Benjamin Gaulon‘s Printball machine was in Vienna recently for BLK River. The machine is an interesting use of Graffiti Markup Language that uses paintballs to print a pre-programmed message onto a wall. For this piece, they wrote TEMPT, which is an entire story itself. Here’s a video of Printball in action:
Photos courtesy of Benjamin Gaulon
Somehow I’ve neglected until now to post about Faile’s upcoming solo show at Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York. It opens on November 4th with an opening from 6-8pm. Bedtime Stories should be something special. I stopped by the Faile studio briefly a couple of months ago and the boys were slaving away on the 12 block paintings that will make up this show. If Jordan Seiler didn’t have an opening in Philadelphia on the 5th, I would be in NYC at this show for sure.
Photo courtesy of Perry Rubenstein Gallery
Amazing news this week about JR, the French photographer/street artist. He has just won the TED Prize, a $100,000 prize (to be used for some sort of positive purpose, not just to buy an amazing car) from the people who put on the TED conferences. TED have done a nice interview with the artist on their website. Ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you how I always say I am somehow mentally incapable of determining if a photograph is “good” or not, but I’m told that JR is a good photographer and he definitely is doing some important work trying to help people.
The prize was announced in an article in The New York Times. Here’s the start of the article:
It’s not common for important philanthropic prizes to go to people whose work involves criminal trespass and who make statements like the following: “You never know who’s part of the police and who’s not.”
But the TED conference, the California lecture series named for its roots in technology, entertainment and design, said on Tuesday that it planned to give its annual $100,000 prize for 2011 — awarded in the past to figures like Bill Clinton, Bono and the biologist E. O. Wilson — to the Parisian street artist known as J R, a shadowy figure who has made a name for himself by plastering colossal photographs in downtrodden neighborhoods around the world. The images usually extol local residents, to whom he has become a Robin Hood-like hero.
So congratulations to JR. This is some great news.
Photo by F4BZ3F4B
No Longer Empty organized this recent mural by Chris Stain which is a pretty substantial size at 82 feet long. Here’s a video of Chris painting the wall and speaking about his work:
Chris Stain from NYC No Longer Empty on Vimeo.
Video by Julie Congo
Photo by Superk8nyc
Last week in London was crazy-busy, but I’m glad I took a few minutes to get over to Pictures on Walls for the launch show of Tristan Manco’s new book Street Sketchbook: Journeys. To be honest, I haven’t read the book yet. I still have a few pages left in Street/Studio and then I’ve still got 2-3 other books in the queue before this one, but the show was good fun. There’s work from Roa, Ripo, Saner, Dran, Titifreak and a bunch of other talented artists, many of whose names I don’t remember. That’s the great thing about Tristan: he knows all these talented artists that most street art fans have never heard of, and this is a good showcase of those artists. But here are my favorite pieces from the show:
Sam3 actually has a new print at Paper Monster, but I think this wood block is 10x cooler.
Unfortunately, this show has closed already, but you can find some more pictures on my flickr.
Okay, so yeah, GRL’s Laser Tag thing is cool, but it’s more of a fun trick than it is graffiti. This new thing is pretty awesome too though, and I think it might be a big development in the world of graffiti: Letterbombing. Improve Everywhere’s Charlie Todd first posted about this form of internet graffiti. Check out the video:
In recent months, I’ve been suggesting that the best piece of street art or graffiti ever would be to hack the Google homepage if even for a few seconds. Then, just a few days ago, I went on a rant to a friend about how computer hackers who do things like this are a new generation of taggers. Letterbombing seems to fit perfectly within the sort of things I’ve been imagining, and if I’m on to anything, letterbombing seems to be the next development in online graffiti. Like moving from tagging to wholecars, letterbombs might not last as long as a hacked website, but they are more refined, can hit bigger targets and will probably be seen by more people. Of course, letterbombing isn’t illegal like graffiti or hacking, but it’s still damn clever.
Are there any other examples of online graffiti out there that I’m forgetting about?
