Street Layers

Street Layers from Paris, Berlin and Vienna

March 9, 2010 Artists, Austria, Berlin, France, Germany, Paris, Vienna

From the Editor:

In the past I breezed by destroyed posters and flyers that amass on construction worksites and abandoned buildings with little thought. Thanks to the work of photographer Vinny Cornelli I have learned to see them entirely differently – like Earth Science, like strata; a layer of text or design or photography with internally consistent characteristics that distinguishes it from contiguous layers. The destruction and consequent revealing of shapes, color, and texture create haphazard new compositions. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but hell yeah, some times it does, and Vinny is always on the lookout.

From photographer Vincent Cornelli:

After my recent trip photographing street art in Hamburg, it brought me back to some of the photos I took last summer in Paris, Berlin and Vienna. I thought it would make the perfect follow-up piece for my bi-weekly posts for BrooklynStreetArt.com. I think I would rather let the pictures speak for themselves. Hope you enjoy them.

Vinny Cornelli shoots Crosby Street in NYC

December 1, 2009 Artists, NYC, On the Street

Bold street splashes and Hacullean mayhem from Manhattan.

Photo © Vinny Cornelli

This week photographer Vinny Cornelli shows us a few images from one spot in Gotham that gets hit with some regularity, and then destroyed and re-hit – and always visited by street art followers.

It’s entertaining how abandoned places on the street turn into a “venue” over time. Then, like Elton John taking residency at Ceasars Palace, one or two street artists seem to gravitate to the same spot again and again, nonplussed by the destruction of their last piece.

Photo © Vinny Cornelli

This spot on Crosby street has been a regular showcase for Haculla, a tripped out pop culture commentator and comedian who weaves criticism with private stories in bold splashes of fluorescence, black and white photos of celebs re-doctored, and thick marker freehand characters.

Of course it all gets piled on by others as part of the “conversation of the street”, and in these layers you can see Matt Siren, Cake, Feral, among others.

Cornelli pumps up the saturation to give the chaos a campy quality and lets the decrepitude dazzle.

Photo © Vinny Cornelli

Photo by Vinny Cornelli

Cake and Haculla - Photo © Vinny Cornelli

Photo © Vinny Cornelli

A Feral wheatpaste here - Photo © Vinny Cornelli

Click here for more street layers by Vinny Cornelli

Documenting Decay Part II: Seeing Art in Street Layers of Detritus

November 17, 2009 Artists, NYC, On the Street

At 11 Spring Street in Nolita, a neighborhood in lower Manhattan, sits a 19^th Century brick building that two centuries ago was a stable and carriage house.

As the 2o^th Century turned, the building had gained a following by urban art fans and street artists from all over the world. Over the course of the 1990’s graffiti and street artists had used the exterior walls of this building as their multi-storied canvas. Within a short time the address had become a destination, an uncurated museum for graffiti, street artists, and tourists alike – an up-to-the-minute ever changing conversation of street culture.

But the blanding plague of gentrification that swept across the city claimed the urban art gallery and it succumbed to condoitus a couple of years ago. Like the visual equivalent of a New Orleans funeral march, street artists and graffiti artists took one last chance to festoon the edifice as it’s soul departed to allow conversion to condominiums, and the local paper did a story on it. Every inch of the facade and much of the interior was covered and recovered by layers of art and graffiti. “11 Spring” took one last bow.

Demolition, buffing, and upgrading to the comforts of a new Manhattan wealthy class soon followed the celebration, and pinstriped men and pencil skirted women strutted through it’s white plastered interior waving their arms and referring proudly to it’s storied past; the artists that once brought attention to the location, abruptly “unfriended”. Among the many ironies of the story, the market for the new spaces has not materialized, reportedly forcing it’s owners to cut their asking prices almost in half this year.

Street photographer Vinny Cornelli used to arrive at the building early in the morning, before the streets came alive with commuters and shop keepers, to gaze upon the raw collage.

He captured the thick layers of art that formed the exterior finish of the walls; covered in spray paint, wheat pastes, rubber, metal, plastic, cardboard, wood and just about anything available. As if in a zen haze, he zoomed in on details, and stepped back to frame the visible cacophony.

This small sample of images show the layering of creativity in the moment before mute. The organic collage speaks to the many contributors and the conversations of the street: a collective contribution evoking chaos, humor, classical, commercial, pop and poetry.

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See more of Vinny Cornelli’s street layers HERE

Documenting Decay: Seeing Art in Street Layers of Detritus

November 3, 2009 Artists, NYC, On the Street

Street photographer Vinny Cornelli joins Brooklyn Street Art today to contribute his voice to the dialogue of the street, in what we hope will be an ongoing conversation.

An enthusiastic traveler and documenter, with his images Vinny reveals an inner world that lies behind the camera; affecting his choices of subjects and how he frames them.

In addition to shooting street art, he specializes in something he calls street layers; those accumulated overlapping stratum of posters and wheatpastes common on abandoned buildings and work-sites, layers of paper torn back to reveal the inside guts of the street and it’s history. Part collage, part archeology, the resulting street layers are finished presentations in his view, as much as they are one more ethereal moment in street history.

This week is the first of a two-part photo essay by Cornelli focusing on one of New York’s more recently famous addresses in street art’s oeuvre. Before it became a celebrated event space, this location was one of the destinations regularly visited by myriad street artists.

As is often the case, it was also an urban scene of neglect and, in Vinny’s eye, beautiful decay. Vinny takes this first opportunity to talk to BSA’s readers in these, some of his first contemplative images of the street early in this decade.

To veterans of New York’s street art scene, see if you can identify the location, and drop us a line.

Next week Vinny shows us what it looked like when street artist’s took it over formally.

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