“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

As always, I’m blown away by Tant and Unga of Broken Fingaz. The two hit London yet again, as they were in town for a group show in December at Hoxton Gallery.

And one from Tant and Unga in Bristol

Photos courtesy of Broken Fingaz

Tellas and Ciredz

Looks like the art world has gotten back on track after the holiday season. Lots of links this week.

• Over at Complex.com, I wrote about the 10 (well, actually 12) street artists that I think people should be watching for in 2013.
• Rae, one of the artists on that list of mine, has a solo show opening at Signal Gallery in London later this month.
• Broken Fingaz are also on that same list, and it looks like they have some new work up in London.
• Sten and Lex get up in an ancient church.
• I’d never heard of Kraser Tres before, but damn can he paint.
• And so can Sokram.
• Faile are working on a huge project with the New York City Ballet. It sounds like a bit of a strange collaboration at first, but I’m excited to see the results. It seems like this has given Faile an opportunity to develop new work in a direction that they would have otherwise never gone, and the results that have been teased so far look strong.
• 2501 has a show opening this month in Bologna.
• A lot of Rammellzee’s work is on display now at New York’s Children’s Museum of the Arts.
• There’s some great work available in the Iron To Gold/Ashes To Hope benefit auction which will help to fund an artist residency program in Detroit.
• Here’s a nice video of Kid Zoom at work.
• I might have asked this question before, but can someone please explain the appeal of Barry McGee’s recent Brooklyn mural to me? The first of the videos here has some info about it, but I need more. McGee has previously stated his objections to painting so-call beautifying murals. The only time in recent memory that I can recall seeing anything similar to the Brooklyn mural is the one he painted a few years ago in Miami, but even that piece included a fair bit of traditional graffiti. Plus, the Brooklyn mural was painted by the billboard painting company Colossal. I’ve got no problem with artist assistants or anything like that, but the whole thing strikes me as McGee just saying “Sure, if Cadillac wants to pay me a bunch of money to license one of my images and hire someone else to paint it on a building, I’ll take that paycheck.” And hey, more power to the guy if he can get Cadillac to pay him for that, but is that all that’s going on here or am I missing something? Has McGee’s philosophy about public art changed?

Photo by Tellas

Seth in Cambodia

Julien Seth is a public art documentarian for French television. The job’s required traveling has given Seth some interesting opportunities. Plenty of street artists these days travel and put work up around the globe, but instead of sticking to some blandly universal subject matter, Seth’s murals are inspired by the countries they’re painted in.

Here are a few examples of Julien Seth’s work. For more, check out his Facebook or his Flickr.

Seth in South Africa

Seth in India

He’s collaborated with Know Hope and Broken Fingaz in Israel, with El Decertor, Entes & Pessimo, Jade in Peru, and he is part of the “French Kiss“ collective with Dem189, Lek and Swiz in his home country of France. Currently, Seth is in the Ukraine, painting with Kislow and Teck.

Seth with Unga in Paris

Seth in Hong Kong

Seth in Chili

Seth in Cambodia

Photos by Seth

If you’re a Broken Fingaz fan in Vienna, you’re in luck. If you’re not a Broken Fingaz fan but you are in Vienna, you’re still in luck because you’re about to become a fan. If you’re a Broken Fingaz fan and are not in Vienna (like me) but can afford to travel there (not like me), call work and tell them you’re sick because this Thursday, June 28th they have yet another solo show (because let’s be honest, who’s going to put work next to BF’s?) opening at Inoperable Gallery. For this show, they’ll be exhibiting some new works alongside pieces from their recent show in London and will hang through the month of the July. The piece above, done recently on the side of the gallery, is entitled “Chase the Devil” which is a play on the long history of Devil mythology in Vienna.

It seems that Unga will not be apart of this show, but he’s been busy; Unga and Insa have been blowing up the ‘Reblog’ button with this dope mural GIF. He also put up work with Lush in London and in Paris with Seth, Dem189 and Babs which was probably around the time of the group show in Paris, for which Broken Fingaz showed alongside Pure Evil and  Pascal Le Gras.

Photos courtesy of Inoperable Gallery

Photo by HookedBlog

Just after the closing of their first major UK exhibition “Crazy Eye Hotel“ at the Old Truman Brewery, Broken Fingaz let loose on the streets of East London. The Israeli crew, consisting of Tant, Unga, Kip and Deso, was able to put on the indoor display of their comic-strip-acid-trip-illustrations through support from the British Israeli Arts Training Scheme; a program built from a bilateral agreement between the British and Israeli governments that enables a creative exchange between the nations’ artists.

Photo courtesy of Broken Fingaz

Photo courtesy of Broken Fingaz

What better way to say “thank you” to the political effort funding your first major solo show in England, than to further-exhibit your art illegally? On one hand, London is without a doubt one of best cities for street art, so can you blame them for getting up while there? On the other hand, if the British Council, the Government of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or the Ministry of Culture and Sport, all of whom provide funding for this program, believed that perhaps they were actually funding some no good vandal punks to get up abroad, would it jeopardize the program?

The fact that they were putting up work was no secret, in fact it seemed advertised almost as much as the show itself. …But on that first hand, Broken Fingaz crew is phenomenal. What do you think?

Photo by HookedBlog

Photo courtesy of Broken Fingaz

Photo by HookedBlog

Photo courtesy of Broken Fingaz

Photos by Hookedblog and courtesy of Broken Fingaz Crew

Masters of Mystery

Here are two pieces done recently by a couple of my favorite artists, Tant and Unga, from Israel’s Broken Fingaz crew. Fresh attitude, vivacious energy, and ample ability.

Born Dead

Photos by Tant