Surge, Gaia, Stormie, Remi/Rough and in The Underbelly Project

UPDATE – LOCATION CHANGE: The Underbelly Show has moved to 78 NW 25th Street in Wynwood, Miami to accommodate the large scale of the artwork in this show.

The Underbelly Project is back. Last year, I posted a lot about the project where 103 artists from around the world secretly painted an abandoned/half-completed New York City subway station. After that initial burst of press here and around the web, The Underbelly Project organizers stayed silent. With only occasional vague tweets from a mysterious twitter account and the appearance on Amazon of an upcoming book about the project. Yesterday though, The Underbelly Project announced that they will be participating in this year’s Basel Miami Week madness with a pop-up gallery in South Beach Wynwood.

The organizers of The Underbelly Project and The Underbelly Show, Workhorse and PAC, have this to say about the show:

Workhorse: The New York Underbelly was an important chapter for us, but the story hadn’t been comprehensively told. The Underbelly Miami show gives us a chance to present the broad scope of documentation – Videos, photos, time-lapses and first hand accounts. The project is about more than just artwork. This show gives us a chance to show the people and the environment behind the artwork.

PAC: While the experience each artist had in their expedition underground can never be captured, it is my hope that this show will highlight some of the trials and tribulations associated with urban art taking place in the remote corners of our cities. Too often the practice of making art in unconventional venues remains shrouded in mystery and I hope this exhibition will shine a faint light on those artists who risk their safety to find alternative ways to create and be a part of the cities they live in.

35 of the 103 artists from The Underbelly Project will be exhibiting art in The Underbelly Show, plus video and still footage of the artists at work in the tunnel. Here’s the full line-up: Faile, Dabs & Myla, TrustoCorp, Aiko, Rone, Revok, Ron English, Jeff Soto, Mark Jenkins, Anthony Lister, Logan Hicks, Lucy McLauchlan, M-City, Kid Zoom, Haze, Saber, Meggs, Jim & Tina Darling, The London Police, Sheone, Skewville, Jeff Stark, Jordan Seiler, Jason Eppink and I AM, Dan Witz, Specter, Ripo, MoMo, Remi/Rough, Stormie Mills, Swoon, Know Hope, Skullphone, L’Atlas, Roa, Surge, Gaia, Michael De Feo, Joe Iurato, Love Me, Adam 5100, and Chris Stain.

For this show, the space will be transformed into an environment imitating the tunnel where The Underbelly Project took place, right down to playing sounds recorded in the station while The Underbelly Project was happening.

If you absolutely cannot wait until February to get We Own The Night, the book documenting The Underbelly Project, a limited number will be available at The Underbelly Show in a box set with 9 photographic prints and the book all contained in a handcrafted oak box. Additionally, you will be able to your book signed by the artists participating in The Underbelly Show.

The Underbelly Show will take place at 2200 Collins Avenue, South Beach, Miami 78 NW 25th Street, Wynwood, Miami. There will be a private opening on November 30th, and the space will be open to the general public December 2nd-5th, with a general opening on the 2nd from 8-10pm.

Photo by RJ Rushmore

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

Some recent mock magazine covers from TrustoCorp

TrustoCorp‘s latest show, Life Cycle, will be opening next week at Opera Gallery‘s New York location on Spring Street. Ambitious as ever, Life Cycle will be based around 4 installations examining the stages of the life of an American, including over 50 artworks. Here’s one, called Botched Operation:

Life Cycle opens on October 21st and runs through November 11th and should be a must-see show (particularly the opening night if past TrustoCorp shows are anything to go by).

Here’s one of TrustoCorp‘s latest street installations: Signage for a drive-thru-liposuction-in-60-seconds booth.

