Surge, Gaia, Stormie, Remi/Rough and in The Underbelly Project

UPDATE – LOCATION CHANGE: The Underbelly Show has moved to 78 NW 25th Street in Wynwood, Miami to accommodate the large scale of the artwork in this show.

The Underbelly Project is back. Last year, I posted a lot about the project where 103 artists from around the world secretly painted an abandoned/half-completed New York City subway station. After that initial burst of press here and around the web, The Underbelly Project organizers stayed silent. With only occasional vague tweets from a mysterious twitter account and the appearance on Amazon of an upcoming book about the project. Yesterday though, The Underbelly Project announced that they will be participating in this year’s Basel Miami Week madness with a pop-up gallery in South Beach Wynwood.

The organizers of The Underbelly Project and The Underbelly Show, Workhorse and PAC, have this to say about the show:

Workhorse: The New York Underbelly was an important chapter for us, but the story hadn’t been comprehensively told. The Underbelly Miami show gives us a chance to present the broad scope of documentation – Videos, photos, time-lapses and first hand accounts. The project is about more than just artwork. This show gives us a chance to show the people and the environment behind the artwork.

PAC: While the experience each artist had in their expedition underground can never be captured, it is my hope that this show will highlight some of the trials and tribulations associated with urban art taking place in the remote corners of our cities. Too often the practice of making art in unconventional venues remains shrouded in mystery and I hope this exhibition will shine a faint light on those artists who risk their safety to find alternative ways to create and be a part of the cities they live in.

35 of the 103 artists from The Underbelly Project will be exhibiting art in The Underbelly Show, plus video and still footage of the artists at work in the tunnel. Here’s the full line-up: Faile, Dabs & Myla, TrustoCorp, Aiko, Rone, Revok, Ron English, Jeff Soto, Mark Jenkins, Anthony Lister, Logan Hicks, Lucy McLauchlan, M-City, Kid Zoom, Haze, Saber, Meggs, Jim & Tina Darling, The London Police, Sheone, Skewville, Jeff Stark, Jordan Seiler, Jason Eppink and I AM, Dan Witz, Specter, Ripo, MoMo, Remi/Rough, Stormie Mills, Swoon, Know Hope, Skullphone, L’Atlas, Roa, Surge, Gaia, Michael De Feo, Joe Iurato, Love Me, Adam 5100, and Chris Stain.

For this show, the space will be transformed into an environment imitating the tunnel where The Underbelly Project took place, right down to playing sounds recorded in the station while The Underbelly Project was happening.

If you absolutely cannot wait until February to get We Own The Night, the book documenting The Underbelly Project, a limited number will be available at The Underbelly Show in a box set with 9 photographic prints and the book all contained in a handcrafted oak box. Additionally, you will be able to your book signed by the artists participating in The Underbelly Show.

The Underbelly Show will take place at 2200 Collins Avenue, South Beach, Miami 78 NW 25th Street, Wynwood, Miami. There will be a private opening on November 30th, and the space will be open to the general public December 2nd-5th, with a general opening on the 2nd from 8-10pm.

Photo by RJ Rushmore

Galo and Pixelpancho in Miami (click to view large)

Well, I was expecting to see my family today, but snow in London have half of them stuck there. Luckily, snow where I am in Colorado is keeping me busy. Too busy to post very much unfortunately. Here’s what I’ve been missing:

• Roadsworth is Lisbon. Definitely check this out.
• Todd Seelie took some great photos of Monica Canilao and Saelee Oh making a beautiful installation in Detroit.
• M-City killed it in Miami even though his stencils arrived days after he did.
• While I didn’t care for Banksy’s latest print release at all, he did give the proceeds (almost £100,000 in total) to a great cause.
• Yellow Pants‘ first show, at Montana’s gallery in Lisbon, looks fabulous. With art from Remed, Zosen, Maya Hayuk and others, how could it go wrong?
• I’m way late on this, but Ron English made some shirts with Hurley earlier this year.
• Sometimes Mint and Serf (who work together as Mirf) do some interesting things. Other times that say crazy things. In an interview with Brooklyn Street Art, Mint said this “So back in April I designed the original Mirf poster and put a bunch of them in Russia. It was one of the first times I’ve seen graffiti being put up on the street but with wheat paste.” While he’s not taking credit for inventing wheatpasting for graffiti, he’s definitely taking too much credit for something that isn’t particularly innovative in 2010.
• DabsMyla and Greg Simpkins teamed up for this great mural in LA.
• World War Won’s new logo for Hackney would be a perfect way to spice up their image a bit.
• Postermat, the latest show at The Hole in NYC, sounds like it will either be awesome or really really terrible. If you go, let me know what you think.

Beautiful night. Photo by Workhorse

One of my roommates came by a few minutes ago and asked “So, did shit hit the fan?” He knew I was posting something about Underbelly yesterday, but he’s not really the artsy type so he didn’t know quite what it was.

Well indeed shit has hit the fan, but mostly in a good way so far. The Underbelly Project made it into The New York Times and The Age. Also, Ian Cox and Luna Park have posted their photos on their respective blogs. And their photos are much better than mine, so check them out.

It seems most people are liking the project, even if some have some reservations. As one commenter on my last post pointed out, maybe you had to be there to experience some of the awesomeness, but it’s still pretty cool. I think that’s a fair assessment. Some artists’ work is best viewed in person, and the best artworks in The Underbelly Project tend to fall into that category. Posterchild put up an interactive sculpture, and Dan Witz’ art is definitely more powerful when it comes as a surprise and in person.

