The Creative Lives‘ latest video profile is of New Image Art Gallery‘s Marsea Goldberg. Marsea is a low-brow and street art legend for the work she’s done at New Image. She’s worked with countless amazing artists and brought them into the limelight. Good stuff.
New Image Art Gallery Feature from The Creative Lives on Vimeo.
This Wednesday, Dreweatts hosts their latest urban art auction in London. This time around it’s called “Urban Contemporary.” Honestly, I’ve avoided posting about this auction until now because while there are some highlights, the lowlights are awkward and disappointing to write about.
Lets start with the positives. Some of works that I’m really liking (in no particular order):
Lot 89: Point Blank by Martin Lea Brown. 67cm x 167cm. Estimated £3,000-5,000. This painting looks okay online, but is just so nice in person.
Lot 72: Musas by Sam3. 91.5cm x 61cm. Estimated £700-900. An interesting painting for the price. It amazes me how cheap a Sam3 original can be. Though I suppose his work is best experienced outside.
Lot 64: African Fence by Rowdy. 91.5cm x 61cm. Estimated £900-1,100.
Lot 47: Studio Critics by Sweet Toof. 91.5cm x 61cm. Estimated £2,000-4,000. Sweet Toof is a painter. He’s a graffiti writer. He’s a street artist. He’s a print-maker. What is he? He’s talented.
Lot 49: Cruncy – Pity of London by Ronzo. 40cm x 40cm Plinth. 106cm x 40cm. Estimated £1,000-1,5000. Apparently this is the only Pity of London sculpture that didn’t go on the streets. So it’s something kind of special.
And now the things about this auction that epically disappoint me. The things that made me not want to write about this auction at all. In no particular order. And there are others lots in this sale that were very disappointing to see at auction, but I’m not going to list them all. Hopefully this gives you a taste.
Lot 13: Self Portrait by Adam Neate. 167cm x 123cm. Estimated £15,000-20,000. Almost everyone I know believes that Adam Neate’s pieces like these should be kept out of auction at all costs. Even if this reaches the high estimate for the piece, it will only serve to further damage the market for his paintings. And in my opinion, Adam is one of the most talented British painters working today, so I’d like to see the market for his paintings recover.
Lot 9: Morons by Banksy. 76.5cm x 56cm. Estimated £3,000-5,000. Every “urban art” auction seems to have at least one Morons print.
Lot 17: Untitled by Seen. 60cm x 70cm. Estimated £600-800. I don’t take issue with this painting. I definitely take issue with how Dreweatts has handled the artwork in their sale. In the catalog, this painting is upside down. Luckily, that’s been fixed online. But when I went to see this piece in the flesh at the auction house last Thursday, it was hung sideways. That, or it’s now sideways online (but given that the central icon of the piece is a Seen tag, I’m guessing that the tag is meant to be read left to right, so the online image is correct and it was hung sideways). Either way, that’s more than a little bit upsetting.
Lot 63: Number 5 by Herakut. 80cm x 100cm. Estimated £2,000-3,000. Another great painting that Dreweatts has just handled poorly. Again, it’s online and in the catalog sideways (and possibly hung that way in the auction-house as well, I can’t remember)! Now, given the content of the painting, I can see how somebody might not be sure which way is up. In fact, you’d have to look at the painting for more than half a second to realize that it might be sideways. How did I figure out that the piece is sideways? There’s an image of the piece online. And it was originally part of a tetraptych, so you know that the image I found online has the painting hanging the right way. Could Dreweatts have missed this? Sure. Except that lot 62 is a painting from the same tetraptych. It amazes me that nobody at Dreweatts took the 30 seconds of research that it took me to figure out which way this painting is meant to hang. Epic fail.
So that’s the Dreweatts “Urban Contemporary” auction. It takes place on Wednesday April 21st in London, and you can bid online.
Last week, Aaron posted about VSP, a street art festival in Portugal. After seeing all the work that Best Ever did there, I just had to give it another mention. These might be some of the best pieces that this duo have painted so far. I remember when I first heard about Best Ever and thought, “Okay, that’s cool, but they’re going to need to do something so that they don’t seem like they’re playing 2nd fiddle to Herakut.” Now I’m more than convinced that they have differentiated themselves and are doing something completely their own. And they’re doing it damn well.
Photos by Best Ever
David Choe’s upcoming Nothing To Declare show takes place in LA but comes to you via London with Lazarides Gallery behind the affair. The show runs from April 23rd until May 23rd and is taking place at 320 North Beverly Drive. Choe is one artist whose I just can’t figure out. Is he a genius or a madman or both? One thing is for sure: man pours his heart and soul in his artwork. These teaser images from Lazarides show some of my favorite paintings that Choe has ever done. Can’t wait to see what else he has in store for this event.
Those images all capture David’s more refined side, but that’s not all that Choe is about. I recently came across this short documentary about David called Whales and Orgies. It’s described as the precursor to the documentary Dirty Hands: The Art and Crimes of David Choe (a film that I desperately want to see). Here’s Whales and Orgies:
Pedro Matos recently introduced me to the artwork of Maria Imaginário. Maria mostly paints in Lisbon, and she does those wonderful sort of paintings that make the everyday person smile. While David Choe’s early mindless vandalism is all good and well, it’s nice to have some street art that anybody can enjoy. The colors remind me of the kind of street art I would expect to see in Brazil, and that’s fantastic too. What do you think?
Photos by Maria Imaginário
His two-man show at Los Angeles Prism Gallery closed less than two months ago, but Phil Frost already has a solo show opening next week at Known Gallery in LA. Phil is a legend and basically in a league of his own. I go through phases of loving or not caring at all for Phil’s artwork. Right now I’m loving it. His paintings (most notably using correction fluid) are entrancing and the obsessiveness with which he has gone about painting them for almost as long as I have been alive only makes them more interesting to me. If you’re in LA next week, don’t miss this show.
At at recent group show in Italy, street artist Elfo decided to try something a bit different. Plenty of artists (particularly anonymous street artists) avoid their own gallery openings. And the ones who don’t will probably tell you that the openings aren’t that fun. They are stressful and tiring. All that talking to everybody who thinks about buying a painting, chatting with people you met once 3 years ago and can’t remember anything about, making sure all your friends get in and get free beer… It’s a lot of work. Well Elfo showed up to this opening, but he didn’t have to worry about any of those things. Here’s what he did:
Seems to me he stayed that way for most of the evening. And yes, that’s really Elfo. What do you think? Certainly it’s something different for a street artist. Here’s a video of the whole piece in action:
Packed Food for Vulture$ from francesco carlo on Vimeo.
Photo courtesy of Elfo streetart
Somehow this one has slipped under my rader. Maya Hayuk had a show open earlier this month at MU in Eindhoven. I think MU is a sort of museum space, but I’m not sure. I’d never paid much attention to Hayuk’s artwork until I saw it in the flesh last December. Now I can’t get enough of it. Ultra, Ultra Deep Fields is primarily Hayuk’s show, but there are also some collaborations with Ben Wolf, another artist to keep your eyes out for. MU has made this video about the show:
Maya Hayuk – Ultra, Ultra Deep Fields from stichting MU on Vimeo.
I know I’ve been posting a lot about Escif this week, but I could not be more curious about his solo show at Pictures on Walls. It opens tonight, so expect pictures posted over the weekend. This a wall that Escif painted on Fashion Street in London, a nice spot that I think has been massively neglected for a while.
Photo courtesy of Pictures on Walls