Photos by TrustoCorp

El Mac

First week of school down. Just a boatload more to go. Here’s what I’ve been checking out to procrastinate doing homework:

• A nice time lapse video of Kid Zoom.
• Very Nearly Almost’s latest issue (with Invader on the cover) launches on September 8th in London.
• TrustoCorp have been putting up some clever new work recently. Arrested Motion has the images, and they’re running a TrustoCorp-related contest.
• The NYTimes has an article about the potential demise of 5Pointz.
• Euth, a street artist, sued Green Day for appropriating one of his images in background graphics for their live show. That lawsuit has been dismissed. Melrose&Fairfax seems to lean towards agreeing with Euth on this one, but while Green Day might have been in an ethical grey area by not compensating Euth, they were undoubtedly legally in the right, and on the whole, that’s a good thing. No idea is 100% original and appropriation is appropriate. As M&F point out in this post, a lot of street artists base their work on appropriation.
• Something new from Morley.
• A guy in the Hamptons is selling a bunch of Banksy pieces that were ripped out of walls from around the world. Gawker has some explanation of what happened. Of course the work is all unauthenticated and the morals of the whole situation are pretty sketchy.

Photo by unusualimage

Beau Stanton and Darkclouds at Welling Court

So I got the latest issue of Juxtapoz in my inbox today (I have a digital subscription), and realized that I still haven’t read the last issue yet. D’oh. So while I get on that, here are a few links to keep you busy.

• Contra Projects showed at Scope in Basel, Switzerland. They had work from TrustoCorp, How&Nosm and Tristan Eaton.
• This is perhaps a controversial statement, but Faile’s print show in LA looks great. I barely mentioned the show here before it opened because I didn’t have high expectations and the print release seemed silly, but damn was I wrong (about the show, still big on the print release). Faile get a lot of crap for their prints, but when they are on, they are really really on.
• This is a few weeks out still, but Subliminal Projects has a group show of female artists including Swoon.
• Lois has been posting on Vandalog about Ad Hoc Art’s Welling Court mural project, and the photo at the top of this post is from that project as well. Obviously I’m a fan. So here’s even a bit more from Welling Court, over at Brooklyn Street Art.
• This show over in Milan with Futura, Os Gêmeos, Delta and more looks great. Especially the Futura pieces.
• If you haven’t in a while, go check out Xylo’s website. Lots of good stuff on there. Especially his supermarket pieces.
• Someone, possibly associated with Banksy and possibly not, tagged this Banksy piece at MOCA. There has been work put up inside MOCA by uninvited artists, both in the bathrooms and throughout the McGee/James/Powers Street installation, but Banksy has also been changing up his section, so either option is definitely possible.

Photo by Beau Stanton

Jordan Seiler. Translation - Make love to your city, caress and hold her tightly.

On March 30th, Jordan Seiler and some Madrid-based helpers disrupted bus-shelter advertisements throughout Madrid for PublicAdCampaign‘s latest takeover, MaSAT (Madrid Street Advertising Takeover). Over 100 artists and everyday people from around the world contributed to MaSAT by supplying text which was then printed on the posters that Jordan and his crew installed. Here are a few of my favorites:

TrustoCorp

Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere. Translation - advertisement for a bad movie

Joe Iurato

Logan Hicks

And the MaSAT project is particularly interesting to me because Jordan is participating in the Street Communications panel that I am moderating this weekend at Haverford College and because both the Schillers and I (Marc and Sara will also be on the panel) participated in MaSAT by sending some text:

Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective

RJ (me). Translation - Hi Carmen. I hope you’ll smile today!

Photos courtesy of PublicAdCampaign

EVOL will be at the WILDE Gallery booth at Volta

With two midterms exams tomorrow, I’m rushing this post, but here’s a simple list for some of what to check out at the art fairs in New York this week.

• The Armory Show:
  - Honor Fraser (Kaws and Kenny Scharf)
  - Ratio 3 (Barry McGee)
  - Stuart Shave/Modern Art (Barry McGee)
• Fountain:
  - 140-foot long street art installation, although it sounds like this might be the same installation as was recently at Fountain in Miami, or at least partially the same.
• Verge Art Brooklyn:
  - Arch 402 (Cept aka Mike Ballard)
  - English Kills Gallery (Don Pablo Pedro)
• Scope:
  - Contra Projects (D*face, How&Nosm, James Marshall aka Dalek, Ron English, Tristan Eaton, TrustoCorp and more)
• Volta:
  - Carmichael Gallery (Mark Jenkins)
  - Wilde Gallery (EVOL)
• Pulse:
  - Joshua Liner Gallery (David Ellis)
  - Ben Wolf’s installation (He has collaborated with Swoon and Maya Hayuk)

I won’t be in NYC for the fairs myself, but I’ll hopefully have some photos to post. Otherwise, the places I will be getting my art fair news will be Hyperallergic and Arrested Motion.

