Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! This week we have some great stuff from Norway for you.
The southern tip of Norway, graced by picturesque towns like Flekkefjord, Obrestad, Bryne, Sandnes, and Stavanger, is imbued with a rich tapestry of history, culture, and breathtaking natural beauty. Nestled along the summer coastline, these towns stand as a testament to Norway’s maritime history and heritage.
As you are driving and winding through the green rolling countryside and into quaint old idyllic towns countenancing picturesque harbors, waterfronts, wooden buildings, cobblestone streets, boat parades, seafood-focused cuisine, towering cliffs, and steep mountainsides plunging dramatically into the deep, serene waters below that, produce and interplay of light and shadow and a mesmerizing tapestry of colors, you think “Where did all of these sheep come from?” At first, during our two days of driving the south Norwegian countryside, we thought we had stumbled into a unique town with those puffy white animals dotting the green hills, constantly chewing, but they would soon disappear. Little did we know.
In the US, there are 16 sheep per person in the country. In Norway, it is 463.
And they are all freaking adorable—also rams. Rams are very adorable but might knock you on your rumpa if you get too close.
Also, there was a very modest amount of street art among all the natural beauty and stunning architecture. Still, with our expert guides, we found surprising occurrences of stencils and murals and the occasional tag while traipsing through places like Flekkefjord, Sandness, and Obrestad (in a lighthouse!).
Our sincere thanks to Tor and Marie for showing us the sights and the beautiful fjords. Hey, did you hear about the musical fjord? It’s quite a harmonious inlet!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: Isaac Cordal, 1UP Crew, David De La Mano, Said Dokins, Ethos, JPS, Pøbel, Hama Woods, Smug, Jofre Oliveras, Helene Norkildsen, Nimi, RH-74 Renate, Pablo S. Herrero, Juan Fiveliner, Skrue, Anette Moi, Ugly Logo.
ITINERARIES OF BODY AND FLESH IN THE PUBLIC MUSEUM SPHERE
Art, technology, and science are often mentioned in the same sentence these days, including occasionally in street art. Indeed elements of all three have always been present in the coded communications of graffiti writers and street artists; a multicolored reflection in the petri dish of society, occasionally examined microscopically. At its very base, Street Art has always used the public sphere as a laboratory for experimenting with new creative ideas, leaving many of us to ponder and pine upon the results.
A new exhibition called “Bio-Rescriptures” finds a Mexican street artist/muralist going literally into the scientific laboratory and combining his expertise in calligraphy to create new works of science and art. Part of the more extensive exhibition “Atentar desde los códigos (Attack from Codes)” at the Interactive Urban Museum of Puebla (MUI) in Puebla, Mexico, Said Dokins, a renowned artist in the street art field known for his murals using ornate calligraphy in large format in public spaces, expounds upon his discoveries in the lab and extends our appreciation of the comingled fields of arts and sciences.
The main intention of the exhibition is to explore the interaction between the human body and microorganisms, blending graffiti and stencils with biotechnology and genetic engineering. Dokins challenges traditional notions of the body as a closed and individualized entity by examining the interconnectedness between the human body, the microbiome, and the environment.
The exhibition showcases various experiments and installations. One involves recording the growth of microorganism samples collected from the daily itineraries of 45 students from the Tecnológico de Monterrey. The participants placed their handprints on agar plates, which were then incubated to visualize the growth of microorganisms. This creates a dynamic microbial “footprint” (handprint) dependent on each person’s geographic space.
Another exhibition aspect involves calligraphic executions using pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria from the human body in culture media. Dokins uses bacteriological ink from these bacteria, such as Salmonella and E. coli, to create Bio-Writings and Bio-Stencils. These abstract calligraphies challenge conventional norms and structures, creating a new dialogue between the written and the living. Microorganisms become a sort of bacteriological ink, forming intertwined and hybrid writing.
In addition, Dokins explores the potential of bacteria in calligraphy through genetic engineering. He uses horizontal gene transfer to exchange genetic information between bacteria, allowing them to emit light when exposed to ultraviolet light. The bio-fluorescent bacteria are then used as a bio-ink to perform calligraphic exercises, resulting in bio-fluorescent writings.
The project involved collaborations with distinguished researchers and professors from Tec de Monterrey Campus Querétaro, including Dr. Aurea Ramírez, Dr. Carmen González, and Dr. Paola Angulo, who contributed their expertise in microbiology, genetic engineering, and molecular biology, respectively. The project was also supported by a photographer, Leonardo Luna, who captured the essence of the project, and visionary artist Roberto Palma, who brought the mapping to life. The auditory experience was orchestrated by sound producer Daniel Arp, creating a wet biology-based sound landscape to enrich the exhibition’s narrative.
