Two decades in the can for Chris from Robots Will Kill, and he’s just as solid as the day you met him. His steady dedication to developing his character has made him one of the most reliable names on New York streets, no matter how many artists he collaborates with and how many new situations he puts himself in.
One of the few street artists who is community-minded, ChrisRWK’s actions over the years to help his peers and to express gratitude to those who have helped him may also explain his staying power as a commercial artist, fine artist, and street artist. Tonight he hits another first: his debut solo exhibition with Harman Projects on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. 1UP – ONE WEEK WITH 1UP – THE SHORT FILM
2. 5 MINUTES WITH: MADC in the Maldives
3. Liberation for Black Trans Women / CANS Can’t Stant / The New Yorker
BSA Special Feature: 1UP – ONE WEEK WITH 1UP – THE SHORT FILM
Global brand 1UP continues to build their mountain of exploits and is smart enough to engage the premiere film director Selina Miles to tell the story. “I loved seeing so many people rushing into action all at once,” says veteran graffiti documentarian Martha Cooper as she relates the adrenalin rush of highly planned aerosol operations on the U-Bahn that she and Ninja K captured for this book/short film entitled “One Week With1UP”.
The risks are measured in the duration of rapid heart rates, multiplied by the long slow burn of anticipation and divided by the dull hours of strategizing, discussion, and planning. Cooper says she’s fascinated by the persistence of the graffiti practice over 50 years, and she should know because she’s shot the evolution of this youth-centered practice since she was a cub photographer for the New York Post in the 1970s. Miles captures the prevalent sensations of the cat-and-mouse adventurism running through this hormone-fueled grey cloud that floats somewhere between art, self-expression, pranksterism, and straight-up vandalism. By leaving the area grey, the viewer is pushed to draw their line about privilege, propriety, and its additive/subtractive relationship with the cityscape.
“It takes community and camaraderie, and skills and experience, and preplanning and all of that,” says Martha.
Big up to Spray Daily and Ilovegraffiti.de for sharing this.
5 MINUTES WITH: MADC in the Maldives
“Painting in these surroundings is unbelievable,” says graff writer MadC as she marvels at the natural beauty she is working in tandem with in the Maldives. “You are right there on the water, there are eagle rays right under you, fish everywhere, flying foxes coming…,” she explains. “I don’t think while I’m painting. It’s on an emotional level.”
Liberation for Black Trans Women / CANS Can’t Stant / The New Yorker
While there is greater support for trans people today, in the end its usually trans people and their closest allies who still do all the work of creating a safe, just world. In this film by Matt Nadel and Megan Plotkawe, we gain a greater understanding of the insidious nature of transphobia as we see a group of Black trans women fighting to repeal a law used to target queer locals.
It looks like it is a matter of survival of the fittest for the two women here painted by the Dutch street artist and muralist Judith de Leeuw, whose street moniker is JDL. A vague reference to the birds who get saturated by oil spills, the floundering figure is destined to drown thanks to thoughtless greed. Meanwhile, so far, one still lives – whether by wit or plum luck.
Part of the Roman “Street Art for Rights Forum Festival,” the 40-meter mural on the Serpentone in Corviale is meant as an allusion tangentially to the climate crises, says the press release. More directly, it points to an unchecked brutal capitalism that picks winners and losers as it ravages the earth and its people. The mural, organizers say, is “a metaphor for a society blinded by profit, that is heading for self-destruction, aiming for the maximum today regardless of the future.”
In recognition of those who came before her JDL “chose not to erase some inscriptions created by residents of the neighborhood” at the base of the building when creating her new work. The artist would like to thank street artists Spike, Smok, Marqus, Boogie, Joys, and the Street Art for Rights team for operational support for her mural.
Illustrator, painter, and lover of Japanese monster movies Dan Kitchener (aka Dank) brought Tokyo’s glistening night streets to Barcelona last week. His signature reflective romance with evening magic and the electrified dense cityscape during a downpour has led him to paint walls in cities worldwide.
Here we have the side walls of the Arnau Theater – which photographer Luis Olive Bulbena tells us “was inaugurated in 1903 as a music hall, and was in operation until 2004. Currently, under rehabilitation, it is now owned by the Barcelona City Council.
A rolling street exhibition space, these three walls that protect the theater are coordinated by the Arnau Gallery and Street Art Barcelona, who work with a new artist here nearly every month. Special thanks to Lluis Olive Bulbena for sharing these images with BSA readers.
Dan Kitchener refers to this stage of the project as working with ghosts. “Managed to get the ghost lines super detailed – loving the feel of this already – great to be painting in Barcelona. Such a beautiful city!” he says mid-project.
New images today from street artist/fine artist Borondo of his new exhibition in Bologna, “Settimo Giorno.”
In the historic and revered gallery venue at the Former Church of San Mattia, he creates eleven new works incorporating a complex video process unique to the artist. To generate narratives between painting and sculpture, he creates bas-reliefs and employs a layering of nets in a monochromatic scheme.
