“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.
Enjoyed part 1 of our 4-part series of Henrik Haven‘s photographs of Copenhagen graffiti? Today we have part 2. Once again, Haven has captured some really amazing pieces. As in part 1, rather than mention some artists in the photos and neglect others, I’m just going to leave the photos without artist credits.
Anthony Lister visited London last fall and painted quite a few pieces around Shoreditch. The piece pictured above is in a Shoreditch carpark where art is organized by End of the Line, who have just released a nice short film of Lister at work. Check it out:
It’s damn near impossible to get a sense of a city’s street art or graffiti from a handful of shots, but Henrik Haven has gone above and beyond with this set of photos of graffiti in Copenhagen. We’ll be posting the photos in four parts over the next few days. Rather than mention some artists in the photos and neglect others, I’m just going to leave the photos without artist credits. Read the names if you’re interested in who painted what.
I’m excited to see that Troy Lovegates aka Other, one of my favorite street artists, just painted this mural in my hometown of Chicago. It was installed as part of the Art In Public Places project with Pawn Works, the Chicago Urban Art Society, and Alderman Danny Solis.
Adnate’s entry for the Archibald prize. Photo courtesy of Adnate.
Adnate‘s work is some of my absolute favourite in Melbourne right now and has been for a while. He has been hitting the streets hard lately, both solo and in multiple collaborations with AWOL Crew and others. Adnate started out painting graffiti and letters over 10 years ago. More recently he has moved into painting beautifully detailed characters, which also still incorporate some of his tags and lettering, which I love. His characters are not only amazingly detailed, most of them also have a story, which make them even more special. Last year Adnate had his solo show “Lost Culture” at RTIST Gallery and exhibited alongside the rest of the AWOL crew at their collective show “Fabric”. Adnate has also traveled the world painting and exhibiting in cities such as Barcelona, Mumbai, New York, Paris and Berlin.
I sat down with Adnate recently and this is what we talked about.
LM: I mentioned above that many of your characters have a story, which I learned by talking to you at some of your shows and while watching you paint. Tell us about some of them?
Adnate: Most of the subjects in my paintings are of people that I have met and personally photographed. It’s important that I know the subjects as I am always trying to communicate certain emotions and stories through my portraits.
With the aboriginal portraits, which I feel are my strongest, I spent the last years getting to know local and national Indigenous Australians. It has been a crazy journey meeting and learning about these incredible people, particularly the current and past climate of their survival.
Photo courtesy of Adnate
LM: Apart from your solo and AWOL group shows, give us a recap of what you got up to in 2012?
Adnate: Last year was the first year that I went bigger and higher with my portraits. It’s a great feeling being elevated that high in the air whilst painting and although I only managed two walls on this scale for 2012 they were definitely a highlight. When painting on the ground you get all sorts of distractions but being up high it’s just you and a few birds (one almost flew into my head recently).
I had some great opportunities to travel around Australia too. I got to travel through the western desert and met some of the oldest indigenous Australians alive. You wouldn’t believe what’s out there, that’s what you call “real country”.
Photo courtesy of Adnate
LM: I read in a recent interview on artshub your work is “Inspired by Renaissance artists such as Da Vinci and Caravaggio, Adnate taught himself classical chiaroscuro techniques to communicate drama and emotion in his subjects”. This is quite an evolution from tagging and letters, what brought about this change in style?
Adnate: I worked on making my own style for 10 years and it was time to try something new. So I flipped my work on its head and began trying to reach a level of portrait realism that’s second to a photo. I’ve never been a big sketcher, so when I was painting letters I did so in a free flowing manner from the beginning to the end. Now with portraits I reference a photo, spending just as much time studying the photo as I do the painting. There is always a point in which I battle with the painting and the photo to make things as realistic as possible. It’s a completely different method of painting that I am used to and I think that’s what I love about it. It’s important to stay stimulated and challenge myself wherever possible.
Photo courtesy of Adnate
LM: Tell me about some of the other work you do using your art?
Adnate: Over the years I’ve done regular youth work using graffiti art as a way to sway them off drugs and hard crime. I’m currently doing most of this now in a Juvenile Prison that houses the most volatile and “at risk” young boys and girls in the state. It’s an awesome job and the best part is getting to know these guys, they all have the craziest stories to tell and its really rewarding when you get to make their day. Plus there are some really talented writers and artists in there, which is definitely inspiring.
Photo by David Russell
LM: Tell me about your background. How did you get into graff?
Adnate: Well I didn’t grow up on a train line, so my first memories were being a little gromit skater and studying all the designs on the clothes and decks. When I hit high school I begun to travel around Melbourne on the trains, in particular the Hurstbridge Line and I got to see all the WCA productions. This blew my mind and I quickly dropped off from skating and graff became my life.
Adnate & Shida. Photo courtesy of Adnate.
LM: What does your name mean?
Adnate: ad·nate [ad-neyt] adjective Biology: grown fast to something; congenitally attached.
I get asked this all the time and to be honest I didn’t choose it for the meaning but simply for the letter structure. I was 16 when I choose it from a dictionary and I loved it because it was a word that gave me lots of kicks and flares with my tags.
The fantastic Horfée’s recent solo show in London, Imaginarium, looks like a real hit. Hooked has plenty of photos of the show, and turned me on to a great video of Horfée made by Hypebeast in which he discusses the Imaginarium. Check it out:
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Hendrik ‘ecb’ Beikirch recently opened a show in Cologne, Germany and painted a large mural to accompany the show. Beikirch’s show, Transsib – Greyhound. Paintings from train and bus rides, is on now through May 19th at Ruttkowski:68 in Cologne, but I want to focus on his beautiful new mural.
To learn more about Beikirch and his process for this body of work, check out this video:
I missed last week’s link-o-rama because I was in Boston for the Barry McGee show at the ICA Boston. So worth the trip (more on that soon), but for now here’s what I missed:
A young Canadian Instagram user was arrested for a photo she posted of a piece of street art because they thought she made the piece. Well, if I ever go to Montreal, I guess I should be careful about what I post to my Instagram.
