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 love

Billboard by Mobstr

This link post is definitely going to be a weekly thing. Hopefully it will allow me to link to things that I just haven’t had the time to cover here on the blog, my Twitter or Vandalog’s Facebook page. So here’s what you may have missed in street art this week:

  • My Love For You Is A Stampede of Horses and Arrested Motion have two sets of amazing photos from Fecal Face‘s 10 year anniversary show at The Luggage Store in SF. This show has a pretty sick line up including Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Jim Houser, Swoon and Maya Hayuk.
  • Nychos’ solo show at Pure Evil Gallery (in cooperation with End of The Line) opened on Thursday. Go here for the press release sort of info or go here for photos from the opening.
  • That I May See, Matt Small’s latest solo show, opened last week at Black Rat Projects and it looks absolutely stunning. My family and I can’t thank Matt enough for his support of the Robert Shitima School in Zambia, which is where Matt and Black Rat Press have decided to donate 40% of the proceeds from this show.
  • Eelus, Logan Hicks, Eine, Lucy McLachlan and others are headed to Gambia next month for the Wide Open Walls project.
  • OFFSET has once again put together an interesting conference of creatives who will be speaking next month (October 1st-3rd) in Dublin. OFFSET 2010 will have presentations from Gary Baseman, Steve Powers, Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective and many more. Early bird tickets are available online for 150 euros (with discounts for students thankfully).
  • A very touching work of street art in Brooklyn.
  • Just Seeds has put together Resourced, a set for political posters that you can download and print at home. There are designs by Gaia, Armsrock, Chris Stain, Josh MacPhee and many more artists.
  • When I first heard about JR’s new Unframed project, I didn’t really care for it. Basically, JR is wheatpasting other photographers (often famous) photographs around in cities. To me, this sort came out of left field. I don’t mind when Blek le Rat does similar things, but with JR, I always liked the stories behind the photos as much as the images themselves. I thought that with Unframed, that aspect of the art would go away. Luckily, Angelo at FAME Festival reassured me in an email and said once I learned more about the project, these would be just as interesting as the rest of JR’s art. Because I trust Angelo, I waited and didn’t write anything about Unframed or JR’s piece at FAME Festival. Earlier this week, Hi-Fructose’s blog posted a better explanation of the project as well as some photos of Unframed taking place in Switzerland. As usual, Angelo was right and after reading that post on Hi-Fructose, I’ve been convinced about Unframed.

Photo by Mobstr

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Walls from Infart Festival

Sqon-Cat. Photo by Jacopo Greggio

Yes, it’s true that I’ve been posting a lot about outdoor street art festivals over the past few days, but I’ve got just one more to write about (plus more news in the coming days about BLK River of course)… Infart in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. I don’t know much about this festival except that Bassano del Grappa is now covered in some beautiful new murals (many of them collaborations between a number of artists). Here are some of my favorites from Sqon-Cat, Bue, El Euro, Zosen, Kenor, Gola, Seacreative, James Kalinda, Useless, Centina and ReFreshInk.

El Euro. Photo by Jacopo Greggio
Bue, Zosen, Kenor, Gola. Photo by Bue
Bue and Resto. Photo by Bue
Seacreative and ReFreshInk. Photo by Jacopo Greggio
James Kalinda, Useless and Centina. Photo by Jacopo Greggio

Photos by Bue and Jacopo Greggio (Thug Life Studio)

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Bastardilla at BLK River and FAME festivals

FAME Festival

Like Roa, Bastardilla is another artist who has been traveling a bit around Europe this summer participating in street art festivals. A few weeks ago, she was at FAME Festival, and now she’s just finished some walls at BLK River. Here are some of my favorites by this artist from Bogota, Columbia.

BLK River Festival

And a special thanks to Stickboy, as I think he introduced me to Bastardilla’s art a while back.

FAME Festival
FAME Festival

Photos by FAME Festival and Scarygami

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Jeffrey Deitch’s street art show at MOCA LA

One of Jenny Holzer's Inflammatory Essays. She had better be in this show if it's to be any good

A few months ago, this was mentioned briefly in an NYTimes article, but now the first real information is starting to come out about Jeffrey Deitch’s upcoming street art show at MOCA in LA. Culture Monster has a post all about the show, Art in the Streets. I’ve been hearing a lot of great things about this event for a while, but it’s all been rumors, so it’s nice to finally get some facts to write about.

Deitch says that Art in the Streets aims to be a broad look at street art, but will also dig deep into the history of outdoor art. That sounds like music to my ears, but it also sounds like a nearly insurmountable challenge. For example, the show will certainly involve graffiti, but so much graffiti had localized differences that now influence modern street artists and writers. So where do you draw the line at what to include? And what about the Philadelphia Mural Arts program, created to eradicate graffiti? It’s not street art, but it might deserve a place in a show titled Art in the Streets… Anyway, I’m sure we’ll know more in a few weeks when a formalized press release is sent out.

