Happy Sunday ya’ll! April is the cruelest month, true. Magnolias today, snowstorm tomorrow.
Great to see the Spanish Pejac here in New York after years of writing about his work elsewhere. It has an extra special quality that plays with perception and that people respond to – especially when he paints blossoming trees at the exact time they are blossoming in our parks, back yards and front stoops. At the other end of the spectrum, the deliberately monstrous and unhinged west coast Neck Face was back for a couple cameos to add some jarring electricity to an increasingly homogenized and candy-covered NYC.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Cogitaro, Kusek, Libre, Lister, Manyoly, Neck Face, Pejac, Praxis VGZ, Skewville, and Stickman.
Good to be back in dirty old New York from dirty old Hong Kong this week. Actually on the dirty meter, we think New York still wins! Hooray!
Looking to the national stage, things couldn’t possibly be more dirty, as the rolling dumpster fire looks like it is setting records for failure to deliver on promises and a gathering cloud of accusations of straight up conspiracy, nepotism, corruption, even treason. And that’s on a good day. Art on the streets sometimes reflects directly and often indirectly on the facts on the ground. Now that spring is here, we expect to see a lot more voices again joining the fray.
Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Below Key, Chzz, Crash, Danny Boy Doid, El Sol 25, Laser 3.14, Obsrvrone,Pixel Pancho, Snik, Two One, Tony Matelli, Wrong Kong, Xeme, and Zura.
We have previously published this Pixel Pancho piece shown in detail above and below. The artist had to restore the piece after additional text was added to it without permission from the artist. We liked how the piece plays with the architecture and the trees as experienced from the High Line Park, sort of like she is lounging and specifically peering through this opening.
In dense cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo and New York there is so much activity that takes place above you, yet we primarily grant relevancy to what happens at street level from our pedestrian perspective.
Perhaps those machinations and love affairs and backroom deals and elegant dances and mergers of all sort on higher floors are what continue to fascinate Tavar Zawacki to direct our attention ABOVE our heads. Perhaps he is simply reminding us that there is a sky.
As an artist in residence this summer with the Quin hotel, the California born artist is currently visiting from Berlin but, as happens to many, is falling in love with New York.
His current show is a collection of highly glossed icons placing his nom de street front and center. These abstracted kaleidoscope-induced neon versions of his tag may bring to mind street signage and the blinking store window vernacular of nighttime commercial districts in many cities.
We’ve been seeing him around town and caught him painting last week in Little Italy with the Lisa Project and you will undoubtedly be seeing of ABOVE’s work in New York in the future. You know where to look for it, right?
Tavar Zawacki AKA Above solo exhibition at The Quin Hotel in Manhattan is currently on view and it is free to the public. Click HERE for more information.
Rounding out the Thanksgiving week here as people think back on what they have to be thankful for in New York and across the US. Despite the class war on the poor, near-weekly proof of systematic racism and extremism, gun violence that feels out of control, and 3 songs on the top ten by Justin Beiber, we have to admit that all is not lost – and we still have a pretty strong union of cool people who actually love our neighbors and multi-cultures and are willing to show it every day.
The art we see in the streets continues to evolve; People like Gilf! are combining experimentation and activism in the public sphere while others are looking for ways to address a variety of social/political ills, – meanwhile many artists now seek and secure legal spots to put up their work, use hash tags and Instagram as marketing directly to collectors, advertisers are mimicking street art to promote brands, and Wynwood in Miami is preparing to showcase some of the flashiest displays of sponsored murals and participants yet during Basel next week.
There is a rising chorus of horrified detractors who say an organic grassroots art form is being commodified. It’s not political enough! It’s narcissistic! It’s all privileged white kids who don’t appreciate the true roots of graff culture! Calm down everybody, we can handle this. There is room for all ya’ll, like they say down south.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Ai Wei Wei, Dee Dee, Ernest Zacharevic, Gilf!, Gum Shoe, Himbad, Invader, Isaac Cordal, Jilly Ballistic, Le Diamantaire, Osch aka Otto Schade, Ouizi, Sipros, and Swoon.
As you may know the Parisian Street Artists named Invader is doing a series of installations with his tiles in New York right now. With the help of L.I.S.A. Project’s Ray Rosa and Wayne Rada the digital inspired tile art is popping up in a variety of Gotham locations. Known for his pixelated tile portraits in recent years (as well as Rubic’s cube paintings), we’re still looking to find the Woody Allen one we’ve heard about….
Today we celebrate Mother’s Day in the USA and Mexico and about 70 other countries. Cheers and thank you to all the mothers of the world.
If only we would stop paying lip service to the foundational importance of motherhood; if millions of mothers would know that tomorrow they will have food to feed their children, that they could live without fear of violence, could take off time from work to care for their families, were paid a living wage equal to a that of a man, could feel loved, protected, supported, respected and cherished.
Let’s all work to make sure that more mothers experience love and a peace of mind. Even if your mother is not alive and here with us today, we can support someone’s who is.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring $howta, Anthony Lister, Brolga, City Rabbit, Gualicho, Hot Tea, JR, M*Code, Mr. Volpe, Nina Kunan, No More Lies, Pablo Harymbat, Phoebe New York, Pyramid Oracle, Swil, Tristan Eaton, and Willow.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bishop203, Blek le Rat, Caratoes, Cone SP, Cost, Dasic, Eelco “Virus” van den Berg, ENX, Enzo Sarto, Jerk Face, Nemo’s, Ripo, and Trash Bird.
