Last week, Blu shocked Berlin by orchestrating the removal of two of his own iconic murals, including a mural that was at one point a collaboration with JR. The murals were located in the city’s famous Kreuzberg neighborhood, which was once home to squatters and artists, but is now undergoing significant and swift gentrification.
The squatters in the buildings Blu had painted were recently evicted, and a real estate developer is about to build on the empty lot in front of the murals. Apparently, the new condos would have had a great view of the murals. So, one night last week, a team with two lifts painted the walls black, and they did it with Blu’s support.
Blu commented, “After witnessing the changes happening in the surrounding area during the last years, we felt it was time to erase both walls.”
Even though I’m not sure I entirely agree with his actions, I definitely say bravo to Blu for sticking to his principles. I’m sad to see these murals go, but their removal is one of the greatest statements made about street art this year. Blu’s street art is highly political, as was this act. Blu decided what to do with his murals before that right could be taken away from him or the murals could be co-opted by a property developer. He took control of a space, just as he did when he first painted the murals in 2007 and 2008. These pieces were painted for old Kreuzberg, not yuppie Kreuzberg, and the yuppies can’t have them.
Finally, of course, here’s what the murals used to look like (after JR’s wheatpastes had decayed and Blu painted goggles in their place):
Today, artist Ryan Seslow and I launched Encrypted Fills, a new digital exhibition space and archive for creations at the intersection of digital art and street art. Essentially, the site is a site to archive artworks being produced specifically for the internet by street artists. Encrypted Fills brings together the best of a usually disparate set of artworks onto one website and into what will become a collection of digital exhibitions. If you’ve read Viral Art, you’ll probably be familiar with a lot of the content on the site, or at least understand my interest in it.
Ryan and I have been watching for years (and Ryan’s been participating as an artist himself) as people in the street art and graffiti world have turned to experimenting with new mediums like GIFs, video art, and related forms of electronic documentation to express their ideas on digital platforms. Sometimes the aesthetics of the work are nearly indistinguishable from static street pieces, and other times these digital works are hardly recognizable as related to street art or graffiti, but we believe that these new works come from the same place. Artists who have been getting up outdoors are now reaching out to a similar digital public, and it’s opened the door for those artists to reach beyond static images.
“We are very excited about this development,” says Ryan, “We want to promote this work and identify it as something particular and distinct from other art being produced in the street art and graffiti communities, and we also want to preserve the best examples of it for posterity, lest in the future we think of these works as standard and forget the artistic leaps that were made in the last few years and those that will be made in the years to come.”
In addition to archiving works already available, we plan to use Encrypted Fills as a platform to exhibit new digital works, specially commissioned for the site. As Encrypted Fills grows and develops, exhibition lengths will vary, but all of the works and exhibitions presented will be archived on the site for future reference.
For Encrypted Fills’ inaugural and eponymous exhibition, we have collected a range of pieces from more than a dozen artists to show the breadth of what street artists are doing when they move into digital art. Exhibited artists include Peter Drew, John Fekner, Olek, Vandalog contributing writer Caroline Caldwell, and more. You can view the inaugural Encrypted Fills exhibition here.
Sorry if some of these links are a bit dated, but hopefully they’re still interesting:
Don Leicht, the original Space Invader, has a exhibition of his work on now at Mary Colby Studio & Gallery on City Island in the Bronx. Leicht has been making space invader characters for the street and for galleries since 1982, often in collaboration with John Fekner. Both Leicht and Fekner have never really embraced the spotlight in the way that others from their generation have (particularly in recent years), and so Leicht’s place in early New York street art often goes unacknowledged. Whereas Space Invader’s characters are generally lighthearted and fun and more about interesting placement than interesting content, Leicht’s content is political. His invaders, painted in camo, serve as a reminder/warning that war is real and of the relationship between videos games and the military.
Speaking of public advertising, this crazy thing happened in Hong Kong.
And over on Hyperallergic, Julia Friedman addresses the major discrepancy in how New York City enforces laws relating to public advertising. Essentially, the current enforcement strategy seems to punish artists and activists while leaving corporate interests to do whatever they please.
