The first issue of The Art Street Journal 2010 is out! Inside, amongst other things, you’ll find reviews on some of the best shows from December (like Grifters at Lazarides) and previews of some of the ones we’re most excited about in January (like A Cry For Help at Thinkspace). There are a lot of interviews in this issue, too – Martha Cooper, Mark Jenkins (who’s showing here at Carmichael Gallery with Aakash Nihalani in January) Stephan Doitschinoff and Zezao.

This month’s Unurth page is very cool (I love that this page enables us to fit so many different artists into the paper – it really is hard to include everything you want to cover in sixteen pages and Sebastian does a fantastic job of highlighting the best on the street), plus we’ve finally started the tasj bookshelf page. Each month, this page will feature a selection of the best publications out there (RJ’s The Thousands: Painting Outside, Breaking In makes it in first time, of course, as does Issue 10 of Very Nearly Almost).

As always, tasj is free and we’ll deliver it anywhere in the world. You can get it here.

- Elisa

It doesn’t get much better than Dennis McNett. I mean, this guy knows printmaking. Well he’s got a show coming up at ThinkSpace in LA, but it is only on for two days. So if you are in LA on August 8th or 9th, you’d best make your way down to see McNett’s work.

More at Brooklyn Street Art

I’m sort of squishing three posts into one here, but they’re all related.

From The Streets of Brooklyn. Photo by Stephen_W

1. From The Streets of Brooklyn opened this weekend at thinkspace gallery in LA. The show, curated by Ad Hoc Art’s Andrew Michael Ford, has taken a bunch of Brooklyn’s best and most prolific artists and put them all together to pretty much transport Bushwick/Williamsburg to LA. Looks like an absolutely fascinating show. Maybe something like it will come to London in the future (are you reading this Andrew?) Read a review here, check out more photos here, and go here to see thinkspace’s wrap up of the show.

Work and photo by veng_rwk

2. One of the artists at From The Street of Brooklyn is Veng from Robots Will Kill. He’s being doing a few pieces lately which are a bit different, so I thought I’d post one of those. Woodcuts I think. There’s also a very nice little post on him at the Curbs & Stoops blog, a blog/gallery that I’ve just found but I really like (see item #3).

3. So basically I went to the Curbs & Stoops blog to read that post on Veng (hopefully you all have too). Then I clicked around the site a bit. Turns out, they are some pretty awesome folks. They’re all about getting art to people who normally wouldn’t have access to art. They have beautiful prints for sale at low prices, a blog that highlights some great artists, and 3 projects they are working on that sound great. The first project is Mission District Portraits. This summer, they went on the street and offered to take anybody’s picture for free. Good fun for all involved I’m sure. Then there is A Dollar For Your Story where you get paid $1 to tell a story on video to show the transformation that happens when people tell stories. Eventually, the stories will be shown online. Finally, their coolest project has to be the Mobile Art Gallery. This isn’t functioning yet, but it sounds like the best idea to come out of New York since probably ever. The Mobile Art Gallery is going to literally park wherever and sell art on a sliding scale so that anybody can afford it. Yes! Art for the people!

So that’s why today is a great day in art.

Photos from veng_rwk and Stephen_W

If you took Gaia to a high school drawing contest he might place first or second, but put his efforts on the street and it becomes worth half as much as a real Swoon. It may be a testament to street artist Swoon’s influence and popularity, that an influenced artist can find a ravenous audience without a new style, technique, or thought for where/how to install it. As a derivative work, its more saccharine, dim witted, but just about as popular. Gaia plays the Monkey’s to Swoons Beatles.

That’s one way to think about Gaia. In fact, that diatribe is a portion of a faux New Yorker article which was wheatpasted right next to a Gaia piece.

By Gaia

On the other hand, Gaia might be really good. That’s what I’d say. His work is powerful and the melding of man and animal creates some very beautiful results. Gaia’s the first to admit that his work is influenced by Swoon, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. All artists have influences. I asked Gaia about his, and about his thoughts on people who say he is too much like Swoon.

Gaia: I think that it is quite apparent in my work that Swoon is a strong influence but I believe that the comparison is a little tired now because I really do feel that my pieces are distinguishable. I believe that these comments and mistakes also stem from a real lack of understanding of the the Street Art scene. Once the viewer has a true awareness and visual literacy for the work that is on the street, then such confusion is avoided. Read the rest of this article »

Some great teaser shots of the first big show of ’09 over at Arrested Motion.

“From the Street of Brooklyn” opens January 9th at LA’s Thinkspace gallery. The show is curated by Brooklyn’s Ad Hoc Art.  Vandalog’s Q&A with Ad Hoc Art’s Director, Andrew Michael Ford, can be found here. They’ve gotten some of New York’s best and most prolific street and graffiti artists together for one large group show. Looking at the artist lineup, it seems like the only way this show could bring Brooklyn to LA any better would be to transplant a street.

Stikman

Imminent Disaster

Peru Ana Ana Peru

See more at Arrested Motion