Sam3 recently posted this piece on his blog along with this caption “Gullible sailor, unmoving on his stone boat, it was the river fleeing.”
Tim Hans shoots… Run
I’ve been a fan of Run‘s work for many years, but I’ve never met the man and never really knew much about him. All I knew were his men, creeping around the walls of Hackney and Shoreditch. Earlier this year, Tim Hans met up to Run for the latest in our continuing series of photo-portraits of artists by Tim, and I asked him a few questions over email.
RJ: Who are the people in your paintings? Anyone, or group, in particular?
Run: The people that I paint show an evolution of episodes and experiences. They are ‘nobody’, they are the portrait of ‘nobody’, they are not even a race (some people said that they have black features) but they have not, they are a template to demonstrate actions, feelings and thought. Sometimes they have a totally blank expression, but others are completely awake and aware. I guess that on the deepest level any artist tries to reproduce him or herself; we are just trying to survive and perpetuate ourselves in order to not disappear. Where I cannot go, or where I cannot reach, “the people of my paintings” can.
RJ: What do you look for when choosing a wall to paint?
Run: The urban environment is so diverse and exciting to look at that sometimes it doesn’t need any other information to be added to it. We should carefully consider whether to add a painting, it really is a delicate matter. Graffiti has such a strong and random statement, that for it to appear it doesn’t need to ask permission and it is totally beautiful and spontaneous. If you look at cities like Rome or Madrid, Buenos Aires or San Paulo, graffiti is everywhere and is not inscribed in any closed area. It is the skin of the city that changes constantly like a snake.
What I do is a bit different because it is not horizontal or vertical but expands with the shape of the building, squashing the architecture around the drawing. I can’t always ‘choose’ a wall but I guess that when I can, I go for the wall that gives me the most options for creating what I want. Also I go for a wall that gives me the chance to be organic with the city and with the architecture/habitants/
RJ: You do a fair bit of traveling. What have been your favorite places to visit?
Run: Traveling it will never be enough. West Africa has been my latest destination and is probably now on the top of my list of places to go back to. It was a self organised and planned trip and I had the backing of a few amazing people (two above all, WideOpenWalls (Gambia) and Yattal Art (Senegal in Dakar)). I moved through the countries by land (and boats), to have a closer view of the culture and nature. People over there don’t care about ‘street art’ or who you are as an artist, but the person that you are.
The most astonishing places to visit for me were where the nature is virtually untouched and where really there’s nothing to paint.
Other than that I try to concentrate on organising my trips, and luckily I’m getting better at that. Maybe now I feel that every trip is such a special opportunity, nothing should be underestimated or taken for granted.
RJ: What is your goal with your art?
Run: Control my time. Inspire people and get inspired. Keep my rebellion always consciously aware and exercised.
RJ: Can you explain your recent fascination with phones? Seems like a completely different subject matter.
Run: When I was in Africa I wanted so many times to communicate with my friends overseas, but it was almost impossible. Sometimes there was no electricity or water, so imagine the internet or mobile phone networks!
Art is projecting magic into the world, so the phone-box was like a dimensional door, you know, it gave me confidence that someone was on the other side of the line ready to listen to me. It’s magic, it really works!
Yes, it makes more sense in a wild area with broken networks, but it’s funny and I like it, kids like it too and I bet adults do as well.
I remember the first couple of phone-boxes that I painted in villages in Africa, the kids called them ‘mobile’, of course, because they have never seen a public landline phone before. I like to keep this phone old fashioned, but I think that I will only paint phones for this year 2013 and then I will stop.
Photos by Tim Hans
Hyuro’s Copenhagen wall, animated
I know we’ve extensively covered Hyuro‘s recent mural in Copenhagen, but I’ve got one more thing about it to share. Skip to 1 minute and 45 seconds into the above video to see her mural animate as it is shown frame by frame. Such an interesting way to tackle a massive but not particularly tall wall.
Nychos in Detroit: A wall, a print, a show and an Indiegogo
Nychos is in Detroit at the moment and he’s making the most of the trip. First, there’s his solo show opening this Friday evening at Inner State Gallery. I’d Like To Meat You! opens on Friday, runs through July 18th, and sounds like it will feature lots of his trademark dissection works on paper, canvas and wood. And today 1xRun released their latest print by Nychos. Longtime Nychos fans will recognize the rabbit in the print as a dissected version of the Rabbit Eye Movement throw-up. The print is almost sold out though. There’s just 7 left out of 100 as I write this. If that print isn’t to your liking or it sells out too quickly, Nychos is currently in the midst of an Indiegogo fundraising campaign to get some money to make a documentary film and there are some great prizes (including prints) for that. Finally, Nychos and Persue just finished the above mural in Detroit.
On a related note, I really want to get out to Detroit sometime soon… So much interesting stuff going on out there.
Photo by Sal Rodriguez courtesy of 1xRun
The ultimate timelapse with Sofles
Honestly, when I see a time lapse video of street art or graffiti, I usually watch about half of it and then skip to the end to see the finished piece. I often then discover that the filmmaker has neglected to include the finished piece at all which is kind of upsetting, and when the finished piece is included, I’d still rather see a photo. Time lapses can be great, but the usually go on for too long. We get it. You use spray paint. What does the end product look like?
Well, this video of Sofles is a time lapse of sorts but it completely blew me away. I don’t think I missed a single frame of the nearly 4-minute piece except to blink. It’s extremely difficult to capture graffiti as the performance that it is, but this video comes close. It may not really capture the performance of graffiti in the purest sense, but it does turn the act of Sofles painting into a performance of sorts. Such an amazing piece. I’ve seen things a bit like this before, but never anything at this level of complexity. Kudos to Ironlak, Sofles and filmmaker Selina Miles for keeping me watching a time lapse video of painting for about 20x longer than I normally would.