Speaking of water companies, street art and hashtags… The folks being the for-profit bottled water company WAT-AAH (aka Let Water be Water LLC, or as I like to call them “Evian for Kids”) sent The L.I.S.A. Project NYC a cease and desist letter for using a hashtag that they claimed to own the trademark for (they don’t). Animal has more on that ridiculous story.
Conor Harrington had a great show in NYC, at a pop up space with Lazarides Gallery from the UK. I went up for the opening, and despite the space being lit like a haunted house and seemingly pumped full of mist from a fog machine, the work looked even better than I had anticipated. Plenty of artists can paint traditionally beautiful paintings, and plenty of artists can use drips and tags and half finished elements and things like that to make their paintings look “street” or to make it look like they are saying “screw you traditional notions of beauty and fine art painting!” Few artists can do what Conor does, which is to utilize all of those styles and techniques, from beautifully staged scenes painted with perfection to all the different ways to make a painting look rough and cool, but utilize those things in the right balance and with respect. To Conor, it looks like a drip is no different than the a detailed brush stroke. The “disruptive” elements look like they belong. He isn’t trying to destroy painting. He’s trying to bring it to new heights, and he’s much better at it than most.
This fall I’ve seen (online) two interesting pieces of endurance art, both of them by female artists in New York City who took to endurance art to address what they see as crises.
gilf and Natalie Renee Fasano walked 15 miles barefoot around the city. 60 million or more people worldwide live every day without shoes. Interestingly, Gilf’s project was not so much an awareness campaign as an opportunity for self-reflection that she documented and publicized. None of her Instagram posts on the performance provide information about what can be done about this problem, and the video documenting the work provides no context except the text “A day in the Shoes of the Shoeless with gilf!” On some level, I find that frustrating. But of course the work wasn’t about raising national awareness for this issue. gilf’s own description of the project makes that clear. It was more a project for herself. And that’s great and useful too, but on some level I can’t get over the missed opportunity here to make the project more than personal suffering/meditation and self-promotion. Why not simply say, “And if this project is bringing the issue of people without shoes to your attention and you want to help, here’s something you can do.”? Yes, it’s a personal project for self-reflection, but it’s also an artwork that was promoted all over the web. So, I’ll close by saying that if you do want to help provide shoes for people in need, Soles4Souls seems to be the place to go (thanks to Animal for that tip).
Emma Sulkowicz has to be one of the bravest, most impressive people I’ve read about in a long time, and I almost hesitate to call what she’s doing an art piece, lest it devalue her actions in an age when so much art is devoid of the kind soul this particular performance/way of living requires. For nearly two months, Sulkowicz has been carrying her dorm room mattress with her to every class, every lunch break, every party, and everywhere else she goes, constantly, and she says she will continue to carry her mattress with her “for as long as I attend the same school as my rapist.” More about this piece, and the reaction she’s received from her fellow students at Columbia University, atHyperallergic.
I should be working on something else right now. I should be doing writing that I really need to finish ASAP, writing that could bring me some considerable upside both in money and reputation. But then Jordan Seiler and the heavy projects (as Re+Public) and Subway Art Blog went and released their awesome and eagerly anticipated new app: NO AD. So I’ve become momentarily distracted, and you should be too. Go download NO AD right now (for Android or iPhone), especially if you live in New York City.
NO AD is an augmented reality application that gives you a glimpse of the New York City subway system without advertisements, a world where billboards are for art instead of ads. NO AD replaces the top 100 ads in the subway system at any given moment with art. How? By using the ads like QR codes. Simply download the app to your phone, open it while you’re on a New York City subway platform, and point your camera at an advertisement. On your phone’s screen, you’ll see the ad almost magically replaced by artwork. Download the app now, and give it a try with this image:
See how amazing that is?
And here’s a short video about the app:
This idea isn’t entirely new. NO AD may remind some readers of Steve Lambert’s Add-Art or Julian Oliver’s The Artvertiser. But Add-Art hasn’t been functional for some time and The Artvertiser never really made it beyond a fun experiment and no longer appears to be in development, so it’s great to see other artists take up the mantle of digitally and legally replacing ads with art.
One question that I’m sure will come up: How does NO AD know what subway ads look like? The app developers essentially have to feed the app information about what ads are up in subway stations at any given time, which means that they have to go out and photograph every different subway ad they can find and rotate ads in and out of the app. As new ads rotate in, so will new artwork.
