Zéh Palito and Tosko

It is time for me to get a reasonable number of hours of sleep. Until I have to get up in the morning. Here’s what we didn’t get to write about on Vandalog this week:

• These two prints from Tristan Eaton and Everlast come from 1xRun and benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, so you’ve got great artists, a great print studio and a great cause all in one package, but less than one week left to buy.
• Two updates on Hyuro’s wall in Atlanta: The neighborhood organization has voted to ask the property owner to remove the mural, and someone vandalized it anyway.
• This freight by MERS is stunning.
• This piece by Batis is pretty great too.
• Buff Monster, David Meade and friends of Vandalog Hrag Vartanian and Adam COST will be speaking on a panel at Doyle New York next week in anticipation of their upcoming street art auction.
• NYC has some great art on its trucks and vans.
• Endless Canvas’ Special Delivery warehouse show looks like it’s got some cool work from Swampy, GATS, Feral Child and others, but really it’s clear that photos do not do the show justice and that you had to be there.
• Adam Neate has a solo show coming up at Elms Lesters in London.
• And Gris1 has a solo show coming up in Marseille.
• My final show to mention this week is Roa’s show opening on Saturday at 941 Geary in SF.
• Know Hope’s latest zine is now available.
• SFMOMA as acquired a huge Margaret Kilgallen piece.
• Invader actually sent a space invader to space.
• Leon Reid IV’s The Hundred Story House project has been installed and is now active.
• The Weird crew’s latest mural features some nutty Disney characters.

Photo by Zéh Palito

Oakland has some of the most exciting and slightly underground graffiti and street art going on the USA right now, and GATS (which stands for Graffiti Against The System) is one of the most exciting guys in that already exciting city. iamOTHER is making some videos about what’s going on in Oakland, with a particular focus on GATS. The first part of that series is above.

GoddoG

It’s time to talk about what other people have been talking about:

• Graffuturism has photos of Roid’s recent solo show, which looks great.
• SKL0 is a street artist in Singapore who may be facing up to 3 years in prison for allegedly putting up fantastic stickers and fake road signs. This petition was started to hopefully get the authorities in Singapore to lessen the charges against SKL0.
• Dran has released a new poster print of one of his paintings.
• Conor Harrington’s has made his visit to this year’s FAME Festival, with stunning results. I’m loving his new rough and half-finished looking pieces.
• Remi/Rough has a solo show opening at Unit44 in Newcastle on June 22nd.
• The opening of Flying Fortress’ first New York solo show is going on right now at Mighty Tanaka in Brooklyn.
• I always enjoy a nice piece by GATS.
• This post on Hyperallergic pretty much exactly echos my thoughts about a Kickstarter project that hopes to raise $1 million to temporarily cover New York’s water tanks in art by celebrities and celebrity artists (and a couple of cool artists too, admittedly).

Photo by GoddoG

Ernest Doty, David Polka and Thomas Christopher Haag

One of the most under-appreciated but active street art and graffiti scenes in the USA must be in Oakland, California. Luckily, the site Endless Canvas does great job of posting some of the highlights of what’s going on. Here are a few of my favorite pieces that were just photographed in the last two months…

"May Day" by unknown artist

More after the jump… Read the rest of this article »

Gut by thesaltr

It’s that time again…

Kanos by SOKE

Gun by TheHarshTruthOfTheCameraEye

Mers by thesaltr

Pink Eye / Gats by thesaltr

Kroma by TheSaltr

Photos by TheHarshTruthOfTheCameraEye and TheSaltr  

Swampy at The Railyard

Thanks to Endless Canvas for turning us on to this story.

It seems that police pressure in Portland has resulted in The Railyard gallery being evicted from their location. The Railyard opened earlier this summer with an installation-based show where dozens of artists (including Swampy, Feral Child and Gats) painted on the walls of the space. Portland police claim that the gallery is responsible, through that show, for bringing artists to Portland who then painted street art and graffiti illegally while they were in town. On the one hand, this whole thing is ridiculous: The Railyard is not responsible for what artists do in their spare time, and the work that The Railyard is responsible for was painted legally (and looks pretty good too). On the other hand, I’m surprised that more police around the world don’t try this tactic. Probably because a. it’s a difficult case to prove and b. it makes the police look like uncultured jerks. Shutting down art galleries isn’t exactly a popular move. Although in this case, it sounds like the police just used intimidation rather than actually pressing charges, so there’s really nothing that would have to be proven in court.

Get the full details on this series of events here and here.

Best of luck to The Railyard. Hopefully they can move to a new space where the police will leave them alone.

Photo by Nuclear Winter

Via Endless Canvas

Spoke Art‘s next show opens this Friday with a New Years Eve Party at the Lopo and Space galleries in SF. For me, the highlight of this show undoubtedly looks to be the room curated by Endless Canvas. As I wrote just a few days ago, I think GATS is awesome, and if Endless Canvas’ blog is anything to go by, those guys have a great eye and will put together a unique room that is definitely worth checking out. It’s not on the flier, but Feral Child will also have work in Endless Canvas’ room, which is awesome. And even though I think his May solo show was very very very heavily influenced by Faile, I want to see what Shark Toof does this time around.

Not sure about the rest of the artists, but if you’re on the fence about checking it out, I’d give Spoke Art the benefit of the doubt. They haven’t been around long, but they’ve put together a few great shows.

Photo by Keoki Seu

I’ve been admiring the street art/graffiti that GATS has been painting in California for a while now, but somehow his work has managed to more or less escape mention on Vandalog. From stickers to roller and everything in between, GATS seems to be killing it on the street. He’s also got a cool screenprint available online for cheap. Here are some of my favorites from GATS…

Photo by funkandjazz

Photo by funkandjazz

Photo by funkandjazz

Thanks to Endless Canvas for introducing me to GATS’ work.

Photos by Keoki Seu and funkandjazz

This should be good. Spoke Art‘s next show open’s this week at Lopo Gallery in San Fransisco and it has a few of my favorite underrated West Coast artists. Foremost among those is, of course, Emory Douglas, one of Shepard Fairey’s biggest inspirations and a great artist in his own right. I’m reading two different books right now about black liberation theology which pretty much say that I can’t appreciate Emory Douglas’ art because I’m white, but I can’t help myself.

Additionally, The Bridge Is Over includes Justin Lovato, Daryll Peirce and GATS (who I don’t think I’ve blogged about before, but whose work I’ve been admiring online for a while as similar to what people like Faro, Swampy and the Burning Candy and Everfresh crews are doing meshing street art and graffiti). Admittedly, the number of artists is this show is large enough to guarantee some bad art will find it’s way in, but that’s just the nature of large group shows.

The Bridge Is Over opens on Saturday, November 27th at Lopo Gallery.

Via Endless Canvas