The exhibition Atentar desde los códigos is curated by Piedad Martínez and Juan Carlos Montes, which organizers say proposes the need to explore the tensions and conflicts arising from discourses and heritage appropriation exercises concerning sociocultural logics. In this exhibition, artists such as Rocío Cerón, Malitzin Cortéz, Ivan Abreu, and Said Dokins present the outcomes of their artistic residency at the Tec de Monterrey campuses in Puebla and Querétaro.
Part of the Querétaro Experimental international public art festival this summer, the artist says his new mirrored pole is called presents Refraktur. As one of the 200 artists across a wide range of disciplines, including music, theatre, dance, performance and sculpture, the muralist is taking on glass, metal, mirrored glass and LEDs to entertain and perhaps puzzle passersby.
“This piece seeks to create an atmosphere that invites the public to reflect on its presence and the environment,” says Dokins “through a scriptural space in the form of a tower that during the day appears as a mirror and during the night is illuminated through the screen hidden within the structure, where a series of words, signs and symbols are in constant movement.”
“This piece seeks to create an atmosphere that invites the public to reflect on its presence and the environment, through a scriptural space in the form of a tower that during the day appears as a mirror and during the night is illuminated through the screen hidden within the structure, where a series of words, signs and symbols are in constant movement,” explains Dokins.
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.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. BSA Special Feature: ‘Gold Mine’ by Pejac 2. Graffiti & Jail: Doug Gillen and FWTV 3. Said Dokins, Cix, and Spaik: Memoria Canera
BSA Special Feature: ‘Gold Mine’ by Pejac
Pejac recently completed a series of interventions within the oldest prison in Spain, the Penitentiary Center of El Dueso. Located at the entrance of artist’s hometown of Santander, overlooking the Cantabrian sea and surrounded by marshes, the prison built at the beginning of the 20th century on the remains of an old Napoleon’s fort was another challenging setting to carry out his poetic interventions.
For 11 days, its walls, courtyards, and corridors became the artist’s workplace, giving life to the Gold Mine project in that sense. The project integrates three singular pieces, which as a whole represent the value of the human condition, its resistance to adversity, the need to create, and its desire, above all, to leave a mark.
“A prison itself is a place wrapped in harsh reality and at the same time, I feel that it has a great surrealist charge. It is as if you only need to scratch a little on its walls to discover the poetry hidden inside.” PEJAC
Graffiti & Jail: Doug Gillen and FWTV
And on another side of the coin, Doug Gillen of FifthWall TV talks about graffiti and street artists who go to prison as punishment for doing illegal graffiti on the streets.
Memoria Canera
Said Dokins, Cix, and Spaik: Memoria Canera was part of a three mural series made by the outstanding Mexican Street Artists Said Dokins, Cix, and Spaik at the Maximum Security Penitentiary in Morelia, Michoacán.
The project intended to shed light on a discussion about Cultural Rights and how artistic and cultural practices can be a valuable tool to mediate against exclusion and marginalization. By disrupting the space with color and text, symbols and patterns, the environment is transformed. The new murals are “Puedes Volver a Volar” (You can Fly Again) by Spaik, “Estado Mental” (Mental State) by Cix, and “Memoria Canera” (Memories from Jail) by Said Dokins.
The patrimonial value given to ruins: the unusual, vaguely explained, and hardly registered constellation of architectural behemoths that are sprinkled through Sicily may be hardly prized, yet a new art project seeks to bring them into the fold. “Incompiuto Siciliano”, a rather tongue-in-cheek title in the naming convention of architecture and its pantheon, is the name given to these incomplete buildings, nearly 350 of them.
Financial boondoggles of official and unofficial corruption during the last half-century or so, 160 of them are in Sicily, these incomplete water towers, hospitals, sports centers, and recreational building projects that rewarded those who conceived of them and washed money with them.
Quizzically they dot the countryside, giving communities colorful and incomplete stories to tell, and they may not contribute to history in the same manner as more famous structures that the country is known internationally for.
Now a public art project seeking to adopt these orphaned buildings, the organizers of the “Incompiuto Siciliano” (Incomplete Sicilian) project say they are locating, registering, studying, and preserving them. Now they seek to regale these empty shells, these brutalist towers in the rolling green, and welcome them into communities.
Calling upon the calligraphic prowess and the talent for the written word of the Mexican painter Said Dokins, organizers say he was asked to intervene, conclude, or redefine one of these incomplete buildings. Today we bring you his exhausting works that cover the outward-facing visages of this confrontational arrangement of modern century fragmentation.
“It is made up of four Kubrickian monoliths that form a cross, but that represents a trick, a whirlwind of power, money, and politics,” says the press release. Never functional, they are nonetheless structural. By delving into the area’s history and that of Trapani, a small city on this Italian island of Sicily, Said creates his own complex tribute.
