Smells, Cash4, Don Pablo Pedro and Keely

Last class of the school year yesterday. Now for finals. Can’t wait… Here are some distractions in case you’re in a similar boat:

• NoseGo has some new prints available today with Unit44. These are not giclee prints, but rather archival pigment prints, a significant step up in quality as I understand it.
• The fantastic ceramic street artist Carrie Reichardt is organizing this show in London.
• Great sculptural installation and indoor mural by Pixel Pancho in Mexico City.
• Loving this collaboration between Kofie and El Mac.
• S.butterfly has photos of the Bom.K show in Paris. Wish I could see this one in person.
• And Kaws has a solo show in Tokyo at the moment. It’s Kaws, so feel free to check out the photos, but you pretty much knows what’s coming.
• JR and José Parlá collaborated on a mural on the outside of Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, where they have a two-man show opening next week. Glad to see Parlá working outdoors, but it always strikes me as a bit odd since he tries to distance his work from graffiti. I guess when there’s a show to promote… Although to be fair, the show is about a series of collaborative murals that JR and Parlá made together in Cuba.
• JR’s Inside Out project booth in Times Square is a huge hit. He’s been covering the street with photos of people who stop by his little photobooth, and it looks awesome. The billboards in Times Square were even (briefly) given over to JR for the project. The whole thing is a fight against outdoor ads and for public spaces for the public, but JR manages to make his point without beating people over the head with politics. Instead, JR just shows people a better world and makes them smile. I’m not a JR fanatic, but I absolutely love this project.

Photo by Hrag Vartanian

Fans of Ever, it’s time to rejoice. I’m a sucker for affordable art, and Each / One is providing just that right now with 7 prints measuring 11 x 14 inches and available for just $20 each. The idea behind Each / One is that releases are limited not by quantity but by time. So, these prints are available now, but after May 28th, no more will be printed. So it’s still a limited release, just in a slightly different way than we’re used to with prints.

Ever’s show on Each / One, Fallas en el Sistema – Technical Flaws, is on now through May 28th. Be sure to have a look before you forever miss your chance to pick up one of these prints at a great price.

Images courtesy of Ever

“The American Cousins” by Cekis in Fleury-Les Aubrais, France

So as finals exams and essays begin to creep up on me (70-ish pages to write in the next month), these link-o-rama posts are going to become essential until the school year is up, so you know, I encourage you to read them closely.

• Aryz has a solo show coming up in San Fransisco at Upper Playground’s Fifty24SF. David Choe is a fan, and says that it’s gonna be a “feeding frenzy” with collectors wanting to buy out the show 100x over even before anyone has seen the work.
• Of course, if you’re looking for something you can get your hands on, I’m loving this print from Unga.
• Ron English recently released a monochrome grey version of his Temper Tot figure on his website.
• Sam3 gets me every time.
• The Carbon Festival is on this weekend in Melbourne.
• I’ve got to hand it to TrustoCorp for making this sweet suitcase device to spray stencils in broad daylight. They also been distributing a bunch of custom cereal box artworks (in collaboration with other artists like Shepard Fairey) around LA for people to hunt down.
• Those pretty blah painted shutters near the New Museum are getting painted again. Sounds like more blah.

Photo courtesy of Ville de Fleury-les-Aubrais

Rowdy and Gold Peg in Leeds

I missed last week’s link-o-rama because I was in Boston for the Barry McGee show at the ICA Boston. So worth the trip (more on that soon), but for now here’s what I missed:

• Wow. So many great murals at La Bienal de Arte Urbano in Bolivia: Erica il Cane x Bastardilla, Charquipunk, Decertor, Inti… Definitely check those out.
• Hooked visited with Gaia while he prepared a new linoblock print for his upcoming London solo show.
• Josh MacPhee of Just Seeds is speaking tonight in Philadelphia.
• A really great community mural.
• A young Canadian Instagram user was arrested for a photo she posted of a piece of street art because they thought she made the piece. Well, if I ever go to Montreal, I guess I should be careful about what I post to my Instagram.
• They sold out pretty quickly so I’m sorry I didn’t get to this sooner, but Essam (the artist who did those great NYPD/drone ad disruptions) released a few prints of those posters at 1xRun last week.
• Russian street artist Pasha 183 (think along the lines of Banksy or SpY) has died at the age of 28.
• The fantastic artist Nychos will be showing at the equally fantastic Galo Art Gallery in Turin, Italy later this month. A great pairing.
• Cre8tive YouTH*ink & Centrefuge Public Art Project are raising money through Indiegogo to work with teens to make a series of murals in NYC.

