Street art is moving online. If you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably noticed that street artists are making art on the street for the purpose of photographing it and sharing the images online (and maybe you remember these posts). I think it is too early to say for sure whether this transition is a good thing, a bad thing or just change, but it has gotten so pervasive that street art that comments on street art now often focuses on pointing out this transition from in-the-flesh street art to art that was intended to be shared digitally. Here are a few recent examples…

1. Reblog This by mobstr (shown above). This piece was painted in Shoreditch, a spot where it would have been seen by countless street art photographers, but it only lasted 7 hours before getting buffed. No matter. Mobstr got a great photo of it and put that photo online. Now it’s all ready to be reblogged on tumblr.

2. What ever happened to street art on the street? by Lush. Both a comment on the proliferation of street art online and the commercialization of the movement. This image is available as a print at Backwoods Gallery. Lush has also made animated gifs of his work, something else that can only be viewed digitally but is created on the street.

3. Fine by Elfo. The text is in Italian and references this work by Giuseppe Chiari. It translates to “Street art is finished, stop all together.” Rather than painting this in a busy city center, Elfo put it on an abandoned building in what looks like the countryside. The audience for the work is (primarily) the audience that will see this photo online and Elfo is well aware of that. Does this mean the death of street art though? Of course not. Chiari continued making art after his declaration, and Elfo has already made more street art. It’s just that Elfo’s public is primarily a digital one, either seeking his work out or coming across it randomly on a site like tumblr, but either way viewing it for free.

For more about this shift towards a digital street and a digital public, here are two posts I wrote a while ago.

Photos by mobstr, Lush and Elfo

Photo by Luna Park

I’ve recently been spending a lot of my recent free time with a paint roller getting the inside of a building to look very white, so to counterbalance that, I’ve been seeking out some more disruptive uses of paint rollers. Here are a few recent pieces that I came across.

Mighty Mo, Sweet Toof and Nemo. Photo by Alex Ellison

Roller and photo by mobstr

You Go Girl! Photo by Damonabnormal

Horror and Rowdy rollers. Rocks by Rowdy. Photo by Becki Fuller

Photos by Luna Park, Alex Ellison, mobstr, Damonabnormal and Becki Fuller

Here’s something new from Mobstr in London. Let’s be honest: I have a feeling that his trick to not getting arrested might have to do with doing street art rather than graffiti.

Photo by AdversMedia

Because it’s been a crazy/confusing/disappointing week, in so many ways…

That’s by Mobstr, who has just relaunched his website and put out a print.

mobstr. Photo by mobstr

Both mobstr and Eyesaw have just done some new ad disruptions. The above piece by mobstr is pretty standard, but I like that the original ad is actually showing through and makes up the text. Eyesaw has done two new ad disruptions in bus-stop billboards. The below disruption is actually right around the corner from me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look great in person, but it comes across very well in photos and it’s one less ad out there. So that’s good. Check out Hooked for Eyesaw’s other new disruption.

Eyesaw. Photo by Hooked

Photos by mobstr and Hooked

£1,000 by mobstr, part of The Commodity Series. Photo by mobstr

Because the humor in these pieces is similar, I’m throwing them together in one post.

First, mobstr‘s new series of paintings is called The Commodity Series. I’m a fan. Sort of like On Kawara, but funny. So far it’s four paintings: £1, £10, £1,000 and £10,000. And yes, I know that blogs like Vandalog are probably part of the butt of this joke, as they should be.

And then there’s Paul Richard’s latest piece. Paul is one of those hidden gems that not nearly enough people know about. He’s always on the mark. Here’s what he has to say about graffiti:

Photo by Lois Stavsky

Photos by mobstr and Lois Stavsky

New from mobstr. Just watch.

DEJA VU from mobstr on Vimeo.

Stencil and photo by Mobstr

Here are a few bits of street art in London that I’ve been liking. Some new artwork from Roa, Stormie Mills, Mobstr and Zezão…

Zezão. Photo by HowAboutNo!

Stormie Mills. Photo by HowAboutNo!

Roa. Photo by HowAboutNo!

Photos by HowAboutNo! and Mobstr

Mobstr just sent over this series of photos. I imagine the buff man has been laughing to himself about all this…

Photos by Mobstr

Billboard by Mobstr

This link post is definitely going to be a weekly thing. Hopefully it will allow me to link to things that I just haven’t had the time to cover here on the blog, my Twitter or Vandalog’s Facebook page. So here’s what you may have missed in street art this week:

• My Love For You Is A Stampede of Horses and Arrested Motion have two sets of amazing photos from Fecal Face‘s 10 year anniversary show at The Luggage Store in SF. This show has a pretty sick line up including Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Jim Houser, Swoon and Maya Hayuk.
• Nychos’ solo show at Pure Evil Gallery (in cooperation with End of The Line) opened on Thursday. Go here for the press release sort of info or go here for photos from the opening.
• That I May See, Matt Small’s latest solo show, opened last week at Black Rat Projects and it looks absolutely stunning. My family and I can’t thank Matt enough for his support of the Robert Shitima School in Zambia, which is where Matt and Black Rat Press have decided to donate 40% of the proceeds from this show.
• Eelus, Logan Hicks, Eine, Lucy McLachlan and others are headed to Gambia next month for the Wide Open Walls project.
• OFFSET has once again put together an interesting conference of creatives who will be speaking next month (October 1st-3rd) in Dublin. OFFSET 2010 will have presentations from Gary Baseman, Steve Powers, Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective and many more. Early bird tickets are available online for 150 euros (with discounts for students thankfully).
• A very touching work of street art in Brooklyn.
• Just Seeds has put together Resourced, a set for political posters that you can download and print at home. There are designs by Gaia, Armsrock, Chris Stain, Josh MacPhee and many more artists.
• When I first heard about JR’s new Unframed project, I didn’t really care for it. Basically, JR is wheatpasting other photographers (often famous) photographs around in cities. To me, this sort came out of left field. I don’t mind when Blek le Rat does similar things, but with JR, I always liked the stories behind the photos as much as the images themselves. I thought that with Unframed, that aspect of the art would go away. Luckily, Angelo at FAME Festival reassured me in an email and said once I learned more about the project, these would be just as interesting as the rest of JR’s art. Because I trust Angelo, I waited and didn’t write anything about Unframed or JR’s piece at FAME Festival. Earlier this week, Hi-Fructose’s blog posted a better explanation of the project as well as some photos of Unframed taking place in Switzerland. As usual, Angelo was right and after reading that post on Hi-Fructose, I’ve been convinced about Unframed.

Photo by Mobstr