This week was exam week, so that means that the majority of my time was split equally between studying and procrastinating with my roommates on N64 and that this week’s link-o-rama is a bit longer than usual:
A perfect example of how street art can brighten up a community (unless there’s backlash for trying to make the site of a car crash look nice, like the backlash when artists painted the separation wall in Palestine).
And they’re baaaaack. The supreme street team is at it again this time plastering new york with Lady Gaga’s beautiful visage. Of course you can expect the people working for Supreme to vent their pent up vendettas against other artists while out plastering this bull shit.
JR is continuing his work LA, as part of a push before both MOCA’s Art In The Streets show and the announcement of how JR plans to use his TED Prize. While the LA Weekly has been documenting JR’s murals, official images from JR are now showing up on his website.
So far, it isn’t known exactly how JR plans to use his TED Prize money, but that will be announced on Wednesday evening with a live streaming event online.
Its easy to recognize a piece by Jade in Peru. His images have a very distinct shape and color that help you immediately recognize the work. His latest works are a series of mainly animal drawings called “Animalinando Lima” The drawings, all done in brown paper have a folk like feel that relates to old cultures and art from Peru.
I, again, felt connected to his art, and I loved it even more to see that Jade is creating a series of cohesive work on the street and taking advantage of his streets. Jade has been making graffiti for 13 years, and he is a very influential force in the street art scene in Peru. South America is thriving with street art and home to wonderful artists like Jade.
To see more of his work, please visit his website.
From the "Animalinando Lima" seriesFrom the "Animalinando Lima" seriesFrom the "Animalinando Lima" seriesFrom the "Animalinando Lima" series
Wow. This week has gone by really quickly. I guess the world feels like it is moving faster when you are running on less sleep. Such a counter-intuitive thing. Anyway, here is what has been going on that I didn’t have a chance to write about this week:
Two members of the Russian artist/activist group Voina are finally out on bail, in part thanks to Banksy.
Swoon was recently in Melbourne for a solo show at Metro Gallery. While in town, she put up a few pieces on the street, including this new image of her partner Ben Wolf:
JR seems to be going non-stop with putting put murals in LA right now. The LA Weekly are covering that pretty well, but the above wall deserves a special mention. It’s part of the Geffen Contemporary at the MOCA, the same building where Blu‘s mural wasbuffedlastyear. This isn’t the same wall, but it’s the same building and JR did this mural for the same even, MOCA’s upcoming street art show. This is interesting because of the outcry over the buffing of Blu’s mural. There was definitely speculation that artists would pull out of the show over issues of censorship and to stand in solidarity with Blu. JR is the first artist since Blu to put up a wall as part of the MOCA show, which opens in April. Not to gloss over the events with Blu, hopefully this is a sign that the show will continue on without any more glitches and be a success. I suppose the other side of this is that someone could say that JR is turning his back on his principles or something, but I think that the TED folk generally are pretty smart about who they give large grants to.
So with the Oscars less than a week away and an Oscar nomination under his belt, of course Banksy has hit up LA with some new work. Some of it’s good, some of it is barely worth a mention and all of it is getting lots of attention.
My personal favorite from this series of hits is the above billboard, the aftermath of which can be seen in this video. Expect it to show up on eBay any day now.
The other piece I really like is this Charlie Brown on a burnt out building:
Photo by Lord Jim
Hieronymus spotted the Charlie Brown piece getting covered by the property management company. His thoughts on the subject as well as on the general way that Banksy’s outdoor work has such a strange life these days are worth checking out. I would pretty much echo his sentiments. There’s also this video of the piece getting covered, but not much is clear except that the building owners want the work covered for now.
I think with either of those two pieces, they’d be worth mentioning even if they weren’t by Banksy, and that should be the measure by which his work is judged. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and massive amounts of attention have also been paid to every new Banksy in LA, even the two mediocre ones. First, there’s Dog Wizz, which is kinda funny I guess but definitely not top-notch Banksy work:
Photo by Hieronymus
And then there’s this piece which looks to me like something Mr. Brainwash would dream up after looking at Banksy and Dran’s stuff for a bit too long:
Photo by Lord Jim
Besides being a really weak concept compared to the rest of Banksy’s work with kids drawing, there are a few crazy things about this crayon-gun stencil: It was first “discovered” by Lauren Conrad from The Hills and she posted a photo on her twitter. As Hrag speculates, this was pretty clearly staged for maximum publicity for both Lauren and Banksy. Additionally, there’s this painting by Nils Westergard from about a year ago that is pretty similar, so if you like this Banksy but can’t afford to hire somebody to chop a wall out for you, you can always buy the Westergard version on canvas for $500. I’m not saying that Banksy ripped off Westergard, just trying to point out how simple the concept of a crayon-gun is (then again, you could argue that the simple concepts are what makes some of Banksy’s art so good). Finally, I think it’s pretty hilarious to see Banksy fans loving this piece when the first thing it made me think of is that infamous Mr. Brainwash image of Elvis holding a toy gun instead of a guitar. Honestly, the concept of this piece seems so MBW-esque to me, even though the style is obviously Banksy’s. Oh, and it looks like somebody trashed this wall already.
So that’s Banksy’s most recent LA advertising campaign. Some good art and lots of hype. Hopefully it all works in his favor, because I’d still love to see him win that Oscar on Sunday. I just re-watched Exit Through The Gift Shop last week for the first time since the premiere, and I liked it more the second time around. It’s not a bad film.
