Temporary mural by Jedi5, Col and Broker. Photo by Broker

Please note: Corrections made to the article are in bold or stuck out.

This is the second post in a two-part series on Artists 4 Israel and their event, the Defend The Future Tour. The first post was an effort to give an account of my personal experiences with Artists 4 Israel and was published yesterday. This post deals more directly with criticisms of Artists 4 Israel and their response to some of those criticisms, as well as other Haverford students’ reactions to the DTF Tour. I encourage you to read part one first, because, while this article is also clearly very opinionated, the first post sheds more light on my personal experiences with the group and may help to explain some of my personal biases that came up when writing this post. As is always the case on Vandalog, this post is mine and may or may not represent the views of any other Vandalog writers. – RJ Rushmore

As explained in detail in part one of this series, the Defend The Future Tour (a thinly veiled front for Artists 4 Israel so that they can appear apolitical) visited Haverford College on November 17th with the innocuously advertised aim of putting on a graffiti workshop for students. In reality, they used the creation of a mural as an excuse to pass out pro-Israel and anti-Arab propaganda masked as apolitical facts. Read the rest of this entry »

Hugh Leeman

We’ve got more photos today from Mike Pearce‘s time in Miami. Today we’re focusing on the art installation at the Fountain Art Fair. As they have done in past years, the fair got some street artists to paint on temporary walls in an outdoor section of the fair. This year, the installation was curated by Samson Contompasis of The Marketplace Gallery and included Hugh Leeman, Sharktoof, Gilf!, Elle, Know Hope, Chris Stain, Joe Iurato, Overunder and White Cocoa. Mike has more from Fountain in this flickr set.

Overunder and White Cocoa

Joe Iurato

Chris Stain and Sharktoof

Know Hope

Gilf! and Elle

Photos by Mike Pearce

Eine

Mike Pearce was in Miami last week taking photos of the murals getting painted. As it has been over the past few years, Wynwood was overrun (in, I think, a good way) for about a week with artists working outdoors on any wall they could get permission to paint or get away with painting. Here are a few of Mike’s pictures of the artists at work…

La Pandilla

Free Humanity, Anthony Lister and Col

Pixel Pancho

Augustine Kofie

Greg Mike

Hebru

Tati Suarez

Entes and Jade

Buff Monster

Trek 6

Photos by Mike Pearce

Know Hope for Primary Flight and Living Walls in Miami

In case you’d like to be in Miami right now for Art Basel Miami and the associated craziness of the season, but you’re stuck at home like me, here’s a small segment of what we’re missing (focusing on indoor events because a lot of the murals are still in progress):

• Hi-Fructose has an overview of Art Basel Miami, the main fair, and Arrested Motion has a two part overview.
• Juxtapoz has SCOPE covered.
• Roa has a few walls new in Miami, but this seems to be the most interesting so far.
• Wynwood Walls have their own pop-up show.
• Last but certainly not least is The Underbelly Show, which hosted a Secret Wars battle.

Photo by Ian Cox

I met Marianne Nems back in June at the East Village’s Dorian Grey Gallery, where she introduced me to the impassioned work of French graffiti artist, Ugly Kid Gumo.  For the next three days, Marianne will be at the Fountain Art Fair, 2505 North Miami Ave. @ 25^th St. exhibiting work by Ugly Kid Gumo and others. Among the images that she shared, I’m particularly intrigued by the artwork of Benoit Debbane, the Lebanese painter whose work first surfaced on the walls of Beirut in the 1990’s.  Another highlight are new works by Angel Ortiz aka LA2, who recently graced New York City’s East Village with a huge mural.

"Adrenaline" by Ugly Kid Gumo

"The Darkness Rising" by Benoit Debbane

LA2's recent mural in the East Village

Photos courtesy of Marianne Nems

The Eternal Infancy of Art by Ron English for The Underbelly Miami

On Monday, The Underbelly Project announced two big things: 1. They did a Paris version of The Underbelly Project, which we’ll have more about soon, but The Huffington Post has info on for now; and 2. They’ve changed the location of The Underbelly Show opening this week in Miami to 78 NW 25th Street in Wynwood. That, and an exclusive preview of that show, will be the focus of today’s Underbelly post.

The Underbelly Show may be the new kid on the block during Miami Art Basel, but it has arrived as a force to be reckoned with. It will featuring brand new work from over 30 artists who participated in the New York and Paris Underbelly Projects, as well as a host of other installations and events. This is not just another gallery show during a busy week. It’s an experience. Starting with the RSVP-only opening party on Tuesday, Thursday will see a Secret Wars battle, Friday the space opens to the general public and includes the launch of a limited edition version of The Underbelly Project’s book We Own the Night, which won’t be on sale in stores until next year. And that’s just the stuff I can tell you about. I can’t even guess at what else the Underbelly crew have got planned, but this is definitely the one must-see thing in Miami this week.

While setting up the show at the original location on Collins Avenue this week, the team realized the amount of art and their vision was too big for that space, so they moved to a warehouse in Wynwood at 78 NW 25th Street.

