Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada has been working on the street since the mid 1990’s, but is probably best known for his largescale black and white portraits. This interview with Fecal Face is a good introduction. This Thursday, he has a solo show opening in Barcelona at Galería Ignacio de Lassaletta (Rambla de Catalunya 47). The show will include both large charcoal drawings and sculptural works and promises to be a must-see event. It runs through January 17th. Here’s a hint of what to expect:
Stinkfish and Troy Lovegates aka Other are showing together now at Brooklynite Gallery now for their show Thinkers of This, but it’s almost over: Thinkers of This closes on November 26th. I wish I could have seen all this in person, but in case you’re like me and will only have a chance to see Thinkers of This online, here are some highlights:
This week the Occupy Wall Street live streams have been very effective at distracting me from Vandalog, which I’m not too upset about. The violent and suppressive eviction of Occupy Wall Street is certainly more important that the latest swindle that some art gallery is trying to pull. Nonetheless, I have been paying attention even if I haven’t been writing, so here’s what’s been going on in the street art world this week:
This Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn, Todd James and Steve Powers are showing their work from their installation Street from the Art in the Streets show at MOCA in LA earlier this year. Other members of Powers’ ICY Signs studio will also be showing their work.
Swoon musical project in New Orleans, Dithyrambalina, is coming along. Artists involved in the collaborative installation are performing a show called The Music Box on November 19th and December 10th. Here’s a trailer, which includes some of their October 22nd performance. Beautiful work, but I’m sure it’s something that really needs to be seen in person.
The Future Tense have another pop-up show opening soon in London: SPECTRA I. It’s the first in a 3-part series of shows with artists whose work has a particular focus on color. The highlights of part one look to be Haroshi, who makes sculptures out of skateboards, and James Marshall aka Dalek, who will be putting out a new etching at SPECTRA I. The show opens at 28 Redchurch Street in Shoreditch on November 24th and runs through December 18th.
Lush is back in Melbourne after spending so much of the summer in California, and he’s getting ready for his second show at Backwoods Gallery. Shithouse “Art” Show opens on December 6th, a nice counterpoint to the Miami Basel madness that so much of the art world (Vandalog included) will still be high off of.
Encrages (French “inking,” according to Google), is JR‘s latest solo show, and it looks to be a significant one. Encrages will take place at Galerie Perrotin, a top-tier gallery in Paris who have also worked with Kaws and Ivan Argote. The show opens this Saturday at 7pm, and runs through January 7th. Arrested Motion have done a studio visit with JR in anticipation of the show.
It’s great to see continued success for JR, but with every step further up the art-world ladder, more questions are of course raised as to the inherent imbalance between the subjects of his photographs and those who buy his art.
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Title: “Byker Wall” by Gaia : Edition: 33 , 2aps – 760mm x 540mm
Medium: Screen printed with 2 colours and hand painted on 300gsm somerset velvet
Paper: Somerset White Velvet 300gsm. Signed, Dated & Numbered by the Artist. £275.00 inc vat to purchase please visit OneThirty3’s online shop
Thomas Daniel Smith (11 May 1915 – 27 July 1993) was a British politician who was Leader of Newcastle upon Tyne City Council from 1960 to 1965. A visionary of his time, Smith wanted Newcastle to become “the Brasilia of theNorth” through the implementation of massive redevelopment projects and slum clearence programs. His legacy included the Swan House in the center of the city which replaced the original Medieval streets with a large motorway and roundabout. Smith`s political career would eventually be destroyed by offering lucrative building contracts to local architects, the result of which were housing estates such as the infamous Cruddas Park project. Props to GMC crew for the wall and all of the help! Of course a big shout to Onethirty3 for flying me out and organizing the installation.
Portrait of Mayor Gijs van Hall and Corbusier interpolated by the phrase "What is the scale of a Human?" in dutch on an abandoned slab housing project in Bijlmermeer.
Bijlmer was designed by the department of City Development according to the strict tenets of CIAM. Constructed throughout the 60’s in striking resemblance to Le Corbusier’s Radiant City plan, by the time the massive towers were constructed, high modernism was already under vitriolic scrutiny by the architectural community. Intended to alleviate Amsterdam’s housing shortage, middle class never moved to the housing project in the wake of burgeoning suburbanization and a plummeting population in the center city.
Bijlmer became the dumping ground for unwanted immigrant communities and the city’s excessive drug problems. Only until recently, has the massive housing project been redeveloped into more mixed income housing with a diversity of uses and styles. Many of the block slabs have been leveled due to poor construction and maintenance but the remaining towers have been renovated into exceptional apartments. This piece was created on one of the last remaining vacant houses.
Anonymous Gallery is launching their permanent space in Mexico City with Fresh Kills, a group show opening this weekend. The artists in this show are purported to, in an effort for renewal, reuse materials that most would consider trash, so the name Fresh Kills comes from Freshkills Park, an upcoming park project in New York to redevelop a site that used to be a landfill. As usual, Anonymous Gallery have put together an impressive group of artists for this show: Aaron Young, Agathe Snow, Barry McGee, David Ellis, Greg Lamarche, Hanna Liden, Richard Prince, Swoon and Tom Sachs. Fresh Kills opens on the 17th, this Thursday and runs through January 15th.
Outpost is a massive street art festival on now at Cockatoo Island in Sydney, Australia. For better or worse, it’s sponsored by the Australian government and from what I’ve seen they are showing a fairly bubblegum pop version of street art so the scope of the show is quite limited, but there are some great artists involved and the festival had over 12,000 visitors in its first week. Kid Zoom‘s stunning installation might be an exception to that bubblegum vision, although it’s certainly more conceptual and institutionally traditional than a lot of street art. He recreated his childhood home from memory and life sized, painted it with a skull and then wrecked and blew up three cars next to the house (which is documented in a film at the festival). Not sure what the cars are about, but the idea of wrecking the cars that the Australian Government probably paid for seems like, at the very least, a good excuse to do something crazy and fun. Here are some photos from the installation and video stills. Outpost has free entry and runs through December 11th.
It’s 11/11/11, so I guess that’s a big deal to some people. That seems so arbitrary to me, since our calendar is pretty arbitrary to begin with. Besides, it’s really 11/11/2011. A few years ago, 11/02/2011 was much cooler. In my social sphere though, 11/11/11 seems like an excuse to throw parties, so maybe I shouldn’t complain. While I was thinking about the ridiculousness of this date, here’s what almost passed me by this week in art:
Echo and The Bunnymen are a brilliant band and Will Sergeant is a fantastically talented member of that group. Unfortunately the same things cannot be said about his attempt at street art.
Last month, Ola Bad’s first solo show took place in Atlanta. It does not look like it’s his first show. It looks much better than any artist’s first solo show should look. There are a number of photos from the show here.
A tribute to Robbo has been painted on the wall where he and Banksy feuded. It looks like it’s by Banksy, but there’s been no word from his camp or any other artists claiming responsibility. Last we heard, Robbo was still in intensive care at a hospital due to the injuries he sustained back in April.
