Category: Photos

Posted on

New DAIN in NYC

Dain has been quite busy in NYC lately. I am loving the new works found on BSA yesterday, not just because they are colorful collage and I wish I could walk by them every day, but the images are so rich in art history that it boggles my mind. Maybe it is jsut because I am sitting in Sotheby’s being lectured at about Documenta X and seeing slide after slide of artists, but DAIN’s work (as well as Judith Supine) really remind me of Hannah Hoch, a German collage artist known best for her feminist and political works in the DADA movement in the early 1900’s. Understanding that street artists come from so many backgrounds, I find it fascinating that the ones that don’t have any art history background are actually repeating pieces from the art canon and putting their own modern spin on it without even knowing it. Possible dissertation piece maybe?

I could be completely wrong, and maybe the striking similarities are not just purely coincidental, but influenced by Hoch and John Heartfield, and other participants from around the world (not just Berlin). We all know that artists are influenced by others in order to find their voice, and some are blatant copycats, but the inclusion of established art history in street, whether intentional or not, furthers the notion that street art does have a place alongside fine artists.

All Photos by Jaime Rojo for Brooklyn Street Art

Posted on

Above in Brisbane

Just got this note from Above. This is one of my favorite pieces from him in a while…

I just returned this morning from being in the flood ravished city of Brisbane, Australia. With the international attention around the floods I decided to immediately fly from Sydney to Brisbane to make this site specific stencil.  Unfortunately I had another stencil that Friday night I got arrested for right in the middle of painting! oughf!  I spent 10 hours in jail, had a court appearance and got a decent fine so this piece is the only 1 I can submit and offer for you. I tried my best not to make fun at this drastic and horrific situation but instead to empathize and portray just how serious and large the scale of these floods had been with the relative depiction of “NOAH’s” ark being sunk due to the floods.

Photo by Above

Posted on

Ola Bad’s dreamcatchers in Atlanta

In a city with very little street art like Atlanta, Ola Bad is making a big impact with his dreamcatcher project.

Check out his flickr for more info about the project.

This picture was taken right before Christmas:

photo credit by Ola Bad

This is the first in a series about empathy and homelessness. The idea is to draw dreamcatchers and put them up where homeless people sleep and go back at night to photograph them sleeping under it. My goal is in atlanta for the symbol of the dreamcatcher to become synonymous with empathy and gratitude. To see one outside even when noone is sleeping under it is to hopefully become thankful for what you have.

I got to talk to phil in the middle of putting this piece up. Hes been here for a long time and let me know that when the sun goes down thats where i can find him. We discussed the issue of homelessness and why atlanta is spending money on things other than a solution to housing them. I gave him a bottle of rum, canned food , some baked goods, and cigs. He insisted on shaking my hand even though it was covered in wheatpaste.

The next day when i was walking i saw him and he introduced me to his friend, gave me the biggest hug, and told me he loved me. Thats what its about. I could care less on how many views this gets my goal is already accomplished on a personal level. My hopes are to get a show built around a series of these and donate half of what i make to the specific person in the photo.

Have a great holiday and be thankful you arent out in the cold.
Love Ola

and this one right after the snowstorm that hit Atlanta last week:

Photos by Ola Bad

Posted on

Posters from Morley in LA

Check out these posters from Morley. He’s been putting them up in LA. Very fun stuff.

And this last one has a bit of a story:

Apparently, the poster originally just said “If we never speak again just assume I became famous” and the other text was added later by someone random.

Photos courtesy of Morley

Posted on

Weekend link-o-rama

Elfo's road sign for an underground robber

Getting back in the swing of things at school this week. Fair warning, today is the first meeting of a class I’m taking about conceptual art. I’m excited and the professor seems awesome, but just fair warning: That class could bleed over into the rest of my life and lead to an increase in bullshitting from me here on Vandalog. Unfortunately, I haven’t sorted out a proper internet connection yet since getting back to school, so I’ve been a bit lax this week. Here’s what’s been going on:

