All posts tagged: Shepard Fairey

“Beyond The Streets” Exhibition : Gastman’s Train Pulls In to LA

June 5, 2018 Artists

A steel-wheeled graffiti train with Roger Gastman at the controls roars into LA’s Chinatown for a two-month stay at this station, a 40,000 square foot warehouse that houses “Beyond the Streets.” Originating at the streets and train yards of the 1960s and 70s, this express survey carries with it 100 or so artists and writers from across the last five decades as practitioners of graffiti, Street Art, and mural painting. Somehow, everyone gets represented.

Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Opening night featured many of the names associated with its earliest beginnings of the New York /Philadelphia graffiti scene like Cornbread, Taki183, Futura, Lady Pink, filmmaker Charlie Ahearn, among many others, including photographer Martha Cooper, who in addition to being an artist in the show, shares these photos with BSA readers. She also extensively shares her photos for the accompanying show catalog, providing documentation from the scene that exist nowhere else.

Retna. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

A diverse and almost overwhelming series of displays present the works in a way that can only hint at the thousands of artists who built this story, necessarily viewed through a wide lens: sculpture, photography, installations, and multi-media all join the canvasses and ephemera and Gastman’s collection of vintage paint cans. Smartly planned for the selfie generation, large pieces are presented almost as backdrop ready to be Instagrammed; a direction coming from the “Photos Encouraged” sign that is next to the wall covered with Retna’s original alphabet near the entrance.

Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Somewhat of a rejoinder to Art in the Streets, the eponymous graffiti and Street Art exhibition in 2011 at LA MoCA, Beyond the Streets takes a focused look at the multitudinous peoples’ art movement from the perspective of one of that first shows’ original curators, Roger Gastman. When arranging the two month exhibition that closes July 6^th, Gastman says that his focus was to celebrate those with street cred, in terms of individual practice, and to combine that requirement with a respectable semblance of a studio practice.

Ultimately he looked for artists who have used their particular approach to expand the definition of art in the streets in some way. That definition by now has become quite wide and it’s also a tall order for any curator to find the common themes here and present them in a cohesive manner.

Beyond The Streets, compiled by Roger Gastman.

Both the accompanying catalog and exhibition take a welcome stance toward educating the audience in many ways, helping the viewer to decode this freewheeling graffiti and mark-making history with basic vocabulary terms, historical events, pop culture inflexion points and examination of tools of the trade all adding context. Catalog essays and interviews are incisive and enlightening, including wit, sarcasm and even the occasional admonishment – notably in the essay by author, filmmaker, and curator Sacha Jenkins, who has been documenting the graffiti scene for a least a couple of decades.

Studying the move of some artists from street practice to commercial gallery that began in earnest with early NYC train writers transitioning to canvasses in the early 1980s, Jenkins upbraids a disgruntled faction among old-school graffiti writers who he characterizes as perhaps intransigent in their stylistic evolution and unwilling to adapt with the game. Later in his essay he lambasts the overtly pleasant and narcissistic cultural newcomers who he sees as milk-toasting the scene with their adoration of pretty murals and shallow sentiments, obtusely ushering in gentrification and “leading up to hearing about how my mother’s building is going to get bulldozed for a hip residential building that has a hot tub in every apartment.” He also may be the only writer here so openly addressing race and class distinctions present during the evolution of the scene and now.

Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

The selection of artists and writers in the book and exhibition, many of them friends and colleagues with whom Gastman has worked with in the past, offers a rewarding and accessible panoply of styles and views. With some study the visitor understands connections in a widely dispersed multi-player subculture that coalesced and continuously changed its shape and character. But even if they don’t, they still get an amazing amount of eye candy.

The catalog offers extensive sections like those devoted to The History of Spraypaint and Graffiti in Galleries, and offers petite exegesis on influencing factors and benchmarks that shaped the art form’s route like Mobile DJs, The ’77 NYC Blackout, the European graffiti scene and graffiti’s role in gang culture, hip-hop and hardcore music. The compilation aids and supports the fullness of a story that frankly requires many voices to tell it. Gastman even gives forum and exhibition space to activist and defiant guerilla gardener Ron Finley and the holistic urban horticultural oases that he creates in South Central LA, calling it his form of graffiti in empty lots of the city.

Martha Cooper with Taki 183. Beyond The Streets. (photo courtesy of Martha Cooper)

With insightful interviews of artists in the exhibition from talented writers like Caleb Neelon, Caroline Ryder, John Lewis, Alec Banks, Evan Pricco, John Albert, Shelly Leopold, and Gastman himself, there are enough colorful anecdotes and decisive signposts en route to help tell the stories of the artists and their individual approaches to the street.

“The artists do not share a singular style, since they are primarily united by a common element of their personal biographies – the fact that they once made their art in the streets,” says self-described novice to the Street Art / graffiti world, Adam Lerner, the Director and Chief Animator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. “There are, however some threads that run through the works.”

Beyond the Streets will help visitors find some of those threads for themselves and undoubtedly they will forge their own interpretation of art in the streets.

Faile. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Invader. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Slick. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Takashi Murakami with Madsaki, Snipel, Tenga One and Onesker. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Lady Pink. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Charlie Ahearn . Futura . Lady Pink. Crash. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Mr. Cartoon. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Futura. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Futura takes a photo of Haze’s art work. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Niels Shoe Meulman. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Ron Finley’s Gansta Gardener installation. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Corn Bread. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Crash . Daze. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Katsu. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Bill Barminski. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Faith XLVII. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Shepard Fairey. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Jenny Holzer, Flashlight (In Collaboration With A-One). Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Blade. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Aiko. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Al Diaz. Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

Barry Magee. Beyond The Streets. (photo and video below © Martha Cooper)

Beyond The Streets. (photo © Martha Cooper)

For more information please visit https://www.beyondthestreets.com/

The Many Faces of Lisbon on the Street

April 16, 2018 Artists

A Scholarly Eye On Artistic Interventions in Public Space

The excitement that pours from city walls in Lisbon is palpable, an animated mix of graffiti, Street Art, murals, sculpture, and the traditional artisan tiles. Like the famous Bacalhau dish of Portuguese cuisine, it all can be mixed together almost a thousand different ways and each surprising recombination can be loved for its unique character.