Thinking with Peter Drew
I really dig these new pieces in Shoredtich by Peter Drew. The locations, right along the routes of all the street art walking tours, are a bit played out and blatantly self-promotional, but it’s not like he’s the only one getting up in these spots. Most street artists who spend any time in London are gonna do the same thing. At the end of the day, I think this work is interesting regardless of the location.
Photos by Peter Drew
NoseGo for 1xRun
I’m super excited today to talk about this print that NoseGo is doing with 1xRun. The good folks at 1xRun asked me for a few ideas of who I thought would be a good fit for them, and NoseGo immediately came to mind. And then, I saw this painting (Tall Tales) posted on NoseGo’s Instagram and thought “God, I hope whatever he does for 1xRun is as good as this.” I don’t usually love NoseGo’s pieces that include dinosaurs, but I do love Tall Tales (okay, I guess the Loch Ness Monster isn’t a dinosaur but you get my point). I especially like the little TV character. Tall Tales is an all-around strong image from a young artist whose work I’ve really fallen in love with over the last year or so. NoseGo says the painting “is based on ideas of folklore and story telling between generations.”
The print version of Tall Tales will be available starting today at 1xRun for $50. The print is an edition of 50 and measures 14 x 18 inches.
Stinkfish, erased
Stinkfish and Buytre APC painted the above piece about two years ago in London. Originally, it looked like this. As you can see, it now looks mostly the same, except for the face Stinkfish painted. Was it the buff squad? No, that would be a strange buff. Was it that Stinkfish used a strange paint that faded much quicker than the rest of the piece? No. Did a vigilante come along and paint over the face because they didn’t like it? No. Well, sort of. Depending on your take on things.
Pochoir (aka Paul Stephenson) is behind the removal of Stinkfish’s work. In the gallery, Pochoir removes portions of old paintings that he buys at auction. Interesting stuff, right? Well how about on the street? For this piece, Pochoir painted acid onto the parts of the piece that he wanted to remove, and then used half a dozen different abrasive tools to get the paint off.
I recently met Pochoir and he explained to me how a lot of people look at his removal paintings and in their mind they can project an image of what has been removed back onto the painting. Makes sense. I look at this piece and I can imagine that there was a horse there once and what the horse looked like, even though I’d never actually seen the piece before Pochoir got to it. With the removal of Stinkfish’s portrait, I think the same effect is still possible. I can still imagine some sort of idealized version of Stinkfish’s work even though it’s gone.
So I really don’t know what to think of Pochoir’s work. In the gallery, I find it really interesting. It reactivates “dead” paintings. And street art is ephemeral, but should we embrace the intentional speeding up of that process? Or is that completely the wrong way to look at this since Pochoir’s erasure is also artwork too. I don’t know.
What do you think about Pochoir’s work?
Photos by Pochoir
Weekend link-o-rama
Sorry for all the downtime on Vandalog this week. I dunno what’s up with Vandalog’s web host. If you have suggestions of a good web host that I could move to (even though I just switched to Gandi), let me know. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been reading:
- Wow. Cannon Dill and Brett Flanigan painted some great walls together as they traveled across the USA earlier this year.
- I always love checking in on what Mathieu Tremblin is up to.
- BSA have been keeping tabs on Judith Supine’s recent wheatpastes in NYC.
- Know Hope participated in issue 11 of Dispose, an publication where interesting people are given a disposable camera to take 27 photos in 24 hours.
- Decertor really did a nice job with this mural in Morocco.
- Liu Bolin got himself painted into a piece by Meres and Zeso at 5 Points, the graffiti mecca in NYC that unfortunately may soon be no more.
- Did you catch Austin McManus‘ Partner in Crime photo series in Juxtapoz earlier this year? Now you can get the series in zine form.
- LNY’s solo show at Solo(s) Project house in Newark just ended. But here are some photos.
- Shift//Delete recently projected a video onto the famous Gherkin building in London and turned the building into a giant, masterbating, penis.
- Planning to protest the G8? Peter Kennard has some great posters for you to download and use.
- Blade is in the Netherlands for a series of graffiti jams and a show in Amsterdam.
Photo by RJ Rushmore
Bast heads to the Hamptons
Bast‘s latest solo show opens later this month at Eric Firestone Gallery in East Hampton, New York. I can’t wait to see what Bast has made for Seafoam. This is the first time in my memory that Bast has exhibited his sculptures (save for the Deluxx Fluxx Arcade where he collaborated with Faile). Of course, I could be completely forgetting something at the moment. Can you think of other sculptures by Bast? Regardless, the sculptures in Seafoam are made from detritus found at Coney Island.
Eric Firestone asked me to write something about Bast for this show, so here are my thoughts about the man… Bäst has spent over a decade stenciling, postering and tagging the streets of New York City, where he has proven himself a master of a gritty urban aesthetic and a representative of the resilient spirit of the city’s underdogs. Through the complex physical layering of collage, figures, advertisements, and patterns, Bäst often represents contradictory conceptions of the city in a single artwork, hiding the rough-and-tumble reality of life within beauty, humor, and Disneyfication. Is Bäst an untrained obsessive-labeled-artist or a master observer and creator? The man behind the name hides in the shadows as one of the last great anonymous street artists. Bäst is a man who knows his city, but we may never really know him.
Seafoam opens June 15th (6-8pm) and runs through July 3rd.
Photo courtesy of Eric Firestone Gallery