On some level, NO AD is an ad takeover tool. It takes space that is currently filled with ads and replaces those very specific ads with art. They could have just as easily used other objects around NYC as “triggers” for the art, but they decided to go with ads. Plus, for the initial launch, they’ve partnered with about 50 artists, many of whom have been outspoken critics of public advertising.
Today, NO AD is a kind of “what if,” a thought experiment to get people thinking about what it would be like to replace the ads with art, because of course you still need to take out your phone, open the app, and look at specific ads to see the artwork. So, essentially, it could be said that the app is a gimmick to get people thinking about replacing ads with art, rather than a tool to actually achieve that.
But NO AD may not be just a thought experiment in a few years. Fast forward to when everyone and their mother is wearing some version of Google Glass all day long. There will still be ads on the subway, but with NO AD running in the background on your Google Glass, you won’t see the ads. You’ll just see art exhibitions.
And that’s the other half of NO AD, the part that is more than just a thought experiment or a very long-term thinking anti-advertising strategy: It’s potential as an exhibition space. The first set of artists whose work is being exhibited through NO AD (including Vandalog’s Caroline Caldwell) are a motley crew of experimenters and friends of the organizers, which isn’t such a bad thing since these guys have some very talented friends, but imagine given a single artist a chance to take over all of the ads on the subway, or bringing in a professional curator to use NO AD and the subway system as an exhibition space in a more organized way. NO AD is an exhibition space that exists somewhere between the physical and the digital, always bringing with it an energy of political activism and chance.
NO AD is a glimpse into the future, a new exhibition space, and a platform for activism. I’m excited.
Speaking of the Mural Arts Program, I am really pleased to say that we now have a major Shepard Fairey mural in Philadelphia. Find me some day and ask me the whole story of this mural, but let’s just say it’s complicated and thank goodness for Roland at Domani Developers for getting us a wall at the last minute.
We also have a new much more politically-charged mural from Shepard Fairey through The L.I.S.A. Project NYC, and while I’m sure the process for that was also quite complicated, my friend Wayne took care of that and all I had to do was pitch Shepard on the idea of a big wall in NYC and the property owner on the idea of a Shepard Fairey mural on his building (neither of which were too difficult). I’m absolutely honored to have played even my small role in each of these murals. It was my first time working with Shepard, and it was a pleasure.
Two real kings of NYC graffiti, Blade and Freedom, have shows open now at the Seventh Letter flagship store in LA. Blade is an undisputed subway king who also pushed graffiti forward as an art-form, a rare combination. Freedom is a personal favorite of mine (his piece in my black book is a real prized possession) for combining pop art, an ability to paint very well, comics, and graffiti in an intelligent way without too much of an ego. I’m sad to be missing both of these shows, but I hope LA will give them the love they deserve.
Hi-Fructose posted some interesting GIFs by Zolloc, but the best part of the post is the first sentence: “While GIFs have yet to find an established place in the art world, they’re fascinating because they have the potential to go beyond the frozen image in two dimensions.” Of course, Hi-Fructose is part of the art world, so just having them post Zolloc’s GIFs counts for something. Hi-Fructose seems to be saying (albeit hesitantly) that GIFs being in their corner of the art world, which is great. That’s not a bad corner to be in, and it’s a hell of a lot better than nowhere. So, why be hesitant? If the work is fascinating, embrace it.
Oh Olek, always the best of intentions, but the results are not so great…
Smart Crew have teamed up with Beriah Wall on a series of cool collaborations. Does anyone else see this as further evidence of Smart Crew growing up, aka transitioning from a crew producing illegal graffiti into a brand or collective that does legal (and sometimes commercial) work referencing illegal graffiti? Nothing wrong with that. I’m just noting the transition.
Hyperallergic has been covering artist reactions to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Public performances in Philadelphia (by Keith Wallace) and New York City (by Whitney V. Hunter) exemplify to the unsurprising obliviousness to the situation or at least lack of caring that so many people openly display (for more, see Kara Walker at Domino). It’s amazing to see these two striking performances go widely ignored while it’s mostly prettybutemptymurals that go viral. Is that the state of street art and muralism today? I hope not. And of course, maybe what makes those performances so jarring online is that they were ignored on the street.
