A lot of events have been happening this week, most likely so that everyone can make a last minute push in shows and such before the holidays. Then we have nothing to write about. Gotta love when a whole industry shuts down for a month or so.
Blu (photo vua Nuart)
Anyways, so here is what has been going on:
Tonight is the opening of the London Miles Gallery“The Idol Hours”. The show is a group show that gives artists like Luke Chueh, Travis Lampe and Scott Young the opportunity to portray artworks from the art canon in a modern sense
Factory Freshwill be hosting a Block Part in Brooklyn Nov. 20th with a live mural painting from Gai, Imminent Disaster, Chris Stain and Skewville. The Burning Candy Crew will also be showing new portions of their ongoing documentary Dots
New Blupiece in France popped up recently. Such detail as usual
Remi/Rough has been busy in England lately. He has a new print released, designed the decor of the new Wahaca Soho eatery, and put up a nice piece in Birmingham with time lapse video
Finally, A Barry McGeeretrospective will take place in 2012 in Berkeley, California in conjunction with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The two organizations were awarded a $100,000 grant by the Andy Warhol Foundation to put on the show
Unusual Image has some great photos of the Best Ever show that took place at Blackall Studios last night
Stolenspace will play host to the second solo show by Ronzo entitled “Crackney’s Finest.” The show will open Nov. 19th
About to be revealed. Maybe. Or maybe not. Or maybe it was revealed a while ago and we’ve wisely chosen to believe he is still anonymous because it’s better that way.
Canimation, a series of short films that combine graffiti and animation and part of Encounters International Film Festival, claims to have CCTV footage of Banksy that conclusively shows his identity. The CCTV footage was apparently captured when Banksy painted something on a building where Aardman, an animation studio, is located.
Animation Programme manager, Keiran Argo, programmed the Canimation strand of the festival to act as a celebration for Bristol’s involvement in both animation and street art development.
Kieran said: “The programme would have been incomplete without a local contribution so the hunt was on for something special. What Banksy didn’t bargain for when recently stencilling the back wall of Aardman’s new building was the discrete CCTV system they had installed allowing us, for the first time, to put a face to the name. All will be revealed in the programme…’
Anyone else think this is probably just a PR stunt and that perhaps this supposed CCTV video is actually an animation or something? I really hope it is, because I don’t want Banksy’s identity to be proven conclusively. Eine and Shepard Fairey have both mentioned that Banksy doesn’t paint a lot of his own street work, so why would he have painted this particular piece that got captured on CCTV? If the footage is real, it could easily be one of his assistants.
When the last artist finished painting the last wall, Workhorse and PAC made access to The Underbelly Project nearly impossible by removing the entrance. Even if any of us wanted to go back (and I do), even if we could remember how to get there (and I don’t), we can’t. Nobody can. For now, The Underbelly Project has become a time capsule of street art, somewhere in the depths of New York City.
Well I guess getting to the station wasn’t made as difficult as had been expected, because it took less than a day for the station’s location to hit the web and for people to attempt to gain access themselves. Naturally, some of the first people to reach the station were haters with paint in hand. They splashed some of the paintings and knocked over sculptures. So much for the station becoming a time capsule of street art. Here’s some of the damage:
Photo by paulbesteves
That’s street art and graffiti. It goes away. Maybe it was naive of me to think that The Underbelly Project would be any different.
But not everybody trying to visit the station has been successful. Apparently, a number of reddit users have been arrested by NYPD for trying to access the station and spent the night in jail. I hope I don’t sound like asshole by saying “I saw this amazing thing in person, now you should see it in photographs,” but that’s exactly what I’m going to suggest to anybody thinking about visiting The Underbelly Project. Especially anytime soon. It’s just going to be a honeypot for police with cops stationed there most nights to make easy arrests. And, more importantly, it’s dangerous. The LTV Squad, a team of NY urban explorers, explains:
Don’t go into NYC subway tunnels. It’s bad idea. Tunnels are confined spaces where injury and death are readily possible. The photos of this project are all over the internet. People continue to send us these photos. They are not hard to find. If you want to see the art, do so from your own home.
Just got back from Jordan Seiler’s show at Vincent Michael Gallery. I’ll have more on that in the next few days, but I found an awesome store in the same area as the gallery: Jinxed. It sells cool toys and the like. Here’s what I didn’t write about this week while I was busy procrastinating and thinking about The Underbelly Project.
