Author: RJ Rushmore

RJ Rushmore has been involved in contemporary art as a writer, curator, photographer, arts administrator, and fan since 2008. With a focus on street art, graffiti, and public art, RJ facilitates and promotes catalytic and ambitious art outdoors, in galleries, and online. He founded the street art blog Vandalog and has worked at The L.I.S.A. Project NYC, Mural Arts Philadelphia, and Creative Time. Currently, RJ is Co-Curator of Art in Ad Places.
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Weekend link-o-rama

Recent mural by Eine. Photo by Unusualimage

Well it was the first week of midterms for me, so lots of time was spent locking myself in my room, turning off the wifi and just studying. On the plus side, had a great meeting today trying to get some grant money from my college to bring street artists to campus and I took a nap on what might just be the world’s comfiest couch. So here’s what I haven’t had the chance to blog with all that school stuff going on:

  • I’ll be running a modified version of my street art tours next Friday at the Moniker Art Fair. The tour will be free and we’ll being checking out the fair as well as some of the street art in Shoreditch nearby. That will be from 1-2:30 11:30-1pm and 1:30-3:00pm next Friday afternoon at Moniker.
  • Unurth has photos of Escif’s latest murals.
  • Kaws blogged some teaser shots of his upcoming book.
  • Feral has been posting a lot of photos on his flickr over the past month of the interesting work he’s been making.
  • Mike put together a nice overview of FAME Festival for Arrested Motion
  • The latest in the line of shows Yosi Sergant (previously involved with Manifest Hope and Manifest Equality) has worked on, Re:Form School looks to be another massive group show advocating a good cause. It is open in New York this weekend only.
  • Kofie has a solo show opening this weekend at White Walls in San Fransisco. The opening reception is on Saturday evening. Check out The Citrus Report for more info.
  • LAB (Little Art Book) has a pop-up shop in London starting today through October 23rd. There will be prints for sale priced as low as £30. Their blog has more info.

Photo by unusualimage

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MOMO’s solo show at Anno Domini

Conversations with Kiki

MOMO‘s debut U.S. solo show opened last week at Anno Domini in San Jose. Better Than 2009 is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen recently, since MOMO is just so different from most street artists. Certainly, there aren’t many street artists trying to paint anything abstract and MOMO gets a lot more conceptual than most street artists.

Here are some of my favorite pieces from Better Than 2009:

Miami Heat
House by the Canal
Poetry Seminar Bathroom

There’s more to see from this show on Anno Domini’s website.

Photos by Anno Domini

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Vandalog interviews – Faith47

A couple of years ago, I mentioned to one of my high school teachers that I liked street art. She got really excited. Turns out, she a. a huge tattoo by Mike Giant on her back and b. once interviewed South African street artist Faith47. At the time, I’d either not seen or not taken much notice of Faith47’s artwork, but that quickly changed. Now, Faith47 is one of the artists that I think of when I think of street art. There are a lot of talented street artists, but Faith47 really gets what street art is about: Faith47 can take an old wall and give it new life, and she helps to raise awareness of serious social issues at the same time. While they are stylistically very different, I see a similar intent behind Faith47’s art as I see with Swoon. Before this interview, I’d only been in touch with Faith47 once or twice before. Now, all my suspicions about her being as amazing and genuine a person as she is an artist seem to have been confirmed.

But it’s not coincidence that Vandalog is doing an interview with Faith47 now. Next week, Faith47 will be taking part in Moniker, the London art fair for street artists. Faith47 will have some art in Campbarbossa‘s booth at the fair. Moniker opens next Thursday evening. Most of Vandalog will be there; it’s definitely something worth seeing (hell, I’m traveling all the way from Philadelphia). So that’s my reminder about Moniker, here’s the interview with Faith47:

RJ: How did you start painting walls? Do you do graffiti, street art, a bit of both, something else or does it even matter what we call it?