I have tried to resit the allure of Pejac’s work for a while, but no more. Yes, some of the jokes are cheap and feel twice-told, exactly the sort of easy made-to-go-viral work that I am complaining about in the previous paragraph, but Pejac is painting them really well, and they consistently catch my attention. As much as I would like to write him off as a Banksy-ripoff who even came to that idea a few years too late, I can’t do so any longer. The work is actually quite good. Have a look for yourself.
Last week I was in Atlanta for the Living Walls Conference. A great time was had by all. I was there to speak with Living Walls co-founder Monica Campana and Juxtapoz editor Austin McManus about the evolution of street art and graffiti over the past five or so year, and Vandalog contributing writer Caroline Caldwell was there to paint a mural. Atlanta got some real gems this year, including new work by Moneyless, Troy Lovegates and Xuan Alyfe in collaboration with Trek Matthews. Juxtapoz hasextensivecoverage. Congratulations to Living Walls on a truly impressive 5th anniversary event.
This coming week I’ll be in Norway for Nuart and Nuart Plus. The artist lineup features some of my personal favorites, including John Fekner, SpY and Fra.Biancoshock. I love Nuart because it’s a festival that always strikes a balance between the best of the best artists painting epic murals on the “street art festival circuit,” and the oft-under-publicized but highly-political activist artists intervening in public space. Putting these artists in the same festival strengthens the work of everyone there, and reminds us that murals can serve many different purposes. I’ll be speaking at Nuart Plus on behalf of the Mural Arts Program in a few capacities. I’ll be moderating a panel about activism in art, presenting couple of short films during Brooklyn Street Art’s film night, sitting on a panel about contemporary muralism and giving a talk about how government-sanctioned art and muralism can be used to promote positive social change. There will be a lot of great speakers at Nuart Plus this year though. Brooklyn Street Art has the whole line up for the festival and the conference.
UPDATE 2: Steve Powers has posted his reaction to this whole situation. Definitely read the whole thing. Very reasonable and wise position overall, and while I appreciate Steve’s perspective which is obviously important to this issue, I disagree with him on one major point: He seems to undervalue the love that Fishtown residents and visitors have for his mural. He sees everything as ephemeral, and so it is, but we can still mourn the loss of an artwork, particularly when it is so well-loved and it is lost (at least until repaired) in such a disappointing manner. But this is something Steve and I have disagreed about before and I’m sure will disagree about in the future…
UPDATE: Leah Kauffman has confirmed that Lee Mayjahs did make a comment on PhillyMag.com as “Dumb Buffer,” and also conducted a brief interview with him.
In 2012, Steve Powers painted a mural for Kurt Vile in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown. A photo of the mural eventually became the album art for Kurt Vile’s Walking on a Pretty Daze. This week in Philadelphia, a vigilante buffman took it upon himself to paint over part of that mural, and only stopping once he was caught in the act by Instagram user @dasheikee. According to @dasheikee, the buffman did not have the property owner’s permission and was not employed by the city, but he decided to paint over the mural because “He claimed it attracted graffiti to the neighborhood!”
The claim about this mural attracting graffiti is a bit silly in my opinion. Fishtown is basically like Philadelphia’s Williamsburg or Bushwick, so that would be like saying that eliminating The Bushwick Collective would end graffiti in Bushwick. Graffiti was there before The Bushwick Collective and it will be there afterwards, because of the people who like to live or spend time in Bushwick. Besides, many people in Fishtown appreciate street art, graffiti and murals. I have to assume that the location of the mural was selected because Powers and Vile thought that the existing residents would like piece, and they do. If anything, if this wall weren’t going to be repaired, the mediocre buff job would probably have led to illegal graffiti being painted right there. As it was, nobody was going to paint over Steve’s work.
I’ll admit that when this mural first went up, I wasn’t a huge fan. I saw it primarily as an advertisement masquerading as a mural, but the fact is that the mural has become an iconic addition to Fishtown, so even I’m disappointed to see this happen. Luckily, plans are already in the works to repair (and update) the wall.
It’s cool to see how a community rallied, largely online, to protect this mural and mourn its partial destruction. There is a very obvious irony in this whole situation that a bunch of fans of street art and graffiti suggesting that the police be called over someone illegally painting a wall, but as Jane Golden of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Programcommented, “I think the big point here is that it’s really sad to lose a work of art.”
