Zéh Palito recently went on some travels around Europe, and while there he painted a number of walls with local artists. Here are a few of my favorites…
Photos by Zéh Palito
Zéh Palito collaborations in Europe
BNE Water
The following is a message from BNE, the graffiti writer and founder of the BNE Water Foundation. The foundation is launching an ambitious project to provide clean water to people in Gunung Kidul, Indonesia. If you have the means, I encourage you to donate or pick up something from the foundation’s shop or gallery. With this project, even a small donation goes a long way.
Hello,
As many of you know, since early 2011 we have been working really hard to launch the BNE Water Foundation (known as Yayasan BNE in Indonesia), a non-profit organization like no other. To get this far, it has taken almost eight months of bureaucracy, a lot of hard work and about $50,000. We are now an official NPO and this is the start of what I feel is a true platform for real social change. Much like graffiti in its purest form, this is something real and very raw that was born in the streets.
Many generous artists including Estevan Oriol, Sabe KST, INSA, Shepard Fairey and others have come on board, they are among the first to have donated artwork. People have also started to support by donating cash and buying sticker sets which is much appreciated. What bothers me is that I have been hearing many people say things like, “That’s really cool what YOU are doing” or “good luck with YOUR project.” This disturbs me and makes me think that most of you really do not understand my intentions. I have funded this project for the most part by myself and will continue to do so for as long as it takes, but this is not something that I can do alone. I am simply donating my name, ideas, time and money to set this off. This was never meant to be MY project, this is something for the people. My intentions were to create something that everyone could participate in, and something that everyone could benefit from. I CANNOT DO THIS ALONE. The most I can do is give all of you the platform and opportunity to create something truly revolutionary. Without all of you, this will not work.
I have spent more than 15 years doing graffiti full-time for no pay, and like many of you I have no plans of ever stopping. Throughout my graffiti career, I have never felt the need to speak or do interviews, anything I needed to say could be expressed on the walls. In order to get all of you to act, and to become a part of something that benefits both our culture and society, it has become necessary for me to speak out. None of you will ever know what I’ve been through in order to travel the world, do the amount of graffiti that I’ve done and to be able to present this project to all of you. However, I think that through my visible actions over the years, I have proven to all of you my dedication to our culture and have shown you what I am about. Now, I would like to respectfully ask all of you, to show the world what we as a culture are about. Our culture was born out of rebellion and if any group of people is capable of igniting something truly revolutionary, it’s us. I would like to believe that we are about something more than ego, endless self-promotion and trying to make a dollar. Are graffiti and street art just empty visual commodities that have been co-opted by brands, corporations and institutions, or are we a culture that actually stands for something?
For our next project, we have promised over 100,000 people in an impoverished area of Indonesia access to clean water and sanitation. It will cost about two million dollars to complete this project. All types of artists and people from all walks of life are of course invited to be a part or this, but now I am reaching out to all of you specifically. I am asking graffiti writers and street artists to be the ones primarily responsible for changing these peoples lives. I have faith that I can rely on all of you to be the spark that blows this movement up into the massive force that I envision. We hope to start work on this project March 1st. If every single one of you decide to get involved after reading this, the entire project will easily be completely funded and you will have given us the much needed traction to move forward. I have always thought that it was a shame and a waste that we have never all united for a single cause. I am now presenting all of you with a chance to do that. I’m not sure how many graffiti writers, street artists, and fans of our culture are out there, but I assume we are in the hundreds of thousands at the very least. If we ALL come together, we can do on our own what our governments are failing to do. The fact that more than one billion people consider clean water a luxury is completely unacceptable.
Our goal is to raise at least $500,000 dollars before March 1st, but I believe that we are capable of raising the full two million dollars or even more. When united in large numbers, the power of the people is massive. With everyone’s support, achieving this goal will not be very difficult.
We are 100% sure to succeed if EVERYONE gets involved by doing the following things:
1. EVERYONE needs to make a cash donation. $5, €10, ¥1000, what ever you can afford, the important thing is that EVERYONE donates something. A $10 donation x 50,000 people is $500,000 dollars. This is enough to provide 25,000 people with clean water and for us to really get the ball rolling. At least 95% of you can afford to donate $10, so please make a donation and get two friends to do the same. Again, in order for this to work, EVERYONE needs to donate something. I don’t care if it’s one dollar or a coin, donate something and make sure you get someone else to do the same.
2. Spread the word. This is very important, please start by forwarding this message to other writers, street artists and fans of the culture. If you have a blog, Facebook or Twitter account please use them to spread the word.
3. If you are an artist who sells your work, please donate a piece to our gallery and get two friends to do the same.
Sadly, if enough of you disregard this message and choose to do nothing, then we will have shown that the world of street art and graffiti is made up of indifferent, selfish individuals who could not be bothered to help change the world. We will have failed in more ways than one. If EVERYONE gets involved, then we will have shown the world what true revolutionary actions look like. We will have also changed over 100,000 thousand lives in Indonesia, and jump started a true global movement for social justice.