In the mean time, here’s what else is known…

  • Art in the Streets opens April 2011 at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary
  • The show will include work from the last few years as well as art from as long ago as the 1970’s, which seems about right.
  • There will be around 25 artists doing installations/murals.
  • Banksy will be involved, so yeah. That’s interesting I guess… I’m not his biggest fan lately, so it’s hard for me to get excited about that.
  • Over 100 artists will be represented in the show.
  • Aaron Rose (from Alleged Gallery/the Beautiful Losers film) and all-around graffiti and street art expert Roger Gastman are helping to curate the show.

This show could be the best thing to happen to street art since… ever. But even if it’s not perfect, it’s still going to be pretty damn good. Deitch isn’t going to screw this up. He, Rose and Gastman all know their shit.

Photo by Lord Jim

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Nuart 2010: Landmarks

M-City

Stavanger’s Nuart festival is well under way right now with some huge walls finished or in progress. This year’s Nuart is called The “Landmark” Series, and artists are not taking the challenge lightly. While in Stavanger last year, I thought that the city had been pretty transformed by street art, but now things are getting bigger than ever. A few weeks ago, Elisa posted here about Dotmasters’ Toy piece, but that’s just the start of what’s been going on.

Vhils in progress
EVOL didn't actually go huge, but he made a bunch of these (check out the Know Hope tag that was already on the box)
Alexandros Vasmoulakis

And I mentioned this piece by Blu and Ericailcane a while back, but didn’t actually post photos, so here are some photos of it:

Photos by kalevkevad

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10 new canvases from Herakut

High Horse

A couple of weeks ago, I briefly mentioned that Herakut have a show opening on September 18th (this Saturday) at LeBasse Projects in LA. Now, there’s a bit more to say about the show. Hope’s Reply will include 10 new paintings, and it sounds like they will all be on canvas. It’s also being said by LeBasse Projects that the canvases will be displayed in a more traditional gallery setting and without Herakut’s usual installations. Although I’m disappointed about the show not having an installation component, it will definitely be interesting to see how Herakut’s art is received in a white-walled gallery setting (of course they’ve been in galleries before, but there is usually some sort of installation or painting on the gallery walls or whatever). So many street artists have a hard time making that transition and maybe use installations and indoor murals as a crutch (though an interesting to look at crutch), but it seems like from all I’ve seen of Herakut that this transition shouldn’t be a problem.

Photo courtesy of LeBasse Projects

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Studio visit with John Fekner and Don Leicht

Back in July (and actually again in August), I had the pleasure of visiting the studio that John Fekner and Don Leicht share. John and Don are two artists from one of the earliest generations of street art. John made his first piece of street art in the late 1960’s, and really got involved in the late 1970’s as one of the pioneers of text art and stencil art. Don is probably best-known as the original space invader. In the early 1980’s, Don was spray painting stenciled space invader characters around New York City and making space invader sculptures.

Detailed view

For me, the best part of visiting the studio is that Don and John still own what is perhaps their most important and powerful indoor work. Your Space Has Been Invaded. Our Children are Fighting a Terrible War. Whole Families are being led to the Battlescreen was made in 1982, and it takes pride of place in the studio. With this artwork, the duo actually predicted something that has since become very true: Soldiers are being trained by video games (although the effectiveness of that training may be in doubt).

I feel like an idiot for not getting a detailed shot of the wooden and metal space invaders on this wall. Don’s invader sculptures have some beautiful details.

Canvases by Don

Many of their paintings are on a pretty large scale; there are probably a few stacks of these canvases (mostly by Don, a few collaborations) 10 deep around the studio.

John told a funny story about the above piece. At one point, he was putting up stencils that said things like NY+DK or DK, so when DKNY was launched, friends called to ask if John had started a fashion line!

These little Pac Man ghosts were some of my favorite pieces in the studio. At first they look like cute little characters, but then you realize that the word “WAR” is written on them all, and the reality of the art sinks in.

The painting on the left says "The Loss of Life is Meaning Less"
Techno Plaques by John

The Techno Plaques are collages made of CDs.

Detail of a Techno Plaque

The studio visit was a really amazing experience, but John’s place in art history comes from his street art. At some point, I’m sure I’ll do a post here with a “best-of” selection from John’s amazing career, but for now, you can check out his website. After seeing the studio, John actually took me to see some of his street art. Throughout his art career, John has been painting at a park in New York that he has nicknamed Itchycoo Park. It was the site of his earliest street art and he curated an outdoor show there in 1978 with artist like Gordon Matta-Clark. I wanted to see one of the birthplaces of street art, so I was excited to visit the park, but John surprised me when we arrived by showing me some of his more recent stencils at the site!

Back in 1983, John painted the word “Memory” on a handball court at the same site, now he’s come back to reflect.

I cannot thank Don Leicht and John Fekner enough for the opportunity to see their studio. They are two of the original street artists, and with street art reaching such popularity these days, it’s important to not forget where it started.