To appreciate the varied elements playing into the Street Art scene here, you won’t find greater insight than by touring with Pedro Soares-Neves, and he’ll make sure you won’t leave without understanding the forty years that have contributed to the scene up to this point.

Park. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Most visitors are overtaken by the sweeping views, the heart of the old city in the valley, the winding Bairro Alto streets full of colorful illegal artworks, the ancient bricks, traditional azulejos tiled buildings, tiny streets, sloping topography, endless staircases and retro-style cable cars that are climbing impossible inclines – each slaughtered with colorful graffiti tags.

Unidentified artist. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Now an international destination for many Street Artists, the growing number of murals here is remarkable, if not outstanding. Soares-Neves can look at the huge variety of expressions on the street and explain why the art is here now and how it fits into a greater context of a historical city that has gradually embraced nearly all expressions of modern art-in-the-streets.

A self-described fan of urban history Pedro is one of the few scholars in the global urban art scene who calls graffiti writers “authors”, quite possibly because he was one himself in his early teens here during the city’s first stage of graffiti proliferation in the early 1990s.

“I am kind of an architectural urban history fanatic,” he says proudly but in a confessional tone. Completing his doctorate in Design and Urbanism this year he is also co-organizer of the Lisbon Street Art & Urban Creativity Conference and the Street Art & Urban Creativity Scientific Journal.

Lister. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A lifelong Lisboan born at the same time the revolution from the dictatorship was born here in the mid 1970s, Soares-Neves tells the story of urban art as a progression of social movement, individual engagement, immigration, urban planning, importation of culture, commercial incursion and coalescing of local artists as a quasi-professional network.

As you ride in his 4-door family SUV-hybrid with kids toys and storybooks scattered across the back seat, you gaze along the historic spice trade waterfront and the Jerónimos monastery and museum row, swerving through the central “filet mignon” of the ornamented city to the outskirts, which he calls “the back-office”.

He gestures at the trains and wooded walls and areas where he once painted graffiti , to some of the current crop of throwups along the highway and to wall murals that have been commissioned by municipal, professional, and commercial interests. As the trip unfolds the story is not quite linear of course, and city history intertwines with personal history.

Telmo & Miel. Bairro Padre Cruz. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As is its personality, art-in-the-streets shape-shifts and redefines itself, creating new alliances, reconfiguring the balance. For example, currently Lisbon city leaders are working with former vandals and art school professionals to create programs of large colorful murals on soaring public housing towers.

The adjacent neighborhood of older single family houses laid out like suburbs features Soare-Neves’ own curated walls done by more conceptual artists who play with ideas about public space as well as aesthetics. The Portuguese +MaisMenos– directly intervenes with stenciled words here, creating quizzical conundrums for passersby and the French experimenter Matthew Tremblin who brings an online poll results via bar charts posing an existential question about Street Art.

Matthew Tremblin. Bairro Padre Cruz. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A truly unique insight into the rather omnibus experience of this urban academic, we actually get to look at two eras of Pedro’s own personal history as an artist are here as well, only blocks away from one another.

This IS a tour!

Pedro Soares-Neves. Bairro Padre Cruz. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

One Soares painting is on a low wall encircling a park. Part of a graffiti wall of fame (which he helped organize), it shows his 1990s affinity for character illustration and experimentation with letter styles. His more recent installation is a mixed media paint/land art derivation that converts disused construction materials and a habit-formed footpath leading up a grassy knoll to a numerical wall.

Again, the spirit of experimentation here is what is core to his art practice. Perhaps this is why his personal philosophies toward public space lean toward the organically Situationist act of creation, a practice that can be extended to all of the public and to the moment of inspiration.

Following are many images captured in Lisbon during our tour interspersed with this history of the last few decades courtesy Soares-Neves and our own research.

Corleone. Underdogs Gallery/Public Arts Program . Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

1980s-90s and Lisbon’s Dawn of Graffiti

Speaking with Pedro about the early graffiti of the 90s you capture a perspective on two important cultural factors that steered its direction.

The first is that through the lense of the liberators of the Carnation Revolution in the 1970s the style of aerosol bubble tags and characters recalled the earlier people-powered community murals and represented “freedom” in their minds, whereas cities elsewhere in Europe would have thought this painting indicated vandalism or a breakdown of the social fabric.

Suker. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Secondly, the fascination with graffiti was spurred by the children of African immigrants from former Portuguese territories of Angola, Mozambique and Capo Verde who moved to Lisbon after wars with them ended during the revolution. Now second generation teen immigrants from two cultures, they were looking for self-identity, according to Soares-Neves.

“They found resonance in this Afro-American and Latin American thing that was going on during the 80s so they connected with it and used it for language.”

Aire. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Quite possibly they were reacting to class and race prejudice and they identified with brothers and sisters in the music videos of American commercial hip hop culture. Seeing the exciting growth and the implied power of graffiti writers, musicians, and bboy movies like “Wild Style” in the 1980s, the expression of graffiti was alluring – a welcome visual art and anti-establishment practice that created identity, community, and newfound respect among a select peer group of cool kids.

“Actually it started with bboying culture in the mid 80s and then in the early 90s it started with a visual language of it,” he says, explaining the progression.

Unidentified Artist…speaking the truth. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A Personal Introduction to Graff

His own teenage aestheticism extended to characters, and a fascination for punk or “rough” magazines and the illustration stylings of artists in the classic Chiclete com Banana magazines. “I had this relationship with drawing and cartoons and this kind of stuff – this popular culture sort of thing,” he says.

His talents as an artist were well prized among his peers until he was nearly outshone by a graffiti writer from Capo Verde, a classmate who threatened Pedro’s status as the school artist; a funny story he explains this way:

“At that time in my high school I was ‘The’ guy who was doing the best cartoons and all this kind of stuff,” he says, reflecting on his celebrity. “Suddenly he did a big piece on the wall! So I was the king of the ‘drawing thing’ and this motherf***er came here and did a big and colorful piece!”

