Ludo sent over this new piece from the streets of Paris, which he calls “Psorophora Encaustum”. Psorophora is a genus of mosquito and encaustum is latin for ink or writing fluid.
Photos by Ludo
Comedian uses CitiBikes to teach SoulCycle class
If you’re in New York City it’s hard to miss the sudden mass presence of CitiBikes. For a city that is known for its careful drivers and self-aware pedestrians, I can only imagine the positive impacts that will come from these bikes. When docked, the bike wheels are still able to spin, so the comedian The Fat Jew decided to utilize them to teach free SoulCycle spin classes for the homeless.
Via The Crosby Press
“The Talking Walls of Buenos Aires” a show in DC of some of Argentina’s leading street artists
Latin America seems like a treasure trove of street art and graffiti. I could spend hours on end looking through these works through groups on Flickr. But for people like me who can’t see it in person, that seems to be the only way to tap into that vibrant and energetic scene. In the last 2 years, I’ve come to know and love a few Argentinian street artists (a few of whom will be featured in this show) but I’m aware that there are so many others who I have yet to come across!
The Talking Walls of Buenos Aires is a group show curated by Graffitimundo, which is based around just that – bringing works by a few of Argentina’s leading street artists to a gallery in Washington DC. Opening July 13th at 6pm at The Fridge gallery, you can catch the work of Buenos Aires Stencil, Cabaio Stencil, Chu, Defi, Ever, Fede Minuchin, Gualicho, Jaz, Malatesta, Mart, Pastel, Pedro Perelman, Poeta, Prensa La Libertad, Pum Pum, Roma, Stencil Land, Sonni, Tec and Tester.
Photos courtesy of Graffitimundo
Baltimore Slumlord Watch x public art
One of the most pivotal aspects of street art is the democratization of public space. Whether people choose to engage or not, graffiti and street art are a way of reminding the everyday pedestrian that they have the power to manipulate their environment (sometimes at a price). Many residents of Balitmore have had to accept dilapidated neighborhoods as their everyday quality of life. The structures around them are literally falling apart due to neglect from city government property owners and has resulted in a massive property-vacancy problem. If Broken Window Theory has anything to do with it, that “If the city doesn’t care, why should I?” mentality has fostered one of the highest crime rates for any city in the country.
What does street art have to do with Baltimore’s structural issues and decline in living standards? Over a dozen street artists have taken on the task of bringing attention to these issues in a grassroots effort, through installing large pieces on some of the city’s dilapidated, vacant houses. Nether, Gaia, LNY, Noh J Coely, Mata Ruda, Nanook, Harlequinade and others have joined their forces as a non-profit organization called Wall Hunters have teamed up with Baltimore Slumlord Watch to put up large-scale murals on these eye-sore structures with QR codes alongside which informs viewers of who owns the vacant property. Simultaneously, they are creating a documentary with Nether and Carol Ott at the forefront, showing this massive issue corroding Baltimore and their relatively small effort to combat it. They’ve received a bit of funding to make their project possible but not enough, so they’ve created this Indiegogo campaign to bring it to fruition.
Specter hits Japan and Russia
Specter is a rare and fascinating thing; his acrylic, hand-painted wheatpastes are detailed enough to emulate the real thing, and subtle enough for passersby to not even notice them. Really, it’s quite a gift and a curse. In the last year, he’s worked on projects around the world and is finally back to his hometown of Brooklyn to share some of his latest installations.
While in Vladivostok, Russia he put up his “Chromatin Structure” in the Sister City Park. In Tokyo, Specter put up his piece “Bodega Window” in the Harijuku fashion district. Before leaving for this trip, he also installed his “Brooklyn Windows” at King and Grove in Williamsburg. “Brooklyn Windows is a documentation of Brooklyn’s changing life examined through windows. Each painted window is a representation of actual windows from various long-standing buildings in the Williamsburg area. The placement and concept of this work comment on the abundance of windows surrounding the space that reflect on each other and on the painting.This reflection of the painted windows is a reflection of the past in the current where each old window represents a new replacement,” says Specter.
Photos courtesy of Specter
Hyuro paints a massive wall in Copenhagen
Some things need to be seen in person. In terms of massive murals, a picture may be able to transmit small details of a piece and/or the overall wall, but not both at the same time. Hyuro‘s new wall is no exception, so while I am providing several detail shots, it is probably impossibly difficult to get a decent picture of Hyuro’s 271 meter (889 foot) long mural in Copenhagen as a whole.
Hyuro recently had a solo show in Copenhagen. What dazzles me about Hyuro is this cross between slides of an animation and public murals. Despite the fact that she must have painted dozens of deer, the pieces translates as one deer running through a forest. Hyruro has done several murals that seem like stagnant frames of an animation or motion picture, and frankly it’s incredibly that movement translates so well through a mural. While I have not been fortunate enough to see her work in person, I can only imagine what it would be like to walk down this street in Copenhagen and see this mural animate itself.
Photos by Henrik Haven
Drawings for the Masses: a group show of personal sketches made public
Drawing for the Masses is a group show of about a dozen international street showing, not just any drawings, but personal drawings and prepatory sketches that would be the blueprints for eventual murals. While a rough sketch of an existing mural may not seem that exiting, 999 Gallery assures you that these works are sometimes more precious to the artist than the public work since these were not intended for others to see. So, stop by to see see the personal work of 108, AndrecoBorondo, Gaia, 2501, Guy Denning, Hitnes, Lucamaleonte, Martina Merlini, Moneyless, Ozmo and Tellas.
The show opened last night in Rome’s 999 Gallery.
