1. “Lost and Found” Tonight in Brooklyn
2. “On the River…”, Robyn Hasty AKA Imminent Disaster Open Today
3. SuperTwins Skewville in San Francisco Employing “Playground Tactics”
4. “Hybrid Thinking” at Jonathan Levine Saturday
5. Muhammad Ali Hits 70, and the Show Begins Saturday
6. Klughaus Gallery, Jesse Edwards show “Dialogue of the Streets”
7. Le Salon d’Art, Fumero and Joseph Meloy , “90 Stanton Street Art Show”
8. Jesse Edwards by Tom Gould (VIDEO)
9. Kophns One: Kophenjoy by The Site Unscene (VIDEO)
10. Ben Eine Off Canvas by Studio Stare (VIDEO)
“Lost & Found” opens today at Mighty Tanaka Gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn with the participation of Adam Void, Alice Mizrachi, Curtis Readel, ELLE & John Breiner:
Her first New York solo show “On The River…” is actually the joining of two strong and handsome rivers into one. Her Street Art work finds a sister in this new wet-plate photograph collection at the cozy Kesting/Ray Gallery in Manhattan.
Robyn Hasty. New Orleans 2011 (photo © Jaime Rojo)The Queens natives and New York wiseguys are re-wiring an entire band from their imagined musical teen heartthrob youth – the one where Droo was adding more gel to his perfect hair and punishing his Fender onstage and Ad was getting high in the mop closet. White Walls in San Francisco takes the risk of letting the Street Art duo put on a show this time, and you can expect more “Playground Tactics” Saturday.
For further information regarding this show click here
“There’s a growing creative movement that we’ve dubbed Hybridism: a blend of both street art and fine art – a hybrid – as the raw meets the refined,” as the 2009 group show at Brooklyn’s Mighty Tanaka observed while giving evidence of what was happening on the streets and in galleries in the Brooklyn show “Hybridism”. Of course, Daniel Feral’s diagram points to 2008 as the beginning of “Hybridism”.
Similarly a year ago at Hold-Up Gallery in LA there was the “Hi-Graff” show that excitingly merged many Graff and Street Art movements as we observed at the time, “Those Cold War years are being chopped away brick by brick like the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, and a new language borrowing vocabulary from graffiti, street art, fine art, advertising, and pop/punk/hiphop/skater/cholo/tattoo culture continues to emerge in ways we never thought of before.”
Now in 2012 Manhattan’s Wooster Collective continues the conversation to reveal “Hybrid Thinking”, their collection of an international roster (South Africa, Germany, Spain, Amsterdam, Beijing) of names that have been successful in the galleries and streets, illustrating what you have been seeing alive and expanding for the last decade. In the curators’ words: “Hybrid Thinking refers to the current zeitgeist of our time: disparate cultures coming together to create something completely new.”
This roster includes Dal, Herakut, Hyuro, Roa, Sit and Vinz.
For further information regarding this show click here
An culturally interesting thematic show honoring the fighter Muhammad Ali called “Ali The Greatest”opens tomorrow at Evolve Gallery in Sacramento, CA. With new stuff from Joe Iurato and David Flores among others, the show is expected to travel to Vegas and New York and celebrates the 70th birthday of the man.
For further information regarding this show click here
Also happening this weekend
At the Klughaus Gallery, Jesse Edwards show “Dialogue of the Streets” Click here for more details.
At Le Salon d’Art, Fumero and Joseph Meloy , “90 Stanton Street Art Show” is open to the general public. Click here for more details.
“On these hard streets a man discarded can’t possibly feel like a citizen of any community. I’ve wandered these streets in my own disconnected delerium and not seen the homeless man lying inside the contorted cardboard box. Layered in sweatshirts and drowsy beneath the roaring traffic on the bridge his eyes flicker above the edge of the box and we are jolted by each others’ suddenness. It’s a split second, and maybe unnerving, but not uncaring. I am, after all, only another man, and here we are on the same street. Given the right chain of events, I could be the one peering out over the tattered edge. Am I changed by this moment? Sometimes I am.” – Steven P. Harrington
So began the introduction by Steven P. Harrington to the book “Community Service”, a monograph of the French Street Artist named C215 that was released last year. It was one of three published works that BSA was honored to write for and provide images for in 2011.