Below the images are descriptions of the project provided by the artist.
The “X”, conformed by gold and silver letters on a deep greenback, is presented as a symbol of cancellation, a way to cross out the logic of Incompiuto, through the re-writing of two ancient texts where the political language expands across time. The first one is the heartfelt call of a trapanese prisoner in Tunisia. It’s the last letter from Alberto Gaetani to his sister, dated in 1776, asking her to intercede for his life so he could go back home. The second text is a Trapanese Facio Communist manifesto, in which they described the rights workers should have access to. Their revolutionary demand, without a doubt, resists all that the Incompiuto stands for.
Dokins takes the words from the Trapanese poet, Giuseppe Marco Calvino, bringing to our time his poem “U seculu decimu nonu“, a sharp critic on power abuse released more than 200 years ago. The artist plays with the contrast between the monumentality of his calligraphy in white and gold, which attributes to the text a sense of dignity and a voice of authority denied to the popular language used to write this poem, originally in Trapanese dialect.
The artist takes a series of writings from the 18th century that contains a list of names, along with their physical characteristics and the work they did. It was a slave inventory. Dokins rewrites those names, making them appear in some sort of binnacle, a huge reticular design that resembles the motherboard of a computer, refer to the new cataloging and control systems, new ways to perpetuate the slavery logic in contemporary social relations.
Through the stylization of the iconic rose window of the church of Sant Agostino in Trapani, where symbolic elements of the three principal monotheist religions – Catholicism, Judaism, and Islam- can be found coexisting in the same sanctuary, Said Dokins turns the profane, an abandoned concrete wall, in a sacred place. The juxtaposition of traditions and cults reflected in the rose window, it’s an example of the cultural diversity that converges in the Sicilian territory, with its tensions and clash. The composition is constructed by the repetition of the sentence: “Everywhere I write is a sacred place”. Writing becomes a ritual act that serves the artist to dislocate the separation between the sacred and the earthly.
When it comes to street art, murals, graffiti, and related events around the world last year, we were running to keep up.
You may have missed some of the people, thinkers, artists, projects, and community resources that we shared with BSA readers last year. We’re pleased to share with you some of those stories you may overlooked. Here are some of the greatest hits of 2021.
Graffiti and street art are cyclical in many ways – reflective of society, urban planning, politics, current events, demographics… Currently the city of Barcelona is pushing hard on cleansing itself of the wild graffiti and street art that brought it so many tourists 15 years ago.
Okay okay everybody settle down. We’ve got a lot of excited people yelling things and making huge pronouncements about things – most full of hysteria tinged with paranoiac visions. When it all gets to be too much for us, we like to see how cartoonists are capturing the current zeitgeist, and making something funny. It’s a talented group of artists who can condense complexity and extract the humorous essence of a situation. Also, so far our move toward the right, the far-right, and the fascist has not led us to have leaders that outlaw cartoons. Fingers crossed.
It’s a pity that the pandemic has kept so many people away from seeing great exhibitions in museums and galleries, among other things. At the Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, street artist Swoon’s “Seven Contemplations” ran its course without nearly as many visitors as you would expect.
So we decided to show you the exhibition in a mini-tour. Who else could be your host today but the artist herself, Swoon.
The streets have been anticipating the arrival of the new president and vice president for a few months now. Today it took place and the U.S. has a 46th President – Joe Biden and 49th Vice President – Kamala Harris.
Sometimes art in the streets can be like that – a reflection of your intellectual musings and your heart’s leanings. Because he has often taken a path less traveled, photographer / doctor / activist / organizer / producer / teacher Chip Thomas (aka Jetsonorama) seamlessly slips into and out of all of his roles. In this way, he may also appear as poet.
No More Normal is a semi-regular newsletter written by Jeff Stoneon his substack. He recently interviewed us on the topic of activist street art and we’d like to share his article here.
In May 2020, Todd Lawrence and Heather Shirey were taking pictures of graffiti focused on the coronavirus in Minneapolis when a police officer killed George Floyd just a few blocks away.
The two cultural historians from the University of St. Thomas had recently started taking pictures of the murals, graffiti, stickers and tags throughout the Twin Cities in an effort to preserve that work during a once-in-a-century pandemic. Their archiving, though, took on a new level of urgency when a police officer murdered Floyd and footage of the killing went viral, sparking anti-racist demonstrations in Minneapolis and throughout the world.
Checking in with Panteón Cultural Center in Mexico City, where we first took you when it was inaugurated in 2017, we find street artist/ fine artist Said Dokins participating in a large exhibition and a new mural for the storied interior. It’s reassuring to see “This is not the end of the world,” the title of the collective show featuring many Mexican artists in this venue that is refined and raw and at least in some ways community based – Not such a typical scene these days.