Ben Eine’s “Innocence” in LA
That guy that paints letters has an upcoming show in LA called Innocence, at CGH Circa (a new art venue from the people at Corey Helford Gallery at 8530-A Washington Boulevard in Culver City). The show opens on June 15th at 7pm and will run until July 13th. The show will feature letters painted in such a way that calls attention to the relationship between art and vandalism, and that’s why the show is called Innocence.
Photos courtesy of Corey Helford Gallery
Cash, Cans and Candy brings street art to Vienna in a big way
This event sounds amazing. Between the hype in New York, London, Los Angeles and Paris, Vienna has enthusiastically been trying to put itself on the map in the global street art scene. The history of the city is one that has shown support of international street art for years but all that suddenly seems fairly small-scale in comparison to this festival. Cash, Cans & Candy has invited some of the big names of street artists (Shepard Fairey, Faile, Retna, Roa, Robbie Conal, Jaz, Dan Witz, etc) as well as some newer or lesser known talent to paint 800 meters (a half mile) of wall space around Vienna.
Shepard finished his wall at the end of May. Kicking the festival off with Shepard was probably a smart move in setting the tone for the rest of the events. The space he was given to work with definitely suited his style and the image is beautiful but I don’t think he incorporated the existing architecture as much as he could have. You can catch Faile painting their wall on June 20th.
The gallery exhibition of the same name at Galerie Hilger Next looks worth seeing. They’ve posted photos of a number of the exhibited works here.
The festival closes September 13th. To keep up with the ongoing events, including talks, tours, workshops, performances and block parties, check out the Cash, Cans & Candy Facebook page.
Photos courtesy of Cash, Cans & Candy
Tim Hans shoots… Pure Evil
Pure Evil is one of the familiar faces of the British street art scene both for his own art and for The Pure Evil Gallery that he runs in Shoreditch. Tim Hans met with Pure Evil at his gallery/studio for the latest in our continuing series of photo-portraits of artists by Tim, and Caroline asked Pure Evil about art and his gallery.
Caroline: Do you think it’s important for artists to have a sort of trademark or logo?
Pure Evil: No, I think artists who stick to the same recognizable thing and just do it again and again are being boring. This is ironic because I repeatedly draw bunnies everywhere. I don’t see that as a logo, it’s a tag. I was watching a film about David Bowie the other night and I got this from it which is very good advice. HOW TO BE A GREAT ARTIST – Change the diversity of what you do at a mind boggling rate. Be prodigious and act as a lightning rod for your time. Bowie did it, I want to achieve something similar, just by doing a whole bunch of crazy different stuff.
CC: What inspires you to create? Where do your ideas come from?
PE: They kind of bombard me from everywhere.. its that whole ‘being a lightning rod’ idea…There’s a flash and then it’s embedded in my cranium. It might be a sentence in a book I’m reading. It might be an image on Tumblr. It might be something I misheard but decided the new form of the phrase is interesting. It might be from a dream. It might be something that I saw and then promptly forgot and then later on thought of it as an original idea.
I just did a check through my history to see what I have been looking at in the past week :
- an awesome video by Adam Curtis
- a picture of Danny DeVito on Chat Roulette
- a cool music clip
- some art that looked better unfinished than finished which made me go hmmmm
- the discog for a label i’m working with
- pictures of Brigitte Bardot
- and some more pictures of Scarlett Johansen. In a cat suit.
- artwork by Roman Opalka… He drew numbers all his life that slowly whited out..
- and some more rad shit from my ‘RAD SHIT’ folder
CC: What was it like being raised by a father who is an artist?
PE: He only took me to the cinema once, to see “LIVE AND LET DIE” which was awesome to watch as a kid, but boy he took me to a lot of art museums and we saw a lot of celtic standing stones all over Europe. It was great being surrounded by Picasso’s and Pop Art when I was growing up. I loved seeing how he never stopped painting EVER. It’s really inspiring… he’s probably painting right now.
CC: What was starting your own gallery like?
PE: It was totally inspired by Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery. That was the blueprint, that and Santa’s Ghetto… Just get a space, paint the walls white and hey presto! You have a gallery. I didn’t even think of keeping it going for more than 2 weeks, but it just seemed like fun. Finding a whole basement that could be used to make art and music was a bonus, and the area is smack bang in the middle of street art central which is pretty cool. I call myself the accidental gallerist though, working out how to actually run it and make it work in the long run was a bit of work, but I just looked at Leo Castelli and what an amazing job he did with Pop Art in the 60’s… he’s a bit of a guru. Read Leo and His Circle. It’s an eye opening book.
CC: Your creativity is pretty multifaceted. Could you talk about the different mediums you use in your artwork? Or about the projects you’ve worked on besides visual arts?
PE: I like spray paint quite a bit. Right now I’m having a lot of fun doing freehand spray stuff and layering OCD tags on top of each other to make randomness. I also like using Krink which moves so beautifully. Then there’s neon which is bloody beautiful to look at and because it comes from signage it’s a perfect medium for street art, which is street signage. I’ve got a neon in a contemporary auction in Paris which is quite humbling because it’s in there with complete legends like Victor Vasarely and Kenneth Noland. Making a genre jump is pretty exciting. Being stuck in one box is tedious. My baby sits in a little brightly coloured doughnut for about half an hour and then she just gets bored and wants some boob. Street Art is the doughnut, Contemporary art is the boob.
I’m quite into making films, just short shonky stuff, and I’m looking into using 16mm just because it’s beautiful and analog. In the basement we have an amazing music studio. It kicks ass. Here’s the music stuff. I’ve got an album called A NEW DAWN coming out in July and another coming out soon after called THE NATIONAL ARCHIVE. All art movements have a soundtrack and were making ours in-house.
CC: Any upcoming projects we should look forward to?
PE: No. Fear them all. Actually I had a baby called Bunny recently and she is going to be something….
Photos by Tim Hans