Know Hope‘s solo show There Is Nothing Dear (Nothing Is Too Much Dear) opened a little over a week ago at Toronto’s Show & Tell Gallery. From the photos I’ve seen, it looks to be some of Know Hope’s best work to date. That said, I’m a massive Know Hope fan, so maybe I’m just excited to see new work. These paintings seem to mark a new chapter for the characters in his continuing narrative.
Again, maybe it’s just that I’ve been following this narrative for quite a while now, but some of these new paintings are heartbreaking. Like when you read Harry Potter and got to the part where Dumbledore dies six books in (sorry for the spoiler, but if you haven’t read the 6th book by now, I don’t think you’re going to).
There Is Nothing Dear (Nothing Is Too Much Dear) runs through October 31st at Show & Tell Gallery.
Photos courtesy of Show & Tell Gallery
TrustoCorp are going to be in LA in a few days for a show at Gallery 1988. New Americana will be TrustoCorp’s second solo show, and unlike the first one, I’m looking forward to this. This looks to be only a 2-day show on Saturday and Sunday, so don’t blink or you might miss it.
In addition to new paintings (which don’t always work indoors), there will be some sculptures and, most exciting of all, more TrustoCorp-styled carnival games. TrustoCorp are known for their fake products and street signs, but after spending some time at their studio over the summer, I’ve come to really enjoy the carnival game side of things and it’s a nice way to bring the work indoors. Also, there is going to be some sort of collaboration with Klipsch speakers and DJ Fred Wreck of Tha Dogg Pound.
Here’s a teaser:
Images courtesy of TrustoCorp
Due to legal concerns, I’ve decided that the best move is unfortunately to disable all comments on this post. – RJ Rushmore
This is probably old news to a lot of readers, but maybe not to all: LAPD’s art fraud unit is currently investigating JetSet Graffiti for various allegations of theft and fraud. JetSet Graffiti is an online gallery run by Daniel Lahoda to sell prints and occasionally original work by street artists and graffiti writers. In the past, JetSet Graffiti has released prints with artists such as Ron English, D*Face and Saber. This isn’t the first time that accusations have been made against JetSet Graffiti, but to my knowledge this is the first time that police are investigating the business.
On August 31st, a message appeared on the Urban Art Assocation/Banksy Forum. Silky, the forum moderator, posted an email from an investigator at the LAPD. You can read the message on the forum, but it essentially said that the LAPD were trying to reach anybody who had had bad business experiences with Lahoda.
Then, around September 16th, the LAPD posted a “Crime Alert” about Lahoda on their website. The crime alert (available online) is an information request once again asking for anyone potentially defrauded by Lahoda to come forward as well as a warning about complaints that have been received. The LAPD says that they have gotten complaints including “art ordered and paid for but never delivered,” “taking art on consignment and diverting the art and money obtained for his own use,” “selling unauthorized prints” and other issues as well. The alert also claims that Lahoda was fired from three jobs over the last 6 years for embezzling funds (I’ve attempted to reach these companies, but could only get a hold of one. They declined to comment). It’s important to note that even given all these things, the report states that Lahoda “is not wanted by the police at this time.”
I spoke with Detective Don Hrycyk at the LAPD, the officer in charge of investigating Lahoda. He gave one example of the numerous complaints that he had received which he believed to be true: Allegedly, a buyer in England gave $8000 to Lahoda for a Banksy print, but never received the artwork.
Lahoda and I were in touch by phone and email both before and after the crime alert was posted online. He offered to answer some questions for Vandalog in an effort to explain his side of the story. Despite repeated emails to Lahoda and his repeated assurance that he would be responding to the questions in a matter of days, I’ve still not heard back from him after a few weeks, so I’ve had to publish this without his comments.
Logan Hicks sent over some photos from Wide Open Walls, the painting trip that he is on right now in Gambia. Logan, Eelus, Mysterious Al, Broken Crow and other artists are visiting small villages right now and painting walls there in an effort to improve the towns and increase tourism.
Juxtapoz, Brooklyn Street Art and the Wide Open Walls blog have more pictures.
Photos by Logan Hicks