Freedom of expression is foundational in a democracy. Without it, it is not difficult for a culture to descend into authoritarianism, fascism, and dictatorship. By many standards, Spain’s democracy is still young, with a Parliamentary Monarchy since 1978. So it is curious and alarming to hear that this EU country has been silencing free speech in the last few years.
External critics may never be as brutal as your internal one – but graffiti and street art sometimes reveals a specifically vicious world of criticism that greets artists and writers. Imagine making friends with those critics and validating their position, and then moving on unscathed or even healed.
“Overall, the project is meant to inspire those who may take criticism to heart,” says street artist HOTTEA, and he means it as a form of sweet liberation, not a bitter one.
Angelo Milano, the founder of Studiocromie and FAME Festival, has been courting Brooklyn artist duo Faile for more than a decade, and they finally created a series of ceramics together for his studio art business in Grottaglie under the tutelage and traditional expertise of the centuries-old Ceramiche Nicola Fasano’s workshop.
The world is slowly making movements toward the door as if to go outside and begin living again in a manner to which we had been accustomed before COVID made many of us become shut-ins. Parisian street artist FKDL was no exception, afraid for his health. However, he does have a very attractively feathered nest, so he made the best of his time creating.
International Women’s Day is only controversial for those who feel threatened by the idea of equality and freedom.
Perhaps that’s why, according to current statistics, women continue to fight and protest against the gender wage gap in Spain, as well as against violence against women. The national female unemployment rate is 17.4%, compared to 13.8% for men.
A writer once shared with me the following observation concerning the early documentation of modern graffiti, if stated in religious terms.
He said:
Henry Chalfant would be God. Martha Cooper would be the Virgin Mary. Jim Prigoff would be Jesus Christ, Jack Stewart the Holy Ghost.
Subway Art would be the Bible. Spraycan Art the New Testament.
I’m no savior, but I’m proud to have saved some incredible and iconic images of this culture while they were painted and to have met so many talented artists.
Sara Lynn-Leo. Well-placed, well-rendered, witty, insightful, incisive.
These are hallmarks of the miniature pieces of street art that New Yorker Sara Lynn-Leo has been putting up in many neighborhoods in alleyways, doors, dirty corners, magnet walls, street furniture, and lamp posts. Finding these offerings can be difficult. They may be tiny in size and often placed out of eye view.
The era of fractured attention spans, heightened emotions, and ravaged hierarchical systems for ordering institutions, beliefs, and the truth is ripe for examination and dissection – even if it takes a looking glass to see it.
The anonymous art-activist thinkers at INDECLINE have spawned many interventions in the last decade in public space – intricate and smartly storied at times, obvious and deliberately provocative at others.
Perhaps, caught up in the energy of street art and graffiti, we do not pay quite so much attention as we should to it being something we might otherwise call public art. Consider that public art as a form goes back through centuries of municipal planning and myriad private and public interests that are concerned with how community identity may be constructed and represented. It is shortsighted not to acknowledge how much of public art has long been about monuments.
This Friday, the anonymous artivists said they were set to return their ransomed confederate chair monument, “The Jefferson Davis Memorial Chair.” It was first reported missing from Live Oak Cemetery in Selma last month – an ornately carved stone chair dedicated in 1893 to the Confederate president’s memory and estimated to be worth $500,000.
It really is primarily about your State of Mind, says LA-based painter Augustine Kofie about his battle with art and quarantine during this last year.
“The pandemic was a stop, an interruption, a loss of control,” he says – and points to the incomplete cycle symbols that appear throughout his new collection of paintings. Normal life, in its circular wending, was interrupted time and again, along with all our typical expectations.
Together with citizens, environmentalists and researchers, he’s created a work of Land Art here in Rome, and he calls the project Aula Verde.
“The work is alive, and over the years it will take shape and as it grows it will return innumerable benefits to the territory,” Andreco says, “currently it is studied by the researchers who are involved in the project, both for the purification of the water and the redevelopment of the surrounding greenery.”
Shots today from last month’s Shepard Fairey “Future Mosaic” at Dubai’s Opera Gallery. With works on canvas, paper, wood, and metal, as well as examples of iconic images and repeated motifs from the breadth of his art and design history, Fairey was very much present for his first solo show here. In a grueling schedule of just 9 days he also managed to install two huge murals facing a skate park in a commercial district of the city, the d3 (Dubai Design District).
Trust artist Dread Scott to perfect the provocative phrase that can raise the prickly ire of certain street passersby, simply and succinctly. And trust the self-elected censorious social media platforms like Instagram to actually ban it.
Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based Scott says, “White people can’t be trusted with power” in this new public artwork at 42nd near 10th Avenue in Manhattan. It may remind you of a Jenny Holzer “Truism” that she may have wheat-pasted on the street in the past, a pertinent pique that strikes at the heart of the matter, minus the sense of irony. But in the current context of white people’s reluctant awakening, Mr. Scott writes, “When this was originally posted, Instagram banned it as ‘hate speech.’ ”
Highbrow art institutions have coalesced behind a small recurring collection of well-known graffiti/street artists in recent years, granting them a lot of space and a powerful entrée to blue-check media parties, blue-chip platforms, and blue blood collectors. The bigger (and frequently well-funded) names are often the easiest to explain to an unfamiliar general audience of art viewers and, of course, will appeal to that younger demographic everyone is after. It shouldn’t surprise anyone when even the New York City Ballet spawned a series of collaborations with street artists in the last five years to bolster flagging attendance due to aging and, well, dying fans.
Artists are getting robbed. It is time to give them the legal tools they need. With this spirit, a few years ago, I started researching copyright aspects of street art and graffiti.
These artistic movements have been intriguing me for a while. Living for several years in the East London area of Shoreditch, where creativity has exploded and developed after the new millennium’s arrival, has certainly nurtured my curiosity towards these forms of art.
“This project represents an innovative attempt to solve one of the biggest problems when exhibiting street art,” says Berlin-based street artist Vermibus, “- the lack of its original context.”
True, something about our previous curated exhibitions of street art – even our current show of Martha Cooper’s photography work at Urban Nation Museum here – loses the feeling of the street once it enters the museum doors.
“I truly believe this way of experiencing and conserving Street Art will be the inevitable future.”
Concreate Urban Art Festival, held now for the second time, has clearly taken over Keran Hallit in Espoo, Finland. Keran Hallit is a huge former logistics center currently operating as a space for art, culture, sport, and other free-time activities. During the next few years, the halls will be demolished to make space for a new neighborhood.
Frankfurt-based ultra-talent Case Maclaim is with the Urvanity Art Fair this week, and he has created a new mural in Madrid’s old, historical city center. His work is being shown by Brussells Ruby Gallery, along with that of street artists EverSiempre and Wasted Rita. Still, he just wanted to go big with a tribute to children’s imagination.
Russian Urban Art: Poetry, Philosophy, and Manifestos in the Streets
In the interest of defining specific areas of the study of Russian Urban Art, I’ll highlight here three main periods that I think are important in the development of these forms of urban art: the 1910s–20s, the 1990s, and the current era. From my perspective, each period was usually born during crisis and revolution, went dead after a few years, and then came to life slowly again. It was this circular pattern that I am trying to define in my recent book Russian Urban Art: History and Conflicts, but here I want the focus to be more specific.
Madrid’s Art Week – who would believe that it could actually happen? And to prove it, we have the 5th Anniversary of Urvanity defiantly strutting from one end of the COAM headquarter to the other. Taking its original inspiration from graffiti, post-graffiti, surrealism, pop, and that broadly applied “Urban Contemporary” tag, Sergio and the Urvanity team have persevered this year again.
A Superstar of the disco era long before people even heard of telling you their pronouns, this queen crossed over and back and even had bonafide dancefloor hits. How fitting that queer muralist Josh Katz painted this glamorous portrait to lift spirits in this city where day socializing and nightlife has been hamstrung by the pandemic, even shuttering some gold-plated legends in LGBTQ+ club history.
Katz says he is happy to bring Sylvester out into the street-life, a response to “what I see as a lack of LGBTQ representation in street art.” He promises that he’ll continue painting portraits to honor legacies and increase visibility.
According to his descriptions of the artist’s new “Inside” installation in the UK’s only island city of Portsmouth (pronounced PORT-smith), there will be tours in this secret location – ever so because the atmospheric and theatrical work is not officially sanctioned and is staged in an abandoned building.
25 years in the game, Pener routinely lets his mind travel to encompass possibilities, then channels them abstractly through a series of echoing geometric forms with aerosol and brush. Here in his hometown of Olsztyn, Poland, he says he imagined the possibilities that young minds inside an elementary school could contemplate.
On a recent sunny May day, we followed street artist Winston Tseng to document his new series of posters installed on three locations in Manhattan. The series is titled “Money Fixes Everything.”
The flat and colorful 2-D illustration style of street artist/graphic artist Winston Tseng doesn’t scream social inequity and cultural insanity the way other graphic styles may. The graphic language is the 2-D, flat, icon-based vernacular familiar to phones and applications, a neutral and familiar reduction to precisely convey the visual elements necessary to infer more is there. Brilliantly pared and exacting in composition, a close look allows the viewer to unpack Tseng’s specific brand of critique – perhaps causing you to crack a smile, or roll your eyes, shake your head.