Askew’s essay on the economics of graffiti and graffiti removal needs to be read. I think it’s exaggerated some of his estimates, but his point remains valid.
Elisa and maybe other Vandalog writers are going to disagree with me on this, but I’m not really digging Aakash Nihalani’s new work at his solo show in New York. I guess I just prefer Aakash outdoors.
Okay, this is just annoying. When you give people freedom to say anything, of course some asshole is going to be racist once in a while, but that doesn’t mean free speech should stop. These are college students, they should be able to think this through beyond the immediate things going on around them. Or just paint the damn tunnel in murals of people of all races and creeds holding hands?
I love this piece by Alex Hornest. The colors are awesome and he uses the corner so well!
If you’re in Sao Paulo, Alex has a solo show on right now called Animais de Concreto at Cavalera ART PROJECTS. The works I’ve seen from it look really good. I’ve included one below.
The show runs through November 30. Find out more here.
This summer, I sat in a massive pitch-black room and muttered “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit…” over and over again. I couldn’t stop repeating “Holy shit” for maybe for five minutes. I’d been anticipating this moment for nearly a year. I was somewhere underneath New York City. I was waiting to be shown The Underbelly Project. Technically, I was there to take photos, but really I didn’t care at all if images came out or not. Really, I just wanted to see firsthand what was going on 4-stories below the streets of New York City.
Revok and Ceaze. That light comes from the lights that were set up temporarily for an artist who was painting that night.
Imagine Cans Festival, FAME Festival or Primary Flight: Some of street art and graffiti’s best artists all painting one spot. That’s kind of like The Underbelly Project. Except that The Underbelly Project took place in complete secrecy, in a mysterious location and without any authorization. Over the past year, The Underbelly Project has brought more than 100 artists to an abandoned and half-finished New York City subway station. Each artist was given one night to paint something.
Know Hope had this entire room to himself. What was this room meant to be? An elevator shaft? An office? I have no idea.
Workhorse and PAC, the project’s organizers, have put countless hours into their ghost subway station, and now they’re finally ready to unveil it to the world, sort of (more on that later). So I guess that’s why I was in that dark room, sitting in silence, waiting for them to give me a flashlight. I’m still not sure why I’d been extended the invitation to see the station firsthand, but I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity. The Underbelly Project is going to be part of street art history.
Surge, Stormie Mills, Remi/Rough and Gaia
Eventually, Workhorse and PAC came over to where I was sitting and lent me a flashlight. I stood up, already coated in dust and probably dirtier than I’ve ever been, and got a full tour of the station. I’m not somebody who is good at estimating the size of a space, but The Underbelly Project took place in a space that was meant to be a subway station, so I guess it was the size of a subway station with a few tracks. The station is like a concrete cavern: random holes who-knows how deep into the ground, dust thick like a layer of dirt, leaky ceilings and hidden rooms. Except the whole station is covered in art. Think of FAME Festival’s abandoned monastery transplanted to beneath New York City. I’m not an urban explorer, so I had no idea that there are abandoned subway stations throughout New York, but The Underbelly Project seems like just about the best possible use of one.
Of course, having been down there myself, I’m going to be prone to hyperbole. Even at it’s simplest, even if The Underbelly Project is “just another mural project,” it’s a story that the artists can tell for years, and it may even be evidence that street art isn’t so far gone and corporate as some people have suggested.
Swoon and Imminent Disaster. Disaster's piece is stunning beyond belief and fits the space so perfectly.
The list of artists who painted for The Underbelly Project goes on and on, but here are just a few:
Swoon
Gaia
Know Hope
Revok
Roa
Dan Witz
Jeff Soto
Faile
Mark Jenkins
Elbow-toe
TrustoCorp
Mark Jenkins and Con. This is at the end of a long and dark tunnel that, at the time, was not otherwise painted.
On my visit, The Underbelly Project wasn’t finished. In fact, somebody was painting there that night. Nonetheless, the space was already substantially painted and postered. I spent that night wandering around the tunnels, taking photos and getting lost (and also scared – Damn you Mark Jenkins! You can’t put a sculpture like that at the end of a darkened hall. I thought it was a person!).
