British artist and graffiti writer Mike Ballard aka Cept recently posted this video, titled The Rest Pretend, showing some of his indoor and outdoor work over the last few years. I’m a huge fan of his work both as Ballard and Cept, so it’s cool to see the Cept work given a sort of Ballard-style touch through the editing of the video. Usually, it seems that the Ballard and Cept identities are kept a bit more separate and distinct.

Via Very Nearly Almost

Photo by RJ Rushmore

Cept

Caroline and I are out in Colorado this week with my family, so art is coming second, but luckily it looks like it’s been a slow week. Here’s what I almost missed…

• An interesting essay about street art and MOCA’s Art in the Streets show (although far from perfect and obvious a little late).
• Sam3 has up to some absolutely great stuff (including a collaboration with Escif).
• Blu has also been busy recently.
• Caroline and I went to the opening of Pandemic Gallery’s latest show and it certainly looks better in person than over photos, but it’s not bad at all.
• Subway Art Blog’s zine can now be purchased online.
• There’s been some anti Chick-Fil-A street art, and one piece has resulted in an arrest. Of course, these pieces play on the Chick-Fil-A advertising that emulates graffiti.
• Dal and Faith47 put up some nice work in NYC recently.
• I absolutely love this piece, however simple it is, by Nuria Moria.
• And this Erica il Cane piece is a lot less simple but equally fantastic.

Photo by Nolionsinengland

In two weeks, Vandalog and Murals Around New York (MANY) will be putting on a pop-up show in a New York City apartment. Up Close and Personal mostly came out of two ideas: 1. Street artists tend to work large outdoors and we wanted to challenge people to make art on a small scale and 2. We’ve all seen artwork in galleries that either would only look good in a gallery but not in a home, or is just too big to fit into a typical apartment and we wanted to see something different from that. With Up Close and Personal, the show itself is taking place in an apartment on the Upper West Side, and we have capped the size of the artwork at 30 x 30 inches, with an emphasis on going as small as possible.

I’ve worked with Keith Schweitzer and Mike Glatzer of M.A.N.Y. to curate this show, and we’re really excited with the line up that we’ve managed to put together: Aiko, Chris Stain, Clown Soldier, Don Leicht, Edible Genius, Elbowtoe, Gaia, How & Nosm, Jessica Angel, John Fekner, Know Hope, Logan Hicks, Mike Ballard, OverUnder, R. Robot, Radical, Retna, Skewville, Tristan Eaton, Troy Lovegates aka Other and White Cocoa.

Up Close and Personal opens May 12th from 7-9pm. We’ll also be open from 7-9pm on the 13th. Then noon-9pm and noon-7pm on the 14th and 15th respectively. Particularly on the 12th, it is possible that we’ll be shifting people in every half hour or so, since the space is a small apartment. The show is taking place at 217 West 106^th Street, Apartment 1A, New York, NY 10025 – Between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues.

Hope to see you in a couple weeks!

Chris Stain

Next week in London, Mike Ballard aka Cept is opening his latest solo show: Ultra Nomadic Def Smith Cycle at Edel Assanti Project Space. It opens Wednesday, March 23rd from 6-9pm, but I’m not sure how long it runs. I’m looking forward to Graffoto‘s review.

EVOL will be at the WILDE Gallery booth at Volta

With two midterms exams tomorrow, I’m rushing this post, but here’s a simple list for some of what to check out at the art fairs in New York this week.

• The Armory Show:
  - Honor Fraser (Kaws and Kenny Scharf)
  - Ratio 3 (Barry McGee)
  - Stuart Shave/Modern Art (Barry McGee)
• Fountain:
  - 140-foot long street art installation, although it sounds like this might be the same installation as was recently at Fountain in Miami, or at least partially the same.
• Verge Art Brooklyn:
  - Arch 402 (Cept aka Mike Ballard)
  - English Kills Gallery (Don Pablo Pedro)
• Scope:
  - Contra Projects (D*face, How&Nosm, James Marshall aka Dalek, Ron English, Tristan Eaton, TrustoCorp and more)
• Volta:
  - Carmichael Gallery (Mark Jenkins)
  - Wilde Gallery (EVOL)
• Pulse:
  - Joshua Liner Gallery (David Ellis)
  - Ben Wolf’s installation (He has collaborated with Swoon and Maya Hayuk)

I won’t be in NYC for the fairs myself, but I’ll hopefully have some photos to post. Otherwise, the places I will be getting my art fair news will be Hyperallergic and Arrested Motion.

Photo courtesy of Volta Art Fair

Mike Ballard, aka Cept, has a show opening this week in Cork, Ireland. Yep. Cork. Sounds like a kind of random place for a show an artist like Mike Ballard, but then again, Mike is not the type to do things the usual way (like the substantial differences between his art as Mike Ballard and his art as Cept). Over the last couple of years, Mike’s work has continued to grow on me. At first, I just trusted nolionsinengland when he said how great it was, but I’m not sure I could quite see it. Now though, I get that awesome sense of wonder when I see something by Mike Ballard. I’m excited to see that Mike is bringing his work to new audiences in Ireland.