Leon Keers is subversive, if that is the way your mind works. His mind-bending plays on real and surreal perspectives may lead you down a path of suspicion, for it appears that he is adept and agile when playing with perspective.
You saw our announcement for the new exhibit At the Vanguard: Bristol Opens Exhibition On Evolution of Global Movement of Street Art and now you get a chance to see the actual shoe newly installed. Dense and rich with original artwork, photography, and ephemera, Vanguard is a studious presentation that confidently lays claim to Bristols place in the history of graffiti and street art.
For five years conceptual artists Biancoshock and Harmen de Hoop have been giving each other assignments as part of a common project that can range from titillating to amusing to incomprehensible.
As with so many works in public space by either of these two interpreters of societal nomenclature, these works field-test theories of the visual prank as much as they level observations or critiques of human behavior. With each installation, you are welcomed to examine one more of myriad modern idiosyncrasies – now placed in a new context. Your interpretation may vary.
Italian land artist/street muralist Gola Hundun has divided his creative projects in the last few years into two distinct but related practices.
The first is to investigate buildings that are being reclaimed by nature and develop site-specific installations that work in harmony with the history of the relationship between architecture and nature. The second, of which we have an example for you today, is a mural installation on active buildings within cities, perhaps invoking a more integrated ecology of symbols and natural systems around it. These two lines of inquiry comprise his project “HABITAT”, a sincere stream of research that lies on the border between anthropic space and natural space
It’s impossible to imagine the contemporary built environment without considering the impact of street art and graffiti has had on not only city dwellers but our city’s designers and architects. While previous generations may have dismissed incorporating painting techniques beyond traditional frescoes or murals, the new generation considers it their birthright to bring modern art movement influences, including Optical Art, Kinetic Art, and straight-up tape art often used on the street.
It’s not every day that you have an 800th anniversary.
Bringing monumental aesthetics, theologic references, and the language of classical architecture to this massive wall at Calle Fernán González, 52, the French duo MonkeyBird celebrates the Burgos Cathedral in grand style. Louis Boidron and Edouard Egea say they worked painstakingly to prepare their tribute to the original workers and artisans who first built the Gothic and Baroque-styled Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1984.
We’ve had the privilege to travel to many cities and cultures over the last decade and a half, from Russian to Chinese to North African to Tahitian and Norwegian, to witness the affecting power of street art on cities, communities, and everyday people. Regardless of the street author’s intent, however earnest or carefully considered, we’re often surprised by the variety of interpretations that can arise from a singular work of art or intervention.
Édgar Sánchez and Arcadi Poch may not simply be curators of the new initiative called Mexpania that merges the cultures of Mexico and Spain. They are social scientists, anthropologists, historians, and some may say, alchemists. With the inaugural installations of this auspicious project primarily created inside the entrance and with only 4 national/international artists, you may be curious how these foundational works will influence future curatorial choices for this ever-growing museum dedicated to urban art, or arte urbano.
Elfo’s furtive and artful wanderings can veer off into the neo-Dadaist fields at times, sometimes wittily so, and textually. The Italian graffiti writer and street artist uses the simplest of devices to capture attention, a reductive and deliberate strategy born of careful consideration girded by impulses to broadcast his view, to be seen and heard.
Italian street artist Bifido finishes this rough wall with the sweetest of sentiments here as summer draws ever nearer to its end. Quoting Keats, as romantics are wont to do, Bifido tells us his latest staged photo wheatpaste is transparent in its sentiment, opaque in his specific meaning.
“It is a hug, so it is something that can be shared,” he offers. “For this time I have nothing to say about this piece.” Enough said.
“An archetypal image”, Edoardo Tresoldi says, “is capable of creating a dialogue between past and present, using a language comprised of meanings that recur over time.”
“Szczecin before the Second World War was a German city,” says the street artist named M-City. Now it’s flying as a spaceship in his latest stencil mural here – in Poland.
Ah, the feckless, sebaceous, inward-turned man; Bumbling through the world unaware and uncaring how his actions may impact the lives of others. Little does he know that the fire he starts will burn him as well.
I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
Sylvia Plath
Street poet and street artist Bifido doesn’t mean to be morose, but here in Mostar he can’t help himself as he creates mirrored expressions of a sullen, ill-tempered youth on city streets. Part of the Bosnian /Herzegovinian street art festival named after this city of 113,000 Croats (48.4%), Bosniaks (44.1%), and Serbs (4.1%), the annual meeting of international and local artists produces a broad variety of artworks for the city.
“I am not that, sir,” he answered, “I’m the vacuumer.” Our short tour ends abruptly as the loud whir of the cleaning machine rises to meet the southern-fried rock classic on the sound system here at Fleetwood’s in Asheville, North Carolina. Ours, and his, is a quick sweep through this small city of 90,000 in the Blue Ridge Mountains known for its progressive ideas, punk squats, Thomas Wolfe, and a harmonious alliance between sanctioned murals, organic street art, and graffiti.