But there’s been one criticism that I absolutely don’t buy: That The Underbelly Project was conceived and executed purely for commercial gain. Yeah, later this week I’ll be posting a trailer to a documentary about the project, but the organizers, who I think are two very bright people, would have to be complete idiots to do this project if their only interest was a sick book deal. Yeah, there are street artists and graffiti writers out there who do illegal work to get attention and doing well-promoted street art can sell a painting or two. I’ve called out people on doing things like that before. That said, the scale and risk of The Underbelly Project is greater than what could be often by any likely monetary rewards. It would be much easier and less risky to either fake the entire project in a warehouse somewhere or just do something that relies on one or two big events instead of a year of secrecy and dangerous activities. I highly doubt that The Underbelly Project will be an efficient way to make money for the participants, even with any future books or films or anything like that. When I was first told about The Underbelly Project, it was little more than an idea, and the idea was to create a secret street art and graffiti Mecca, not to make a million bucks.

Here are some more photos from down in the tunnel:

Lister. Photo by Garrett

Sinboy. Photo by RJ

Surge, The Flower Guy, Stormie, Indigo and somebody I don't know. Photo by RJ

Photo by Garrett

Photo by Garrett

Gaia. Photo by PAC

Mark Jenkins and Con. Photo by Workhorse

Paper Twins and 1010. Photo by PAC

M-City. Photo by Workhorse

Lister. Photo by RJ

Jeff Soto. Photo by RJ

Roa, Revok and Ceaze. Photo by RJ

I’ll continue this week to post more photos, but you can check out a more full set of my images on flickr.

Photos courtesy of The Underbelly Project (by Workhorse, PAC and Garrett) and by RJ

Unfortunately I didn’t hear about this show until after the opening, so I couldn’t give any Parisians reading a heads up about that, but M-City’s show Urban Jungle at Galerie Itinerrance in Paris is still on through October 30th. Pretty much looks like what you’d expect from M-City: crazy stenciled industrial landscapes cut and painted with technical skills that so many stencil artists somehow seem to lack.

I remember the first time I saw M-City’s work: there was a giant M-City piece at the original Cans Festival, but it was in the area where anybody with a stencil could paint (I did, and if they let me in, you know they were looking for quantity of artists, not quality). There were a lot of crap amateurs like me and my friends painting that spot, and then there was M-City (and also Hush). I couldn’t understand why M-City was in that part of the festival, and it made me worry that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be painting there. M-City was no amateur.

Photos courtesy of Galerie Itinerrance

M-City

Stavanger’s Nuart festival is well under way right now with some huge walls finished or in progress. This year’s Nuart is called The “Landmark” Series, and artists are not taking the challenge lightly. While in Stavanger last year, I thought that the city had been pretty transformed by street art, but now things are getting bigger than ever. A few weeks ago, Elisa posted here about Dotmasters’ Toy piece, but that’s just the start of what’s been going on.

Vhils in progress

EVOL didn't actually go huge, but he made a bunch of these (check out the Know Hope tag that was already on the box)

Alexandros Vasmoulakis

And I mentioned this piece by Blu and Ericailcane a while back, but didn’t actually post photos, so here are some photos of it:

Photos by kalevkevad

Since arriving in the states recently, M-City has been busy. There was that wall in New York. Then the show at Carmichael Gallery. And now M-City has just done what I’m guessing must be his biggest piece to date. It is huge. Unurth made this video of the 380 foot long wall:

M-City Painting in LA from unurth on Vimeo.

I have been awfully busy recently with my various gallery and journal duties, but I just wanted to take a second to quickly share the way things are looking here at the moment. Boogie is the first photographer to have a solo here at Carmichael Gallery so it’s an important show for us. I’ve loved his work for a really long time (you can see more of it here) and the pieces we’re showing this month mark a really special stage in his career. I was curious to meet someone who’s lived and documented the world the way he has, and as I’ve gotten to know him this week I’ve really come to understand where that fascinating understanding of humanity comes from. He’s an amazing person.

As for M-City, anyone who knows me at all knows I’m a massive fan and have long supported everything he does. The last time we worked with him was a group show back in 2008 and we never talked seriously about working together again until just recently. My long-held belief that he is one of the world’s most talented street artists hasn’t changed from meeting him – I just know now that he’s a really nice person, too. He’s also very hard-working – he literally hasn’t stopped since he got here and now that the show is up, he’s going off to work on a huge wall downtown! I’ll keep you posted.

Anyway, there’s my promotion of my gallery and the artists currently inhabiting it. I really am proud to be working with these two.

- Elisa

Let’s start in Brooklyn: M-City has just painted this huge wall. Brooklynite Gallery was there to take plenty of photos. Here are some detailed shots:

And all the way on the other side of the country in Los Angeles: Carmichael Gallery have a show with M-City in their showcase space. It opens on this Saturday, July 10th. Something definitely worth checking out.

Photos by Brooklynite Gallery

Over the past two nights, M-City and I painted this collaborative mural on Malcolm X Blvd under the auspices of Brooklynite Gallery. It was a pleasure to work with this incredible artist and frankly the painting went swimmingly, without so much as a single conflict in our styles or vision. A big shout out to Mikeion for the fantastic documentation and the wonderful Brooklyn Street Art for the coverage

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