Earlier this week, we posted about Kid Zoom’s upcoming solo show, This City Will Eat Me Alive, which opens on Saturday in NYC. We also promised an interview with Kid Zoom aka Ian Strange. Because I admittedly don’t know much about Kid Zoom, I asked him to find a friend who could interview him for Vandalog. He chose art collector and filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. While Spurlock might be best-known for directing and starring in the films Super Size Me and Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?, he is also an avid art collector. Here’s their interview:
Morgan Spurlock: When I first came to NY in 1991, I was overwhelmed but excited beyond words. I felt like I was meant to be here. What were your first thoughts when you arrived in NYC?
Kid Zoom: My first time in New York was only last year, but I had a very similar experience. It’s a massive, intimidating, overwhelming place, especially coming from a small city in Australia – But the great thing was exactly what you said, I felt like this was where I was meant to be. I went home to Australia, sold my stuff and 6 months later I moved here.
Morgan Spurlock: How is the art scene different here from your native Australia? What was it like back home and what drove you to come here?
Kid Zoom: The scene I was apart of in Australia is a small community of very talented artists and it seems similar here, I’ve had really positive experience as the new kid.
There’s just a lot more people around here if you want to paint walls.
Morgan Spurlock: This will be your first major art show in NY. That’s a huge accomplishment. How do feel? Any pressure? Nerves on end?
Kid Zoom: Thanks, I’m just very humbled by the caliber of people who have thrown their weight behind my career and let me basically do whatever I want with this show. There’s a lot of pressure and nerves, sleepless fumed out nights and i have taken to drinking with a lot more passion than usual. But it’s all things I love and it’s a great way to lose your mind.
Morgan Spurlock: How do you personally define success?
Kid Zoom: For me I think it’s a simple as getting to do the things you really want to do in life and being surrounded by like minded fools. I’ll feel successful if I can just keep creating bigger and stranger projects and continuing to do the dance involved in lining everything up to make them happen.
Morgan Spurlock: If it wasn’t for my parents giving me the freedom to be myself, I’d probably be working in a bank somewhere. Who are the greatest influences and inspirations in your life?
Kid Zoom: I came up in the Perth graffiti scene with some really great people and a lot of the older guys were a great inspiration and help.
My parents were also great, laid back people who always told me to do what I love – and I loved painting on walls, which when you’re 15 doesn’t really seem like anything with a future, especially when you start getting dropped home by the police. Before I could drive my mother used to drive me to walls I’d painted the night before to get photos – I can’t imagine where I’d be if I had more traditional parents.
Morgan Spurlock: What’s up with the bear? Kid Zoom: The piece is titled, ‘Tag on Bear [self portrait of the artist straight fronting]’ – So the short answer is its me, well, it’s kid zoom with the ego intact, so it’s a projected idea of myself.
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Kid Zoom‘s show This City Will Eat Me Alive opens this weekend in NYC. Here’s the flyer (with an image of Tag on Bear [self portrait of the artist straight fronting]):
Escif painted that mural outside of Graffiti Gone Global’s Fresh Produce show in Miami last week. While Basel Miami and the associated events aren’t all about money, it’s certainly on everyone’s minds. That doesn’t mean that the shows were bad though. There was actually a lot of great art on display for those who took the time to look. Here are some of the indoor highlights (unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with me besides my cameraphone, so I have to link to other peoples’ coverage of everything):
Amazingly, Sanrio’s Hello Kitty show was, by all accounts, actually pretty good. I stuck to my vow of not checking out the show myself (okay, actually, once I changed my mind and wanted to see it, the show was close both times I tried to stop by). Of course it looks like there was some crap and boring pandering to the brand, but there seem to be a few decent paintings in there too. Also, it was super crowded every time I walked by, so hopefully those visitors who were there for Sanrio’s show also saw some of the other great shows nearby.
Retna‘s solo show, Silver Lining, at Primary Projects was his first show since being on the cover of Juxtapoz. After landing in Miami last Thursday evening, I went to straight from the airport to Primary Projects to catch the end of this opening. There was a little bit of something for everyone: installations, canvas, monotype prints, work on old doors and more. Oddly enough, it was the more refined work that didn’t appeal to me. For me, the canvases seemed to be lacking that spark that makes Retna’s work so amazing. Everything else was a real treat though. The watercolors and monotypes in particular were beautiful. This show is still running, so any Miami residents who haven’t seen it yet really should stop by. For the rest of the world Arrested Motion took photos.
