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.
Jetsonorama sent over photos of his first piece on the Navajo reservation this year, a pasting celebrating springtime, which is also sheep-shearing season in the area. Of course, putting up a piece of street art (particularly at this scale) is never as simple as it may appear when you see the pristine finished product, and this piece was no exception. Jetsonorama has done a great job over at his blog explaining just what went into getting this piece up and the people he met along the way.
Things Left Standing Behind is the second part of Know Hope‘s two-part series of solo shows at Gordon Gallery in Tel Aviv. If you missed Things Standing Between, the first show in the series, we posted photos last week. Things Left Standing Behind is open now and runs through April 6th. For those of us not in Tel Aviv, Know Hope sent over these photos of the show.
One of the reasons I really love Know Hope’s artwork is that I find individual works interesting and precious, but taken as a whole, his overall body of work has a lot of depth to it too, a balance that I sometimes fear is missing with a lot of street artists. These two shows really exemplify that. The first primarily consisted of illustrative paintings and drawings hung on the walls of the gallery, while this part of the show continues the same narrative but centers on an installation titled The Tangled Hollow. Both shows dealt with the idea of fences and walls (things that stand between). Know Hope explained that the wall that makes of The Tangled Hollow is meant to have been constructed by the tree stumps in the center of the wall, which have now been cut down to nothing as a result of building the wall. So what does the wall protect now? Nothing except an idea of what once was. The paintings on the wall are whitewashed so that images only barely show through, like memories of events that were portrayed in the first part of the show.
Got these updates last week from the fabulous Xuan Alyfe. Check out the above piece in particular. While Xuan Alyfe’s style is all his own, it’s interesting to see him take bits and pieces from other artists and combine them as small elements in his own, more complex, works. In the above piece, there’s the comparison to be made to Retna, Sowat, or Chaz Bojorquez with the blue text arranged in an oval, but it’s just one component of the larger piece. And with Xuan Alyfe’s figures and buildings, there might be comparisons made to Interesni Kazki, but then the abstract components remind me of MOMO. Nonetheless, the work looks like something that could only be by Xuan Alyfe, not a collaboration between Retna, MOMO, and Interesni Kazki.
Sheryo and The Yok in Scarborough, Western Australia
The Yok and Sheryo have finally returned to NYC after a good few months traveling and painting around the world. We posted a few pieces from this trip back in November, but that wasn’t the whole trip. Here are a few more of my favorites (I think they’ll all located in Australia), plus a video of the above wall being painted.
The Yok in Fitzroy, AustraliaSheryo in Perth, AustraliaSheryoThe Yok and Sheryo in Perth, AustraliaThe Yok
Mumbo Sauce, a group show co-curated by Roger Gastman, opens next month at The Contemporary Wing in DC. The show includes work by BORF, Mark Jenkins and others.
Shepard Fairey has designed the official mission patch for a space mission. Yes, it’s kind of an odd collaboration and other 100 artists probably could have designed something good for this patch, but I really like Fairey’s design. Great art? I dunno. Solid design? Definitely. Hyperallergic has more examples of patches for space missions.
Gaia was in Newcastle, UK last month for some murals organized by Unit44. I’ve got photos of the wall here, but I think the video Gaia made with Unit44 is even more interesting. In it, he speaks about the challenges of being a muralist/street artist trying to do more than just impose advertising (aka street art) onto communities. I don’t agree with everything he says, but he makes some very valuable and interesting points.
Alicè Pasquini is visiting the USA from Rome, and she has thus far put up three new murals in New York state. The first was in Bushwick at Bushwick 5 Points as covered last week by Rhiannon, and the latest two are in Ithaca.
Know Hope is currently half-way through a two-part solo show at Gordon Gallery in Tel Aviv. Here, I’ve got photos of Things That Stand Between, the first part of this show which opened at the end of February. The second part, Things Left Standing Behind, opens today (Thursday) at 7:30pm. As I understand it, this second part of the show will involve a complete reinstallation of different work in the gallery.