Edis1. Bairro Padre Cruz. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: ..and everyone knew about it of course.
Pedro: Yeah of course it was much more visible than what I did. So I started to interact with the guy.

Pedro’s personal history with graffiti began there and never stopped. After starting on walls and greatly enlarging his own illustrations and experimenting with letter styles, he and his peers grew to about 10 or 12 writers and the graffiti scene appeared to blow up from there.

A community of writers from many backgrounds spread across the city practicing one-upsmanship in technical skill and logistical daring, operating singularly, in small groups, or the occasional Wall of Fame project. Because there wasn’t a strict evolutionary lineage of style, many young artists developed their own in the laboratory of the street, not necessarily related to the hip hop culture but adapting from their own culture.

Cola. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

2000s and the Turn Toward Street Art

By the late 90s and early 00s he feels that the scene suffered a sort of malaise when purely commercial murals began to take parts of the wall inventory and change the character of some areas. It was a development he deeply disliked for its perversion of a freer art practice yet he appreciated it for the employment it provided to professional artists. The city also borrowed the vernacular of graffiti for public service announcements painted as murals.

The mid 2000s began to reflect the influences of artists like Banksy and a new sort of community comprised of artists from old school graffiti writers and new generation Street Artist began to coalesce in Lisbon he says. Additionally the later 2000s began an increasing flow of international Street Artists and graffiti writers who began avoiding Barcelona after that city started cracking down on their famed urban art scene.

RAM. Bairro Padre Cruz. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“They (artists) started to add a few other languages to try to surpass this previous period and also began dialoguing with the new things that were happening in Street Art,” he says of the witty skewering of pop culture iconography, introduction of fine art illustration styles and the use of newer art-making methods.

“It was starting to really have lots of people doing stencils and paste ups and this kind of stuff all around. It started to influence the younger generation and that put some pressure on the older generations, who started to do that themselves.”

Visual Street Performance and the Crono Project

A collective guild comprised of artists from both graffiti and Street Art like HBSR81, Hium, Klit, Mar, Ram, Time and Vhils joined together in the mid 2000s and called themselves Visual Street Performance (VSP). A professional/DIY effort, they began to organize large events and an annual exhibition through 2010 that expanded the vernacular to hybrids of fine art and elements of pop, character illustration, photo realism, surrealist fantasy, found object art, abstract expressionist, more traditional graffiti and graphic design.

Pang. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pedro had been studying abroad in the Czech Republic and Rome for a few years, “And when I came back I noticed a different panorama. There were lots of younger kids with totally different skills and with that approach of making money out of it,” he says with a mixture of admiration and possibly concern at the professionalism entering the equation.

“They managed to invent themselves,” he says, “and also within the exhibitions the kids like Vhils were born from these,” he says as he talks about the commercial aspects of the cultural scene with connections to an aerosol art brand, print makers, and related clothing projects.

Kam Laurene. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A notable commercial and marketing milestone that married Street Art and urban culture with the image of Lisbon itself took place in 2010-11 when the year long Crono project, curated by Soares-Neves, Angelo Milano (of Fame Festival), and local Street Artist Vhils (Alexandre Farto), brought rising stars of the moment to a high profile block-long series of ornate Art Nouveau and shuttered buildings along a heavily traveled strip in the city, Avenida Fontes Pereira de Melo.

Os Gemeos . Blu . Sam3 . Erica Il Cane. Crono Project. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Internet’s volleying of fresh images of pieces by the Italian anti-corporate BLU, the hallucinatory dream illustration style of Brazilian graffiti twins Os Gemeos, and the lyrical storytelling of Spanish 2-D SAM3 alerted the Street Art worlds’ knowledge of Lisbon, and the project quickly became a destination for travellers.

Os Gemeos . Blu. Crono Project. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Soares-Neves sometimes speaks about the commercial appropriation of the street art vernacular in his academic work and in some ways it appears that the unexpected success of the Crono Project unsettled him as well. The curators had worked with the city to finance the project with an intention of giving opportunities to artists and fostering new aspects of the public art conversation, but according to Soares-Neves the high profile of the project undermined their own anti-establishment sentiments when city leaders recognized that a comparatively modest investment had ballooned into a successful city “branding” campaign.

Os Gemeos. Crono Project. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Possibly this is a cautionary tale that underscores the incremental dangers present when subculture crosses the rubicon into simply “culture”. There is always the fear that the original philosophies encoded in a subculture will be irreparably transformed, candy-coated, cheapened, or worse, excised.

Recently closed London-based Street Art print pioneers “Pictures On Walls” lamented in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way on their website in January when describing the evolution of their 15 year old business this way, “…inevitably disaster struck – and many of our artists became successful. Street Art was welcomed into mainstream culture with a benign shrug and the art we produced became another tradeable commodity.”

Borondo. Bairro Padre Cruz. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The City We See Today

The city seems like it is absorbing all of these changes well, and the variety of faces and styles of public artistic intervention that you see scattered throughout it feel vibrant and necessary. The city continues its 25 year heritage of organic graffiti and entertains international writers and has the occasional Walls of Fame. Elements of unsanctioned Street Art exists as well and neighborhoods are accented by the new generation of muralists with mad skillz.

Then there are those who are a little harder to categorize, like the subtle reworkings of traditional Portugues tiles with modern icons and patterns by Add Fuel and the prized sculptural pieces across the city by the trash-recycling animal naturalist Bordalo II, who just had a massive solo exhibition in November.

Bordalo II. In conjunction with his solo exhibition ATTERO Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The contemporary urban artist and international Street Art star Vhils is a company at this point: operating a studio in a few cities, here running a gallery, a studio laboratory program for young artists, a street art tour business, and partnering with city art programming initiatives as well as brands. Somehow he still finds time to create artworks in the streets, including a recent portrait collaboration with Shepard Fairey in Lisbon and LA.

Shepard Fairey . VHILS. Underdogs Gallery/Public Arts Program . Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

At the end of our tour marathon Pedro Soares-Neves takes us to the Centro de Informação Urbana de Lisboa (Lisbon Urban Information Center) where we climb the stairs through the airy modernist foyer full of scholarly readers to discover a small scale maquette of the entire city that we have just been traversing.

Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fanned out for you before the shiny blue Tagus River, perhaps 15 meters at its full expanse, the topographic features of the city are much less daunting when viewed from this perspective. As Pedro walks around the perimeter of the mini-city and points to neighborhoods, regions, the forest, the airport, the old city and the newly gentrifying areas of Lisboa he recounted stories of expansion, retrenchment, privatization, skullduggery and deliverance.

Thanks to him we appreciate graffiti/ Street Art/ urban art truly in its context of this city, its history, its people and the built environment like never before.

Lisbon. Pedro makes a point. December 2017. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Bordalo II. In conjunction with his solo exhibition ATTERO Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Borondo. Bairro Padre Cruz. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Vhils. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Underdogs Gallery/Public Arts Program . Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey . VHILS. Detail. Underdogs Gallery/Public Arts Program . Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lister. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Crayon. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Andre Nada. Bairro Padre Cruz. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified Artist. Amoreiras Wall Of Fame. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Slap. Amoreiras Wall Of Fame. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

RariOne. Amoreiras Wall Of Fame. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

±MAISMENOS± Bairro Padre Cruz. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Corleone. Bairro Padre Cruz. Underdogs Gallery/Public Arts Program . Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Utopia. Galeria De Arte Urbana. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tags. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Blu. Lisbon. Crono Project. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Blu . Sam3 . Erica Il Cane. Crono Project. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Erica Il Cane . Lucy McLauchlan . M-Chat. Crono Project. Lisbon. December 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With gratitude to Pedro Soares Neves and to Raul Carvalho, General Manager of Underdogs Gallery for taking the time to talk to us, for sharing their knowledge and insights with us and for showing us around Lisbon.

BSA in Lisbon comes to you courtesy BSA in Partnership with Urban Nation (UN).

This is the first of two articles with BSA in Lisbon in collaboration with UN Berlin, it was originally published on the Urban Nation website, and the project is funded in part with the support of Urban Nation Museum for Urban Contemporary Art (UN) in Berlin.

SPRING/BREAK ART SHOW: Benefit Auction 2018 – 475 Kent Artists

March 6, 2018 Artists

Every Armory Week, the SPRING/BREAK Art Show hosts a benefit auction—giving you the opportunity to buy great artworks and support a great cause. This year, your bids will help fund the 475 Kent Tenants Association, which advocates for affordable artist spaces in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

475 Kent Tenants Association (475KTA) teams up with SPRING/BREAK for an auction to benefit the creative community at 475 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of this legendary artists’ building on the Southside, the 475KTA is working to ensure livework tenants are secure in their homes for decades to come. The 475KTA advocates with New York City Loft Tenants, representing NYC’s greater livework community. Artwork from around the globe has been donated by an international community of artists, friends and tenants who have passed through 475 Kent. (#475KentLives)

The auction features 67 works including: limited edition prints by Shepard Fairey, a photograph by the legendary feminist artist Laurie Simmons, a woodcut by activist street artist Swoon, Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson’s renowned Obama portrait, and a still from Eve Sussman’s video 89 seconds at Alcázar.

The artworks will be on view at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show, March 6th-12th, at 4 Times Square on
the 22nd floor, room #2237. Bidding for the auction will close on March, 12th at 8pm ET.

Below we offer you a small selection of the lots being offered for auction:

Jaime Rojo. Untitled, 2006. Silver Gelatin Print. 16 x 20 in. Edition 3/3

Eve Sussman. De Espaldas (still from 89 seconds at Alcázar), 2004. C Print. 14 x 26 in

Swoon. Construction worker, 2016. Silk screen, acrylic, gouache on paper and wood. 11 x 37 in. Edition 3/35

Michael Brown. Omak, 2017. Pigment Print. 6 1/2 x 10 in

Deborah Masters. Two Cows Talking, 2014. Inkjet Print. 43 x 56 in. Edition 3/5

Robert Clark. Ape Hand, 2017. Pigment Print. 20 x 14 in

Fred Tomaselli. Bloom 2011. Silk screen on digital print. 14 x 12 in

Laurie Simmons. Yellow Hair/Red Coat/Umbrella/Snow, 2014. Inkjet print. 12 3/4 x 8 3/4 in

Shepard Fairey. Oil Lotus Woman, 2018. Screen Print. 24 x 18 in. Edition of 450

Shepard Fairey. Home Invasion, 2014. Screen Print. 24 x 18 in. Edition of 450

Shepard Fairey. Peace Guard, 2016. Screen Print. 24 x 18 in. Edition of 450

To peruse the auction and to register to bid click HERE

For more information about SPRING/BREAK ART SHOW click HERE

Please visit us at room #2237 on the 22nd floor.

SPRING/BREAK Art Show

BSA Images Of The Week: 01.28.18

January 28, 2018 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Stumbling and slipping and dancing through January here in New York requires dexterity and a tolerance for dry skin and flattened hat-hair and the occasional sore throat. Thankfully there are great indoor activities sometimes like the huge trippy balloon installations by suave art dynamo Jihan Zencirli at her opening exhibition inside the NYC Ballet atrium Friday night. Hundreds of thousands of balloons, free bourbon, and a DJ after a surprisingly post-post-modern program of envelope pushing dancing on the mainstage by amazing pros! Gurl, that ballet is ballin’.

Elsewhere in art news the Guggenheim’s Nancy Specter offered a gold-plated toilet to the White House after turning down their request to borrow a VanGogh, people lined up to see “One Basquiat” at the Brooklyn Museum this week while they streamed by many Basquiats on New York Streets without looking in the 80s, and New York magazine announced a “public art” campaign with 50 artists (Yoko Ono, Barbara Krueger, Marilyn Minter) this year that sounds a lot like it is borrowing heavily from Street Art techniques “throughout the five boroughs and in a variety of formats, such as on street lamps or “wild postings” on walls around the city.” Wild postings?

