El Decertor

Thanks to spending the weekend in NYC for Skewville’s show at Factory Fresh (on now and great), I am late with this week’s link-o-rama. Nonetheless, here it is:

• When David Choe painted Facebook’s offices back in 2005, he was given two options: He could either take a couple thousand dollars as payment, or stock in the company. He chose the stock. Assuming that Choe has held onto that stock, the New York Times estimates that Choe may be worth $200 millions pretty soon. So of course, Choe ended up on the front page of the NYTimes and is being written about all over the web, but he is also a talented artist. Here’s some of what he painted in Facebook’s offices (he just painted their new offices as well) and here’s what Choe and a few friends got up to in Denver recently.
• Eloquent Vandals, a film about the Nuart festival, is now streaming online.
• Ron English has two great new sculptures that are well-worth checking out: Fat Tony (the tiger) which will be for sale as a toy and Hulk Obama, which looks like a customization by Ron that may or may not ever be for sale.
• Another great wall by Phlegm in Sheffield.
• Dabs and Myla have a touching Christmas tradition (now let’s get a fun discussion going in the comments about the ethics/humility of making a video about that tradition).
• This collaboration between Reka, Ghostpatrol and TwoOne turned out really nicely.

Photo by El Decertor

The Nuart festival in Stavanger, Norway has just posted this video of Herakut’s installation from last year’s festival.

Herakut Nuart 2011 from NUART on Vimeo.

Photos courtesy of Nuart

While David Choe and his collaborator DVS1′s contributions to Nuart 2011 were mentioned a couple of months ago, Nuart has just posted this video of all the work coming together. It’s cool to see these two talented guys at work, plus be reminded of what a great installation they put together for Nuart.

Bust in Amsterdam

Happy almost Halloween. It’s been a week of wasted energy, or so it seems. A potential legal wall that I was organizing has fallen through for the time being, but hopefully things are just delayed rather than cancelled. Here’s some of what I should have posted about this week:

• Reported, this sculpture at Occupy London was made and left there by Banksy, but that claim is unconfirmed by Banksy so far. Nonetheless, Zeus added this modification to the piece. And Above has also made some work in solidarity with the Occupy movement. Similarly to K-Guy’s work at Occupy London, I’m conflicted here. On the one hand, it’s great when artists who know how to get headlines do so in solidarity with a political movement of sorts, but on the other hand these artists are of course latching on to the movement and associating themselves with it in a way that they know will get headlines and potentially help them sell some paintings. Of course the same could be said of many of the celebrity speakers who have been generally well-received at Occupy events. So there’s that dilemma to think about.
• Faile are the latest artists to hit the wall at Bowery and Houston.
• Last time I was in NYC, I saw this billboard for Hennessy cognac with designs by Kaws. Just interesting to see the flip from a decade ago when Kaws would have modified that billboard illegal to insert his work onto it in an effort to associate with the Hennessy brand, and now Hennessy pays Kaws to associate with their brand. Also, this new Kaws/Snoopy toy goes on sale today on Kaws’ website. Okay, one last bit of Kaws news: I love this new painting by him.
• This is a nice video of ECB painting a wall in London.
• The Citrus Report interviewed Feral Child.
• John Baldessari’s views on street art.
• The Nuart festival book is available for pre-order.
• TrustoCorp’s show at Opera Gallery in NYC looks like a lot of fun.
• Here are two articles about street art and graffiti in Libya and other countries being impacted by the Arab Spring.

Photo by Bust

Vhils for Nuart 2010

With fall approaching (hopefully quickly after all the time I’ve been spending in 100 degree weather), another edition of Stavanger, Norway’s Nuart festival is just around the corner. This year, Nuart will break away from the murals that its become known for in favor of an event more like The Underbelly Project or Hell’s Half Acre: While there will still be some walls painted around the city, most of the festival will be indoors where artists will focus on painting directly on the walls of “seven abandoned 17x5x5 meter tunnels [and] a 50meter long access tunnel with an entrance hall equal in size to the cities largest gallery.”

And here’s this year’s artist line up… Dan Witz, David Choe, Herakut, Herbert Baglione, Escif, Hyuro, Tellas, Lucy McLauchlan, Dolk, Phlegm and Vhils.

Photo by kalevkevad

Unknown artist in TriBeCa

With the riots and protests in Egypt, I thought the above sticker is a worthwhile thing to consider this week. I’m a bit late on this week’s link-o-rama.