4,500 children die everyday from water related diseases. These forgotten children are putting our culture to a test.
Let’s do this!
DONATE HERE and PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO OTHERS.
Sincerely,
-BNE
11-28-2011
Photo courtesy of BNE
Brad Downey – Spontaneous Sculptures
Gestalten recently published a new book of Brad Downey‘s work: Spontaneous Sculptures. The book focuses on a series that Brad calls his spontaneous sculptures (of course): A mostly illegal and non-permissioned series of work where Brad interacts with public spaces somehow. While the book of course includes some academic-sounding texts and interviews with Brad, I found the real appeal here to be seeing all of this work in one place. Too often, Brad Downey is written off as nothing more than a dickish prankster when you see one piece on its own, but he’s much more than that. Yes, he’s at least an impish prankster, but Spontaneous Sculptures is a reminder that Brad is also a brilliant artist whose work encourages unfettered interaction with public spaces. If that occasionally results in a broken window or two, so be it.
Of course, not every sculpture Brad does is brilliant. Much of it is far from that, but within the context of an entire book, that’s okay. Even a boring or “failed” Spontaneous Sculpture is going to change public space in some way.
I can’t recommend this book highly enough to those who aim to view their world with more of twinkle in their eye and the inspiration needed to make change. It made me want to walk around and make the world a more interesting place, or at least a different one.
Photos by Brad Downey from “Spontaneous Sculptures” copyright Gestalten 2011
Preview of The Underbelly Show (and NEW LOCATION)
On Monday, The Underbelly Project announced two big things: 1. They did a Paris version of The Underbelly Project, which we’ll have more about soon, but The Huffington Post has info on for now; and 2. They’ve changed the location of The Underbelly Show opening this week in Miami to 78 NW 25th Street in Wynwood. That, and an exclusive preview of that show, will be the focus of today’s Underbelly post.
The Underbelly Show may be the new kid on the block during Miami Art Basel, but it has arrived as a force to be reckoned with. It will featuring brand new work from over 30 artists who participated in the New York and Paris Underbelly Projects, as well as a host of other installations and events. This is not just another gallery show during a busy week. It’s an experience. Starting with the RSVP-only opening party on Tuesday, Thursday will see a Secret Wars battle, Friday the space opens to the general public and includes the launch of a limited edition version of The Underbelly Project’s book We Own the Night, which won’t be on sale in stores until next year. And that’s just the stuff I can tell you about. I can’t even guess at what else the Underbelly crew have got planned, but this is definitely the one must-see thing in Miami this week.
While setting up the show at the original location on Collins Avenue this week, the team realized the amount of art and their vision was too big for that space, so they moved to a warehouse in Wynwood at 78 NW 25th Street.
In a rare statement, the usually silent Workhorse told Vandalog:
The scope of the Underbelly Miami show grew larger than we had expected. Originally our idea for the location in South Beach was to showcase selected works in a high traffic area so as many people could see it as possible. As the works started to come in, we realized that we were going to run out of wall space. One of the Swoon pieces is 21 feet wide by 13 feet tall. The L’atlas piece is nearly 12 feet tall. We have over 70 pieces of work and most all of them are 4×6 feet and larger. The work is massive. So we began to look for additional space and realized it was best to move the show to Wynwood so that we could feature the works without being crowded and crammed onto the walls.
Photos courtesy of The Underbelly Project
Miami mural madness 2011 begins…
Peter Vahan sent over these images of what’s been going on over the last few days in Wynwood, Miami. Primary Flight and Wynwood Walls each have a number of murals being painted by a range of artists. Here’s just a small selection of the progress so far from Neuzz, How & Nosm, Above, Shepard Fairey and Retna…
Photos by Peter Vahan
Swoon at Black Rat Projects
Swoon’s latest solo show, a rare occurrence for her, is opening this week in London at Black Rat Projects. Murmuration is her first solo show in London. It opens on December 1st. Do not miss this. While in London working on Murmuration, Swoon has put up at least one piece on the street, documented in this interview with Time Out.
Photo by Mike Snelle
Where to look at SCOPE Miami
The SCOPE art fair’s Miami iteration should, as always, have a few booths of interest to Vandalog readers to year. SCOPE opens on the 29th and runs through December 4th. Make sure to stop by these booths: Mallick Williams for Skullphone and Love Me/Curtis Kulig; Jonathan LeVine Gallery for Olek, WK Interact and Aakash Nihilani; Dorian Grey Gallery for Richard Hambleton (and maybe LAII); and New Image Art Gallery for Maya Hayuk and Retna. Of course, all those galleries will be exhibiting other artists as well, those are just some highlights. And there should be plenty of else of interesting. For the last two years, SCOPE has been where I’ve seen some of the most interesting indoor art in Miami.