TrustoCorp
And what now? The walls have all been painted and the artists have moved on to new projects. When the last artist finished painting the last wall, Workhorse and PAC made access to The Underbelly Project nearly impossible by removing the entrance. Even if any of us wanted to go back (and I do), even if we could remember how to get there (and I don’t), we can’t. Nobody can. For now, The Underbelly Project has become a time capsule of street art, somewhere in the depths of New York City.
Meggs
Brad Downey once explained to me why he thought Damien Hirst’s diamond skull is interesting. It had something to do with what people would think of the skull in 1000 years, when its original meaning has been lost to time. That’s when the skull is going to become a true icon and object with immense power. In some ways, The Underbelly Project is like Hirst’s skull, without the price tag. One day, decades from now hopefully, somebody may rediscover that old subway station and have no idea what they’re looking at. Hopefully, they’ll just feel that it’s something incredibly special.
Dan Witz. This was the first time I'd seen his street art in person. It's the perfect setting for Dan's Dark Doings series.
Here are some more images from The Underbelly Project, and expect more over the coming days on Vandalog and around the blogosphere… Or you can pay £1 to read an in-depth article about it in today’s Sunday Times.
Stash (well, part of his piece). This is another room like Know Hope's area.Swoon and ListerL'Atlas, Mr Di Maggio, 1010, Paper Twins, Bigfoot, Control/Jice. Photo by WorkhorseFaile. Photo by PACSkewville, PAC, SheOne, Revok/Ceaze. Photo by PAC
As you may have seen mentioned on my Twitter, I’ve been working with a few artists that I admire to make a series of t-shirts.
Today, the first three in a line of Vandalog t-shirts are available online. All three are designs are artworks by people that I admire. These aren’t your standard artist collaborations though. There are a few things that make these shirts unique. Yes, Vandalog now has a clothing label, but nowhere on these t-shirts will you find the Vandalog name. This project was conceived as being about the artists as much as possible. Additionally, these aren’t the sort of thing that you’ll find 40 of in every Urban Outfitters throughout the world. There are less than shirts 40 with each design in the world. That was intentional. These t-shirts are screenprints, except that they were printed on fabric instead of paper and they aren’t signed by the artists. Luckily, all these shirts are significantly cheaper than screenprints on paper, at $30 each plus shipping.
Faro’s shirt is an edition of 34. Faro is a mummy-obsessed artist and graffiti writer who you may have seen around New York City. His graffiti is cool and it’s how we at Vandalog first heard about Faro, but his drawings are what really sets him apart, which is why Faro’s shirt is based on this drawing.
Other
Troy Lovegates aka Other’s shirt is an edition of 35. Troy Lovegates is a Canadian artist who likes to draw outside, often with his friend Labrona, as well as make beautiful prints and paintings indoors. I’d say Troy is probably my favorite Canadian street artist. Also, he recently had a cool book of his art published.
All these shirts are available now at Vandalog’s online shop for $30 each plus shipping.
I’m racing through my computer science homework right now and also throwing this post together before it gets to be too late. I have to be up early tomorrow to get to Washington D.C. for The Daily Show’s Rally To Restore Sanity. I probably shouldn’t been spending my entire day on my way to and from that rally, but it’s going to be an insane day. So between planning getting 50 students to the rally and teaching a course on street art at my university (not an official course, there’s no homework or exams and I don’t get paid), things had to slip through my fingers this week:
There’s a film about Steve Powers’ A Love Letter For You Project, and it just premiered in Philadelphia. Also, Steve has a new website with some work available to purchase and plenty of photos.
As most of you may know, one of Roa‘s beloved works in East London is facing removal after the owners of the building were told they have 14 days to remove it or the Council will. The whole ordeal is a bit ridiculous, since the Hackney Council is calling the piece a “blight on the environment”even though the owners the building gave the artist permission to paint int he first place. An online petition is going on to save the work and pretty much tell the Council to back off. So sign it and try to save the piece. I would hate to start seeing even more works under glass…
The environmentalist blog TreeHugger recently posted a list of their top 5 “environmental artists.” Props to TreeHugger for putting Banksy at number 5 and then John Fekner at number 3. They put together a nice slideshow of some of their favorite work from Fekner, something I’ll eventually do here as well.
