Weekend link-o-rama

Unit 12, maybe. Photo by Dani Mozeson.
Unit 12 or Unit 112, maybe?

This link-o-rama is super helpful for me, because all week I’ve been working on my upcoming ebook instead of blogging. Hopefully the ebook will be out in November… Anyways, links:

  • I love that this show at LeQuiVive Gallery reframes a certain kind of work that often gets lumped in with street art or urban art as Neu Folk Revival, which describes the work much better than calling it street art or urban art or low-brow art. Some real talent in this show: Doodles, Troy Lovegates, Cannon Dill, ghostpatrol, Zio Ziegler, Daryll Peirce, Justin Lovato… It opens next month.
  • This piece by Part2ism needs to be seen. And look closely. That’s not just paint on the wall. Very interesting. I am glad to see Part2ism on the streets again, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. Once again, he has shown that he is ahead of the rest of us. This piece doesn’t look like graffiti. It doesn’t look like street art. It looks like art on the street, and that’s much too rare.Swampy has relaunched his website and posted a video diary sort of thing. I’m very curious what people think about it. Have a look and let me know.Check out this concept from Jadikan-LP: Art that only exists within Google Maps. Click the link. Explore the room. I normally hate lightpainting or “light graffiti,” but I absolutely love this piece. As far as I’m concerned, the internet is a public space and Jadikan-LP has invaded it with artwork, so this project is street art.
  • CDH wrote a really fascinating article in Art Monthly Australia about the commodification of street art. While I don’t agree with him entirely, I think it’s a must-read because at least it sparks some thoughts. It’s one of the best-written critiques I’ve read of the capitalistic nature of contemporary street art. Over on Invurt, they have posted CDH’s article as well as a response by E.L.K. (who CDH calls out in his critique). In his article, CDH called out E.L.K. for using stencils with so many layers that the work isn’t really street anymore, since stencils were initially used for being quick and a piece with 20 layers isn’t going to be quick. It’s just going to look technically interesting. Well, E.L.K. shot back in his response and made himself look like an idiot and seemingly declaring that all conceptual street art and graffiti is crap. There were arguments he could have made to defend complex stenciling or critique other points of CDH’s article, but instead E.L.K. mostly just attacked CDH as an artist. Anyway, definitely read both the original article and the response over at Invurt. The comments on the response are interesting as well.

Photo by Dani Mozeson

The Bridge Is Over – a group show from Spoke Art

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

Some upcoming shows

Here are a couple of shows opening this month that should be worth checking out…

1. C215‘s book launch in Paris: Community Service at Gallerie Itinerrance is a solo show for C215 and will also serve as the book launch for his upcoming Community Service book. The show opens on November 12th at 6pm.

2. Gallery Heist‘s 1-year anniversary exhibition: Till Death Do Us Part is a group show c0-curated by Allison and Garrison from Ad Hoc Art to celebrate Gallery Heist’s 1st birthday. The list of artists here is long but includes Gaia, Ludo, Mike Giant, Justin Lovato and Miso. The show opens on November 13th from 7-11pm, and runs through the 27th. And this show is not at Gallery Heist’s usual space. It’s at 1036 Hyde Street in San Fransisco.

3. Ghostpatrol and DeadLeg in Manchester: Mooch N4 in Manchester has a group show towards the end of November. I don’t know much about Mooch N4, but anybody who is showing Ghostpatrol outside of Australia is okay in my book. And DeadLeg has done some nice collaborations with Best Ever, so that should be interesting too. That shows opens on November 25th and runs through January 31st.

How I met Justin Lovato

While in Miami for Art Basel last month, I went to more than a dozen different fairs or exhibitions of one kind or another. And I barely scratched the surface of what was there. One night, I was out with a big group including people from Babelgum, Arrested Motion and a few other organizations. We were more or less wandering around Wynwood looking for any fairs that were still open. We ended up at Art Whino. I’d heard of Art Whino, but frankly hadn’t planned on going to the show. There was just so much going on that I didn’t think I would be able to find the time. Turns out, it was one of the more interesting exhibitions in Miami. There was artwork from Chris Stain, Billy Mode, PaperMonster and a whole assortment of others.

But for me, one artist stood out. This guy who had a sort of low-brow illustrator style, but not the kind that I normally hate. There was some substance to these paintings. I was absolutely loving all the paintings by this artist. His name was Justin Lovato. I happened to see Gaia nearby, so I rudely interrupted whatever conversation he was having with somebody I didn’t recognize and told them about how I had just found this amazing new artist called Justin Lovato. Turns out, the guy Gaia was talking to was Justin Lovato. Even better, Justin does paint the occasional piece outdoors, so it gave me an excuse to mention him here.

Here’s what Juxtapoz.com has said about Justin:

Here’s what we have to say: his art looks neat. The linework is nothing groundbreaking, reminiscent of a mix of Andrew Schoultz and Ferris Plock, but he has a distinctively rich, earthy palette and subtle use of stenciling incorporated with hand painting that makes us smile.

(oh, and make sure to click on these pics of his indoor work so that you can see them much larger and in the detail that they deserve to be seen in)

More after the jump… Continue reading “How I met Justin Lovato”