Year: 2009

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Great print deals

I’ve found two deals on screen prints that have popped up recently.

Over at FUSShop.co.uk, they are giving away a free print by A.CE with orders over £50. My suggestion would be to get the Shepard Fairey issue of Arkitip Magazine for £59.99 because you get a print by Fairey and one by A.CE for not much at all when you think of how much a print might usually cost. More info here.

ace_london_50s_faces_print_fusshop

ace_london_gunpoint_print_fusshop

Or just just £60 you can take your pick of prints from artists like Sweet Toof, Kid Acne and Dscreet from the Seven Styles for Seven Brothers show at The Archipelago Works.

Kid Acne
Kid Acne
Sweet Toof
Sweet Toof

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News I missed while in Stavanger

Most of what I was posting while away in Stavanger for Nuart was prewritten so that I could focus on the festival. The downside being that I missed a bunch of cool potential posts over the last few days. So here’s my usual post holiday link wrap-up:

  • Sam3 has a new video animation out (Via Wooster Collective). You can watch it on Vimeo. Oh and on a related note, the first pieces on loan from collectors for The Thousands arrived at my house this weekend, including a piece by Sam3.
  • Also from Wooster Collective is a new piece by Mark Jenkins. A sculpture of a person made of newspaper.
  • JR released this video about the women who were involved with his project in Kibera, Kenya (Via unurth):
  • Juxtapoz has details about Woodward Gallery Keith Haring show in New York City (which opened September 12th)
  • Another photo has been released for Adam Neate’s October solo show at Elms Lesters (via Arrested Motion). “A New Understanding” opens October 9th. This could be the street art exhibition of the year, though I’m not feeling this new work as might as I’d expected.
    adam neate

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Openings in New York and LA

While I’m still in Stavanger enjoying Nuart (check out Logan Hicks’ photos on Brooklyn Street Art), there are two art openings tonight I wish I could make it to.

The first is in Los Angeles. Anthony Lister’s show And Then The Wind Changed is at New Image Art. Just a super talented painter.

Lister

Lister

And in New York City the Jonathan LeVine Gallery has solo shows from Mark Dean Veca and D*Face.

Mark Dean Veca
Mark Dean Veca

I could say a lot about D*Face’s show, Ludovico Aversion Therapy / All Your Dreams Belong To Us, but it seems like the best coverage has been on Arrested Motion and Juxtapoz, and they have both interviewed D*Face and have plenty of pictures to show for it.

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The Adventures of Darius and Downey

There are a lot of street art books in stores today. And most of them follow a simple formula: Take photos (or more often than not, acquire them for nothing from other photographers), lay them out on a page, mislabel all the photos so that work by Mister MN is said to be by Adam Neate, think up a title, print the book. Some books in this format are great, some are not, but this is what you expect from a street art book. Well The Adventures of Darius and Downey is absolutely nothing like that. Not one bit. For one thing, Adventures is a non-fiction/creative non-fiction book 200-odd pages in length, and instead of just throwing a bunch of photographs together, this book tells a story.

Naturally, Adventures is about the street art duo Darius and Downey (aka Leon Reid IV and Brad Downey), but it’s also about the street art and graffiti scene in the early 2000’s. Nobody else has really had his or her street art career described in this way before. Sure, you can read interviews or watch documentaries and get the gist of how Barry McGee or Faile got to where they are today, but D&D are the only ones so far to have set out the whole story in print, and as pioneers of sculptural street art and non-typographical graffiti, they deserve that privilege.

And while reading Adventures definitely provides insight into D&D’s work, what I found even more interesting was the lifestyle and culture that they were a part of. Swoon wrote the intro to Adventures and is mentioned in the book, D&D ask permission from ESPO to paint over one of his spots, they confront Swatch, graffiti writer and “cataloger” of street art (aka, guy who steals pieces off of walls) and more.

The Adventures of Darius and Downey tells a story of a friendship and collaboration that changed the face of street art and this book should be essential reading for anybody who wants to learn about the history of street art, but it’s also just a great read. Readers won’t want to put this book down. It is a quick, fun read with much to say.

But why am I posting this review now, more than a year after the book was published and months after I read it? Well Brad Downey and Leon Reid IV are at Nuart2009 in Stavanger right now, which is where I am too. More on Nuart2009 on Monday.

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Aakash Nihalani’s Tape and Mirrors

Given that they are next door neighbors only separated by a couple pieces of sheet rock gallery wall, its nice to see Eastern Disctrict and Ad Hoc collaborating! Especially with the likes of the ever playful Aakash. Here is the newsletter they just sent out to everyone on their mailing list:

Eastern District and Ad Hoc Art are pleased to announce their newly featured joint effort exhibit: “Tape and Mirrors” by artist Aakash Nihalani. Tape and Mirrors, the artist’s third solo exhibition in New York, will open on Friday September 25th, 2009.