The multi-layered and luminescent stencil portraits that C215 has created in neighborhoods of cities all over the world have made his work well-known and respected by peers in the Street Art world. For us, his technique and human touch has been so inspiring that it was an automatic response when he asked us to write the introduction and conduct an extensive interview with him for his book. Along with photographs of his work by Jaime Rojo, the work that C215 considers to be “community service” is captured in print by an international roster of many of today’s top street art photographers.
Together they all tell a story about a moment, this moment on the street with one of the best, and we were proud to be a part of it in 2011.
Excerpted from the interview for “Community Service”:
Steven P. Harrington: Some people have said that Street Art is transforming contemporary life. Is that one of it’s roles?
C215: I think that an observant person seeing these small works will never return to an ordinary view of the streets. The day you become interested in street art is a kind of point of no return. The German poet Novalis said, “If you look for your favorite color, you will see it everywhere”. I could say the same about graffiti. Street art is changing urban perception for sure, and if you begin to photograph something you have found and show it to someone else, you are so happy to share it.
Steven P. Harrington: When you create portraits of people, often they are people who are in the margins of a society. Can you talk about how you decide which people you will portray in a certain environment?
C215: This is a personal artistic attitude: I try to interact with context, so I place in the streets elements and characters that belong especially to the streets. I like to show things and people that society aims at keeping hidden: homeless, smokers, street kids, etcetera. It is also the result of a certain personal ideology, being socially inadapted myself.
Regarding the pictures I use, it is always a completely subjective choice, based on my own emotions. I’m always expressing my personal feelings through an image everyone can understand. The work has to remain one of self-expression, even when it is also useful for the community. Changing the city by adding color and faces to it is a good compromise.
“Community Service” the art of C215, featuring photography by Vitostreet (FR), Chrixcel (FR), RomanyWG (GBR), Luna Park(US), Jaime Rojo (US), Lois Stavsky (US), Jessica Stewart (IT), Vinny Cornelli (US), Elodie Wilhem (CHE), Lionel Belluteau (FR), Unusualimage (GBR), and Gregory J. Smith(BR). With introduction and interview by Steven P. Harrington from Brooklyn Street Art, a preface by Marc & Sara Schiller from Wooster Collective, and Thierry Froger, collector.
Last Friday C215 played host at Galerie Itinerrance as he debuted many new pieces across various surfaces using the stencil technique he is known for. His addition of color variations over the last year or so has opened a door into more possibilities for dimension and emotion in his portraits. Fans of the monochromatic style he established his name with were pleased to see the black/grey/white stencils also continue to capture his interest.
The show is accompanying the release of a book of the same name “Community Service”, featuring photography by 12 artists behind the camera, an interview with Steven P. Harrington of Brooklyn Street Art (who also wrote the introduction), and a preface by Marc and Sara Schiller with Thierry Froger. More on the book and show HERE.
Photo © Jaime Rojo
In a very short time C215 has become an important phenomenon in street art around the world. BSA has been among the crowd who have been moved by the feelings that arise with a sudden encounter of his work on the street. What gives his stencil work resonance is the light that emanates from within the people he selects from whatever neighborhood he is in. Paolo M., a photographer who goes by the moniker Unusual Image and is featured in the new collection, remarks on C215’s people, “I think that there is a kind of sense of humanity that illuminates them.” It’s an uncanny ability to summon the spirit of a subject through his deft cutting of stencils, but it’s what he does with regularity.