“In order to think about Genesis, it is necessary, in some way, to also think about its opposite. Thus, the energy of creation and the energy of destruction merge on the Seventh Day, giving life to an intermediary space that visitors will be able to see and walk through”.
Gonzalo Borondo SETTIMO GIORNO at Former Church of San Mattia and MAGMA Gallery runs from 03.02.2023 – 05.03.2023. Bologna, Italy. Click HERE for further details.
It’s a brave and intricate undertaking, receiving someone’s painted canvas into your studio and then determining how you will alter it by painting over someone else’s work. Graffiti writers spend years developing and perfecting their ability to handle letters with a can, to coin their individual style. Partly in recognition of this, other writers avoid going over your work on the street, unless it is done with the intention to provoke.
Each partner in the Versus 3 Project, which we tie up today with some photos we didn’t publish previously, knows that the rules of the street are intentionally, and functionally broken here. The artists tell us it is uncomfortable even when permission is given. The root of collaboration in the project required passing the canvas back and forth between artists in a silent conversation, with no rules about style or materials – and the results can not be predicted accurately.
Patrick Hartl and Christian Hundertmark, as a duo called Layer Cake, repeatedly related stories last week of opening the newly arrived package, unwrapping the painted canvas, and staring intently at it.
“I think we don’t really have expectations, right?” says Hundertmark of the process.
“We know the work from the artists,” says Hartl, “so we probably know what they are about to do. In the end, we don’t know how comfortable they feel when they get not a white canvas, but a painted canvas.”
It’s relevant to mention that the collaborative works of Layer Cake have always been this way between the two – and the Versus project is simply opening up the process for new artists to participate in this way. “We had been doing this for five years already,” says Hundertmark, “so for us, it was just normal.” That practice grew into the Versus Project, a project of trading canvasses that resulted in two mounted exhibitions at Urban Nation’s special project space in Berlin. Now for Versus III, the exhibition travels to Miami with the guys at the Museum of Graffiti.
Jaime Rojo, Christian, Patrick, Alan Ket, and Steven P. Harrington. Layer Cake – VERSUS 3. Museum of Graffiti. Miami.
Some artists they had met only through the Internet or social media, and others were long-time friends. Some had a special meaning because they were introduced by recommendation. Others were revered originators in the graffiti and street art scene, with well-known careers on the street stretching back decades. No two experiences were the same – with multiple variables at play, including how much time an artist took to respond with their new iteration. A few never returned their canvas at all.
“Of course, you always have something in your mind about how the canvas will look when it comes back,” says Hartl during an exhibit tour.
When working with the Berlin art couple Various & Gould, the guys thought they would send them their first layer in tones they would be pleased with. “For this one, it was exceptional because we sent them a green and yellow canvas,” says Hartl. “They opened it and said, ‘Okay, these are not the colors that we usually work with!’”
“For us it was interesting to see what was coming back. So we opened it and said, ‘Wow, they added orange!’ ”
The Swiss graffiti writer and artist Thierry Furger speaks of his ‘buffed’ paintings and relates that it was a tentative process to collaborate like this on a canvas, feeling like he was breaking the rules, but eventually, he liked it.
“In graffiti, going over or crossing other pieces is actually a no-go and sometimes connected with consequences,” he says, and it sounds like he still has some reservations. “But I really hope that if I ever meet the two guys that they do not punch me because I went over them, ha ha ha.”
In Miami’s Wynwood District for a handful of days, we weaved through the humid, hot, dirty streets. We captured the chaos of new graffiti bombing, street art murals, stickers, commercial commissions of street artists, bland abstracts on massive facades, billboards posing as street art, and even some yarn-bombing. Every retail store is selling products that have been spray-painted with non-descript cheerful, sticky, drippy, stenciled, ironic messaging.
The construction cranes that soar overhead are nearly grazed by the low-flying 737s streaming to and from the airport, reaching ever higher, foretelling of higher rents and luxury condos. Meanwhile, a guy is pissing on the sidewalk behind a dumpster.
Nighttime escapades include chock-a-block clubs with big-gunned men and ropes out front and hostesses in bras and thongs, teetering on high heels. Because competition among these clubs is thick, they are yelling to you over the gut-thumping Shakira-Bad Bunny-Meghan Thee Stallion remixes blasted out to the street, “No cover charge! 2 for 1 drinks!” and other come-ons. The lines queue for the door with IDs in hand while a police cruiser lurks on the corner, throwing blue and red lights flashing across murals and dazed passersby.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: 1UP, Blade, Sac Six, Maxi Bagnasco, Terra Armstrong, NB Artistry, XIK, Resko-CMA and VHILs.
