Roa has returned to his home country of Belgium for a solo show, cleverly titled Stop Over, at BODSON-EMELINCKS in Brussels. The show opened a couple of days ago, and we’ll likely have more coverage soon, but for now here are some preview shots by Henrik Haven of the show’s installation.
Continue reading “Preview: Roa’s “Stop Over” in Brussels”
gilf!‘s solo show i Exam is open now at Arcilesi Homberg Fine Art in Brooklyn. The show includes a number of unexpected new pieces from gilf! that really separate her outdoor work from her indoor work. The basic themes are still the same, but the technical complexity of some of the work is beyond what we’ve seen from her outdoors. I haven’t included too many photos in this post because many of the pieces include somewhat obscured text which is difficult to read in a jpeg, but I’d love to hear what people who saw the show in person thought of those pieces.
i Exam runs through March 10th.
Photos courtesy of gilf!
I love the way Joe Iurato’s aesthetic is continually evolving. His stencil art works beautifully not only in public spaces, but also in gallery settings. Currently on view at London’s Signal Gallery are some of his strongest pieces to date.
Images courtesy Joe Iurato
As I tweeted the other day, my mind is kinda stuck on how much I wish the Parra show at Jonathan Levine Gallery opened today and not on Saturday so that I could go see it. So while I’ve been distracted by that point, here’s some of what I almost missed this week:
Photo by Luna Park
In 2011 and 2012, Patrick Waldo aka Moustache Man tagged thousands of subway advertisements. His tag was simple and fun. He wrote the word “Moustache” on the ads where someone else might scribble a crude moustache. The intervention was simple but extremely popular and fun. Unfortunately, NYPD disagreed. They arrested Waldo and charged him with criminal mischief. Not surprising, but certainly disappointing and a waste of their time.
This week, Waldo is taking the Moustache Man identity indoors for his first solo show. The show will be held at Krause Gallery in NYC, opening on the 21st (7-9pm) and running through February 24th.
Although Andrew Hosner of Thinkspace Gallery has implicitly suggested that I am shaking my head over this show because of Nico Glaude’s piece last week, I’m actually curious about this show. Outdoors, as a little prank, I think Moustache Man is pretty funny. And I love that he turned his experiences tagging and then being arrested for the most ridiculous of offenses into a one-man-show for the UCB Theater. But indoors, what is he supposed to do? What is Moustache Man without vandalism and a lack of consent, and how do you bring that indoors? This is bound to fail, right?
Well, now I’m not so sure. Part of Waldo’s show includes “Forced Collaborations” between himself and various other artists. In the case of Mr. Brainwash, Waldo has taken an actual Mr. Brainwash print and added his tag to it. Additionally, since Mr. Brainwash puts his thumbprint in ink on his prints, Waldo decided to dip his testicles in ink and the print has a print of Waldo’s left testicle next to Mr. Brainwash’s thumbprint. Mint and Serf tried something similar a few years ago, but I believe that was with the permission of the involved artists. I’m not sure if this is going to work, but it might, and I’m very curious to see how it goes.
I won’t be able to see the show in person though, so if you do go and see it, please leave a comment and let me know how it goes.
Photo courtesy of Patrick Waldo
Sorry for the late link-o-rama. Caroline came to visit on Thursday, so I’ve been trying to stay offline.
Photo by HowAboutNo!
Riddled with the obsessive need of more more more, Cassius Fouler’s compulsion to keep creating has found a home with Arlene’s Grocery. Opening Monday, February 11th at from 7-10pm, Withdrawal Anxiety catalogues the artist’s most recent work, which takes the form of sculptural wood tags, canvas, and paper. Much like the go hard or go home attitude behind the graffiti world that Fouler is drawing upon, he has been incessantly creating for Withdrawal Anxiety to avoid exactly that.
Fouler has shared several progress images for his upcoming show, we also have this from the press release:
When you’re compelled, you gotta do what you gotta do.
But what if you suddenly can’t do that anymore?
Then you gotta do what you can, and you work with what you’ve got.
In this collection of recent paintings and collages, Cassius Fouler has graffiti on the brain, and the work provides a glimpse into the nature of creative compulsion as well as the increasingly hazy line between graffiti and fine art.
All photos courtesy of Cassius Fouler
Z from Bomit has curated GO! STICKER, a show of sticker art by about 100 artists. The show opens later this month at The GO! Shop, a part of Wynwood Walls in Miami. At least by number of artists, the show is quite massive and maybe “organized” is a better word to describe Z’s role that “curated,” but it will include work by some world-class sticker artists like Os Gemeos, Invader, Skullphone, Pez, D*face, Baser, Aiko, Ader, and Shepard Fairey.
Stickers occupy a strange space in the graffiti and street art communities. For some, stickers are an essential part of their practice, maybe even the primary piece of it, but other reject stickers entirely and look down on them. Some spend time working on unique handmade stickers that act as markers of where they have been. Others print up tens of thousands of stickers with the same design and distribute them to fans worldwide. The fanbase for stickers also seems to be oddly separate from the fanbase for most street art and graffiti, kind of like the men and women who obsess over freight train graffiti. All of which is to say that I’m very glad Z has put this show together, but I’m also very curious and unsure of what the response will be. Sticker art is important and deserves to be highlighted, and Z is one of the best possible choices to put together such a show, so I hope he succeeds at making stickers appeal to more than just us sticker-heads.
GO! STICKER opens February 13th from 6-10pm and runs through February 28th at The GO! Shop in Wynwood, Miami.
Slow week, but that doesn’t mean nothing good happened. Here’s some of it…
Photo courtesy of David de la Mano and Pablo S. Herrero
I love the way Nether’s graceful portraits of everyday folks — pasted onto abandoned and decaying spaces in his native Baltimore — interact with their surroundings. His current exhibit Crumbling Cities at Weldon Arts provides a wonderful glimpse into the world that Nether has created in Baltimore and in his travels. Here are a few more images:
The exhibit continues weekends through Saturday, February 16th at 181 Irving Avenue in Bushwick.
Photos by Tara Murray