Faith47: Wealz130 from the YMB crew was my catalyst in the formation of this love affair with graffiti, he taught me the do’s and don’ts and has been my adviser ever since.
I understand and appreciate graffiti culture immensely…
One of the things I liked most about graffiti was its anti social nature and its ability to exist outside of society…
And with this in mind I didn’t want to feel stuck within the mode of graffiti thinking where I am not free to experiment and do exactly what I want to do.
So you could label the different things I do into different categories, but at the end of the day it’s all just labels.
I paint the streets, and in a gallery space, I basically just do the work that I want to do and don’t worry so much about any of this, ‘what do we define this as?’ thinking… as life is bigger and more complex and intricate then that…

Where is your favorite place to paint?

My studio… at nighttime… with deep dark music on…
Or in the inner city littered streets, on a broken abandoned building which is still echoing of times past…

Most of your photos of your work outdoors show the wider context of where the work was painted, and many of those photos show members of the public passing by the art. Why do you paint where you do, and how do people react to it? It’s one thing for sites like Vandalog or Wooster Collective to post a photo and say “wow that’s cool,” but I’m not sure that’s your intended audience…

I’ve always loved the actual process of painting on the streets. It’s the experience itself that is half the beauty of it.
In South Africa people rarely explore life outside of their particular class category. This is partially due to the legacy of the apartheid group areas act.
So, to move around the country and in and out of the various communities through my painting has opened up this life to me in ways that I don’t think I could ever actually explain in words… This spills over to traveling in other cities and countries, the way you experience the city changes 100% when you are painting its streets… I’ve managed to experience the world and its alleyways and stolen lost roads with sheer excitement and wonder for the last few years, and for this I feel truly blessed.
I much prefer to paint in gritty, neglected areas and countries… Where one can see the life stories of the people ached into their faces…
The hand painted shop signs, the chaos of the streets, the freedom in this chaos to find your own space and work within it, to become part of the environment in this way… It’s organic and breathing and I like to feel that silent screaming breath of the city.

How does your art change between working on walls or “gallery art?”

I fell in love with painting on wood and I think this will be an endless exploration into how I can play with this medium, it is so natural and such a base element. It takes me closer to nature. I’ve been exploring thoughts that are intensely personal; it’s been good for me.
I think it’s freeing me up a lot, allowing me to work in ways that are also in turn affecting my street painting.
So the relationship is symbiotic.
Also I can’t do one of them too much with out getting tired, so it’s nice to change from street to the studio from time to time, keeps things sharper…

What are you goals as an artist?

I really want to get to the point where I can comfortably support my son and myself without doing any work or commissions that I don’t want to do.
I really want to be able to use all my time to explore whatever ideas I have in my mind.
My biggest challenge in this life has been the financial pressures that interrupt my artistic process… It’s gotten a lot better, but it’s been such a long process and taken up a lot of extra time. I think this is a challenge for many artists… Especially in countries where there are no support structures or where you’ve had no formal art training etc.

This issue may have completely blown over by now, but I remember something like a year and a half ago that you tried to get the word out about an absurd anti-graffiti law that was being proposed in Cape Town. Were you successful in preventing that law from being passed?

It was passed a month ago.
I am feeling very depressed about it. It’s a blanket law that totally alienates us. I feel completely deflated about this. There is no option but to carry on as per usual and hope for the best. I want to move away from this city because of this negative energy from the city, but my son is here and he is very close with his father and we have a strong extended family structure. So I have to wait it out until he is at least 18…
Cape Town is a beautiful city, but it has a sickness that can affect you if you are not vigilant about it.
This is why I love / need to travel, to make sure I am breathing and thinking and alive and not subscribing to the bullshit that one subscribes to when you are in a small town for too long. A few days ago my unsuspecting heart sunk into the ground when I saw that they had buffed over the old “free Mandela” slogan which is on the off ramp near the Pick and Pay in Observatory… I’ve driven past that for years, we used to joke about stealing that iconic vibracrete and selling it to a museum – it’s so precious of course where it is that we would never had done such a thing, but our city council doesn’t care about these things and with grey bland death cement paint they erased a symbol of the painful struggle, perhaps because they knew that it never really ended and that the tires are still burning.

