bogotá, the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the country are stupendous. And we need more time in Bogotá because that Street Art scene is crazy!

Luckily we were back in NYC just in time for the big Spanish speaking/singing block party outside of the apartment of racist lawyer Aaron Schlossberg, who made headlines this week for being a jackass and intimidating people with less power with his big white-man blabbering about Spanish speaking employees at a fast food restaurant, even threatening to call Immigration authorities.

Not only is he insulting himself and all New Yorkers (and the spirit of the USA), he may be indicating that he doesn’t get outside very much. If he did, he would realize that “while there is no precise count, some experts believe New York is home to as many as 800 languages — far more than the 176 spoken by students in the city’s public schools,” according to a 2010 article in the New York Times. Our favorite video this week is the one of him running from reporters while the Benny Hill theme song plays along. Bienvenidos a su ciudad Señor Schlossberg !

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring APC Crew, Ben Eine, Chinz, Collin Day, D*Face, ERRE, Monstfur, Stinkfish, 6ryzor and Toxicomano.

Top Image: Ben Eine for Dictador Art Masters Foundation. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ben Eine for Dictador Art Masters Foundation. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toxicomano. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

APC Crew. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

APC Crew. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A motley crew at the old distillery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A little free-wheeling graffiti from M-City . 6ryzor . Chinz . Eine . Toxicomano . El Chopo . Erre.  Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City . 6ryzor . Chinz . Eine . Toxicomano . El Chopo . Erre.  Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

6ryzor. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chinz. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eine. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toxic El Chopo. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

ERRE. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Monstfur at the old distillery. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Monstfur for Dictador Art Masrters Foundation. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face at the old distillery. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Chinz at the old distillery. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stinkfish. Valledepur, Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toxicomano at the old distillery. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Director and handsome hatter Collin Day at the old distillery. Colombia. May 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Selected Scenes from the Colombia Diary. Day 3 – Moments

Selected Scenes from the Colombia Diary. Day 3 – Moments

May 16, 2018

This week BSA is in an unusual location in Colombia by invitation to see a new initiative with Street Artists in an abandoned distillery now being brought back to life with their imaginations and penchant for transformation. Come along with us for a few days to see what we discover.

As we are chronicling the movement of the Street Art story into new spaces such as this hybrid venue that transforms an aged factory into a unique ex-urban gallery, it occurs to us that the revolution of this street culture movement has always been in its ability to adapt.

 Stinkfish. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

After last nights’ tumultuous rains that turned much of the dusty ground into thick chocolate mud we walked amongst these hulking steel giants of manufacturing again, seeing everyone and everything with new eyes.

Climbing up the rusted rickety staircases and rotting corrugated floor panels and peering out upon painters and vandals alike as they plot their next proposition, you remain alert for unscripted turns in the plot.

Ben Eine with Connor. Colombia. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Invariably a pause, an ellipse, a stolen moment may reveal something more about the artist and their passage into the creative ether. With a documentarian sense, you’ll want to capture it before it blinks away.

When the creative spirit is fluid in environments such as these, it is possibly impossible to articulate the complex set of actions, reactions, strategic calculations, synchronous movements, awkward missteps, punk pirouettes, and the occasional virtuosic executions that can take place.

Filmmaker Collin Day. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Once you accept that the process of creativity for Street Artists and those who enable them is rather full of magic, you have equipped yourself to see that magic wherever you look. It happens as quickly as the flight of the short-tailed bat that grazes rapidly passed your hat on its way to the roost .

These are fleeting moments.

Monstfur. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City and Martha. Colombia. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Filmmaker Radek Drozdowicz. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Louis and D*Facew. Colombia. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Ben Eine and Connor. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ben Eine and Connor. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Monstfur. Colombia. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Monstfur. Colombia. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

M-City and Martha. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Louis Jensen. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toxicomano. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wildife. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wildife. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wildife. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wildife. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Barrel’s rings. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

This event has been made possible by Dictador Art Masters Foundation. To learn more about the foundation click here.

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This is How It’s Done : Colombia Diary. Day 2 – Process

This is How It’s Done : Colombia Diary. Day 2 – Process

May 15, 2018

This week BSA is in an unusual location in Colombia by invitation to see a new initiative with Street Artists in an abandoned distillery now being brought back to life with their imaginations and penchant for transformation. Come along with us for a few days to see what we discover.

In factories and in art-making, process is crucial to success.

Back at this Colombian factory site for a second day of work, the artists are climbing ladders, tracing out shapes, stepping back to check perspective, and lunging forward for the first genuine phase of painting. The brand new initiative on this industrial site sparks your mind with ideas – nothing seems impossible, actually. The future is unwritten.

Ben Eine and Connor. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

So it seems especially appropriately audacious when you see Ben Eine and his son Collin rolling by you on a massive lift that holds them aloft overhead with cans in hand. You deftly dart out of the way so you are not smushed underneath the massive rubber tires that roll toward you, carefully ducking the occasional leafy limb that is snapped off the tree they are grazing in their metal bucket as they paint, now wrapping to another side of the building.

Ben Eine. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

They are spraying out a series of Eine’s iconic lettering across the top floor of one of the compound’s brick facades, and suddenly you may have the feeling that this is the first page of a new book being written. We may not yet know what it will say, but you can appreciate the process, two guys from different generations extending their arms toward the wall, can in hand, propelling clouds of aerosol forward, writing a common missive.

Ben Eine. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Scattered through these rusty dusty caverns and crooks there are Street Artists at work; with birds and bats and beats filling the air. A new of industry at work, one can  appreciate now how the image is built. It’s a mysterious and sometimes spell-binding unveiling, carefully considered.

With no specific aesthetic guidelines from their hosts and no review of sketches, we are privileged to see these self-driven murals disclosed in real time without prejudice on walls of the artists choosing.

Stinkfish. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

There are myriad processes at play. Placed in the hands of artists who can appreciate the opportunity to create quality works , there is attention to detail and context. Whether it is D*Face’s ironic reappropriation of symbols/text and dramatically tragic heroes – or the pop culture humor of Toxicomano’s leopard queen, or the golden disk framing Stinkfish’s neo Colombian intergalactican icon, its a studied process that makes it happen.

Stinkfish. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City drips with rivers of sweat in the merciless humidity while peeling away one more panel of his four pillar stencil opus called “Goldmine”, his paint encrusted hand dropping another wet cutout with a deft gesture – leaving it to drift in the heavy breeze 3 stories beneath him to the ground.

The Monstfur duo carefully balance on ladders to reach and hold stencils, spraying out each textured layer of industrially inspired grayness, careful to align the successive hand-cuts that they are gridding across a tank that previously carried toxic fluids.

Stinkfish. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As this projects’ character is taking shape while we are watching, you see that these artists are pouring themselves into the act properly, giving top flight performances.

It’s part of the process.

D*Face. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stephen Thompson of D*Face tam. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face, Louis and Stephen. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City with Martha. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Monstfur. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Monstfur. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Monstfur. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toxicomano. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toxicomano. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Toxicomano. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stinkfish . Ben Eine. Colombia. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

 

This event has been made possible by Dictador Art Masters Foundation. To learn more about the foundation click here.

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