While it was technically mostly a mural project, I’m throwing Wynwood Walls into this post because the vibe was like a gallery show. Hrag and I are pretty much in agreement on this one. Although I’d give Logan Hicks’ mural more credit than Hrag.
Lastly, I want to mention New Image Art‘s pop-up show. There was some new artwork by Judith Supine, Os Gêmeos, Bast and others, as well as a bunch of photos by Neckface and his friends, which are 100x more interesting than I had expected them to be. Here are a few photos from that show:
Os GêmeosBastJudith Supine
This is probably most, if not all, if the coverage I’ll be giving to indoor things at Basel Miami, but I’ll be posting a lot more about the murals and other outdoor events in the coming days.
I’ve been out of the loop and stuck in libraries lately (and then in Miami for the weekend), and that’s led to me miss posting about a lot of things. I’ve got some catching up to do, so here’s the start of that:
EPOS 257built a fence in a public square in Prague. A. It reminds me of Richard Sera’s amazing Tilted Arc and B. Seems like a great way to screw with the local bureaucratic government. I guess there’s the important question left though of if the public actually thought about anything when looking at the work. I’m hoping that some did, but perhaps it was too nondescript to provoke much thought.
Ending on a very sad note, Brooklyn Street Art has received word from Faust that his friend and fellow graffiti writer Sure has died while serving the USA in Afghanistan.
Last night, Pictures on Walls opened their holiday show, Marks & Stencils, starring Banksy and Dran. For those of you who read Vandalog daily, you know that I am a MASSIVE Dran fan. When I first lived in London two years ago, I interned for Pure Evil Gallery and the first show I worked on was Je t’aime, an exhibit featuring members of the DMV crew. When I first saw Dran’s work then, I could see this guy was going to be a big deal, and judging by the likes of last night’s crowd- I was right.
In true, POW style, the pop-up exhibit took out all the stops. The space on the Berwick Street in Soho was completely transformed to exhibit as much work as possible. One of the issues that a lot of people debate now is how to exhibit street art on white walls and whether the meaning of the work changes or if it is even street art anymore, albeit done by “street artists.” POW somehow found a solution, albeit temporary, to this raging debate by making the space look like a messy artist’s studio fused with the outdoor components like traffic cones, gray cracked walls and exposed brick.
The space is broken in two levels, with the top styled more like a thrown together group show and the bottom floor transformed into My Everyday Life, a solo show of Dran’s work. The theme the exhibit is Scribouille (featured above) a character of Dran’s imagination who constantly makes art all of the time. The idea was taken literally with areas created to show a workshop, artist’s table and tools, a shopping cart full of cardboard (a material of choice for Dran) and the creation of one of my favorite works by Dran- a cardboard box opened up with eyes cut out and chalk drawings of child-like flowers. The walls were scattered with unframed canvases of Dran’s witty illustrative social commentary addressing everything from the British obsession with football and shortsighted scientists to men’s fascination with porn and a women’s need to control their partners. I laughed out loud most of the time, and I don’t think the absinthe being served was helping my uncontrollable laughter either.
On the end of the space, Dran uses cardboard boxes from around the world to explore socio-political notions relevant to each country. The series is not only innovative, but displays a tension between the light-hearted nature of the drawings and the heavy themes Dran is actually drawing upon. He just goes to show you that simplicity can pack the same thematic punch as heavy convoluted abstracts that attempt to comment on similar ideas.
Upstairs, the art work includes more pieces from Dran, as well as Zevs, Sickboy and of course, Banksy. All grouped together, it was difficult at times to guess which work was by which artist which was annoying at times, but the free show catalog was pretty good about explaining what was what. Sorry guys, I’m not RJ. I don’t know everything that was there. Actually though, if someone know who the Scrabble “Snuff Film” piece was by, drop me a line. It was underneath a ZEVS but I have no idea if it was his. I would assume though.
Anyways, POW put on a great display of graffiti/art that they cited as the work of “drunks and idiots.” All pictures in ornate frames, the photographs are were a clever way to show off work that have not really been seen, but are definitely a crowd favorite.
And of course, to talk about Banksy’s work in the show… Well for starters, there was not that much of it. I was a bit disappointed in the fact that what was displayed were an array of pieces that have similar brethren in an outdoor capacity (like the door, 3D rat or the “Boring” works). What I found more interesting, however, is the close artistic relationship that has seemed to form between Dran and Bansky. I couldn’t peel my eyes off of Dran’s “Mona Lisa” because of how much it resembles Bansky’s painting attack works from a few years ago. I am not saying they are similar styles, their aesthetics are as different as can be, but their mainstream simplistic way of conveying their own social commentary are extremely similar. They both use ideas of art history, children, apes, war and starvation in their pieces as symbols of current situations. It makes me wonder if Dran is just incredibly inspired by Bansky, or if Banksy is actually mentoring the young French artist. One day, hopefully there will be an outdoor collaboration of their work, but seeing two of my favorite artists of today showing side by side is enough for me right now.
