Here at Vandalog, we get some pretty ridiculous press releases from publicists, galleries and artists themselves. Some not in English, invites to shows opening in foreign lands, many not having anything to do with art, and my personal favorite- that this artist is the new Banksy. We pride ourselves on hardly ever posting these, but when they are as funny as this one we think we will make the exception for our audience. Here’s the first in this new (and hopefully infrequent) series…
Threesome Anyone?
From online gallery 1xRun comes the work of Ryan McCann, a former college football player who was drafted by an NFL team and uses a blowtorch to create his artwork. How badass is that picture? The naked twins and flame only add to this guy’s aura.
The current release is Abe Lincoln’s burnt face in the vein of The Social Network. How gritty and clever. And guess what the artist has to say? Nothing about the work except where he took the font and size of the piece from:
ARTIST STATEMENT: This piece was inspired from the Social Network movie poster that had a similar saying regarding getting to 1million friends. That is why the original piece is 40×27 inches, the standard movie poster size. These multiples are burnt into a 3/8 inch wood panel with a blowtorch, and then have 2-color silkscreened letters applied before they are sealed in polyurethane. Each piece is hand branded with my signature on the front and will be signed and numbered in ink on the back. – Ryan McCann
There is even a sick promo video to accompany the release. Enjoy!
Roa’s 2-part solo show Hypnagogia is on now in London. Half of the show is at Stolenspace, and half is down the street at The Stone Masons. Here are some photos from the portion of the show at The Stone Masons. Check over here for photos of the portion at Stolenspace, and over at Arrested Motion for more photos from The Stone Masons.
If that is the case, they aren’t hiding very well these days.
I suppose you could blame TNT’s popular TV cop drama Southland for some of that. The group’s “Painting the Painters” mural was prominently featured in a recent episode titled, oddly enough, “Risk.” In addition, UGLAR member Evan Skrederstu was commissioned by The Wende Museum (the same institution that commissioned RETNA, D*face, and Herakut to paint portions of its Berlin Wall) for the L.A. Chamber Orchestra’s “Play Me, I’m Yours” Project to paint a piano to stand across from LACMA, next to the wall segments.
The group has also completed two murals with ZES (including one in collaboration with PUSH for L.A. Freewalls), and features in the upcoming La La Gallery show.
The word is out, it seems. So who are they?
UGLAR stands for Unified Group of Los Angeles Residents and consists of five members: Evan Skredertsu, Christopher D. Brand, Steve Martinez, Espi, and Jose A. Lopez. They recently added ‘works’ to their name in honor of the great public works projects that were once commonplace in Los Angeles during the era of Rivera and Siqueiros. Originally, however, the group took their acronym from the Ulysses Guide to the L.A. River when they created a book celebrating the river and its inhabitants in 2008. This culminated in a show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art that featured Chaz Bojorquez and others. Perhaps what is most remarkable about that show is that the group fabricated and installed the entire exhibition by hand and brought the feel of the concrete L.A. riverbed indoors by obliterating the white gallery walls.
And yet, just a glimpse of their work shows it to be incredibly diverse. Martinez paints, photographs, and is the only member to use Photoshop in conceiving his pieces. Lopez graduated from graffiti lettering to abstraction years ago, even taking to etching some recent works on copper. Espi adds a spiritual element to the group it seems, but what else would one expect from the Art Director of the Los Angeles Friends of Tibet?
As a group, they do far more than walls. They are kings of scale, from the huge to the tiny, from murals to bugs. Yes, bugs. The story goes that Skrederstu and Brand were painting in the L.A. River a decade ago and accidentally sprayed a cricket blue. What grew out of that happenstance is amazing to see. Yet, what I find so fascinating is they do more than simply paint, and they don’t work exclusively with aerosol. Brand also sculpts, and is capable of some incredibly lifelike pieces similar to those of Ron Mueck. By way of example, check out the severed head below.
At a time when many are asking if street art can transition indoors (obviously the techniques can, but how well, and to what effect?), it is fascinating to watch contemporary street artists adapt to new spaces after having few limits. I can’t help but wonder which artists will transcend such labels by producing regardless of venue, and which will be limited in new environs. Considering the breadth of UGLAR’s skills and polish, it seems reasonable to conclude that they have all the potential necessary to effectively make that leap. Perhaps most importantly, they don’t seem satisfied to work exclusively on the street, but anywhere their creativity takes them.
Especially given my distaste for Supreme’s annual destruction of graffiti and street art through flyposting (I believe they call it an advertising campaign), I was pleased to see these parodies of their ads by Kidult.