In a rare statement, the usually silent Workhorse told Vandalog:

The scope of the Underbelly Miami show grew larger than we had expected. Originally our idea for the location in South Beach was to showcase selected works in a high traffic area so as many people could see it as possible. As the works started to come in, we realized that we were going to run out of wall space. One of the Swoon pieces is 21 feet wide by 13 feet tall. The L’atlas piece is nearly 12 feet tall. We have over 70 pieces of work and most all of them are 4×6 feet and larger. The work is massive. So we began to look for additional space and realized it was best to move the show to Wynwood so that we could feature the works without being crowded and crammed onto the walls.

Undergound Brooklyn by Skewville for The Underbelly Miami

Photos courtesy of The Underbelly Project

Maya Hayuk, who will show at New Image Art Gallery's booth

The SCOPE art fair’s Miami iteration should, as always, have a few booths of interest to Vandalog readers to year. SCOPE opens on the 29th and runs through December 4th. Make sure to stop by these booths: Mallick Williams for Skullphone and Love Me/Curtis Kulig; Jonathan LeVine Gallery for Olek, WK Interact and Aakash Nihilani; Dorian Grey Gallery for Richard Hambleton (and maybe LAII); and New Image Art Gallery for Maya Hayuk and Retna. Of course, all those galleries will be exhibiting other artists as well, those are just some highlights. And there should be plenty of else of interesting. For the last two years, SCOPE has been where I’ve seen some of the most interesting indoor art in Miami.

Maya Hayuk, who will show at New Image Art Gallery's booth

Photos courtesy of New Image Art Gallery

Back again this year at Village Underground in London, the Moniker Art Fair is opening today and will be open through Sunday. In contrast to the Frieze art fair (also on this weekend in London), Moniker is free and focuses on work by street artists and low-brow artists. This year, galleries exhibiting at Moniker include Stolenspace, Scream, LeBasse Projects, Shea & Ziegler (Frankie Shea of Moniker/CampBarbossa teaming up with Tina Ziegler) and Andenken Gallery.

The program at this year’s fair is packed, so make sure to check it out before heading over, as there are a number of special events like print releases and artist talks going on. Hooked Blog is running tours of the fair and the surrounding street art on the weekend, something I had a lot of fun doing on a more informal basis last year.

In addition to gallery booths, the fair includes project spaces for individual artists. This year, Matt Small, Beejoir, Best Ever, Peeta, Dabs and Myla will be showing work in the project spaces.

Photo courtesy of Moniker Projects

Portrait of Steve Jobs in France

This weekend I’ll be in Boston. If you have any ideas for what I should get up to, leave a comment. I’ll definitely be checking out Swoon’s installation at the ICA Boston. Here’s what’s been going on in street art while I’ve been locked in my room studying all week:

• Steve Powers aka ESPO designed some beer cozies for The World’s Best Ever. They’re pretty okay, but should your beer cozy really be more than pretty okay? I would honestly feel a bit weird of my beer cozy had some brilliant high-brow design on it. Much more impressive is the latest in Powers’ Love Letter series.
• Philips de Pury and MTV had a charity auction for MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, with particularly nice work by Shepard Fairey and Faile.
• Stik’s latest solo show just opened in London.
• Some beautiful pieces by Sam3 in Porto, Portugal.
• AvoidPi designed the latest cover of Showpaper.
• Blu’s latest mural is in Greece.
• A nice booth for Joshua Liner Galler at Pulse in LA.
• Mr. Brainwash has a show opening soon in LA, but it’s going to be full of other people’s art. Anyone can submit work to be wheatpasted around the exhibition. On the one hand, yay, artists can benefit from Mr. Brainwash’s stupid fame and hype. On the other hand, I guess Mr. Brainwash has acknowledged that he doesn’t have any ideas for art, so he’s just openly benefiting from the art of others to further his own art career. So it’s mutually beneficial, except that individual artists submitting work will gain a lot less from this arrangement than Mr. Brainwash will gain overall.

Photo by Abode of Chaos

Galo, 2051 and Ottograph

So much going on behind the scenes this week for a couple of upcoming events. Can’t wait to say more. Hopefully next week I’ll be able to write about one of them. Here’s what I didn’t have a chance to post about this week:

• Sick burner by Jume.
• I wish I could have seen Mark Jenkins’ installation at Carmichael Gallery’s Volta booth in the flesh.
• OaKoAk: A french street artist who is kind of awesome.
• Some shots from Vhils‘ latest solo show in Portugal.
• Someone is placing “hipster traps” around NYC.
• Shepard Fairey’s Revolutions show looks pretty cool.
• Check out Contra Projects’ booth and murals from Scope NYC.
• The LA Police are trying to interfere with a graffiti writer’s art career by not allowing him to use his name (Smear) with anything relating to his artwork. And then they arrested him.
• Just rediscovered this piece from last year by WorldWarWon where he “graffiti-ed” an iceberg.
• Tika has a show coming up in Berlin.
• Galo, 2051 and Ottograph have a show opening soon in San Fransisco at Lower Haters Gallery.

Photo by Galo