Photos courtesy of New Image Art Gallery
Something special from Interesni Kazki
Interesni Kazki, aka the Ukrainian duo of Waone and Aec, opened their first solo show in the US last week at Mid-City Arts in LA. The show, titled Nothing Special, consists of canvases that each artist painted separately. Here’s a portion of the show, and you can see the rest on Interesni Kazki’s blog:
Photos courtesy of Interesni Kazki
Weekend link-o-rama
Sorry this is coming a day late, but Thanksgiving and related activities took priority. Here’s what I missed posting about this week:
- Roa and Resto collaborated on this wall in the Netherlands.
- Peter Bengtsen has written some thoughts on a controversial Boris Hoppek product.
- Invader has a solo show opening at Lazarides’ The Outsiders next week. It will include Invader-shaped waffles.
- Dabs and Myla have designed a toy.
- James Marshall aka Dalek recently had a show at Womb Gallery in Oklahoma City. Arrested Motion has photos and there’s a behind-the-scenes video as well.
- On December 9th, Mighty Tanaka in Brooklyn has a group show opening with Robots Will Kill and other artists that they crew have selected.
Photo by Luna Park
Here comes the masturbatory docuseries
Wynwood Walls is a noteworthy mural program in the Wynwood District of Miami. It has brought a number talented of artists to Miami to paint walls, and I’m under the impression that these artists are rewarded handsomely for their work. So far, so good. The project was started by Tony Goldman, a real estate developer. For this reason, Wynwood Walls has always been a bit controversial. To put it simply, Goldman is banking on commissioned murals by street artists and graffiti artists/writers to help quickly gentrify the neighborhood of Wynwood, where his company has significant property holdings. Okay, so that’s going to be controversial, but personally I think both sides of that issue have some good points. While Wynwood Walls has made me uncomfortable in the past with their high-culture and very dollar-sign focused take on murals, at the end of the day Wynwood has more walls painted by great artists because of Wynwood Walls and the neighborhood is on the upswing. But I’m digressing with history and politics before I even get to my main point: Wynwood Walls was not the first mural project in Wynwood, nor the largest, nor the most important. Before Wynwood Walls came along, the district was known in the street art and graffiti worlds for Primary Flight, quite likely the largest mural festival ever held with over 250 participants since 2007. While Primary Flight is not going to have quite as strong of a presence this year as it has in years past (both festivals are held over the first week of December), Primary Flight has undoubtedly been the superior festival to Wynwood Walls in size and the locations of walls in the past. This year, Wynwood Walls has ramped things up and Primary Flight has slowed things down, so it remains to be seen which will be the bigger festival, but the idea of Wynwood as a mural district certainly stems from Primary Flight’s work. Wynwood Walls took a version of Primary Flight’s idea, added their personal spin to it and started up a few years later in the same neighborhood as Primary Flight.
Given that history, I at first found it surprising that a recent docuseries about Wynwood is telling such a different story: Here Comes The Neighborhood. The series is described as “a Short-Form Docuseries exploring the power of Public Art and innovation to uplift and revitalize urban communities,” and supposedly tells the story of how Wynwood has been improved by murals. Unfortunately, the series is not at all what it claims. Tony Goldman, the man behind Wynwood Walls, is the executive producer of Here Comes The Neighborhood. When you know that, it becomes a lot more clear as to why the video series is, so far, a bit of a circle-jerk of Wynwood Walls participants talking about how great the project is, save for about 20 seconds mentioning Primary Flight and Gaia’s joke that the main Wynwood Walls complex might be “where art goes to die, to a certain extent.”
The Wynwood Walls website and the Here Comes The Neighbordhood website are even worse, with absolutely no mention of Primary Flight or the graffiti and street art in Wynwood that preceded either festival. Of course people and companies can say what they want about their projects so Wynwood Walls and this video series could just tell the story of Wynwood Walls and not mention Primary Flight, but I do take issue with them claiming to tell a history of art in the area and practically writing out the organization responsible for the majority of Wynwood’s murals. Based on a quick estimate, the Here Comes The Neighborhood trailer includes at least 6 of the murals affiliated with Primary Flight rather than Wynwood Walls, as were 8 artists affiliated with Primary Flight rather than Wynwood Walls, 9 artists shown who worked with Primary Flight before Wynwood Walls and 1 who worked with both Primary Flight and Wynwood Walls during her first trip to Miami. So clearly the makers of Here Comes The Neighborhood like and know about the murals for which Primary Flight is responsible, but have for some unknown reason neglected to give Primary Flight due credit for their contribution to Wynwood.
So with their twisting of history in mind, here’s the trailer for and the first two episodes of Here Comes The Neighborhood, which at least does show some great artwork if you can get past their gross distortions:
Photo by Hargo