Also, for all you Banksy fans who cannot get enough of the show’s curator, the artist’s new print is shown below. Taken from his recent outdoor homage to Keith haring, the print will be on sale in December through Pictures on Walls. “Choose Your Weapon” is a five colour screen print priced at 450 pounds.
All photos by Steph Keller. See the full set on flickr
Looks like the IRAK guys have just hit up Barry McGee aka Twist’s legal wall of tags at Bowery and Houston in NYC and covered it with a massive fire extinguisher tribute piece to Sace aka Dash Snow. As much as I loved McGee’s mural, this piece is damn beautiful and I love that this wall got hit up so massively and illegally. Given that McGee’s mural was a bunch of tags, it only seems right that they spot be covered by something nice and illegal. Sace’s name was put up in the original mural though (see the Sacer by the top left corner in this photo)
If you don’t like it, it’s probably worth pointing out what McGee usually does when someone commissions himtopaintmurals.
Update: Based on this photo by Dante Ross, it looks like somebody’s already been brought in with a scissor lift to cover up the wall. Pretty useless to try buffing it if you ask me. IRAK will just be back if they want to be.
Update 3: Kathy Grayson’s blog clarifies things. The wall was repainted with permission. It will last 1 day only (which sucks for me because I’ll be in NYC tomorrow evening) before being completely buffed over, and another artist or artists will be repainting the wall next week.
As mentioned earlier this week, WK Interact has been in Mexico City working on a 200 x 7 meter mural at the General National Archives. Looks like he’s finished. Here are some photos…
As has been whispered around the blogosphere recently, Retna has a solo show coming up in Miami just a few weeks from now. The show, called Silver Lining, will be Retna’s first solo show since being on the cover of Juxtapoz earlier this year. Silver Lining is going to take place at Primary Projects, a new 4,500 square foot space run by the folks behind Primary Flight. It opens on Thursday, December 2nd and will include “paintings, drawings, an installation and an entirely new body of work” from Retna.
I just booked my flight to Miami and unfortunately I’m going to miss the opening, but this will be one of the first places that I stop by on Friday.
As you can see in the above invite though, I’ve got to make mention of something about Silver Lining which will be important for readers to remember whenever I blog about it: The show is being supported in part by The Rushmore Collection, which is basically my parents. While I’m not my parents and my parents aren’t Vandalog, I did talk with them over the phone twice in the past 24-hours and we are part of a family. My dad sparked my interest in art, but I probably introduced him to Retna’s artwork. Just something for readers to keep in mind when I write about this show.
Dave the Chimp takes a little look at “the buff”, it’s uses and misuses, and where it can head in the future.
I used to live by a small park. Kids walked through the park to take a short cut to school. Drug dealers worked the same route. There was a garage there covered in tags. I had the idea to paint the garage with some friends, covering the tags with a brightly coloured mural. The idea was to make the space a little brighter, a little less like a spot where drug dealers would hang out. I made a fake letter from my local government authority giving me permission to paint the garage, just in case anyone asked, and set to work. This is the result:
One of my neighbours saw me painting and later told me she thought I was doing “community service”, which in England is an alternative to a prison sentence!
ESPO made his own “community service” projects as a way to get his name up, starting with his “Exterior Surface Painting Outreach” program in New York (those infamous shutters), and later with his “Community Service” project in LA, where he buffed graffiti in the way we are all familiar with today (blocks of colour) so that the buff-marks spelt his name.
What I like about this latter project is that it uses the anti-graffiti weapon as the weapon, like a martial artist using their enemies’ strength against them. It also sits nicely with the way graffiti is abstracted so that it becomes a code that can only be read by certain members of society. And it’s incredibly amusing.
Here are some photos of some abstract compositions I made earlier this year by adding my own buff marks to a wall that had been buffed, and other buff marks that I added to spell my name, much like ESPO did, though I created huge letters by only painting the negative spaces in the letters. I didn’t think much about this piece. I had a bucket of paint that was left over from another project I was working on at the time, and I just walked outside to see how I could use it, and this was the result. I’m sure with more thought better pieces could be created with this method. Feel free to take this idea further.
Another body of work utilising the buff was the Toasters‘ Bluff Buff, which inserted the shape of their toaster into areas of buff, as a comment on the inaccurate colours used to cover graffiti: here and here.