Further distinguishing the work is the level of detail in these hand-cut pieces, incrementally setting a new standard for stencils and portraiture. Says VitoStreet, another featured photographer who has shot numerous of the pieces in the street, “The most amazing things such as feathers, fur, beard, hair are reproduced brilliantly.” Collectively the steady development of the body of work is blurring the line between fine art and street art.
This Friday in Paris C215 is debuting a new show of studio work on both floors of Galerie Itinerrance.
The neighborhood of Park Slope in Brooklyn is better known for beautiful Brownstones, impossible parking, towering maples, social liberals and baby strollers than graffiti or street art. There is one commercial strip down the upper middle of this town-y enclave, with delis and bagel shops and The New York Times on Sunday – and aside from the occasional mural or stickered paper-box, not a whole lot of Street Art action.
Park Slope window installation by artist Ryan Seslow as a satelite to “Programmed”
Brooklyn Street Art: Tell us about yourself.
Ryan Seslow: My name is Ryan Seslow. I’m a multidisciplinary artist living and working in New York. I am also a professor of fine arts teaching studio courses between 4 colleges here in NY and I’m always involved in several different projects at once, it seems, either as an artist, curator, or both.
I feel like I’m 3 or 4 different kinds of artists all trapped into one body. I have more energy than I usually know what to do with, so I love to exercise that on artistic potential and experimentation. Making art from a very young age, my real love for art came from the inspiration I found in 1980’s graffiti, public art, and cartoons. Martha Cooper’s “Subway Art” was, and still is, one of my all-time favorite books.
I was a teenager when the b-boy movement got a hold of me. My entire family is from various parts of Brooklyn, so weekends and summers were spent combing the streets looking for inspiration, while trying to mimic the works I saw.
The original “Subway Art” book by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant
Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about “Programmed” and what it’s about?
Ryan Seslow: I was recruited to do a satellite installation for “Programmed“, a show about rethinking the relationship with these electronic objects in our lives that we no longer use. The concept of the show was to synthesize the use of obsolete electronics into your work. It touches areas of recycling and the ephemeral existence of many things in today’s world.
I had already been doing this in another commercial window space for a few years, so the fit was nice and exciting. The owner also had this great public window space that he wanted to use to showcase my installation-based works, rather than just filling the space with redundant advertising so we collaborated ideas on the use of the space.
In both projects I wanted to inspire and reach the general public of Park Slope with colorful installations that would show a variety of traditional art techniques as well as more non-traditional works. The context of the commercial window space was perfect to contradict what is essentially public work.
Artist Ryan McIntosh’s piece from the “Programmed” exhibit, made from hard drives, is called “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall” (image courtesy www.cultofmac.com)
Brooklyn Street Art: Can you talk about some of the materials you used and their significance.
Ryan Seslow: The materials are intuitive manifestations and representations of what can be used to make ART. I’m all about the allowance of communication and self-expression. The curators did ask me to emphasize the use of obsolete electronics. The Mac Support Store (the installation site) is also a hub for the recycling of used computer parts.
The store had this enormous mountain of stuff to choose from and I was drawn to the keyboards right away because keyboards are objects of serious potential; amazing tools and an intermediary means of infinite communication. Each keyboard has the potential of writing the next great literary novel or the next great resolution to help the world. The keyboards connect both the familiar and unfamiliar imagery in the installation, maybe helping the viewers create narratives between the pop icons and the technology.
“I love making art. I’m pretty much obsessed with the process of generating things. I love learning new skills, not so much to isolate the skill itself, but more to integrate it into what I am already doing. I like to test the potentials of things,” Ryan Seslow.
Brooklyn Street Art: How long did it take you to prepare for this, and do the installation?
Ryan Seslow: This installation was built in less than two hours – It is an art practice in itself.
My installations are all intuitive and immediate. I have been working pretty large for about 10 years now so the energy that goes with setting up an installation is always thrilling and I like the challenge of working with the space. Each piece is created individually, so they must hold up that way first, but the installations are 100% modular. Every piece must ultimately fit and work together as a whole by means of form, color and content.