Rising above the sticky spray-painted chaos on the first story level of nearly everything else here in Wynwood, you’ll walk by and gaze upward at the newly finished panels of scientifically accurate butterflies by the French street artist Mantra. This is part two of a gig he got with a real estate firm that we caught the first part of just before the New Year. (Mantra Flies High in Wynwood, Miami)
We’ll be sharing some of the street’s visual cacophony with you in future postings, but for today let’s calm our minds to recover from the harsh conflicting messages of raw commerce crashing into the enormous income gaps and class ruptures everywhere else. These butterflies are expertly rendered, preserved for posterity, floating up from the fray – a stolen moment of tranquility that silences the jackhammers and beeping cash registers.
That’s what we found out today when we got a sneak preview of LAYER CAKE at the Museum of Graffiti with Co-founder Alan Ket leading the way. The Munich-based duo landed in Miami last night to attend tonight’s opening in the Wynwood District.
“Versus III” is the latest iteration of this back-and-forth project between Layer Cake and some of the most accomplished and avant-garde names on the European (and American) graffiti/street art scenes. Ket and co-founding partner Allison Freidin and the museum team are hosting the two former graffiti writers Patrick Hartl and Christian “C100” Hundertmark tonight for a special reception in the main gallery. We thought you’d like to see some behind-the-scenes shots of the installation.
Come through tonight for a special talk tonight with Urban Nation’s Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo with the artists about the politics, practices, and possibilities that can pop up when you ship your painted canvas off the someone else and say “do whatever you want to this – and send it back”.
The guys will be showing us photos of the stages of the process and telling the audience how their lives have changed from being graffiti writers to being regarded as contemporary urban artists.
As the celebrations of the Lunar New Year come to an end on Sunday and the Year of the Rabbit begins its cycle, we’re reminded of the hardships that the Asian Community is experiencing right now.
Hate crimes against our brothers and sisters are being committed at an alarming rate here in NYC and in more cities around the country. Perhaps aided and abetted by the notoriously racist-in-chief Trump, a misled horde of ignorant individuals continue to think that attacking community members is something they must do to vent their anger. More than ever in most people’s memory, the poor and working class are being scammed by political leaders, rapacious corporations, and a media in lambs’ clothing.
While we’re busy fighting each other, they have worked so hard on “both sides” of the aisle for four decades to shred our social net, to decimate even the most basic federal and local benefits that immigrant families and the working poor rightly deserve, abolishing laws that once protected us. Creating distractions is an old and effective trick used for centuries by the people in power to get away with their scams and to cling to power at the expense of those less fortunate. Let’s be clear about this fight.
A great piece by Calicho Art helps drive home the message.
OverUnder and NDA took a trip to CDMX over the weekend and say they “hit the ground running”. The street artists/muralists have been running the streets of various cities over the last 10-15(?) years even though they live in different time zones now (Reno and Philadelphia) and neither are in Brooklyn, as they were when we first met them.
Both surreal in their approaches, their styles complement one another – as you can see by the wheat pastes they put up on the streets in Mexico City. The works take so much effort and planning, a self-authored approach that is unsanctioned and given freely.Their richly alien pieces change everything around them with on-point color stories and carefully rendered mysteries. Without a doubt these new pieces recontextualize their surrounding, causing passersby to perhaps reexamine and reconsider everything nearby; typical business signage, color palettes, textures, and architectural details.
In addition to the smaller street art pieces, Overunder, NDA, and local/international mural talent Eva Bracamontes had time to do a new mural together. Well, 75% of a mural anyway. “One business on the bottom right pulled out on the day of painting, so that is why it’s a weird white box.” Who hasn’t been there? Sudden re-allotment of space aside, the mural is a finely balanced combination of their styles – and completed in record time!
“The icing on the cake was meeting up with the talented and gracious Eva to imagine and paint a 3-story mural in just 10 hours,” says OverUnder, who sends us some pics from the quick trip. OU says he would like to thank the Secretaria de Obras y Servicios de la CDMX for the space, supplies, and support.
End of January, beginning of looking forward to spring. With warmer, wetter weather than we’ve had in years, we also have some plants popping up from the soil that we wouldn’t expect till March or April. This week has been a good show for street art and graffiti, though.
Unfortunately, demonstrations against police brutality have begun here again due to the public release of body cam and surveillance footage in Memphis, Tennesee, on Friday that document police restraining, pepper spraying, tazing, kicking, and punching a young black guy, a citizen, at a suburban intersection. The scene is stomach-turning, devastating to his family, and psychologically damaging to the body politic. Demonstrations in Times Square Friday night were followed by demonstrations in Washington Square Park last night.
Meanwhile, we want to show you some new graffiti and murals and street art from this moment in NYC.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: You Go Girl, Rero, Huetek, DEK, Leaf, Vojtech Trocha, ZROC, DOLE, Manuel Alejandro/The Creator, Jaye Moon, CNO, Atelier Wand Art, BORU, and BOOG.
Elfo is a graffiti writer and social commentator whose work intentionally sidesteps traditional notions of style or technical lettering. This …Read More »
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