One more indoor exhibit totally worth your time is Ann Lewis’s installations at a no-name popup in Manhattatan. The conceptual Street/gallery activist artist continues to push her own boundaries, and many of ours, with her work addressing difficult social and political issues like police brutality, institutional bias against women, racism, the Resistance. At a time when we need women’s voices to rise, she collaborates with StudioSpaceNYC at a pop-up at 149 West 14th Street (shots from the installation below).

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Ann Lewis, Atomik, Jihan Zencirli, Obey, Pet-de-None, Shepard Fairey, Studio Space NYC and Tona.

Top Image: TONA in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

OBEY in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ann Lewis and Studio Space NYC exhibition/collaboration “Unspoken”. Stay tuned for more on this exhibition. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pet-de-None in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cinza in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Atomik in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hasta la vista B2B in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DON’T EAT ME in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We couldn’t read this tag…help anyone? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jihan Zencirli AKA Geronimo at the NYC Ballet installation. Detail. More to come shortly… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist in Lisbon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Manhattan and the East River from the Williamsburg Bridge. January 2018. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artists Continue to Fight for Affordable Housing in NYC

January 18, 2018 Artists

They’re not coming here to dine at the Olive Garden or take a tour through the Target.

They’re here for “Hello Dolly”, “Hamilton”, and “Cats”. They’re here for Billie Joel at the Garden, “Springstein on Broadway” and the “David Bowie” opening at the Brooklyn Museum. They’re here for the virtual reality exhibition “Celestial Bodies” at the Museum of Sex, Picasso and Marina Abramović at MoMa, and the 34,000 items in the Met’s Costume Institute. They’re here for Jazz at Birdland, punk at Manitobas, the singers at Joe’s Pub and dancing at “The Dirty Circus” party at House of Yes in Bushwick.

Whether its EDM or country music, Ai Wei Wei or Shepard Fairey, they’re reading about the arts from writers in the The New York Times, ArtForum, Hyperallergic, Time Out, The Village Voice, Daily News and right here.

Brooklyn Skyline. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The creative economy of artists, actors, dancers, musicians, photographers, curators, designers, art directors, architects, producers, writers, authors, painters, poets, coaches, trainers, teachers, filmmakers, lighting designers, stage designers, software programmers, prop makers, furniture designers, singers, chefs, hairdressers, makeup artists, fashion designers, and yes, Street Artists all are the contributors to the valuable cultural lifeblood of New York City.

And all of these people need a place to live and work, to create, to practice, to try and fail, and to try and succeed.

They also need to be able to pay the rent. That has been less and less and less possible in the last three decades at least with skyrocketing prices chasing low and medium income people from one neighborhood to the next.

These cultural creators have been moving from abandoned neighborhood to neglected neighborhood – in the process most often making the neighborhood more desireable – and then pushed out by the real estate investors. An effort to stem this unfair, brutal and insulting process, activists and artists created The Loft Law, which saved thousand artists in the 1980s and 1990s and it protected many Live/Work creative spaces and the cultural richness of the City that Never Sleeps. A second wave of Live/Work spaces were given protection via Albany in 2010 in a 2nd Loft Law that covers creatives who brought neighborhoods around the city like Williamsburg and Bushwick back to life as desireable creative meccas.

Yes, this is one of the stories about gentrification – and yes, protection of affordable space for artists is not more important than affordable apartments for every single New Yorker. There are many programs afoot put in place ( please see: Mayor de Blasio Announces City Secured More Affordable Housing in 2017 Than in Any Prior Year.)

But that’s not why we’re writing today.

We’re writing to support all artists who give to this city and would like to assure that our elected officials, landlords, and the Loft Board remember their responsibility to respect and protect the rights of tenants, their families, their children, their grandchildren, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers.

Many tenants in the last couple of years have questioned whether the protections afforded under the Loft Law are being run over roughshod or ignored altogether, according to many artists you’ll speak with. There are accusations that hard-won rules are being skipped over, artists are being coerced, that clearly defined processes are being foreshortened and rammed through without input.

It’s an old story, a swinging of the pendulum of justice toward the people and away from the people, but one that needs to be righted occasionally. At this moment, with the Mayor so clearly expressing a desire to protect the rights of the New York creative industry for affordable safe loft Live/Work spaces, it seems possible.

Here is the press release for a protest by 475 Kent tenants today at the meeting of the New York City Loft Board.

475 Kent tenants are asking that you ALL come out and support them.
Loft Board Meeting
2:00 PM
January 18, 2018
New York City Loft Board
22 Reade Street, 1st floor
New York, New York

Magda Danysz Brings “Art From The Streets” to Singapore Art Science Museum

January 16, 2018 Artists

“Art From the Streets”, an exhibition at the Art Science Museum in Singapore opened this weekend to coordinate with Singapore Art Week that runs from tomorrow until the end of the month with fairs, festivals and art exhibitions. Commercial art dealer and writer Magda Danysz curated the show with names she represents and whom you will be familiar with – Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Faile, and Futura, for example.

Two versions of the catalogue, one by Felipe Pantone, the other by Futura, are available on the Magda Danysz website .

But she also brings an eclectic mix of others on her roster and possibly lent from some private collections. Collectively they span many of the high profile, the saleable and known over the past 5 decades from various disciplines and philosophical practices; In the case of Jacques Villeglé, whose practice of lacerating posters in the 1960s predates Failes’ by 4 decades, a lineage can be drawn. Other connections are not as easy.

Ultimately the collection gives a sense of the vast number of personalities and techniques that have characterized the street practice in Europe and North America primarily without focusing on any one specialty too greatly. Here are the revered names along with mid-career folks and current darlings who are sure to leave a mark. There is also a small inclusion of more regional favorites like Eko Nugroho from Indonesia, and Singapore’s Speak Cryptic, who each were on hand this weekend with many of the artists for the opening.

Giving tours with microphone in hand during the opening days, the energetic Ms. Danysz educates new fans and potential buyers about an organic artists scene that grew from the streets and is now more frequently being offered for sale in places such as her three gallery locations in London, Paris, and Shanghai. Today it is slowly appearing more often in museums as well.