The show, Community Thunder, will take place at Triskel Arts Centre, opens this Saturday from 6-9pm and runs through March 23rd.

PS, I don’t mean to say that Cork or Ireland in general sucks, I’m just saying it’s not known for a thriving street art or graffiti scene besides a few exceptions.

Photo courtesy of Mike Ballard

D*face sticker

Happy new year! Between snow in NYC and the general slowness around this time of year, not much going on this week. Here’s a bit of what I’ve been enjoying though:

• Over on Hyperallergic, Hrag has an interesting review of Faile’s Perry Rubenstein show (now closed). He argues that they are great sculpture and so-so painters. If you agree with Hrag, it adds to the argument that Faile are essentially good designers/businessmen since they still make paintings which probably sell better than sculptures. I never had a chance to see the show in person, but I liked the photos I saw of the paintings. Of course, Faile’s best artwork from 2010 was that temple sculpture in Lisbon.
• JR is the artist behind Arkitip’s latest issue.
• Cept aka Mike Ballard has an interview in the latest issue of Juxtapoz, and Juxtapoz has posted an excerpt online.
• I’d forgotten that MOMO and Sam3 painted a collaboration in NY a while back, but Luna Park recently rephotographed it.
• Arrested Motion has photos from Armsrock’s latest solo show.

Photo by Delete08

Tek33, Gold Peg and Sweet Toof. Photo by Tek33

There are a few little bits to mention today about my friends in Burning Candy. The crew have been keeping pretty busy lately.

1. The above wall (thanks to Tek33 for putting me up) is the latest in at least 3 large walls painted in London by members of BC in the last month or so. Nolionsinengland has photographed the other two.
2. Important note: I worked at High Roller Society for one day last week, but it’s not a regular job or something I expect to repeat since I’m moving soon. The crew’s Candy Shop show at High Roller Society kicks ass. It’s a small space, but Burning Candy have really made full use of the gallery. The installation is really fun to explore. There are so many little bits that it’s unlikely anybody noticed every minor detail that the crew had put into the assemblage of paintings, stickers, sculptures, drawings and found objects. There are photos on High Roller Society’s flickr, but I think that this weekend was the show’s last and it is now closed. But double check with HRS I guess, because I could be wrong.
3. The crew is traveling. Sweet Toof is painting in New York City and a standard Mighty Mo/Sweet Toof has appeared in Amsterdam.
4. Sweet Toof’s got an interview in this week’s le cool.

Recently, I’ve been working with Burning Candy (Cept, Cyclops, Dscreet, Gold Peg, LL Brainwashed, Mighty Mo, Rowdy, Sweet Toof and Tek33) on a project that’s really got me excited. For me, Burning Candy are some of the most interesting and talented street artists living in the UK right now. In the UK, there isn’t a street artist who gets up harder, a graffiti writer who hits better spots or a crew that pushes the boundaries of their art further than the members of BC. So about this project…

A man called The Barron is directing a film about the rest of Burning Candy called Dots. This isn’t your ordinary graff film though. Since The Barron is a friend of the crew, he’s got more access than the standard documentary filmmaker would ever get. So far, he’s filmed and edited the first 20 minutes or so of the film. The next 70 minutes? It’s on its way, but Burning Candy needs the help of their fans to make it happen. To fund the making of the Dots, BC have made a box set of prints. All nine members of the crew have contributed an image to this print release. Since I’m working with BC on this print release, I’m obviously biased, but I don’t think there’s a bad image in the bunch.

So here’s the press release with all that vital info:

To help raise funds and make Dots a reality, Burning Candy has put together a limited edition set of 9 screenprints, one print from each member of the crew. The set will come in a hand-screenprinted bespoke box. The prints are 2-colors and A5 sized and the edition size is just 150. These prints aren’t only artwork; anyone who buys a set of prints will also own the rights to 0.05% of the films revenues for the next 10 years. 100% of the profits from these prints will go to funding the making of Dots.

The prints will be released online imminently for just £500. In the mean time, you can email sales(at)dotsfilm.com for more information.

And for those curious about my personal involvement in the film and print release, I’m helping out friends and artists that I believe in, but I’m also getting paid for my work.

Cept has put this piece up recently. It looks great, but that’s not really the whole story. It was painted on top of a classic Cept. Why paint over the old piece? Turns out that the council demanded that the owners of the wall remove the graffiti because there had been complaints about it. Instead of paying the £5000 to clean the wall, they just had Cept paint something new there. Graffoto has the whole story, along with other examples of Hackney council’s inconsistent and often absurd graffiti removal policy.