  • This isn’t street art or urban art or low brow or anything really related to Vandalog, but one of my favorite artists, Hiroyuki Doi, has a show on in New York right now. Definitely check it out.
  • Kid Acne has a new zine out.
  • This collaboration between Malarky, Billy and Mighty Mo is great.
  • At first I hated this sculpture from Jeremy Fish, but now I’m thinking I’d love to walk by it every day.
  • Last week I asked about graffiti photographers in Philadelphia, and Fat Cap has found a great one.
  • I think some of these pieces from Phil Jones are old, some just remind me of Asbestos’ Lost series and some are pretty meh, but damn overall Jones is kicking ass with some fun street art.
  • Felice Varini makes me smile.
  • Exit Through The Gift Shop was nominated for a BAFTA and won an award for documentaries. In other Banksy news, someone is trying to sell 5 Banksy works on paper, basically preparatory works, for £125,000.
  • This “news” article reads like a press release for Bonhams, but there is one surprising bit of information in there: Apparently the Shepard Fairey Peace Goddess, which sold earlier this month at Bonhams for £27,600, is the highest price ever paid for a Shepard Fairey work at auction. I would have thought he’d reached a higher number by now, but I guess most of the work that goes to auction tends to be prints and HPMs, not the large collages or retired stencils that might have otherwise already reached that number. UPDATE: Of course, the article is wrong. That isn’t the highest price paid for a Shepard Fairey work at auction. Not sure if this price is the highest, but it’s much higher than the Bonhams result. So I guess that article is just a giant press release. Sorry.
  • And because that last thing was all about money, here’s a relevant old piece from Twist/Barry McGee.
  • Jose Parla has been busy in Toronto (Thanks to Simon for the tip).

Photo by Elfo

Posted on

Going down

The above photo was taken earlier today. The home was a squat in downtown Madrid and the wall is by 3ttman and Remed.

Photo by Miss Kaliansky

Posted on

Swings and googly eyes making the world a better place

Yes. Blu and Nunca and Shepard Fairey and all the rest can put up really impressive gigantic murals that tourists will travel from around the world to see and property owners will cover in plexiglass. That’s cool sometimes. But there’s something to be said for the anonymous street art that just makes people smile. It’s an often overlooked segment of the street art world, because a lot of that sort of work is small, very ephemeral, hard to notice, something that doesn’t look like art, hard to capture an image of on film and impossible to experience through a photograph. This is a short post attempting to draw attention to some of that art. To me, it’s just as important, if not more important, than the sort of street art that will one day wind up in museums.

Over the winter break, a high school friend of mine introduced me to Faces in Places. He loves that blog. Me, I’m indifferent, but I see the appeal. When I mentioned to him that there were a bunch of googly eyes appearing on my university campus, where people would put googly eyes on things to help facilitate more Faces-in-Places-like-things, he laughed. Here at Haverford, the googly eyes are a mystery, but it turns out that some of his friends started a bunch of googling (as they call it) on the Wesleyan University campus. I don’t think they were consciously trying to make art, they were just trying to make people smile and take back to the world “googling” from Google. But putting googly eyes on things is amazing street art. Is it as complex as something by MOMO? No. But it makes people smile and it brightens their day! That, to me, is one of the most noble and important goals of street art. And it’s not particularly difficult to achieve. So go and google something or scribble a funny piece of graffiti in the bathroom stall, it’s probably not going to end up in MoMA, but it may just make somebody smile, and that’s much more important.

Another similar project is this one by Oh San Fransisco:

Even though there’s a slight advertising component with that project and it’s not completely anonymous, it’s still a pretty damn good gift to the community. Putting up swings is a simple gift to make the world a better place. Kudos to Oh San Fransisco for getting out and making people have a better day. Random Acts of Greatness also explains well why they like Oh San Francisco’s project.

Photo by waystation

Posted on

Parallels: Fire with Fire by Isabelle Hayeur

From the artist’s website: The Downtown Eastside is the oldest neighbourhood in Vancouver; it is also the most run-down. This historic area is infamous for being plagued by social problems due to poverty. Before falling prey to serious urban decay, it has known brighter days, and was even the city’s business hub until the 1980s. Derelict for over twenty years, in more recent ones, it has started to be sought after again. The Downtown Eastside is undergoing a major mutation —witness the newly renovated buildings and the constructions sites that now dot the area.


The coming of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games is accelerating the Downtown Eastside’s transformation by heightening real estate speculation and gentrification; new condo towers and big box stores are appearing. The revamping of the neighbourhood seems more responsive to the expectations of people who are better-off. Tensions between real estate developers and members of the community are palpable, with fears of a form of implicit “social cleansing”.

 

It is striking that the history of the Downtown Eastside began in destruction and disappearance. In 1886, soon after the city was incorporated, the Great Vancouver Fire swept down on the neighbourhood and razed almost all of it to the ground. The video installation Fire with Fire recalls this troubled period of Vancouver’s history. It also alludes to the neighbourhood’s present conditions by reminding us that many lives have been consumed there, worn down by years of homelessness, drug use, street prostitution, and violence.

The video can be watched here on Youtube. Thanks Elle on the tip