• If you like Simon and Garfunkel, this one’s for you.
• I love you so much.
• A TWIST bus stop from 1995. And intense Barry McGee fans may appreciate this video, but it’s kind of lost on me.
• Seems really interesting that this piece has text in English even though it’s placed in Iran. As if they intended for a good number people to see it online in the Western world and placed as much importance on that as on people seeing it in person.
• The Nuart documentary is streaming live online on Monday.
• An artist in Toronto is posting up portraits of his dead partner.
• This seems like odd placement of an LA Freewalls mural by INSA, given that I’m pretty sure he claims his work is about not objectifying.
• Swampy was interviewed for the NYTimes Magazine.
• Juxtapoz has two posts detailing the Shepard Fairey and Mark Mothersbaugh show currently on at Subliminal Projects. Shepard’s stuff looks really good.
• Shepard has being having a very reasoned dialog on his website about the 2nd amendment.
• Hyperallergic reviewed Street|Studio, a book about the Melbourne street art and graffiti scene written by Miso, Ghostpatrol and Alison Young.
• This looks like a crazy group show in LA next week.
• Ripo’s solo show in Barcelona looks nice.

Photo by Loisinwonderland

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

Been in NYC for the last few days. Besides being busy, it seems like the hotel I was at still hadn’t quite figured out the concept of wifi extending to all rooms in the hotel… So now I’ve got a lot of stories to post about. Here’s what I missed while I was away, though you may have read about it elsewhere:

• I’ve actually been meaning to post about this for a while. Ken Harman from Arrested Motion and the Hi-Fructose Blog, just curated one of the better group shows I’ve seen. Some artists of particular note would be Emory Douglas (a major influence on Shepard Fairey and important propaganda-maker in his own right), Dabs, Myla, Mike Shine and Monica Canilao. A Decade With No Name is open on Saturdays and Sundays through September 12th at 54 Washington St. Oakland, CA. My Love For You Is A Stampede of Horses has photos of Monica’s installation, and Spoke has photos of everything else and is where you can purchase the artwork.
• Papergirl NY is bringing Germany’s Papergirl concept to the USA. Basically, artists get together to distribute a bunch of free art to members of the public by riding around on bikes. Their YouTube video shows what happens in a bit more detail. Papergirl NY events are taking place in New York City this week. On Tuesday and Wednesday they will be at the DUMBO Arts Center, and then Papergirl will move to The Armory where you can find them Friday through Sunday.
• Mobstr hasn’t been around forever, but his humor can already rival Banksy.
• Blu and Ericailcane are in Stavanger for Nuart, and their wall is one of Blu’s boldest political statements yet (after all, Stavanger is an oil-funded city, and oil money from taxes pretty much funds Nuart). Nice stuff.
• I’m loving Shepard Fairey’s portrait of Johnny Ramone at Signal Gallery’s Beyond Punk show.
• Graffiti in New Orleans after Katrina.
• Luzinterruptus has made some “urban nests.”
• I’m hoping to post some more about this in the coming days, but Jordan Seiler as written on his blog about his experiences at Living Walls.
• Once5 aka Jeffrey Pena has a solo show coming up at My Addiction Gallery in Tucson, Arizona. Pena has a nice timelapse on YouTube of him putting up a large paper-cut in Brooklyn.

So that’s it for now, but I should be back to daily posts now.

I don’t want to hype this up too much, but last weekend I had a really enjoyable time at Nuart in Stavanger and I can’t believe there aren’t more tourists flying out to see this festival. Here are a few pics.

This first pic is by me, the rest are by Ian Cox.

Skewville

David Choe and DVS

Skewville and Chris Stain

David Choe

Swoon

And Logan Hicks made this cool time lapse animation of David Choe and DVS painting:

There are a lot of street art books in stores today. And most of them follow a simple formula: Take photos (or more often than not, acquire them for nothing from other photographers), lay them out on a page, mislabel all the photos so that work by Mister MN is said to be by Adam Neate, think up a title, print the book. Some books in this format are great, some are not, but this is what you expect from a street art book. Well The Adventures of Darius and Downey is absolutely nothing like that. Not one bit. For one thing, Adventures is a non-fiction/creative non-fiction book 200-odd pages in length, and instead of just throwing a bunch of photographs together, this book tells a story.

Naturally, Adventures is about the street art duo Darius and Downey (aka Leon Reid IV and Brad Downey), but it’s also about the street art and graffiti scene in the early 2000’s. Nobody else has really had his or her street art career described in this way before. Sure, you can read interviews or watch documentaries and get the gist of how Barry McGee or Faile got to where they are today, but D&D are the only ones so far to have set out the whole story in print, and as pioneers of sculptural street art and non-typographical graffiti, they deserve that privilege.

And while reading Adventures definitely provides insight into D&D’s work, what I found even more interesting was the lifestyle and culture that they were a part of. Swoon wrote the intro to Adventures and is mentioned in the book, D&D ask permission from ESPO to paint over one of his spots, they confront Swatch, graffiti writer and “cataloger” of street art (aka, guy who steals pieces off of walls) and more.

The Adventures of Darius and Downey tells a story of a friendship and collaboration that changed the face of street art and this book should be essential reading for anybody who wants to learn about the history of street art, but it’s also just a great read. Readers won’t want to put this book down. It is a quick, fun read with much to say.

But why am I posting this review now, more than a year after the book was published and months after I read it? Well Brad Downey and Leon Reid IV are at Nuart2009 in Stavanger right now, which is where I am too. More on Nuart2009 on Monday.