I’ve been traveling a bit and I’m in London at the moment, so here’s me playing some catch up:
There seems to be a big question mark on the freshly launched Street Art Project from Google. I’ve been getting friends outside of street art sending me links to the NYTimes article about the project and asking what the hell to think, and everyone within street art that I’ve spoken with seems unsure of what to think about the thing. I’m also unsure so far. On the surface, sounds great: A major institution offering to archive, tag, map and promote the best high-resolution photos of street art around the world. But the more I think about it, the less exciting it sounds: Only a select few contributors (from the amazing Living Walls to the questionableGlobal Street Art), essentially replicating the functions of flickr without the ability for anyone to participate, using art to whitewash the reputation of a controversial company… Honestly, if I had the opportunity to contribute photos to this project, I probably would just because of the possible selfish promotional value, but at the same time I’m not sure that this project is of any real worth the the street art or graffiti communities. I don’t know. I’m just not sold on the idea that this is the best strategy or documentation or archival. Anyone have any thoughts on this thing?
Banksy has updated (and upgraded) his website. Notable updates include the updates to the Q&A section and an embed of this video, titled “Better Out Than In – the movie,” which is essentially a slightly edited version of his Webby Awards acceptance video. The question now is whether that short video is really “the movie,” or a trailer for an upcoming movie. Street Art News seems to think it’s a trailer, but I don’t see Banksy having hinted one way or the other.
Ken Sortais aka PAL Crew’s Cony had a show on in Paris earlier this month. The show has closed now, but it’s worth checking out the photos. The sculptures are very George Condo-esque, but Sortais has some real talent. The work isn’t completely removed from his graffiti, but he’s certainly not using his graffiti reputation or skills as a crutch for these gallery works, something that happens all too often with less talented artists as they move from the street to the gallery.
All of London is talking about the Roa and Ripo shows opening today at Stolenspace Gallery. I’m looking forward to the opening: Two artists whose work I enjoy, and it will be my first time at Stolenspace’s new location.
Next week four of the great early photographers of graffiti will be on a panel hosted by Jay J.SON Edlin at the Museum of the City of New York as part of the City as Canvas show. That’s one event not to miss. I may even come up from Philadelphia for it, so if you’re in NYC, you have no excuse not to go. Use the discount code in this flyer to save a bit on tickets to the event.
The former site of the “Old School” piece by Banksy that was in the “Stealing Banksy?” auction/event/whatever
The Sincura Group, yes that company led by the hilarious TonyBaxter and hosts of the Stealing Banksy? auction from back in April, announced that the point of the auction of former Banksy artworks (street pieces removed from their original locations) was not to sell the artworks, but really to start a street art museum in London. Here’s an archived copy of their post-auction statement. Apparently, people are taking them seriously, with a stories about the museum in The Art Newspaper and The Independent, plus Global Street Art’s Lee Bofkin being considered as a possible curator for the museum.
According to The Art Newspaper, The Sincura Group now says that they never meant to sell any of the Stealing Banksy? works at auction for charity, as they had initially claimed, and that the whole auction and media circus was really just to test the waters for a museum of street art, to open in London next year. The Sincura Group’s statement says that some of the works were for sale, but it is unclear which ones. This seems to contradict what Baxter said in an interview with Vandalog where he was quite clear that a portion of the sale of every piece advertised as for sale at Stealing Banksy? would benefit charity.
So, nothing was for sale, or at least some pieces advertised as for sale really weren’t. The Sincura Group spent months promoting an event that they said would benefit many charities, but it was a lie. And now they are promoting a new project based of that that first project, and we are supposed to believe them. Fool me once…
I think this latest twist adds a new layer of crazy to an already ridiculous situation. At best, it is, as a Time Out blogger wrote, “all an unfathomable mind game.” At worst, it is falsehoods and a lack of transparency piled on top of more falsehoods and a lack of transparency. Essentially, The Sincura Group said that they would raise a bunch of money for charity by selling Banksy artwork and then practically did a 180 to say, “Gotchya! It was all just a social experiment!” Maybe they got the idea from BNE. Why would anyone continue to take The Sincura Group seriously or associate themselves with people who do things like this? Does anyone actually think that all of this is a good, or ethical, idea?