Veteran New York Street Art/graffiti artist COST was in the news this week after being nabbed for putting up illegal work, and as you might expect, is instantly a hero to some because of it. Literally the same day as the police press release about the arrest we noticed a fellow artist mask taping some letters on a buffed portion of this legal wall where COST and his fellow artist ENX have been riding for a while. We returned a day later to find the message below.
School’s back in session, the Jews just celebrated a new year, Kobra painted new portraits of Warhol and Basquiat in Williamsburg, and if you were at Brooklyn Museum last night you got to see Street Artist and muralist Don Rimx and us live – and us with markers in our hands looking completely lost.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring $howta, Apples on Pictures, Conor Harrington, Dain, EKG, Funky13, Jack the Beard, Jeff Huntington, Jesse James, Matthew Reid, Mr. Prvrt, Os Gemeos, Pyramid Oracle, Ramiro Davaros-Coma, Sam3, Square, Stikman, and What Is Adam.
““I think that the courage to confront evil and turn it by dint of will into something applicable to the development of our evolution, individually and collectively, is exciting, honorable.” ~ Maya Angelou ~
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bikismo, Cera, Conor Harrington, indie184, Knarf, London Kaye, Nemo, NemO’s, Pyramid Oracle, Sheryo, Stikki Peaches, The Yok, Troy Lovegates, UNO, and Wolfe Work.
Scroll to the end to see the brand new video of M-City stencilling atop a sea vessel during his Nordic oceanic installation off the coast of Stavanger. Also, check out the blowing winds on the mic at the beginning.
A powerful group of images this week as we do a drive by on Labor Day Weekend in New York. We know it’s the last weekend of Summer but hell no! I’m gonna have another strawberry ice cream out on the stoop.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alma’s, Anthony Lemer, Arnaud Montagard, Alice Pasquini, Bast, BLY, Cesar Mieses DALeast, Dek, Jerk Face, Paul Insect, Pete Kirill, Ryan McGinness, Sean9Lugo, Seymour Chwast, Solus, Swil, Tripel, Willow, Wing, and You Go Girl!
“This is my latest wall, painted in Syracuse, Sicily with the support of the Istinto Naturale cultural association,” says Alice Pasquini of this new tableau.
“Titled ‘The myth of Arethusa and Alpheus’ it was inspired by the spring of Arethusa in Ortygia (Syracuse), a body of fresh water close to the seashore. The legend says that the nereid Arethusa, trying to escape the advances of the river god Alpheus, fled by turning into a stream, eventually breaking ground in Ortygia where Alpheus found her and was able to mingle in her waters.” ~ AP
Let the mingling begin! Although you have to admit that she doesn’t look like she’s quite committed to the idea.
Dek’s installation of Bronx native Seymour Chwast’s posters from 1987. The timeless and timeliness of a 27 year old poster on the streets is remarkable. War Is Madness. (photo @ Jaime Rojo)
Before the summer ends New York is still happily awash in myriad public festivals, concerts, street fairs, free Shakespeare in the park, stoop sales, fire hydrant fountains, rooftop parties and of course tourists who would like to scale a bridge. Last week our August dog days extended to welcome one of Street Art’s bigger names to swing through with a new mural that drew small crowds with a decidedly optimistic message.
Shepard Fairey doesn’t really do small. It has to be a vast designed and balanced swath of red, black and ochre that takes over an entire wall or it is nothing. Well, maybe he’ll slap up a couple of stickers on lamp posts while you’re not looking.
He also doesn’t appear to do fake. When that extended crane lift finally lowers him to the ground he makes time to say hello to admirers, artists, and the occasional antagonist and to sign his name, shake a hand, listen to a story and offer a thoughtful opinion. In this age of quickly spreading news across social media, word of Fairey’s new mural on Bowery and Broome didn’t take long to ricochet across phones and before you knew it there were people on the sidewalk and dangling off roofs to get a good view.
Not strictly Street Art and not strictly in Little Italy, the new work is part of a commercial neighborhood improvement initiative that has brought pleasing murals by Street Artists to the tourist frequented area of Little Italy over the past two years. Over the course of three days the socially conscious Fairey and his brand Obey scored one wall for a symbol of peace during a summer that has pounded in our ears with war drums in Ukraine, Russia, Syria, Libya, Israel, Palestine, and Iraq, among other sites of strife on the world stage.
A slogan at the bottom of the banner says “Transform Our World With Creative Response”; a nebulous enough sentiment that may be interpreted a few ways, and somewhat ironic on this island that is no longer open to young struggling creatives unless they can pay the $5K monthly rents this neighborhood often demands. But the burning fire in the chest of the dove – we’ll just take a chance and say that it stands for our collective yearning for peace and freedom.
Let’s hope Fairey sees something in the future many of us are missing.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Alice Pasquini, Boy Kong, El Topo, Flood, Foxx Face, GSC, Kaffeine, Li-Hil, LMNOPI, Myth, NTC Cru, Olek, Ozmo, Texas, Gane, TV With Cheese, and Versus.