“Conscious that promotion of the emerging scene is necessary, Magda Danysz took part in many fairs,” says a press release, “such as for example Art Brussels, Arte Fiera in Bologna, Artissima in Torino, Fiac in Paris or Pulse in New York, and is one of the four galleries at the origin of the Show Off Paris art fair.”

This weekend’s activities included short presentations panel discussions and a screen of Wild Style.

Art from the Streets tickets are $17.00 on the Marina Bay Sands website.

A complete list of artists varies online with artists listed on the museum website including:

Banksy, Tarek Benaoum, Stéphane Bisseuil, Blade, Crash, Speak Cryptic, D*face, Fab 5 Freddy, FAILE, Shepard Fairey (aka Obey), Futura, Invader, JR, L’Atlas, Ludo, M-City, Nasty, Eko Nugroho, Nunca, Felipe Pantone, Quik, Lee Quinones, Blek le Rat, Rero, Remi Rough, André Saraiva, Seen, Seth, Sten Lex, Tanc, Hua Tunan, Yok & Sheryo, YZ, Zevs “and many more“.

Elsewhere online the roster is said to include 2Koa, Jef Aérosol, Ash, André, A-One, Aplickone, Banksy, Benjamin Duquenne, Tarek Benaoum, Stephane Bisseuil, Blek Le Rat, Boulaone, C215, Crash, Dface, Dondi, Dran, Eror729, Shepard Fairey, Faile, Futura, Keith Haring, Isham, Jayone, Jonone, Jr, Katre, Kaws, L’atlas, Lem, Ludo, Barry Mc Gee, Mikostic, Miss.Tic, Mode 2, Steve More, Nasty, Nord, Yoshi Omori, Os Gemeos, Psyckoze, Quik, Rammellzee, Recidivism, Rero, Remi Rough, Seen, Seth, Skki, Sore, Space Invader, Spazm, Spécio, Swoon, Tanc, Toxick, Vhils, Jacques Villeglé, Nick Walker, West, Yz, Zevs, Zhang Dali, Zlotykamien and Zuba.

BSA “Images Of The Year” for 2017 (VIDEO)

December 15, 2017 Artists

Of the thousands of images he took this year in places like New York, Berlin, Scotland, Hong Kong, Sweden, French Polynesia, Barcelona, and Mexico City, photographer Jaime Rojo found that Street Art and graffiti are more alive than every before. From aerosol to brush to wheat-paste to sculpture and installations, the individual acts of art on the street can be uniquely powerful – even if you don’t personally know where or who it is coming from. As you look at the faces and expressions it is significant to see a sense of unrest, anger, fear. We also see hope and determination.

Every Sunday on BrooklynStreetArt.com, we present “Images Of The Week”, our weekly interview with the street. Primarily New York based, BSA interviewed, shot, and displayed images from Street Artists from more than 100 cities over the last year, making the site a truly global resource for artists, fans, collectors, gallerists, museums, curators, academics, and others in the creative ecosystem. We are proud of the help we have given and thankful to the community for what you give back to us and we hope you enjoy this collection – some of the best from 2017.

Brooklyn Street Art 2017 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo includes the following artists;

Artists included in the video are: Suitswon, Curiot, Okuda, Astro, Sixe Paredes, Felipe Pantone, Hot Tea, Add Fuel, Hosh, Miss Van, Paola Delfin, Pantonio, Base23, R1, Jaune, Revok, Nick Walker, 1UP Crew, SotenOne, Phat1, Rime MSK, Martin Whatson, Alanis, Smells, UFO907, Kai, Tuts, Rambo, Martha Cooper, Lee Quinoes, Buster, Adam Fujita, Dirty Bandits, American Puppet, Disordered, Watchavato, Shepard Fairey, David Kramer, Yoko Ono, Dave The Chimp, Icy & Sot, Damien Mitchell, Molly Crabapple, Jerkface, Isaac Cordal, SacSix, Raf Urban, ATM Street Art, Stray Ones, Sony Sundancer, ROA, Telmo & Miel, Alexis Diaz, Space Invader, Nasca, BK Foxx, BordaloII, The Yok & Sheryo, Arty & Chikle, Daniel Buchsbaum, RIS Crew, Pichi & Avo, Lonac, Size Two, Cleon Peterson, Miquel Wert, Pyramid Oracle, Axe Colours, Swoon, Outings Project, Various & Gould, Alina Kiliwa, Tatiana Fazalalizadeh, Herakut, Jamal Shabaz, Seth, Vhils, KWets1, FinDac, Vinz Feel Free, Milamores & El Flaco, Alice Pasquini, Os Gemeos, Pixel Pancho, Kano Kid, Gutti Barrios, 3 x 3 x 3, Anonymouse, NeSpoon, Trashbird, M-city, ZoerOne, James Bullowgh, and 2501.

Cover image of Suits Won piece with Manhattan in the background, photo by Jaime Rojo.

Le Rat Has Arrived, Police Remove Cars from “Art Mile”, 2 Days to “Unstoppable” in Berlin : BSA Dispatch 3

September 13, 2017 Artists

Blek Le Rat arrived at the Urban Nation office today with his wife Sybille after a long car ride from Paris, ready for a coffee and possibly to take a look at the wall he’ll be painting here to celebrate “UNSTOPPABLE”, the inaugural exhibition of the UN museum this weekend. The wind taunted BustArt as he attempted to lay his irreverent stencil of Mother Mary coddling Pluto Jr. and the sliced cutout cardboard bent and bowed beyond an average person’s patience while his buddy Stephan helped hold it down for spraying.

Isaac Cordal. Detail of a larger outdoor installation for the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Under the elevated train a legion of police and traffic cops removed 80 or so cars so the team could begin building stages, cages, platforms, lighting, electricity – for a slew of fresh outdoor pieces which will be installed Thursday and Friday for the weekend outside component.

