Update: Ron English just announced TWO MORE events of his opening this Saturday in Beacon, bringing the grand total up to four.

Ron English is taking over Main Street in Beacon, New York this week with two shows opening at 6pm on Saturday. Both shows offer insights into English’s artistic process, showing a bit of behind-the-scenes preparatory work. At X on Main, English’s Between The Scenes show is made up of his first new series of photographs in 25 years. The photographs will be the ones he uses as studies for his paintings, which are often based on extremely complex dioramas that he creates in his studio. Between The Scenes runs through July 26th. Just down the street at Clutter Gallery, Thought Factory will be a show of the sketches and drawings that serve as the basis for English’s toys (plus some custom toys and special releases).

Caroline and I will be there, and we’ll be coming up from Philadelphia, so surely some New Yorkers should be making the trip as well.

Photo by break.things

“The American Cousins” by Cekis in Fleury-Les Aubrais, France

So as finals exams and essays begin to creep up on me (70-ish pages to write in the next month), these link-o-rama posts are going to become essential until the school year is up, so you know, I encourage you to read them closely.

• Aryz has a solo show coming up in San Fransisco at Upper Playground’s Fifty24SF. David Choe is a fan, and says that it’s gonna be a “feeding frenzy” with collectors wanting to buy out the show 100x over even before anyone has seen the work.
• Of course, if you’re looking for something you can get your hands on, I’m loving this print from Unga.
• Ron English recently released a monochrome grey version of his Temper Tot figure on his website.
• Sam3 gets me every time.
• The Carbon Festival is on this weekend in Melbourne.
• I’ve got to hand it to TrustoCorp for making this sweet suitcase device to spray stencils in broad daylight. They also been distributing a bunch of custom cereal box artworks (in collaboration with other artists like Shepard Fairey) around LA for people to hunt down.
• Those pretty blah painted shutters near the New Museum are getting painted again. Sounds like more blah.

Photo courtesy of Ville de Fleury-les-Aubrais

Dart, PC, Curve, Rams, and Sane

As I’ve been gearing up for midterms, I’ve missed posting some great outdoor work (and other things) this week.

• Does the buffman have a sense of humor or did mobstr do this himself?
• Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, & Laurie Reid showing together in SF.
• You may have seen the video of Margaret Kilgallen on Art21 before, but here’s some previously unseen footage of her and Barry McGee from that shoot.
• I love this piece by Disk.
• And also this one by the highly underrated Ludvig.
• There’s a fundraiser to benefit Essam, the artist who was beyond those brilliant drone strike posters and then subsequently arrested, taking place later this month.
• Graffiti geeks will love this tattoo flash.
• Jack Murray aka Panik ATG has written a must-read post about some historic London graffiti on The Foundry being covered by a street-art-emulating ad for Microsoft’s Surface. Hopefully somebody once again uses that surface for something creative very soon.
• Ron English has a new colorway of his Temper Tot art toy for sale exclusively on his website.
• I’m not quite sure what has happened here. First, an artist who goes by the name Edwin painted this piece in Hackney Wick. Now, it looks like this. It seems to me that Sweet Toof went up and added his teeth to the piece as a subtle diss to Edwin for ripping off Lenny The High Roller, the character that Sweet Toof and Cyclops used to paint back when their Burning Candy crew really dominated Hackney Wick. Yes, lots of street artists paint skulls and graffiti writers paint skulls, but the similarities here, particularly the eyes and given the location, are too much to ignore as mere coincidence. Also, this might be a stretch, but the hands in Edwin’s piece kinda look like Gold Peg’s hands (who also painted with Burning Candy in Hackney Wick and elsewhere).
• This film about M. Chat is screening in Philadelphia next week at the Slought Foundation. Strange thing though. The description of the film actually never gives the name of the artist, but M. Chat has a Wikipedia article and a Twitter account and shows work in galleries. Additionally, the Slought Foundation has posted downloadable templates of M. Chat’s work for people to customize and put up on their own. I called up the Slought Foundation and was told that Thoma Vuille, the man who it seems was behind M. Chat, is not involved in the show, although the man I spoke with suggested that the M. Chat logo may have been painted by a collective rather than just one man (like The Toasters collective with one logo and multiple members). So, is this appropriation of an unexplained urban mystery or theft an artist’s creation? I’m not one for strict copyright laws, but it does seem to me like the moral thing to do here would be to at least give some credit to Vuille aka M. Chat rather than pretend that the cat is still a complete mystery.