The London Police are getting ready for their first solo show in Newcastle at Unit 44. A Night with The London Police opens on May 11th (6-9pm) and runs through the 18th. So it’s not actually just one night with TLP, but if their past openings are anything to go by, that will be the night to go and check out the show. In addition to prints and paintings at the show, The London Police will be painting a “huge” new mural while they are in Newcastle.
The Nuart festival of Stavanger, Norway is one of a handful of trailblazing street art festivals that have been popping up over the last decade or so. Actually the predate most, if not all, of the significant festivals. Last year, the organizers of the festival put together a book documenting Nuart’s history, Eloquent Vandals: A History of Nuart Norway.
Extensive photographic documentation of Nuart is already available, but Eloquent Vandals also has texts that you won’t find anywhere else. Essays by Logan Hicks, Carlo McCormick and Brooklyn Street Art’s Steven Harrington and Jaime Rojo provide some context for the festival and the festivities that happen there.
Hicks gives the inside scoop on what it is like to be a participant at Nuart. He acknowledges what so many artists and festival organizers really love about places like Nuart: The best festivals are made up of the best people, and the best parts of the festivals are the unexpected fun bits, not the murals. The artwork mostly just facilitates the good times and helps to justify to the rest of the world why a bunch of people getting together in a small city in Norway.
McCormick’s essay begins with one of my new favorite quotes about public art “Public art, when it is commissioned and produced according to some vague idea of the public good, is by and large really lousy art – and as such arguably the very last thing people need.” He goes on to show how festivals like Nuart can breath new life into the realm of public art.
Harrington and Rojo’s essay is not only the most important in the book, but one of the most important essays written about street art in this decade. They lay out what so many of us have thought about, but few have written about so eloquently and with such serious consideration: THE INTERNET IS REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF CONTEMPORARY STREET ART. Sounds simple and obvious right? Well, it’s a bit more complicated than what I just wrote and the complicated aspects of this obvious fact deserve serious consideration, a conversation that Harrington and Rojo have now begun.
If you are interested in street art festivals like Nuart, and especially if you are one of the many people out there thinking of starting a street art festival, I highly suggest that you pick up a copy of Eloquent Vandals: A History of Nuart Norway.
Roa’s 2-part solo show Hypnagogia is on now in London. Half of the show is at Stolenspace, and half is down the street at The Stone Masons. Here are some photos from the portion of the show at Stolenspace. Check back soon for photos of the work at The Stone Masons. And check Arrested Motion for more photos.
Jeff Soto recently worked with Chevy on an ad for the Chevy Sonic. I’ve got some problems with advertising, advertisers working with artists and advertising that co-opts street art and graffiti to sell dumb crap. But I’m pleasantly surprised that this advertisement actually kind of works. At the end of the day, the world is left with a new mural by Jeff Soto, and that mural doesn’t have a massive Chevy logo on it, just an engine block. Is the concept a bit cheesy? Perhaps. Is calling the piece “street art” irritating? Sure, but expected. Even I oversimplify at times by calling murals (or in this case, pseudo-murals) street art. And the ad still way better than 90% of the street-art-related advertisements out there. So, an awkward kudos to Chevy for not screwing this up, I guess…
In the aftermath of another fantastic gallery show, this time at White Walls in San Francisco, Sickboy took some time out from painting massive walls with Eine to answer a few questions.
Shower: How did the concept of the Wonder Club arise? Can you give some examples of the daydreams that have inspired this body of work?
Sickboy: I used to have an illustrated picture of the Mad Hatters Tea Party in my bedroom as a kid, and it’s still in my family home. To this day I pondered on the thought of its inspiration on my life and that opened up a chasm of ideas. I have also been known to have some crazy dreams, I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s possible to transcribe some of them from the Wonder Club body of work.
You delved into the world of ‘mixed media ephemera’ as part of the show. Can you explain how and why?
Yeah sure, I spent the month prior to the show working and living above a studio in San Francisco, courtesy of the gallery. In that time I collected many story books from local shops and found some great surfaces to paint on including some metal drawers. All of these were included in the show. Many of the books were used in the temple assemblage. I’d remove the covers and paint on the backs of them. It’s satisfying to know that those pieces would never have been created without spending time in San Francisco.
As part of the Wonder Club you aimed to revisit your inner child for inspiration. When I was a kid it was all about Lego and Thunderbirds. Was there a certain toy, film, comic or fairytale that inspired you?
I guess I refer more to what art has represented to me in my youth. I copied Sweeny, the toddler comic strips, and gave them as Christmas presents once, and later down the line my first graffiti pieces mean a lot to me in their naivety. I lost a big bag of photos that had my first pieces in it but I can remember their metallic holts duplicolour essence, that to me is my inner child. Continue reading “The Caravan King – An interview with Sickboy”