The brilliant illustrator of fantasy and firey allegory, BLU, championed the cause of the Rog Factory squat in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2016 with a centrally framed handgun in pink and red. In that heated moment the community of artists and activists had fended off developers, construction thugs, and even some kind of fascists attacking them or trying to chase them from the property.
We have some special events taking place this month to celebrate one complete year of the career-spanning exhibition “Martha Cooper: TAKING PICTURES”, which we created with the team at Urban Nation Museum in Berlin.
Today graffiti/street artist AIKO talks about her striking new graphic mural for the façade of the museum that highlights and interprets a suite of recognizable elements from Martha’s iconic photographs – a perfect answer to the Martha Remix section of the exhibition inside featuring 70 or so artists “remixing” her photos in their individual styles.
Half biologist, half street artist, all gentleman. The French painter Youri Cansell AKA Mantra opens his very first US solo show tonight at Goldman Global Arts (GGA) in Miami. In preparation for “Metamorphōsis,” the artist has been painting non-stop all summer at a temporary studio in Cancun.
When we asked Shepard Fairey if he would be up for a new remix of a Martha Cooper photo for our exhibition celebrating her career, he quickly said yes. Not only did he create a new original piece of art based on one of her classic “Street Play” images to hang in the gallery of our “Marth Remix” section, but he and his excellent team have also produced a new print – 250 of which sold out in 20 minutes on the Urban Nation website last night.
SpY describes his new public art project “Earth,” as “a luminous red sphere caged inside a structure.” You may wonder what this structure made from building-site scaffolding represents, especially when he says “the sphere is caged within it”. Gaseous fumes? Global Oligarchs? Free-trade agreements? K-Pop fans? We asked him:
BSA: Is the earth the color red because it is on fire, in pain, in a state of emergency, or perhaps in love?
SpY: The red earth in a cage has different meanings.
Get in, get out, no one gets hurt. Our few days in Miami were full of adventure on the street and at parties and receptions for artists. The party rages on tonight and this weekend at the fairs and in the galleries and bars and streets of course, but our last events were interviewing Faile onstage at Wynwood Walls last night, going to the Museum of Graffiti 2nd Anniversary party/opening for FUZI, and, well there was this thing with Shepard Fairey and Major Lazer and a guy proposing marriage to his girl before the crowd…
Checking in with Panteón Cultural Center in Mexico City, where we first took you when it was inaugurated in 2017, we find street artist/ fine artist Said Dokins participating in a large exhibition and a new mural for the storied interior. It’s reassuring to see “This is not the end of the world,” the title of the collective show featuring many Mexican artists in this venue that is refined and raw and at least in some ways community based – Not such a typical scene these days.
Here in this grizzled colonial complex that deliberately preserves its unfinished character, you can now see the expansive use of Dokins poetry within the stylized calligraffiti, sacred circular wreaths, and dynamic diagonals racing across fresh canvasses and battered walls of this historic property lying in the middle of the oldest, crusty colonial part of CDMX.
In collaboration with Gama Gallery, the artist also creates his mural Winter Language (video at bottom), into which he “decided to place some writings, ideas, and poems that came into my mind about the difficult times we’re living in, where uncertainty lurks, and the hope of a new cycle still permeates some of us.”
It’s been a rough winter in Mexico City. The pandemic pushes people apart, and a fractured national response to it lead to many illnesses, with many family members left behind, many futures newly uncertain. When the travails are so harsh, is there any wonder that many of us are now turning to poetry, philosophy, and the comfort of religious traditions?
“This winter in Mexico, between the sounds of ambulances, desperate messages looking for oxygen,” Said says, only compounded the dystopia, along with the “psychological numbness before the tragedy and the fiction of individual good sense; while criticizing our neighbors, getting angry with different groups, society, or the government. We are leaving behind family, friends, and people that we love.” The words march and fall in lines through our heads and crosswise on these walls.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. “Offset” by Nevercrew at Urvanity in Madrid 2. Icy & Sot: “Our house is on fire” By COlabs / Marco Figueroa 3. Said Dokins on Cultura Colectiva
BSA Special Feature: “Offset” by Nevercrew at Urvanity in Madrid
Welcome to BSA Film Friday with a new mural from the Urvanity commercial art fair in Madrid that culls together 30 or so galleries and mounts a public art campaign during the same week. “Offset” by the Swiss muralists called Nevercrew presents a massive pile of bears, one stacked upon the other.
