Sam3. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

We’ve been posting images here and there from the Bien Urbain mural festival that took place in Besançon, France, but now photos of all the works are on flickr. These are a few of my favorite images (from Sam3, Hyuro, Moneyless, TBLR-ONE, Escif, Quillograma, Nelio, ), but definitely take the time to check out this Bien Urbain flickr set to see everything from the festival.

Hyuro. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Hyuro (detail). Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Moneyless. Photo by D. Demougeot

OX. Photo by OX

TBLR-ONE. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Escif. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Quillograma and Nelio. Photo by Nelio

Photos by Nelio, E. Murcia Artengo, OX and D. Demougeot via Bien Urbain

Portrait of Steve Jobs in France

This weekend I’ll be in Boston. If you have any ideas for what I should get up to, leave a comment. I’ll definitely be checking out Swoon’s installation at the ICA Boston. Here’s what’s been going on in street art while I’ve been locked in my room studying all week:

• Steve Powers aka ESPO designed some beer cozies for The World’s Best Ever. They’re pretty okay, but should your beer cozy really be more than pretty okay? I would honestly feel a bit weird of my beer cozy had some brilliant high-brow design on it. Much more impressive is the latest in Powers’ Love Letter series.
• Philips de Pury and MTV had a charity auction for MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, with particularly nice work by Shepard Fairey and Faile.
• Stik’s latest solo show just opened in London.
• Some beautiful pieces by Sam3 in Porto, Portugal.
• AvoidPi designed the latest cover of Showpaper.
• Blu’s latest mural is in Greece.
• A nice booth for Joshua Liner Galler at Pulse in LA.
• Mr. Brainwash has a show opening soon in LA, but it’s going to be full of other people’s art. Anyone can submit work to be wheatpasted around the exhibition. On the one hand, yay, artists can benefit from Mr. Brainwash’s stupid fame and hype. On the other hand, I guess Mr. Brainwash has acknowledged that he doesn’t have any ideas for art, so he’s just openly benefiting from the art of others to further his own art career. So it’s mutually beneficial, except that individual artists submitting work will gain a lot less from this arrangement than Mr. Brainwash will gain overall.

Photo by Abode of Chaos

Sam3 in France

This week it seems like I’ve been appearing elsewhere on the web as much as here on the blog. I’ve been more active than usual on Vandalog’s tumblr, which I’ve finally getting a feel for; I was interviewed by Brian Sherwin over at FineArtViews; and I wrote a post for my friend at Hyperallergic about advertisers utilizing the style of Liu Bolin to sell stuff. Here’s what didn’t make it to Vandalog:

• Revok called out Fab 5 Freddy for appropriating (or in Revok’s words “stealing”) letters from other artists including Sever and using them in his own work. You can read Revok’s post here, and hopefully I’ll have some thoughts about it in a post on Vandalog over the weekend. A commenter on Vandalog actually noted that Fred was doing this about two months ago.
• New York Magazine published an article, and not a particularly brief one, all about a painting that is supposedly by Jean-Michel Basquiat but was denied by his estate’s authentication committee. Well, while the writer of the article tries to get readers to sympathize with going through a potentially daunting and certainly not transparent authentication process, there was really no point for the whole thing: The painting is clearly by Phil Frost, something that the article doesn’t mention at all. So, umm… good work. Thanks to Known Gallery for pointing this all out.
• Nunca, Titifreak, Invader and more at this show in Paris.
• Retna painted a mural in Miami.
• Here’s some images of Bast’s show in Newcastle.
• The New York Times went with graffiti writer Freedom back to The Freedom Tunnel where he used to paint and took some photos.
• A street art / mystery investigation documentary film thing. Looks kinda cool except that they are trying to “out” an artist, so I’m not sure I’m 100% cool with that.

Photo by Sam3

As far as I know, this mural by Sam3 is the tallest in America, if not the world. It was painted this month in Atlanta for the Living Walls Conference. Yes, there are murals and even illegal graffiti that cover more square-footage, but in terms of height, this 15-story-tall mural has everything I can think of beat. So is this really the tallest mural in America or possibly the world? Let me know in the comments if you know of a taller one.

Update: Thanks to a anonymous commenter, we’ve found out about this mural in Chicago, which is 200 feet tall, and the mural on the David Broderick Tower in Detroit. Looks like one of those murals holds the record of largest painted mural, for now.

Photo by nickmickolas

Doodles, Swampy and Greg Mike at Living Walls 2010

Later this month, Atlanta is going to be taken over by street artists from around the world for this year’s edition of the Living Walls conference, Living Walls: the City Speaks. From the 12th-14th of August, there will be film screenings, lectures and artists painting murals around the city. Living Walls have brought together an impressive artist roster from around the world including (but not limited to) Doodles, Swampy, Gaia, Roa, Labrona, OverUnder, Sam3, Freddy Sam, White Cocoa, Nanook, Greg Mike, Paper Twins, Clownsoldier and Gawd. And I can’t complain about the keynote speakers either: Tristan Manco, Gaia, Ricky Lee Gordon and me.

So if you’re in Atlanta, come out check out the opening party at The Sound Table on Friday the 12th, lectures at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia on the 13th during the day, a party at The Goat Farm the night of the 13th and a tour of all the new murals on the 14th. I’ll post more details about exact times later. And of course, I’ll be posting plenty of photos from the conference as well.

In September, another Living Walls event will take place in Albany, NY. More on that later.

Photo by Greg Foster Photography

Estado de bienestar

Sam3 painted this billboard in Murcia, Spain twice recently. First, he painted the above piece, titled Estado de bienestar, Welfare state. As you can see in the photograph below, he then repainted the same spot. This time he called it Estado de flacidez, which you can probably translate for yourself.

Estado de flacidez

Photos by Sam3

Here are a couple pieces that Sam3 has painted this month. Great as always. The billboards are in Murcia, Spain and the mural below is dedicated to the Spanish Revolution and painted in Poznań, Poland.

Photos by Sam3

D*face sticker

Happy new year! Between snow in NYC and the general slowness around this time of year, not much going on this week. Here’s a bit of what I’ve been enjoying though:

• Over on Hyperallergic, Hrag has an interesting review of Faile’s Perry Rubenstein show (now closed). He argues that they are great sculpture and so-so painters. If you agree with Hrag, it adds to the argument that Faile are essentially good designers/businessmen since they still make paintings which probably sell better than sculptures. I never had a chance to see the show in person, but I liked the photos I saw of the paintings. Of course, Faile’s best artwork from 2010 was that temple sculpture in Lisbon.
• JR is the artist behind Arkitip’s latest issue.
• Cept aka Mike Ballard has an interview in the latest issue of Juxtapoz, and Juxtapoz has posted an excerpt online.
• I’d forgotten that MOMO and Sam3 painted a collaboration in NY a while back, but Luna Park recently rephotographed it.
• Arrested Motion has photos from Armsrock’s latest solo show.

Photo by Delete08

As the BLK River Festival continues in Vienna, more artists seem to be filling the city with beautiful new murals every day. Sam3 was extremely busy during his visit. Here are a few of the walls that he painted, and there are plenty more over at Unurth.

Photos by 40 K

San, one of the many talented artists that I don’t write enough about, has put together quite a festival in Miajadas, Spain with Insitu. Herbert Baglione (though not my personal favorite, I can see why people love him), Escif, Sam3 and of course San himself will all be involved. I’ll be keeping an eye on the festival’s blog to see what everybody paints.

Speaking of Escif, Unurth has photos of the pieces he recently painted in Poland.

Via The Citrus Report