"Chicos 2" by Jaz

Franco Fasoli, better known as Jaz, has his first European solo show this week in Barcelona at RAS Gallery. The show, curated by Maximiliano Ruiz, opens on May 17th from 7:30-10pm and runs through June 16th. Jaz is one of my favorite street artists, and his work really should to be seen in person to be properly appreciated. I saw him finished one of the pieces for this show when we were in Baltimore last week, and it was quite spectacular. Check after the jump for more of a preview of the show…

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Bue in Berlin

Bue never fails to put a smile on my face. Here’s some of his most recent pieces, including collaborations with Mazuprozak, Squid, Sheryo and Jamz.

Squid and Bue in Ghent

Mazuprozak and Bue in Ghent

Mazuprozak, Bue, Sheryo and Jamz

Photos by Bue

Kidult's shirt in pink

The love/hate affair between Kidult and Marc Jacbos (here and here) continues… First Kidult painted the word “ART” on a Marc Jacobs store in New York. Then Marc Jacobs began tweeting about the piece as if it were created intentionally and selling a t-shirt with a photo of the defaced storefront for $698. Now, Kidult is making his own similar shirts, editions of 50 in white and 50 in pink, which will sell for €6.98.

Marc Jacobs’ shirt is available at the Marc Jacobs shop on Mercer Street in New York.

Kidult’s shirts will be available online at Kidult’s webstore at 3pm Eastern time on Wednesday, May 16th.

I still can’t figure out for sure of this whole series of events is a secret collaboration between Kidult and Marc Jacobs, or just two parties generating publicity and money through an actual fight/game of one-upsmanship. It’s a bit of a street art soap opera. Is Kidult working for Marc Jacobs? ISN’T HE?

Kidult's shirt in white

Photos courtesy of Kidult

Other and Labrona at Haverford College. Photo by RJ Rushmore

Earlier this month, Labrona and Troy Lovegates aka Other came down from Canada for a few days. Their first stop was Haverford, the small Philadelphia suburb where I go to college. At Haverford College, they painted a mural on the same building that Gaia painted last year. Then, they spent less than 24 hours in Baltimore, but took advantage of every second for painting and getting up. In Baltimore, Martha Cooper invited them to paint in SoWeBo, a part of town where she has been photographing the residents.

Other and Labrona in Baltimore. Photo by Martha Cooper

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Erica il Cane recently painted three sides of an artists’ studio space, Het vogelnest vzw, in the Belgian city of Ghent. He will also be showing his work inside the space on the 19th-20th of May and there is a “street art night” on the 19th with lectures by Sarah Rombouts, Peter Bosschaert, Harlan Levey and Javier Abarca, and a screening of Exit Through the Gift Shop. For more info on those events, check out the studio’s website. You can see all Erica il Cane’s murals after the jump… Read the rest of this article »

Remi/Rough met up with TwoOne and Hendo and collaborated on this wall in downtown Melbourne.

Photos by Remi/Rough

LNY in Baltimore

Caroline and I were in Baltimore this week checking out Open Walls Baltimore. If you have the chance, definitely make a trip over there. Full posts about Baltimore coming soon. Point is, between Baltimore and moving this weekend, I’ve been lax this week. Things should return to normal on Wednesday or Thursday, but in the mean time, here’s what I’ve been meaning to post about:

• An update on the Kidult/Marc Jacobs situation: Marc Jacobs have turned a photo of the vandalism (or maybe commissioned tag) into a t-shirt that they are selling for $689, and at least one has sold already.
• Barry McGee’s show at Prism (his second, if you include his 2-man show with Phil Frost) has opened and is of course a must-see.
• Okay yes, it’s another Shepard Fairey show with images we’ve seen before, but there are a few gems in there. Specifically, the painted printing plates.
• A Basquiat painting went for over $16 million at a Phillips de Pury auction.
• This piece by Phlegm is one of my favorites from him in a while.
• Tes One and Bask collaborated on this dinosaur-themed mural in Florida.
• This group show at Opera Gallery’s NYC location looks like a top-tier show for being a group show. Anthony Lister, Interesni Kazki, Roa, Mark Jenkins, Bast, Swoon, Faile, so many more…
• Nychos and his crew paint some crazy stuff.
• Afeura, a mural festival in Peru, is using Kickstarter to raise funds for the project. So far, Escif, Bastardilla, Desertor and Jade have signed on to painting at the festival.
• In a move of crass commercialism reminding us that perhaps street art is dead, some artist made a really beautiful mural for the sole purpose of releasing a print of the same image.
• Sonni (the guy who did that crazy boom box in Miami) has a show opening this month in New York.
• Faile released some new prints on their website this week (sold out already of course), and intend to do so much more often from now on.
• The DMV and 1984 crews pulled the crazy stunt of putting on a one-day illegal show in Paris on the day of the French elections.
• Depoe is part of a two-man show opening on Saturday evening in New York. He has preview photos here.

Photo by RJ Rushmore

Word To Mother is busy preparing for his upcoming show in San Fransisco at White Walls Gallery, Can’t Afford to be Broke. After years of successful solo shows in London, it’s great to finally see Word To Mother getting the attention he deserves in the USA too. The show includes new original pieces on wood, painted baseball bats and zines with a screenprinted cover.

Can’t Afford to be Broke opens on May 12th (7-11pm) and runs through June 2nd.

Photo courtesy of White Walls Gallery

It looks like Kidult hit a Marc Jacobs store in New York, but rather than panic, buff and pretend it didn’t happen like most other stores that Kidult has hit, Marc Jacobs’ Twitter has claimed the work. Of course, they still buffed the piece. The New York Observer has more, and as they point out, maybe Kidult was commissioned to do the piece, as has often been speculated about his work. After all, it’s well-known that KAWS was approached by companies to do ad disruptions for him (which he eventually sort of did, in that he has designed work for use on billboards, but without the illegal look).

Via Street Art News

Photo courtesy of MarcJacobsIntl

LNY was in Baltimore recently to check out Open Walls Baltimore (exactly what Caroline and I are doing right now actually). He had quite a time while there and put up a couple of very Baltimore-specific pieces. Here’s what he has to say:

So I got a story to tell you and some pics to share, see I ended up making these drawings in Baltimore by randomly running into this group of urban horseback riders galloping down an East Baltimore neighborhood while visiting Gaia and Nanook. It was Sunday so what would be better than to go on a horse ride right? So I took some pictures and then made some work to later find out that they are part of this old Baltimore tradition of Huckstering, basically going around in a horse drawn cart selling vegetables. These guys are also called Arabs, which comes from the term “street Arab” as in an abandoned kid who roams the slums, and I was lucky enough to find a stable in South West Baltimore where horses are bred and taken care of by the community. All of which blows my mind because these guys were so happy and excited about my posters as I was about meeting them and discovering this otherwise invisible history of a city I am completely alien to. As I was putting the work up I got a lot of feedback from the neighborhood and they read the images in so many different ways that I had never even considered; we talked about resilience, beauty, vision, excellence, dead space, gold, bling and the efforts of Sowebo to rejuvenate the neighborhood from the inside. I feel totally overwhelmed by the way the work was able to engage and be fulfilled by having this conversation with the neighborhood. All of this thanks to Martha Cooper who introduced me to Sowebo and has been constantly engaging and documenting the area, these are her pictures and a lil clip I took of the spot.

Photos by Martha Cooper