The manner of arrangement of the bears presents creatures of the wild as no more than commodities, in the same way that corporations and countries think they can “purchase” offsets through a surreal trading market where one purchases the right to pollute and kill our atmosphere. In a positive light, the title “Offset” may refer to the practice of biodiversity offsetting, where previous wrongs are righted following a mitigation hierarchy to produce “no net loss” of biodiversity.
Also, bears are really cute.
“Offset” NEVERCREW in Madrid for Urvanity Art Fair 2020
Icy & Sot: “Our house is on fire” By COlabs / Marco Figueroa
The pacing is quick, the reversal of the timeline adds a sense of mystery and mastery to the brothers’ fox-witted ability to communicate horror in a rather elegant way.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening : 1. “Melania”, Directed by Brad Downey 2. Said Dokins. “Runaway Writings” Solo Show 3. “Who’s the Daddy?” A film by Wong Ping
BSA Special Feature: “Melania”, Directed by Brad Downey
Street Artist/Interventionist Brad Downey widens his oeuvre with a
documentary, and his exquisite critiques of hypocrisy – and his appreciation of
life’s beautiful ironies are still fully intact.
Here in a grassy area between a dirt service road and the Sava
River Mr. Maxi Z
creates his ode to Melania, a girl born in the same hospital and year as he.
Using his chainsaw to coax the immigrant/model/First Lady Melania from this
tree whose roots go deep into her Slovenian homeland, the sculptor creates a
painted tribute and a direct connection between art and life for all to see
publicly. Hearing him describe his work is important, as is appreciating the
struggle and sacrifice he speaks of. Hearing a traditional song and reading its
lyrics, well crafted with nostalgia and heartache, buttresses the storytelling
with context.
For us Mr. Downey’s brilliance is his examination of the assumed, his
breakdown of folly, his ability to see. Here he shares his view with us, with
warmth and satire. Among his targets, implied at least, may be the art world,
the Street Art world, social anachronisms, international power structures, craven
corruption. Among his tributes are the creative spirit, individual ingenuity,
and the will to overcome. Long live Melania.
“Melania” 2019, Sevenica, Slovenia A film by Brad Downey Featuring Maxi Z. Production Miha Erjavec Camera Aljaž Celarc Editing Eva Pavlič Seifert Song pevskizbor Bunkarji Sound Editing Simon Kavsek Translation Ana Bohte Assitance Jaka Erjavec Thanks to Son of Maxi Z, wife Jožica, Graveks d.o.o
Said Dokins. “Runaway Writings” Solo Show
Graffiti
artist, contemporary artist, calligrapher and curator Said Dokins organizes
images, objects and personal questions in his new exhibition at Centro Nacional
de las Artes in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
With works on paper, on canvas, video, light, and photograph,
the show speaks of conflict, community, the empire to the north, and his
expansive practice with calligraphy. With each letter, each word, Said Dokins’
strokes free the steps of those who lived between these walls.
“Who’s the Daddy?” A film by Wong Ping
Hong Kong film director/animator/artist Wong Ping creates with the excesses and superficiality of non-stop consumer culture – humorously mixed and mingled with a young man’s insecurities, search for identity, and desire to get laid. His social, racial, cultural, political observations resonate beneath the eye candy. His sense of humor makes the formerly difficult easier to contemplate, the questions now tempered with the colorful absurdity of the world. Consider here, his ruminations on the length and curvature of the penis, among other things one might write in an online public diary.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening :
1. “The US Tapes” with Fatheat and TransOne
2. Said Dokins: Stories of a Word
3. INO: Lost in Greece
4. Low Bros x Viva Con Agua
BSA Special Feature: The US Tapes with Fatheat and TransOne
“Listen, my only request…. When you’re done doing your thing, do an Italian flag with my daughter’s name on it,” says a guy who is shouting up from the street to the roof where two Hungarian graff writers are preparing to hit a wall with a giant rat in Jersey. That rat looks fantastic as it basks in the blinking glow of the marquee for Vinny Italian Gourmet on the streets in the Newark night below.
That scene alone can stand as their American iconic moment for the US Tapes, but Fatheat and TransOne documented a number of golden moments on their trip this winter to New York, Wynwood, LA, and Las Vegas. Travel with them as they try to square the television mythology of modern America with the one they are encountering in all its ridiculous free-wheeling self satisfied unreflective emotional consumerist funkified freedom*. Standby for sonic blasts from the cultural pulp soundbook and prepare for a celebrity visit.
Slyly they observe and sample and taste and catalogue the insights by traversing the main stage and the margins, smartly not taking it too seriously, finding plenty of places for wide-eyed wonder and wiseguy sarcasm. Steeped in graffiti history with mad skillz themselves, this is all an adventure. Generous of heart, they also share it with you.
Ready for your Friday road trip?
Said Dokins: Stories of a Word
You saw great shots and heard the story this week on BSA :
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
