Chase

The Walls Project is a series of legal spots organized by the folks behind Global Street Art. To date, they’ve organized over fifty of spots in London for local and international artists to paint. A lot of the spots they find are the roll-down shutters for shops in East London. It’s great to know that there are a couple of friendly guys in London who are simply interested in helping artists find more spots to paint and making their daily commutes a bit more interesting. You can see more of the walls and a map here.

A side note: Global Street Art are currently working on releasing their first book through Unbound, a sort of Kickstarter for books.

Here are a few of my favorites shutter pieces from The Walls Project:

2Rise and Gris

Ador

Roma

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Rai Cruz

It’s time to read about the news I missed this week, if you missed it too.

• Jorge Rodriguez Gerada’s latest show looks absolutely fabulous.
• Faith47 gets it right again.
• My friends at Station16 released prints last month with LNY and Enzo & Nio.
• Graffuturism provides an introduction to Zoer CSX.
• A Kid Acne solo show just opened in LA.
• Sad news but expected for the world graffiti community: 5Pointz, a graffiti Mecca in New York City, is going to be demolished around September 2013.
• Wondering what Revok has been up to since moving to Detroit? Here’s your answer: Some good stuff.
• New mural from the DMV guys.
• Lewy BTM hit the side of the Brooklyn Bridge, something that happened in 1988 with Sane and Smith and then again in 2000 with Year and Sace, but certainly isn’t an everyday occurrence. Lewy’s work has already been buffed.

Photo by Rai Cruz

Lek and the Da Mental Vaporz crew (Blo, Brusk, Dran, Sowat, Jaw, Gris1, Kan and Iso) collaborated on this installation of a Madonna at the Artaq Festival in Angers, France. It’s always great to see what the DMV guys can do when they get together, and this is no exception.

Photos courtesy of Lek and DMV

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

Elfo and BR1 (BR1 won the game)

Late link-o-rama this week. Troy Lovegates and Labrona are visiting to paint a mural at Haverford College, and it’s the week of all my final exams. Here’s what I’ve been reading to distract myself:

• With these two pieces, Carmichael Collective looks like a group of artists on the way up.
• Barry McGee has a show opening on the 12th at Prism in LA.
• Mega-collector Selim Varol will be showing the best bits of his art collection in Berlin.
• Nice t-shirt by Gris1 of DMV.
• Shepard Fairey has a show open now at Pace Prints in NYC.
• Spaceboy’s animation/wheatpastes for Red Stripe are kind of interesting, even if it’s mostly post-production work that makes it cool.
• A beautiful new wall by Conor Harrington.
• Nug (of this fame) is showing at Skalitzers in Berlin in a few days. I can’t wait to see how the show looks.

Photo by Elfo

Snyder in Beijing

While I spend my day at my other job explaining to people how a skee-ball tournament is art (seriously), I hope you’ll enjoy these newsbites from the past two weeks:

• Almost everything I’ve seen of this show looks absolutely amazing: Saner’s solo in SF opening today.
• You can listen to this conversation between Retna and his friend Med if you want a bit of insight into the Bowery/Houston mural, although it may just confuse things further in a good way.
• Escif has been doing some really cool work lately and I’ve been neglecting to post it, but here’s one of my favorites.
• Steve Powers and Faile designed potential covers for New York Magazine. Powers’ was used, but I’m a sucker for anything Faile so I definitely would have gone that route.
• I meant to put this piece by Marco Sueño as the image for last week’s link-o-rama, but then my hostel didn’t have wifi so there was no link-o-rama.
• Jaz took it up a notch with this mural in Lima.
• S.Butterfly’s photos of the DMV crew show in Australia are finally online and the show looks great.
• Eine painted the outside of Village Underground in London to raise awareness of the Homes for London campaign.
• GrafRank is an attempt to graph the popularity of street artists and graffiti writers online using data from flickr. Interesting idea, but they need your feedback to make sure they are getting things right.
• Juxtapoz is turning 18 and they are celebrating with a show later this month in Santa Monica. Artists include Retna, Shepard Fairey and Neckface.

Photo by Snyder

Inside of DMV's show

Da Mental Vaporz’ (Bom-K, Blo, Brusk, Dran, Gris1, ISO, Jaw, Kan, and Sowat) exhibition at RTIST Gallery in Melbourne in still open for a few more days, but if you can’t make it down, here’s a short video giving an idea of what’s going on (including a mural)…

DMV ~ Le Venin from Rtist Gallery on Vimeo.

Photo by S.Butterfly

Bom.k and Sowat of Da Mental Vaporz

There are so many interesting shows opening in the next week or two that I thought I’d just throw them all together into one post. Here’s what I think looks worth checking out:

• Yesterday, the Museum of Sex in New York opened a show that sounds absolutely awesome called F*ck Art. It’s on through June 10th and features artwork by Aiko, El Celso, Lush, Mode2, Cassius Fouler, Miss Van and many more.
• Love & Hate is a group show opening at StolenSpace this week and runs through March 4th. D*face, Dan Witz, Ronzo, Word to Mother, Jeff Soto, Eine, Charles Krafft and others are included.
• Chris Stain, Veng and Taka Sudo will be showing together at C.A.V.E. Gallery, beginning February 11th. Brooklyn Street Art has a preview of Chris’ work.
• Zes and Retna are together at Known Gallery in LA. LA TACO has the info.
• Nick Mann aka Doodles, Brett Flanigan, Craig Rodgers and Dan Bortz are collaborating with one another in Oakland, CA.
• Another collaborative group show will be in Da Mental Vaporz‘ (Bom.k, Blo, Brusk, Dran, Gris1, ISO, Jaw, Kan, and Sowat) show at Melbourne. That show, Le Venin, will be at RTIST Gallery from February 16th through March 4th.
• All Talk at Pandemic Gallery will include Aakash Nihalani, Cassius Fouler, Gabriel Specter, Jesus Saves, NohJColey and others and runs from February 17th through March 11th.

Photo courtesy of Da Mental Vaporz

Earlier this month the DMV (Da Mental Vaporz) Crew collaborated on this amazing wall for Crimes of Minds in Brest, France. The whole process was caught on camera and Awouell has just published this great ‘making of’ video…

1010 and Other aka Troy Lovegates

Had about 4 days away from a computer and it’s taken me nearly as long to catch up on emails. This post should help to finish that task. Here’s what I missed while I was away:

• Aiko has a show at Pure Evil Gallery opening today. It’s called Unstoppable Waves, which was the name of her recent show in Amsterdam, so it will probably be some of the same work.
• Some cool walls from Hyuro (especially this one).
• Sickboy also has an upcoming solo show in East London. His show runs November 3rd-6th.
• Lazarides’ Minotaur show/restaurant in the Leake Street Tunnels is open now, and, regardless of the ridiculous high-society vibe of the event, the art looks good. S.Butterfly has plenty of images. Additionally (and counteracting a small portion of that high-society vibe), Lazarides’ The Outsiders webstore has 3 unlimited run screenprints available now from ATMA, David Choe and Stanley Donwood.
• Dale Grimshaw has a solo show on now at Signal Gallery in London.
• Da Mental Vaporz (Avec, Dran, Bom K, Sowat, Kan, Brusk, Blo, Gris, and Jaw) painted this mural in Brest, France.
• Here’s the latest from Isaac Cordal.
• If you’re a fan of ephemera and art from Colab/ABC No Rio/Fashion Moda and the like, check out Gallery 98 Bowery.
• Similarly, Printed Matter in NYC has a show opening this weekend about Colab.

Photo by Other