You’re probably the only well-known street artist that I can think of who is also a mom. How does being a mother influence your art?

Well it’s been super challenging, especially in the beginning.
But his dad and the family play a big part.
I’ve always thought that the best way to teach is through example, so when I had him, I was really young, and everyone expected me to get some lame ass job and do ‘what needed to be done,’ but I thought, “no, if I want him to do with his life something that he loves, then I need to do the same…”
I’ve been pretty uncompromising about this and it’s working out now after all this persistence.
He hangs out at his dad’s tattoo studio or at my studio a lot so he is always around great artists and people.
We’re really lucky, he loves drawing and in fact he burns a lot of artists hands down…
From the start we incorporated him into our lifestyles, so as he’s gotten older hes become an amazing friend and it’s actually a pretty easy dynamic.

How will you be involved in the Moniker Art Fair?

Well I’m going to be showing and painting at the Stroke.03 fair in Berlin.
So I thought I would hop over to see Moniker. I’ll paint a wall somewhere I think, and I’ll have some work up with campbarbossa.
But really I just wanted to hang out with Frankie a bit who is organizing the fair, and meet some of the galleries who are involved.

What have you got planned for the future?
I’m going to fall in love.
Again.

Photos courtesy of Faith47

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David Choe and DVS hit London

David Choe and his partner DVS have been in London preparing for Hell’s Half Acre, the show we mentioned recently that Lazarides Gallery is putting on in the Leake Street tunnels. They also took some time out to paint a few pieces on the graffiti covered walls of Leake Street.

These are a few of my favorites, but Choe has a bunch more photos on his blog.

Photos by David Choe

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The Humble and Sublime: El Mac at Joshua Liner Gallery

There’s less than two weeks until El Mac’s upcoming solo show at Joshua Liner Gallery in NYC. While Mac is best known for his murals, he’s also active in the studio producing work for galleries.

From what I’ve seen so far, it looks like most of the show will consist of Mac’s stunning acrylic on panel pieces. The first time I saw one of these was earlier this year Joshua Liner’s summer group show, and it was definitely one of my favorite works there.

The Humble and Sublime opens on October 14th and will be El Mac’s first New York solo show.

Photos courtesy of Joshua Liner Gallery

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M-city show in Paris

Unfortunately I didn’t hear about this show until after the opening, so I couldn’t give any Parisians reading a heads up about that, but M-City’s show Urban Jungle at Galerie Itinerrance in Paris is still on through October 30th. Pretty much looks like what you’d expect from M-City: crazy stenciled industrial landscapes cut and painted with technical skills that so many stencil artists somehow seem to lack.

I remember the first time I saw M-City’s work: there was a giant M-City piece at the original Cans Festival, but it was in the area where anybody with a stencil could paint (I did, and if they let me in, you know they were looking for quantity of artists, not quality). There were a lot of crap amateurs like me and my friends painting that spot, and then there was M-City (and also Hush). I couldn’t understand why M-City was in that part of the festival, and it made me worry that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be painting there. M-City was no amateur.

Photos courtesy of Galerie Itinerrance

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Weekend link-o-rama

A mobile projection by Armsrock

Here’s what I missed this week, or where people just wrote things that I couldn’t do or wrote them better than I could:

Photo by Armsrock

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Compare and contrast: D*face and Jordan Seiler

Stencil by D*face (photo by hebedesign) and Weave It by Jordan Seiler (photo by Jordan)

I want to look at two very different artists and how they tackle advertising and the media in their art: D*face and Jordan Seiler.