Photo by Carnagenyc

As I tweeted the other day, my mind is kinda stuck on how much I wish the Parra show at Jonathan Levine Gallery opened today and not on Saturday so that I could go see it. So while I’ve been distracted by that point, here’s some of what I almost missed this week:

• KATSU’s April Fools prank is a bit early, but still pretty funny.
• The Outsiders / Lazarides has some really nice prints by Ron English. They are variations on his Figment image, aka Andy Warhol wig and a skull.
• Barry McGee, Chris Johanson and Laurie Reid are showing together at City College and SF starting today.
• Here’s a new piece from the always-interesting 0331c, but if you don’t know 0331c’s work, here’s an introduction.
• Nice video of Eine updating one of his walls in London from saying PRO PRO PRO to PROTAGONIST. Interesting comment about street art being a thing that “looked like it would offer what graffiti promised but didn’t deliver.”
• Nychos x Jeff Soto = Yes!
• New work from Isaac Cordal.
• Woah. Nice work from How and Nosm in San Fransisco.
• Jonathan Jones is up to his old tricks of dissing Banksy to get more hits for his column, and I’m biting. He writes, “Banksy, as an artist, stops existing when there is no news about him.” Even if that is the case, is that the end of the world? Does that relegate Banksy to “art-lite”? No. Banksy is one of the most talked-about artists in the world. I would bet that the same criticism was leveled against Warhol, who I believe Jones likes. Banksy’s manipulation of the media, playing it like a damn violin sometimes, is some of his greatest artwork of all. He manipulates the media to spread a message. The best example of this was probably him going to Bethlehem to paint on the separation wall because he knew that the media would cover it. He was able to play the media to draw attention to an issue that he felt strongly about. Banksy’s paintings are sometimes great and sometimes not. But his ability to make people fascinated with him and his paintings is just as much of an art, and that shouldn’t discredit him.

Photo by Luna Park

Ankles

Back to school on Tuesday. Actually, I’m okay with that. And of course, it means more time blogging because it means more time procrastinating. Here’s some of what we missed this week while Caroline and I were on vacation:

• New print from Ron English of his Obama/Hulk custom toy.
• If you’re a fan of Remi/Rough, you should have a look at his new book.
• Vhils has a new mural.
• And Elbowtoe put up a huge new wheatpaste based on one of his collages.
• Martha Cooper and Ian Cox discuss photographing the Paris edition of The Underbelly Project.
• Dan Witz has a show coming up at Lazarides’ Rathbone Place location.
• Zeus (British, not French) also has a show coming up in London.
• And then there’s the show with Nice One and Lucx at Chicago’s Galerie F which opened on Friday night.
• Complex.com has some advice for success as a street artist from Kid Zoom, How&Nosm, Eric Haze, and others. Kid Zoom’s tip? “Don’t be a street artist.”

Photo by Ankles

Adam Clark’s Billboard Bandits: Outlaw Artists in the Sky, published this year, is 208 pages of photos, entry level information on graffiti culture (i.e. What are throw-ups, pieces, and billboard backs?), profiles and personal anecdotes in the vernacular of true writers (which includes explicit language).

The book is divided into two sections by graffiti and street art, with “Billboard bombing” representing the graffiti camp of billboard interference, which seems to be a bit looser in definition given that many of the pieces were not on the ads directly, but above, below, on the walls behind, or on the backs of billboards. The street art portion, entitled “Billboard Liberation”, is a lot more limited in coverage but profiles some street art favorites like Ron English and Billboard Liberation Front. Clark’s distinction between the two subcultures is a necessary one for this topic since the motivation behind hitting billboards is entirely different: graffiti artists use billboards as a highly-visible platforms to proliferate their names, whereas street artists tend to utilize the space to express ideas. The common thread between both is the drive to deemphasize, interfere with, or eliminate the ubiquitous power of adverts.

The content is fit for a niche audience of LA graffiti heads, with featured West Coast writers such as AM7 Crew, Augor MSK, Bleek CBS Mayhem, Fuct AL LGF, Jeloe US BKF CF, Naut One, Pharoe LCF SOB, Pysa MSK LTS, and Silencer. For those people who would truly appreciate seeing these artists, I think the content in this book would be better published in the form of a regularly-updated blog. Works on a billboard are typically short lived, so the book can show recent and past works by artists but can’t update readers on how long the pieces lasted which is one of the interesting part of ad disruptions.