Photo courtesy of Volta Art Fair

In a lot of ways, Hargo sums up Miami's art fair week

With so much of the art world migrating to Miami this week in a frenzy, there seem to be too many events and parties (and I promise not to blog about the parties in detail. This isn’t a gossip site) and exhibits and festivals and everything else to keep track of. Here’s a roundup of some of the things that I’m most interested in seeing (or not seeing).

Things that have already been mentioned on Vandalog:

• This year’s Primary Flight mural project has an impressive list of artists including Roa, Escif, Retna and Boxi.
• Fresh Produce looks to be a solid group show of graffiti and street artists.
• There will be some new Cash For Your Warhol billboards.
• Retna has a solo show at the new Primary Projects space.
• Wynwood Walls is a mural project (among other things) with some big-name artists but questionable motives.

And things that I haven’t already blogged about:

• Elisa Carmichael has her list of Miami must-sees, which includes a Dan Witz book signing and a Trespass book signing with Marc and Sara from Wooster Collective and Carlo McCormick.
• Sorry to bring this up, but Sanrio’s exhibition of Hello Kitty art is just annoying. They got some great artists like Jim Houser to paint Hello Kitty characters. I’ll be avoiding this show like the plague.
• I mostly go for Ryan McGinness’ really abstract work and this isn’t that, but McGinness fans will probably want to check out his solo show.
• Barry McGee will be showing work and signing books at Ratio 3′s book in Basel Miami.
• Jonathan LeVine Gallery has a pop-up show as part of Wynwood Walls. Some of the artists include AJ Fosik, Judith Supine, Doze Green, Dan Witz and WK Interact.
• FriendsWithYou are filling a park with giant blow-up sculptures.
• Last year, OHWOW Gallery’s It Ain’t Fair show was one of the most interesting shows in Miami. Once again, they have a killer line up for the show including José Parlá, Rey Parlá (José’s brother who is, I believe, a filmmaker), KAWS, Phil Frost, Barry McGee and Neckface.
• OHWOW Gallery are also opening a bookstore at The Standard Hotel in Miami.
• New Image Art’s pop-up show includes Neckface, Judith Supine and Os Gêmeos. Probably going to be a must-see.
• Tristan Eaton and his partners are launching Contra Projects with a wide-array of events this week including a tent/lounge space, a mural (by Mr. Jago, Tristan Eaton, Ron English and others) and a TrustoCorp carnival aka TrustoLand. More info on the Thunderdog blog.
• Carmichael Gallery, Joshua Liner Gallery and others will have booths at SCOPE, and I think Maya Hayuk is painting a mural there, which should be awesome if I’m remembering that correctly.
• And of course there’s all the fairs I haven’t mentioned, because there are just so many. So many. Too many. It’s gonna be art overload. But if I’ve missed anything that you think is particularly special, please leave a comment.

Photo by Hargo

This summer, I sat in a massive pitch-black room and muttered “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit…” over and over again. I couldn’t stop repeating “Holy shit” for maybe for five minutes. I’d been anticipating this moment for nearly a year. I was somewhere underneath New York City. I was waiting to be shown The Underbelly Project. Technically, I was there to take photos, but really I didn’t care at all if images came out or not. Really, I just wanted to see firsthand what was going on 4-stories below the streets of New York City.

Revok and Ceaze. That light comes from the lights that were set up temporarily for an artist who was painting that night.

Imagine Cans Festival, FAME Festival or Primary Flight: Some of street art and graffiti’s best artists all painting one spot. That’s kind of like The Underbelly Project. Except that The Underbelly Project took place in complete secrecy, in a mysterious location and without any authorization. Over the past year, The Underbelly Project has brought more than 100 artists to an abandoned and half-finished New York City subway station. Each artist was given one night to paint something.