D*face is known for billboard takeovers, messing with pop culture icons, messing with corporate logos and his “d-dog” icon. He’s kind of like Kaws in that D*face inserts himself into pop culture, but D*face’s work is typically subversive or critical of advertising, marketing and things like that. On the other hand, KAWS is inserting himself into pop culture in order to embrace it and become a part of it. Actually, D*face probably explains his art better himself in a new video for Don’t Panic:

I think it’s fair to say that D*face is “against” advertising, or at the very least that his critique of it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. I would also say that D*face has been, throughout his career, very good at subverting advertising, media and pop culture. Yet, there’s something about D*faces work that doesn’t subvert advertising at all. In fact, in some ways, D*face’s art embraces advertising. Like Shepard Fairey (one of D*face’s major influences), D*face has an “icon” or a “logo” of his own. The d*dog or elements of the d*dog appear throughout his work, as does D*face’s own name. So is D*face advertising himself by subverting advertising? Certainly. Is that his intent? I’m not sure. And if it is, it’s worth mentioning the standard argument defending that: (except for Shepard Fairey who has teams of wheatpasters) an individual artist doesn’t have the resources to advertise themselves on anywhere near the scale that a brand like Coke can advertise and the artist is putting up art while advertisers are solely trying to sell a product. Additionally, D*face’s use of a logo has probably helped him to become the success he is today, which in turn allows him to do crazy projects like this and increase awareness for his agenda of getting people to question advertising and mass media.

For those familiar with Adbusters, this paradox might be familiar. The Adbusters organization sells shoes which are essentially made in opposition to Converse and branded shoes made in sweatshops, but by creating an anti-brand, they have created their own shoe brand.

Jordan Seiler, like D*face, is known for billboard takeovers but also for his efforts to change/eliminate advertising in the public space. In addition to his own art, Jordan organized NYSAT and TOSAT. Throughout his outdoor art career, Jordan’s style has changed more drastically than the average street artist. While there are a few reoccurring motifs (like a use of simple geometric patterns and shapes), each project is very distinct and it would be hard for me to define a specific style for Jordan (unless doing ad takeovers is itself a style). Additionally, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Jordan sign his outdoor work. Recently, Jordan has been preparing to retire one of the designs that he has used for a while now and is starting to become identified by, his Weave It design.

From the Paper Champion project, photo by Jordan

On his blog, Jordan recently explained that he was finishing up the Weave It project (as he had ended projects previously before they became “iconic”) “in order to remained un-branded as an artist and therefor escape criticism that I use the streets and advertising venues as advertising for myself.” Two days later, Jordan restated his feelings in another post. Once again, Jordan said that he is moving on from the design in an effort to “prevent branding of PublicAdCampaign imagery.”

To most street artists, changing their style regularly and actively trying to avoid any identifiable trademarks might seem like a novel and counter-intuitive idea, but Jordan seems to be sacrificing potential short-term artist notoriety for his long-term political aims. The flip-side of this strategy is that a lot of Jordan’s art isn’t immediately obvious as an advertising takeover. Most of the takeovers don’t scream out “I am here instead of an advertisement,” so the art can easily be ignored or even possibly confused as some sort of guerrilla marketing campaign. While D*face’s artwork makes itself obvious and forces people to re-examine the world we live in, perhaps Jordan’s more subtle techniques cause the art and the action he has taken to be overlooked (although, and I’m not sure about this, he might argue that that’s sort of the point in some cases).

I emailed briefly with Jordan and he clarified his position on using logos in art. Surprisingly, he said “My thoughts on logo reproduction in street art and ad takeovers are not as idealistic as that which I practice” and he actually doesn’t believe that street artists shouldn’t use logos, just that “I choose to go as far as I can from logo production and stylistic similarities (which I can often fail at) mostly because I choose only to hit ads and therefore am under even higher scrutiny when being asked if my work is self promotional.”

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So whose work to you think is more effective? Let me know in the comments.

Photos by hebedesign and Jordan Seiler

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New from Labrona and Other

Labrona sent over some photos of what he’s been up to recently. Labrona have some work at Moniker next month in the Campbarbossa booth, so if we’re lucky, maybe he’ll be over in London for that as well. Oh and the billboard below was painted along with Other, who is one of the three artists to contribute a design to a line of Vandalog t-shirts that I’ll be launching soon (more info in the coming weeks).

Photos by Labrona