Sorry for this somewhat long, probably confusing post, but this has proven to be a long, confusing series of events. Now, the question I have is this: Was a museum really in the cards all along, or was the auction a complete failure, forcing The Sincura Group to come up with a plan b for all of these street pieces? I don’t no whether to laugh or cry at the entire situation.
Joe Iurato and Logan Hicks, co-curators of The Mana Museum of Urban Arts.
Very exciting news for the worlds of street art and graffiti: Jersey City’s Mana Contemporary will be opening the world’s only urban art museum later this year. As much as I detest the term “urban art,” I’ll excuse Mana on this one because there is no good term for a museum that will include both street art and graffiti. So, The Mana Museum of Urban Arts it is. If this sounds familiar, it should, because Mana Contemporary announced plans for a street art museum in January, but at that point, details have been skint. Now, we know the museum’s curators, and they provide some major reassurance that Mana Contemporary will be doing this right.
I love the museum’s curators: Logan Hicks and Joe Iurato. Logan has been a friend since before Vandalog started, and he’s been one of my most valued guides to the art world and life in general. More importantly, he’s an underrated curator who is in the perfect place (at least within the street art world) to curate this museum. Logan actually introduced me to Joe’s art a few years ago. Both are hard-working guys with a great respect for street and and graffiti. I’m sure they will do a great job with this project.
The Mana Museum of Urban Arts opens this September in a 100,000-square-foot former ice factory in Jersey City, NJ.
From the press release:
The Mana Museum of Urban Arts’ mission includes: showcasing contemporary street artists from around the world through rotating interior exhibitions, large-scale exterior murals, and through an artist billboard; documenting and preserving historically significant works with a permanent collection and media center; educational outreach; and fostering creativity and community among artists through workshops, artist studios, and public works.
Of course, there’s the question of whether such a museum should even exist, maybe it signals the death of “urban art.” I like Mana Contemporary Eugene Lemay’s response to that question in an interview with Hrag Vartanian at Hyperallergic:
This sounds to me like a question coming from a place of fear. The idea is not to institutionalize the artwork, but to create a platform for learning about its rich history, increase accessibility, and build a gathering place.
Sounds good to me. I’m all for an institution making sure that the increasingly complex history of street art and graffiti are preserved. And definitely check out that entire interview. Lemay also says that there will be a free wall area where anyone can paint.
Congrats to Mana Contemporary, Logan Hicks and Joe Iurato. This could be something pretty amazing and important. See you in September!
Future site of The Mana Museum of Urban Arts (check the old KAWS rollers)
I don’t have much to add beyond what’s already been written elsewhere about the new Banksy pieces or pieces that have been all over the news in the last few days. But I do want to link to some of the best and most up-to-date articles I’ve seen covering these pieces.
In case you somehow haven’t heard, Banksy posted a new piece to his website earlier this week, shown above. Kinda looks like an old cover of The Atlantic, but it’s a well done piece and I imagine The Atlantic wasn’t the first to do something along those lines either. The manager of a financially struggling Bistol youth club located just down the road from where the piece was installed quickly removed the piece from the wall (which he does not own) in the hopes of selling it. Animal argues that this isn’t so bad. Then the piece was put on display in the youth club. The club’s CCTV cameras may have caught a really useless image of Banksy installing the piece. Then, the youth club manager started receiving death threats, so he worked with the city of Bristol to have the work removed by police and placed on display in the Bristol Museum.
Detail of Banksy’s piece once moved inside the youth center. Photo by Banksy Locations & Tours.Police entering the youth club to remove the Banksy piece. Photo by Banksy Locations & Tours.
Another piece, a possible Banksy, has appeared in Cheltenham, near the headquarters of British NSA-equivalent GCHQ. While this piece hasn’t shown up on Banksy’s website, it looks like a Banksy to me. And I’m not the only person who thinks so. If we’re wrong and it’s not a Banksy, okay, but whoever the artist is is at least trying harder than most to emulate Banksy in concept, technique and placement. Given this piece’s proximity to the GCHQ headquarters, I really love the spy theme. Oh, and some people tried to vandalize the vandalism and then someone else washed off the paint… So begins the saga of this piece’s destruction.
Possible Banksy in Cheltenham, England. Photo by Kathryn.