Know Hope had this entire room to himself. What was this room meant to be? An elevator shaft? An office? I have no idea.

Workhorse and PAC, the project’s organizers, have put countless hours into their ghost subway station, and now they’re finally ready to unveil it to the world, sort of (more on that later). So I guess that’s why I was in that dark room, sitting in silence, waiting for them to give me a flashlight. I’m still not sure why I’d been extended the invitation to see the station firsthand, but I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity. The Underbelly Project is going to be part of street art history.

Surge, Stormie Mills, Remi/Rough and Gaia

Eventually, Workhorse and PAC came over to where I was sitting and lent me a flashlight. I stood up, already coated in dust and probably dirtier than I’ve ever been, and got a full tour of the station. I’m not somebody who is good at estimating the size of a space, but The Underbelly Project took place in a space that was meant to be a subway station, so I guess it was the size of a subway station with a few tracks. The station is like a concrete cavern: random holes who-knows how deep into the ground, dust thick like a layer of dirt, leaky ceilings and hidden rooms. Except the whole station is covered in art. Think of FAME Festival’s abandoned monastery transplanted to beneath New York City. I’m not an urban explorer, so I had no idea that there are abandoned subway stations throughout New York, but The Underbelly Project seems like just about the best possible use of one.

Of course, having been down there myself, I’m going to be prone to hyperbole. Even at it’s simplest, even if The Underbelly Project is “just another mural project,” it’s a story that the artists can tell for years, and it may even be evidence that street art isn’t so far gone and corporate as some people have suggested.

Swoon and Imminent Disaster. Disaster's piece is stunning beyond belief and fits the space so perfectly.

The list of artists who painted for The Underbelly Project goes on and on, but here are just a few:

Swoon

Gaia

Know Hope

Revok

Roa

Dan Witz

Jeff Soto

Faile

Mark Jenkins

Elbow-toe

TrustoCorp

Mark Jenkins and Con. This is at the end of a long and dark tunnel that, at the time, was not otherwise painted.

On my visit, The Underbelly Project wasn’t finished. In fact, somebody was painting there that night. Nonetheless, the space was already substantially painted and postered. I spent that night wandering around the tunnels, taking photos and getting lost (and also scared – Damn you Mark Jenkins! You can’t put a sculpture like that at the end of a darkened hall. I thought it was a person!).

TrustoCorp

And what now? The walls have all been painted and the artists have moved on to new projects. When the last artist finished painting the last wall, Workhorse and PAC made access to The Underbelly Project nearly impossible by removing the entrance. Even if any of us wanted to go back (and I do), even if we could remember how to get there (and I don’t), we can’t. Nobody can. For now, The Underbelly Project has become a time capsule of street art, somewhere in the depths of New York City.

Meggs

Brad Downey once explained to me why he thought Damien Hirst’s diamond skull is interesting. It had something to do with what people would think of the skull in 1000 years, when its original meaning has been lost to time. That’s when the skull is going to become a true icon and object with immense power. In some ways, The Underbelly Project is like Hirst’s skull, without the price tag. One day, decades from now hopefully, somebody may rediscover that old subway station and have no idea what they’re looking at. Hopefully, they’ll just feel that it’s something incredibly special.

Dan Witz. This was the first time I'd seen his street art in person. It's the perfect setting for Dan's Dark Doings series.

Here are some more images from The Underbelly Project, and expect more over the coming days on Vandalog and around the blogosphere… Or you can pay £1 to read an in-depth article about it in today’s Sunday Times.

Stash (well, part of his piece). This is another room like Know Hope's area.

Swoon and Lister

L'Atlas, Mr Di Maggio, 1010, Paper Twins, Bigfoot, Control/Jice. Photo by Workhorse

Faile. Photo by PAC

Skewville, PAC, SheOne, Revok/Ceaze. Photo by PAC

Photos by RJ Rushmore, Workhorse and PAC