Brooklyn Street Art: Do you think of this as street art?
Ryan Seslow: I do think of this installation as street art. I have been a lover and a participant in the medium of street art for a long time. I may be a lot more careful about when and where I put my work up than I was 10 years ago; that knowledge comes from past experiences. Art forms should be embraced as ongoing expanding things, by seeing the potential of why and how they can fit the foundation of where they began. This exercise itself forms ideas and allows for expansion.
The work is right on the street, the viewers are those walking by on the side walk, or driving by in their cars. It has been framed in glass and protected to a degree. I find this interesting as well. I anticipate more museums and galleries doing this in the future as the context of public art develops and artists continue to push its limits.
Brooklyn Street Art: Do you have any favorite Street Artists whose work you follow?
Ryan Seslow: I love and follow several street artists on a daily basis. I’m a big fan of the BSA site as well as the Wooster Collective. Some of my favorite artists are John Fekner, Michael DeFeo, Gaia , Jeff Soto, Abe Lincoln Jr., Miss Van, Faile, Bast, Robert Williams, Lady Pink , Fafi, Gary Baseman, Tim Biscup, Barry McGee, Swoon, and so many more, too many to name!
Ryan used computer pieces, paper, film, and this image of Jackie Kennedy on the screen of a monitor for the installation.
Brooklyn Street Art: How does Jackie Kennedy figure into the piece?
Ryan Seslow: Funny, Jackie O and JFK have always left this long-lasting impression on me. When the John F. Kennedy assassination was brought up to me in the 5th or 6th grade, in a history class, it never left me. I recall being really freaked out by the way I was interpreting the whole event. As time went on, by the time we got into high school, we were shown the actual assassination film itself (you know the one). At least once a year, I seek to find old and grainy images of the couple. I think they represent some form of the ephemeral with in me. They remind me that our stay here on this planet is not forever, it activates this crazy gratitude to and for all things.
Brooklyn Street Art: Do you ever hang out and spy on people who have stopped to look at your installation?
Ryan Seslow: Nah, not too much spying, but I do get people who approach me and ask some interesting questions from time to time. Kids seem to be big fans on a regular basis! I have gotten several independent commissions this way, just by creating live art that invites the public to participate by simply talking to me. I am always left with a memory of the experience.
Brooklyn Street Art: You’ve done drawing, painting, stenciling, collage, even sculpture – is there something you haven’t tried but would like to?
Ryan Seslow: That is a great question. I love making art. I’m pretty much obsessed with the process of generating things. I love learning new skills, not so much to isolate the skill itself, but more to integrate it into what I am already doing. I like to test the potentials of things. I would love to do more with the synthesis of street art, public sculpture, experimental film and collaborations.
Actually, this is what I mean; I want to collaborate more with other artists. There is so much to learn when you work with other people, which is one of the main reasons I became an art professor.
Detail from the installation by Ryan Seslow
Brooklyn Street Art: What’s the next project you’ll be working on?
Ryan Seslow: Got several things going on right now. I’m teaching 8 courses this semester, so teaching is a bit more demanding than usual. I’m also curating a special video art/experimental documentary program for The Streaming Festival in the Netherlands , working on an installation series for public art in Jericho Plaza in Long Island, a group video art stills project in Denmark, participating in MagMart in Naples, and I’m part of a top secret underground stencil project.
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See a year-long window project Ryan did HERE
Ryan Seslow’s blog HERE
His art on Flickr HERE
Follow him on Twitter: @ryanseslow
All images of Ryan Seslow’s work courtesy the artist.
“Programmed”: a group installation art exhibition, is curated by Michele Jaslow & Spring Hofeldt. Park Slope, Brooklyn. The show is open until March 13, 2010.
Learn more about the “Programmed” show.
Cult of Mac’s Review HERE
The Mac Support Store is located at 168 7th Street in Brooklyn. The store is open Monday thru Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The store is closed on Sundays.
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