I painted characters so they looked as though they were behind areas of buff in Berlin and Hamburg, and turned the actions of the buffer into comedy:
And in this case, the original piece was buffed for real, so I pulled out a marker and turned the buff into fog:
Earlier this week we saw a piece by Mobstr which became a game, with his opponent being the buff man. Comments posted suggested further ways to play the game.
Banksy took a shot at New Orleans famous buffer Fred Radtke AKA The Grey Ghost when he visited the city:
He is featured in an upcoming documentary, along with other buffers such as the “Silver Buff” from Berkeley, California, who believes there is too much “visual noise” on the streets. Watch the trailer here. Something I found interesting is that one buffer in the movie talks about how buffing makes him feel “in control” of life. This suggest that the actions of graffiti and street artists can make people feel like they have no control, making them victims. This is something to consider next time you hit the streets.
Photographer Chris Brennan documents the layers of colour haphazardly applied to the city walls to cover up layers of colour that were made with more thought. His photos often look like the work of abstract artists. One of the photos we see at that link puts me in mind of the work of Mark Rothko, though I doubt the buff in the street can ever be as effecting as being in a room with one of his huge, deep paintings.
Another weapon in the buffers armoury is the pressure washer, that cleans off graffiti. It can also be used to clean dirt off of walls, a fact ZEVS put to great use. Other versions of “clean graffiti” can be seen here. I’m sure we’ve all seen advertisers use this technique too, usually to place logos on city sidewalks.
It’s not unusual to see advertisers use street art techniques, just as it’s not unusual to see street artists fight back against advertising.
I like these pieces by the Thought Police member Eric Pentle, who will happily cut out your carefully constructed copy, or simply paint your whole billboard black. Unlike other artists, such as OX, that use advertising space as their canvas, there appears to be no clever message in Pentle’s billboards. He simply removes their ability to be effective. He is reacting to the lack of control he has in a world full of messages constantly being shouted at him, and thus makes his environment quieter. This is much the same as the Silver Buff does with graffiti. I find this very interesting, as I live in a country where I understand little of the language, and so advertising has no effect on me. It creates a more peaceful daily experience to not be told what to do all the time. See Pentle defuse more advertising here.
As we can see, the buff is nothing to fear. In fact, let us embrace the buff, and see where we can take it. Let us use this negative energy and turn it into a positive force.
One of the advantages of the buff is that, with a little effort, you can get the materials for the job for free. Try ESPO’s technique and tell the city you want to cover the graffiti in your neighbourhood, and are willing to work for free if they give you paint. Failing that, many cities have “paint recycling depots” where unused paint is taken to be disposed of. My friend Ekta in Sweden gets most of his paint for free by going to his local recycling depot and simply asking for the paint. Also keep your eyes open to see where legitimate painting work is happening. Brushes and rollers are often thrown away as people don’t want to make the effort of cleaning them. Soak them in water and the paint soon comes off. Or if they use an oil-based paint and you don’t want to mess around with turps trying to clean them, just wrap them in a plastic bag, they’ll be good for a few more days. Free brushes and rollers! Sorted!
As buffing requires little skill, this fun activity is open to everyone. No need to spend hours cutting stencils, screen printing posters, or learning how to draw – just grab your roller and a bucket of paint and make your mark in the world. The streets are a playground for everyone! I would suggest though that you have an idea before leaving the house, otherwise your efforts will be as destructive and unattractive as The Grey Ghost and his friends.
So come on kids, lets get buffing! Maybe by employing the buff as one of our weapons, applying it liberally around town, we can confuse city authorities so much that they start employing artists to paint art over all of the ugly buff marks in our cities. They can pay us to do what they paid themselves to undo.
GroundedTV has a great series of photographs from a recent visit to Toronto. Sometimes it feels like certain cities (New York, London, San Fransisco…) have multiple people who are obsessively photographing and documenting the street art and graffiti while other cities with plenty of street art don’t get nearly that much attention. There’s some great art in these photos, but I hadn’t seen any of it before. Although maybe I just wasn’t looking for it. Either way, it says something about a flaw that seems apparent in much of the street art community. I was speaking to somebody at Haverford recently about street art in Atalanta. He told me that there is a significant street art scene there, but I’d only ever connected street art and Atlanta after the Living Walls Conference, which consisted mostly of artists from outside of Atlanta painting there.
If you live in a city or town that has a street art scene that isn’t getting much attention, let me know by email or by commenting on this post. I’d love to see some art from the many cities that I haven’t spent enough time learning about.
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.