Who is going to be on display as part of the Art Mile? Try Pixel Pancho, Franco JAZ Fasoli, Bordalo II, Mimi S., HowNosm, Zezao, Isaac Cordal, Olek, Seth Globepainter, Blek Le Rat, Hottea, Dot Dot Dot, Borondo, Herakut, Deih XLF, Faith 47, David De La Mano, Nespoon, Tank Patrol, Lister, Cranio, Sandra Chevrier, Aaron Woes M, Yok & Sheryo, Haroshi, Don John, Ben Frost, Various & Gould, Icy & Sot, Mademoiselle Maurice, the Juxtapoz newsstand, Mark Bode, Shepard Fairey, 1 Up, James Bullough, and 2501. It’s a real cross section of styles, influences, and voice that will be engaging guests this weekend.

Hot Tea at work on his site specific installation for the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Berlin police actually use a truss and truck that picks up the offending car, puts it on a flatbed. Then, believe or not, they look for an empty parking spot in the neighborhood an place the car into the new place – also signs are posted to let you know where your car was re-located to.

In New York City if you are unfortunate enough to park your car in the wrong place it is simply towed away to a massive car yard somewhere, banging into things occasionally on the way and flying through potholes – and then held for a King’s ransom. Then you have to simply guess if it was towed or stolen. No word on what the London Police do in regards to cars parked illegally.

Hot Tea at work on his site specific installation for the Art Mile. Florian couldn’t wait to take a peek. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Hot Tea)

Up on a lift for painting today also were Mademoiselle Maurice, David De La Mano, and James Bullough, and the company plastering the corner façade of the museum with pink letters. When the winds got to strong everybody was forced to bring the lifts down for an hour. Intrepid and lucky photographers like Jaime Rojo and Nika Kramer still managed to go up in the buckets to get some good shots in.

Hot Tea is spraying a big installation space with a rainbow of colors – on the walls and floors completely. People who are peeking through the plastic sheeting that protects the windows are wondering what this world of color is going to be.

Hot Tea at work on his site specific installation for the Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Meanwhile the onslaught of arrivals continues, including hopefully we’ll see Martha Cooper and Carlo McCormick. Martha of course will be here to celebrate the beginning of the Martha Cooper Library within the museum and Carlo will be here to see the didactics and texts he wrote for the exhibition and catalogue –as well as speaking at the Unlock Book Fair. This publishing fair for graffiti, street art and related practices is a must see for those who relish the independent thinking minds who publish on paper in this scene. Other great speakers featured will be Pedro Soares, Jens Besser, Susan Phillips, Thomas Chambers, and Javier Abarca.

Okay that’s your update for today. See you on the streets tomorrow.

Mademoiselle Maurice detail and process shot of her installation for Art Mile. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lister Off His Plane, Fairey on a Train: Berlin Readies for Urban Nation (UN) Opening this Weekend : BSA Dispatch 2

September 12, 2017 Artists

Lister’s plane is on the tarmac and Olek is dragging a shopping cart full of art materials past the Vietnamese restaurant on Zietanstrasse and a block away two ladies in very high heeled boots and short shorts are meandering back and forth under the elevated train line. It’s a sunny fall day in this still skanky sometimes lustrous neighborhood of Berlin – a bit of gravel and leather mixed in with your Marilyn Minter sweet cocktail.

The Berlin-Schöneberg neighborhood is fresh off the International leather and fetish weekend & street fair at Fuggerstraße and you may still see the occasional mustachioed man wearing a dog collar and leash, or perhaps a leather mask that simply looks like a dog head – walking up the street on his way to brunch, perhaps.

Ah well, this is what gives birth to Urban Nation: the marginalized, the rebels, the counter cultural innovators, the forward thinkers and outright kinkers. Just made that word up.

Brazils’ Zezao courtesy Instagrafite’s Marcello and Marina at work on a new collage of mostly found objects and materials. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Today we got a look at Bordalo’s giant garbage sculptures of Berlin bears being prepared in a rented studio space south of the Ringbahn and in a warehouse standing in the middle of on a parking lot full of Mercedes Benz’s. For people like us, that parking lot was like stumbling into a field of diamond’s, all class.

For Germans a Mercedes is as common as a slab of fried schnitzel or a bubble tag by 1Up so Bjorn was bombing through the lot in his little car expertly until we reached the roll-up gate on the garage. Also inside is Yok & Sheryo’s special interactive walk-in installation that will go on the “Museum Miele/Museum Mile” with about 25 other brand new sculptures and installations this weekend.

Overhead on the elevated bright yellow rumbling trains you can see whole cars with new skins by Shepard Fairey, How Nosm, and Faust announcing “Unstoppable”, the name of the opening exhibition at Urban Nation that we’ve curated with a team.

Riding the U1 train over to Prinzenstraße we caught the new murals by Ron English, Cryptic and an ONUR/Wes 21 collabo. Heading over to Urban Spree to talk to printer/publisher/curator/gallerist Pascal Feucher in the tattered reverie and aerosol compound we also spoke with Street Artist Tavar Zawacki. The California born Berlin-based artist tells us he has undergone a “Metamorphosis” creatively and has large canvasses in the gallery to prove it.

Deconstructing his arrow shape, he is now free to experiment with overlapping any number of geometric shapes; deconstructing and manipulating his own self-imposed roolz. On our way out of the compound we ran into Louis Masai up a ladder creating one of his signature quilted endangered species. We were sort of running by so all we can say is it looked like a fish of some sort.

Lunch with Christian Omodeo at an Italian restaurant means the food will be good, because he is an actual Italian and won’t brook any suggestions of inauthenticity. That is one charming quality of the academic/curator/writer, in addition to his astute and acute knowledge of rare graffiti/Street Art books that qualifies him to be assisting the museum to organize and conceptualize future plans for the Martha Cooper Library.

Just a portion of the collection of ephemera will be on display for the Saturday’s opening night in the not-yet-completed library space, but you’ll be impressed by the promise of what is to come.

Zines, posters, even framed T-shirts from the collection of the famed photographer will cover the walls in addition to a portion of the thousands of books that constitute the beginning of an important collection which, when finished, will be unrivaled and provide invaluable opportunities to research by scholars of all levels.