You can get a copy of Billboard Bandits here.

Photos courtesy of Art Crimes: Graffiti News and Events

Jade

It’s the weekend…

• This is not your average train-bombing video.
• Lois Stavsky interviews Stikman.
• Dennis McNett has an open studio this weekend, with some prints available at 25% off.
• Troy Lovegates has a new limited edition book available.
• Aiko, Ron English, Swoon, How & Nosm, Logan Hicks, Kenny Scharf, and Futura are showing work indoors at Wynwood Walls this week in Miami.
• Speaking of Miami, Brooklyn Street Art have a round up of great things to do and see in Miami this week.
• This work from Aakash Nihalani was done during Nuart earlier this fall, and I love it. It’s simple and site specific. Remember, always practice good placement. If you do that, you don’t have to paint 7 stories tall just to catch people’s attention.
• What Are You Doing To Participate looks like a great show of zines opening this week in LA with work from Mel Kadel, Matt Leines, Pez, and many more.
• Sickboy and Word To Mother have a show together in London next Thursday for one-night only.
• In Syria, street art and graffiti can get you killed.

Photo by Jade

So, I know that I haven’t seen too many shows in person this year, but of the ones I have, Ron English‘s Crucial Fiction show at Opera Gallery‘s New York location has to take the top slot. For most of the work in the show, Ron really does pop surrealism at it’s absolute best by creating pop-infuriated surreal scenes that draw you in and creep you out at the same time. The story behind Crucial Fiction is that the work is meant to be the result of a sort of dialog between Ron and his 8-year-old-self, the master now painting with impeccable technique what his childhood-self envisions. The paintings where this is most evident are some of the strongest pieces I’ve ever seen from Ron or any pop surrealist. Of the one piece in the show that was undoubtedly weak and out of place, all I’ll do is repeat what Caroline Caldwell once told me, “Glitter is the herpes of the art world.”

I’ve included a few photos here of some of my favorite pieces in Crucial Fiction, but Arrested Motion has a full set of photos from the show. Crucial Fiction is open now through November 29th, and it really is best experienced in person. And besides, I may not be the most trustworthy evaluator of the show since I went to the opening looking like this.

Read the rest of this article »

gilf!. Photo by Tali Blankfeld.

Last weekend we finished up The Art of Comedy with The New York Comedy Festival, Little Italy, Ron English, Hanksy, and gilf! with a tour around New York’s Little Italy to see all the new work that Ron, Hanksy and gilf! have painted there. We were even joined by comedian Jim Gaffigan and Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez. For those who couldn’t make it, here’s what’s new on Mulberry Street:

Ron English. Photo by Luna Park.

Hanksy. Photo by Jake Dobkin.

gilf!. Photo by Tali Blankfeld.

gilf!. Photo by Tali Blankfeld.

Hanksy. Photo by Tali Blankfeld.

Hanksy. Photo by Tali Blankfeld.

Jim Gaffigan was so taken with Hanksy’s piece staring that the two had been tweeting back and forth and Jim took his kids to see the wall. Hanksy knew that Jim would also be coming by the art crawl, and so he came prepared with a painting to give to Jim…

Jim’s new painting, Hanksy, Caroline Hirsch, Jim Gaffigan, Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, and Ralph Tramontana. Photo by Tali Blankfeld.

Ron English. Photo by Tali Blankfeld.

Photos by Tali Blankfeld, Luna Park, and Jake Dobkin

Hanksy

Come by NYC’s Little Italy tomorrow (Saturday the 10th) at noon for some food and street art at The Art of Comedy Art Crawl. We’ll be meeting at Caffe Roma on Mulberry and Broome and walking down to Sambuca’s Cafe by Mulberry and Canal. In between, we’ll be checking out all of the spots that gilf!, Hanksy, and Ron English recently painted along Mulberry as part of The New York Comedy Festival‘s art component, The Art of Comedy. Jim Gaffigan will be there to check out Hanksy’s piece depicting Jim at Mulberry and Grand, and Ron English will be putting a few finishing touches on his 30-foot-tall mural.

The event is free and open to anyone, but you can RSVP on Facebook.

Photo by Rhiannon Platt