This year’s edition of Primary Flight, Miami’s original annual mural festival, is shaping up to be pretty mad. Primary Flight, now in its 4th year, is an annual mural festival that takes every year in Miami during Basel Miami. Past highlights include murals from Depoe, El Mac and Retna, Pose, Shepard Fairey, Typoe, Boxi and Ron English. Like last year, most of the painting will be going on at the RC Cola Plant in Wynwood, with other artists painting between 20th and 36th Streets, from NE Second to Biscayne Boulevard (Wynwood and the Design District I believe).
Primary Flight has put together an impressive group of artists. Here are just a few from their massive list that I’m most excited about: Anthony Lister, Augor, Burning Candy, Haze, Nunca, Remed, Retna, Saelee Oh, Skewville and Stormie Mills. Everyone will be painting from November 29th through December 5th.
Primary Flight 2010 will also mark the start of the Wynwood Mural Museum, which is something that Primary Flight, the Wynwood Arts District Association, and the City of Miami have put together. The museum is a listing of over 30 murals that have gone up since the start of Primary Flight. As I understand it, the government of Miami weren’t originally fans of the festival, so it’s pretty cool to see them change their minds and get behind it.
Keep an eye on Vandalog, as I’m sure we’ll be posting some photos from Primary Flight, and if you’re in Miami this December, this is definitely something to check out. It’s probably where I’ll be spending most of my time while I’m in town.
Ron English just finished a mural and sculpture garden sort of installation in Miami as part of Wynwood Walls. I’m not a huge fan of pop surrealism myself (although I really respect what Ron and other artists in that genre do), but damn those Ron English fans must be going crazy right now looking at this thing. It’s a mural that then extends off the walls and includes some of his camo-dear sculptures (which I love). Hi Fructose has more images.
Click to view large
And Shepard Fairey has finished his installation at Wynwood Kitchen & Bar, as mentioned the other day. The restaurant isn’t open yet, but it should be ready for Basel Miami week at the start of December.
The City of Miami has taken a giant step forward by recognizing the value of street art and officially designating the Wynwood Arts District as the “Wynwood Mural Museum”. Under the auspices of Primary Flight, artists will be descending en masse during Art Basel 2010 to paint an unprecedented number of walls.
Jessica Goldman and Shepard Fairey. Click to view large.
Shepard Fairey has begun working on an installation at the soon-to-open Wynwood Kitchen & Bar in Miami. The installation is part of this year’s Wynwood Walls project.
Photo courtesy of Wynwood Walls/Goldman Properties
One of my roommates came by a few minutes ago and asked “So, did shit hit the fan?” He knew I was posting something about Underbelly yesterday, but he’s not really the artsy type so he didn’t know quite what it was.
Well indeed shit has hit the fan, but mostly in a good way so far. The Underbelly Project made it into The New York Times and The Age. Also, Ian Cox and Luna Park have posted their photos on their respective blogs. And their photos are much better than mine, so check them out.
It seems most people are liking the project, even if some have some reservations. As one commenter on my last post pointed out, maybe you had to be there to experience some of the awesomeness, but it’s still pretty cool. I think that’s a fair assessment. Some artists’ work is best viewed in person, and the best artworks in The Underbelly Project tend to fall into that category. Posterchild put up an interactive sculpture, and Dan Witz’ art is definitely more powerful when it comes as a surprise and in person.
But there’s been one criticism that I absolutely don’t buy: That The Underbelly Project was conceived and executed purely for commercial gain. Yeah, later this week I’ll be posting a trailer to a documentary about the project, but the organizers, who I think are two very bright people, would have to be complete idiots to do this project if their only interest was a sick book deal. Yeah, there are street artists and graffiti writers out there who do illegal work to get attention and doing well-promoted street art can sell a painting or two. I’ve called out people on doing things like that before. That said, the scale and risk of The Underbelly Project is greater than what could be often by any likely monetary rewards. It would be much easier and less risky to either fake the entire project in a warehouse somewhere or just do something that relies on one or two big events instead of a year of secrecy and dangerous activities. I highly doubt that The Underbelly Project will be an efficient way to make money for the participants, even with any future books or films or anything like that. When I was first told about The Underbelly Project, it was little more than an idea, and the idea was to create a secret street art and graffiti Mecca, not to make a million bucks.
Here are some more photos from down in the tunnel:
Lister. Photo by GarrettSinboy. Photo by RJSurge, The Flower Guy, Stormie, Indigo and somebody I don't know. Photo by RJPhoto by GarrettPhoto by GarrettGaia. Photo by PACMark Jenkins and Con. Photo by WorkhorsePaper Twins and 1010. Photo by PACM-City. Photo by WorkhorseLister. Photo by RJJeff Soto. Photo by RJRoa, Revok and Ceaze. Photo by RJ
I’ll continue this week to post more photos, but you can check out a more full set of my images on flickr.
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
This week, Eelus and other street artists are off to Gambia to for Wide Open Walls, a street art project that Eelus has curated there. I can’t wait to see what they paint. The lineup is very exciting: Eelus, Logan Hicks, Broken Crow, Lucy McLachlan, Ben Eine, Xenz and Mysterious Al. The aims behind the project art pretty clever. Eelus and the rest of the Wide Open Walls artists are trying to increase tourism to Gambia with their artwork. Like how FAME Festival and Nuart have brought tourists to places they wouldn’t have otherwise visited, this project has the potential to bring money to an area that could really use it. You can learn more about Wide Open Walls here.
Originally, I had planned to interview Eelus about the project, but then Juxtapoz and Zeitgeist each interviewed him, so I figured I probably didn’t have much to ask that hadn’t already been asked.
Well it was the first week of midterms for me, so lots of time was spent locking myself in my room, turning off the wifi and just studying. On the plus side, had a great meeting today trying to get some grant money from my college to bring street artists to campus and I took a nap on what might just be the world’s comfiest couch. So here’s what I haven’t had the chance to blog with all that school stuff going on:
I’ll be running a modified version of my street art tours next Friday at the Moniker Art Fair. The tour will be free and we’ll being checking out the fair as well as some of the street art in Shoreditch nearby. That will be from 1-2:30 11:30-1pm and 1:30-3:00pm next Friday afternoon at Moniker.
The latest in the line of shows Yosi Sergant (previously involved with Manifest Hope and Manifest Equality) has worked on, Re:Form School looks to be another massive group show advocating a good cause. It is open in New York this weekend only.
LAB (Little Art Book) has a pop-up shop in London starting today through October 23rd. There will be prints for sale priced as low as £30. Their blog has more info.
I really like Ericailcane’s new murals for Fame Fest. He always does some of the best work there, in my opinion. See his 2009 walls here (my favorite) and here.
If you want to see more, I’ve posted some more photos of these new walls, plus a video of him working in Studiocromie, on tasj.
Yes, it’s true that I’ve been posting a lot about outdoor street art festivals overthepastfewdays, but I’ve got just one more to write about (plus more news in the coming days about BLK River of course)… Infart in Bassano del Grappa, Italy. I don’t know much about this festival except that Bassano del Grappa is now covered in some beautiful new murals (many of them collaborations between a number of artists). Here are some of my favorites from Sqon-Cat, Bue, El Euro, Zosen, Kenor, Gola, Seacreative, James Kalinda, Useless, Centina and ReFreshInk.
El Euro. Photo by Jacopo GreggioBue, Zosen, Kenor, Gola. Photo by BueBue and Resto. Photo by BueSeacreative and ReFreshInk. Photo by Jacopo GreggioJames Kalinda, Useless and Centina. Photo by Jacopo Greggio