Photo courtesy of Rowdy

KATSU at Eyebeam for F.A.T. Gold

KATSU, one of my favorite writers of all time, has had quite a week. I was just going to throw these things in the weekend link-o-rama because other blogs have covered the events so well, but then stories about KATSU just kept piling up. So, here they are:

• Need a bit of a refresher on the awesomeness of KATSU? Brooklyn Street Art has you covered.
• KATSU has a series of 3 prints available this week at 1xRun. They have almost sold out already. Personally, I picked up the black on black version.
• KATSU is part of F.A.T. Lab, and they have a show (F.A.T. Gold) on right now at Eyebeam in NYC. This evening from 5-7pm, KATSU and Mike Baca aka 2ESAE will be in conversation live online. That event should be streaming here and will presumably be available to watch at a later date as well.
• It seems that KATSU’s most noticeable contribution so far to F.A.T. Gold has been to paint the outside of Eyebeam with a fire extinguisher, as pictured above. As it turns out, those things are hard to control when it’s windy. Some of the paint got onto the gallery next door, Paula Cooper Gallery. Paula Cooper is not happy about that. For the rest of us, there’s a hilarious video to watch of a Paula Cooper Gallery employee trying to figure out what’s going on with all the gold paint flying everywhere.
• KATSU is also using launching a new postering campaign on the street this week called Status Update. The posters feature Facebook’s Marc Zuckerberg, but with a black eye and chipped tooth. KATSU emailed with Gizmodo about the project.

Photo by Dani Mozeson

OX

It’s content I missed. Check it out.

• The East Gallery, a section of the Berlin Wall covered in art and still standing, was knocked down this week.
• New print available from Pixelpancho.
• Or if plush is more your thing, check out Personal Jesus by Dave the Chimp.
• Some really great murals by Run in Gambia and Senegal.
• Barry McGee has a show opening in Fort Worth this week.
• I really like the placement and scale of this piece by Liqen.
• Rap + site specific work + Jay Shells = Yes.
• Adam Cost is on the cover of the Village Voice this week.
• Gaia’s first solo show in London opens at Nelly Duff next month.

Photo by OX

“Modern Tulipa” by Ludo

Bit of a shorter link-o-rama this week. I’ve been with my parents in Colorado, trying to get some work done on my upcoming book. The hope is that Viral Art will be released for free online in mid-June. There’s still a fair bit of work left to do though. Anyway, the links…

• Don’t Fret had a show in Chicago earlier this year around the theme of internet dating. Great stuff.
• Liqen’s latest piece is a call to preserve a wildlife sanctuary in Ecuador.
• A.CE has a new print out at Station16.
• Sweet piece by 45RPM on a huge airplane. Anyone know the story here?
• Sowat painted in the historic Paris nightclub Les Bains next to a Futura piece from the mid-80′s.
• Paul Insect and Sweet Toof have been getting up around London. It looks like his time spent with Bast while in NYC recently may have influenced him a bit, as some of Paul Insect’s work is in a more naive style reminiscent of Bast or Haring that I don’t think I’ve seen from him before. Looks good.

Photo by Ludo

As I tweeted the other day, my mind is kinda stuck on how much I wish the Parra show at Jonathan Levine Gallery opened today and not on Saturday so that I could go see it. So while I’ve been distracted by that point, here’s some of what I almost missed this week:

• KATSU’s April Fools prank is a bit early, but still pretty funny.
• The Outsiders / Lazarides has some really nice prints by Ron English. They are variations on his Figment image, aka Andy Warhol wig and a skull.
• Barry McGee, Chris Johanson and Laurie Reid are showing together at City College and SF starting today.
• Here’s a new piece from the always-interesting 0331c, but if you don’t know 0331c’s work, here’s an introduction.
• Nice video of Eine updating one of his walls in London from saying PRO PRO PRO to PROTAGONIST. Interesting comment about street art being a thing that “looked like it would offer what graffiti promised but didn’t deliver.”
• Nychos x Jeff Soto = Yes!
• New work from Isaac Cordal.
• Woah. Nice work from How and Nosm in San Fransisco.
• Jonathan Jones is up to his old tricks of dissing Banksy to get more hits for his column, and I’m biting. He writes, “Banksy, as an artist, stops existing when there is no news about him.” Even if that is the case, is that the end of the world? Does that relegate Banksy to “art-lite”? No. Banksy is one of the most talked-about artists in the world. I would bet that the same criticism was leveled against Warhol, who I believe Jones likes. Banksy’s manipulation of the media, playing it like a damn violin sometimes, is some of his greatest artwork of all. He manipulates the media to spread a message. The best example of this was probably him going to Bethlehem to paint on the separation wall because he knew that the media would cover it. He was able to play the media to draw attention to an issue that he felt strongly about. Banksy’s paintings are sometimes great and sometimes not. But his ability to make people fascinated with him and his paintings is just as much of an art, and that shouldn’t discredit him.

Photo by Luna Park

Kid Acne at Village Underground in London

Sorry for the late link-o-rama. Caroline came to visit on Thursday, so I’ve been trying to stay offline.

• I love these simply-sprayed but clever one-liners by MTO.
• Alexandros Vasmoulakis has a show open now at LeBasse Projects in LA, and it looks really really nice.
• The brilliant and massively under-appreciated Peter Kennard has a solo show this month at UpperPlayground’s Mexico City Gallery Fifty24MX.
• San Franciscans are lucky that two Brits, Sickboy and Word To Mother, have solo shows going on there now. Sickboy is at Shooting Gallery and Word To Mother is at the affiliated White Walls Gallery.
• Apparently Zilda and Ro have been collaborating for some time, but I think this is the first I’ve heard of it and the result is fantastic.
• It’s already sold out, but I really like this recent Nychos print from 1xRun.
• Half of La Pandilla just painted a mural in LA.
• Australian street artist CDH is thinking about the preservation of street art in a responsible manner and trying to get the effort going in Australia. Definitely an interesting, and controversial, read.

Photo by HowAboutNo!

“Órbita” by David de la Mano and Pablo S. Herrero. Click to view the full piece.

Slow week, but that doesn’t mean nothing good happened. Here’s some of it…

• Love this drawing by Pixote.
• It seems that Hrag Vartanian was not a big fan of Les Ballets De Faile, Faile’s project with the New York City Ballet. Personally, I really liked to the project. Yes, Hrag is right in pointing out that people were expecting more (like Faile having involvement with set design and costumes), but what Faile did do was, I think, a major success. Nine artists out of ten would have seriously messed up this sort of collaboration by not striking the right balance between completely ignoring the setting and embracing it too much. Ignore the setting, and the work could just have been shown anywhere and would have looked out of place. Go too far in trying to bend the work to the situation, and the artists’ essence is lost and the whole thing comes off as a cheesy joke. Faile struck just the right balance. There was a lot of classic Faile, mixed in with some new ballet-inspired imagery, but the ballet-inspired imagery didn’t look out of place at all. Faile’s work has always had a mix of grit and classical beauty, that ballet with their spin fit perfectly into that. I’ve got to disagree with Hrag on another point and say that I thought the work looked like it fit in just as well as anything else in the theater, particularly the massive “Tower of Faile” piece.
• Thoughts on Crummy Gummy? I’m not sure what I think. Another Mr. Brainwash-inspired derivative artist who never needs to be mentioned again, or actually kinda funny?
• Zoer has a new print out.
• Kid Acne made some scarves that are now for sale with his “art fag” character on them.
• The British Zeus had a solo show open this week at London’s Graffik Gallery. It’s open through the 21st.
• Ever wanted to design a t-shirt using D*face’s logo? Now you can, and you can win $500 and a print for your efforts.
• Great new piece by Seacreative.
• It’s exciting to see strong murals going up in South Delhi, India.

Photo courtesy of David de la Mano and Pablo S. Herrero