Note, the Press/VIP Preview is from 6-7pm, followed by a public reception from 7-10pm. The exhibition will be on view weekly Thursdays through Sundays from 2pm-8pm until October 25th, 2009.

Eastern District is a contemporary exhibition space located at 43 Bogart Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn. They pride themselves on the merging of all creative artistic practices and presenting the community with art exhibitions as well as ongoing performance and event-based programming. Eastern District is excited to be presenting Tape and Mirrors with Ad Hoc Art. Ad Hoc, formerly located at 49 Bogart Street, is a staple in the Bushwick art community that has dedicated itself for years to being more than a gallery but a passionate creative fulcrum, showing work that is often marginalized by the larger New York art scene. This collaboration will undoubtedly be the first of many to come and will hopefully continue to build the local art community to another level.

Aakash Nihalani’s street work consists mostly of isometric rectangles and squares. Using brightly colored tape, he selectively places these graphics around New York to highlight the unexpected contours and elegant geometry pre-existing in the city itself. All execution of his street level tape work is done on site, with little to no planning.

For however brief of a time, Aakash Nihalani’s work offers people a chance to see a different side of New York, and momentarily escape from routine schedules and lives. “We all need the opportunity to see the city more playfully, as a world dominated by the interplay of very basic color and shape”. He tries to create a new space within the existing space of our everyday world for people to enter freely and unexpectedly ‘disconnect’ from their reality.
Playing off of the metaphor ‘smoke and mirrors,’ meaning an illusion created out of an elaborate distraction, Nihalani’s Tape and Mirrors exhibition aims to create a magical experience out of the mundane. By implementing mirrors in key positions throughout the space, the viewer is given an opportunity to step ‘into,’ and view themselves within, Nihalani’s signature tape installations. Creating a playful interruption to the regular gallery schematic, the viewer is prodded from a bystander into a participant, not only interacting with the space and materials around them, but also with their own reflections.

Let Nihalani’s Tape and Mirrors open up a new portal of reality and experience yourself between dimensions at Eastern District gallery in Brooklyn.

Original prints and paintings by the artist will also be on view and for sale throughout the gallery.

To find out more information about Aakash Nihalani’s Tape and Mirrors exhibition, and more about Ad Hoc and Eastern District’s collaboration please go to adhocart.org and eastern-district.com.
For more information on Aakash Nihalani and his art visit aakashnihalani.com.

Refreshments generously provided by Asahi.

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Guiditta Supina

judith supine

I’m so happy to see how far along this guy has come in such a short period of time. He truly is one of the great artists of our generation and I’m so excited to see where he goes next. Just wish I still had those wheatpastes we pinned to the wall of our first art show back in 2006!

Judith Supine

Judith Supine

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Travels through Europe

Months late, I’ve finally uploaded all the photos from my 3 week holiday traveling through Europe in June/July to flickr. You can see the full set of street art photos here, but I thought it would be fun to pick out a few highlights.

First, Venice. The Swimming Cities were gone this time I was in Venice, but the Biennale was still on, and Miranada July’s sculptures deserve a mention. Here’s a photo of me with one of July’s sculptures.

July

And if anybody knows who painted this piece, let me know. It was also in Venice:

Venice

But most of the street art I found was in Berlin. Here’s some of that:

Kripoe
Kripoe
Blu
Blu
The London Police
The London Police
Os Gemeos
Os Gemeos

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Kindred Times and Future Goodbyes

So a week or two ago Know Hope says to me that he has a secret project in the works. Something about taking over an abandoned house. Sounded like a great idea, but I wasn’t sure if anything would actually come of it. Turns out, Know Hope and his friends were further along than I realized. The project, now called Kindred Times and Future Goodbyes, was well underway. In fact, it’s going to be opening at a secret location in Tel Aviv on Saturday. This is what street art is about.

Zero Cents

KINDRED TIMES AND FUTURE GOODBYES

This Saturday
12.9.2009, 17:30-20:30

An Exhibition in abandoned house in the form of a collaborative effort between : Foma <3, Klone, Know Hope, Zero Cents.

This exhibition came to life as a natural extension of the constant collaborative creation of the group.

The location is secret on account of legality issues and therefore will be announced at noon time, on the day of the opening.

The exhibition is located in a derelict building that has been abandoned for many years,and was once used for residence. The building remained texture-ridden and saturated with old memories, memories which the artists translate into present time through their artistic interpretation.
The wall paintings are a new periodic layer of paint that add on to the already existing peeled layers of time. The artists use these longstanding layers, which represent remains of personal stories and traces of memories, absorbing the existing textures and inhabiting the building with their artistic and contemporary interpretation.

Although the new layer of paint created for this exhibition is soon to become covered with new layers of a renovated building, it is added to a pool of memories which can’t be evaded and enriches it, when it is bound to be preserved between layers of past and future times.

The location and further details to be announced on www.kindredtimes.blogspot.com

The artists have been prepping the building recently. Here’s a couple pics (plus the Zero Cents piece above is part of the show):

Know Hope

Foma