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.27.17

August 27, 2017 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Welcome to Sunday and the last free weekend of summer in New York before Labor Day. We had a fun tour yesterday with the two winners of the Magic City – Munich competition who won the opportunity to see the streets through our half cracked and mostly sunny perspective. The foot tour with Munich-based students David and Nesli zig-zagged through the Lower East Side and Little Italy before we ended with a fresh summer aerosoled view of ROA painting a brand new mural live in Brooklyn. Here as a visiting artist at a new residency in Bed Stuy, we had seen him earlier in the week in studio preparing new works of natures creature – a few shots here for you to enjoy.

Earlier in the week Shepard Fairey was here to create a new mural celebrating musician Debbie Harry and her band Blondie directly across the street from the former site of CBGB, The Village Voice announced it would not be a print paper after 60 years of culture and politics pumping from its downtown offices, and Brooklyn proudly hosts the Afropunk Festival – full of music, ‘tude, and dope street fashion by some of our BK’s finest style denizens. Already in Paris and London, next stops for Afropunk are Atlanta and Joburg. Hot!

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Daze, Dr. Scott, drsc0, Hank Williams Thomas, Invader, Shepard Fairey, Jason Naylor, Rx Skulls, ROA, Rober Janz, and Voxx.

BSA Images Of The Week: 05.21.17 – Berlin Edition

May 21, 2017 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

This week in Berlin we had the chance to meet so many great folks as a result of the final Urban Nation events before September’s opening of the museum. All the curators were in attendance, including your BSA friends here, for the “We Broke Night” show along with the artistic director, managing director, architect, and about 40 artists in the 225 person party that featured breakers on pedestals dancing with flourescent tape, Shepard Fairey as DJ, and plenty of new artworks created just for this event.

Along with the main museum space show, across the street was another exhibition, the Project M/12 show called “What in the World” with mainly European former graff writers/now-fine-artists curated by Evan Pricco from Juxtapoz. Overflowing from the main space, the sidewalks were a parade of aesthetes, fans, business people, graff writers, archivists, politicians, and sex workers… It’s a wild mix and it gets very rowdy and everyone is reacting to the dynamics at play and wondering aloud how a museum like this will pull this off.

We’re not wondering, however. The sheer volume and variety of interested artists and related art lovers and community supporters tells us that this museum is a success before it has even opened. Here are a few images from the last few days for you to take a look at from outside and inside.

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Besonders, BustArt, Cranio, Daniel Van Nes, Fin DAC, Herakut, Lora Zombie, Millo, Nasca, Nuno Vegas, Sebastian Wandl, Shepard Fairey, Stikki Peaches, Snik, Tank Patrol.

Top image: FinDac. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Conjunction with Project M/12. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

FinDac. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Conjunction with Project M/12. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stikki Peaches. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Conjunction with Project M/12. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey in Berlin translates his No Future piece for the words apathy, sexism, xenophobia, and racism. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Conjunction with Project M/12. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cranio. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Conjunction with Project M/12. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BustArt. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Conjunction with Project M/12. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lora Zombie. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art in Conjunction with Project M/12. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Pfui Teufel!” Ms. Merkel hears some disturbing news in this sticker placed on a post box.Unidentified Artist. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sebastian Wandl. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. We Broke Night. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Daniel Van Nes. Detail. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. We Broke Night. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Daniel Van Nes. Detial. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. We Broke Night. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Herakut in purple light for the “We Broke the Night” exhibit inside the space that will be the Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stencil majicians Snik. Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. We Broke Night. Berlin, May 19, 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

UN Convenes Scenes, Creates Its Own in Berlin. Artists in Action for Project/12 and More

May 18, 2017 Artists

Shepard, Findac, Stikki Peaches… and that’s before we even get into the UN exhibition space or the main museum space – both locations a combustible beehive of painting right now with perhaps twenty artists working at once.

Somehow this is the frenetic energy that we have grown to expect of a typical Urban Nation event. It is simply not enough energy unless the event you came for is compounded by three or thirteen other Urban Nation events happening simultaneously, due in large part to the omnivorous aesthetic and cultural appetite of director Yasha Young and her big-thinking and resourceful team.

In the three years of Project M exhibitions leading up to the official opening of the UN museum this September, Ms. Young has spread the curatorial wealth, mixed multiple metaphors, ignored stylistic boundaries, stirred myriad emotions and fired up a lot of talk on the street with weeks like these.

Evan Pricco’s description to us of his own curated show here helps to define this moment as well, “It’s sort of a nod to not really having to have boundaries, or a proper definition, but a feeling that something is happening. Its not street art, its not graffiti, but its this new wave that is looking out, looking in, and finding new avenues to share and make work.”

In New Orleans, they would call this savory multi-layered sensory-rich dish something like Jambalaya. In the Gambia it would be an Oyster Stew, in Spain it would be one of Valencian restaurateur Juan Galbis gargantuan paellas. Hungry yet?

At this moment there are artists and production folks preparing a new curated show by Pricco, Editor in Chief of Juxtapoz magazine in the UN auxiliary gallery called. He’s calling it “What in the World?”. Simultaneously there are preparations down the block for a huge dinner and night of live performances and temporary art installations inside the actual evolving museum space called “We Broke Night!”

And there are several outdoor installations roving throughout the neighborhood at the same time, with passersby interacting with and engaging the artists in discussions. All levels and disciplines of artists from the Street Art/Graffiti continuum are converging in this neighborhood painting, pasting, stenciling, hanging, installing, — enormous wall pieces (Shepard), smaller collaged wheatpastes (Stikki Peaches), hand-painted murals on a ladder outside walls (Findac), hand painted signage and calligraphy (Serge Lowrider), multi-layered stencil portraits (Snik), optically dizzying tape installations (Tape Over Crew), post-graffiti bucket painted organic geometries (Erosie and Daan Botlek), and yes, much more.

Erosie on the left with Grotesk’s news stand on the right for Urban Nation Project M/12 curated by Evan Prico/Juxtapoz. Berlin, May 18 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Variety and quality like this is unthinkable at best and un-pragmatic at worst in formal exhibition spaces and institutions. But witness the panoply unfolding before your eyes and this hybrid may strike you as a truer contemporaneous representation of this complicated generation than most organizers have the gall to attempt.

Somehow, this all works. Being in the midst of this UN kitchen feels as alive as the scenes it convenes.

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