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Hell For Hire

The press release:

Anthony Michael Sneed is an emerging artist who will be having a pop-up show at ARTJAIL in NY this Thursday January 13th from 7-10. his exhibition entitled “Hell for Hire” is the culmination of work that has spanned over two years time. Embodying numerous mediums from canvas to Legos, and varying themes from JFK to the KKK, Sneed has amassed an impressive collection of work not only in scale but in content.

About the artist:

Anthony Michael Sneed is a multi-platform visual artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. As a small child, Sneed suffered an accident that crushed his right hand, temporarily disabling its use and thereby forcing him to become ambidextrous. The implications of being right handed and switching to left as a result of this trauma and the plausible impact it has on his right versus left brain functions fascinates Sneed and inspires inquiry into how that has translated in his work.

Legos, video games, and even the arts and craft association of the artist’s process are derivative of Sneed’s childhood memories. These tools and their application to the large-scale canvas comprise an ultimately self-referential language dominated by the basic geometric nature of the pixel. Angular shapes and rational lines constitute the visual framework across all the mediums in which he works and gives form to ideas, both abstract and conceptual. Rigid angles sharply contrast with the playful, tongue in cheek nature of his social commentary. Often incorporating early 80s 8-bit video game aesthetics, the resulting imagery can seem anachronistic or frozen in a particular time, juxtaposing the contemporary topical content with a conscious approach.

Anthony Michael Sneed has been selected by Shepard Fairey for an upcoming show at Subliminal Projects in LA and has shown with Leo Kesting in New York.

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tasj vol ii – issue iv

tasj vol ii – issue iv is now out – thanks to everyone who picked up a copy at our opening last Saturday and/or has signed up to receive it in the mail for free – we recently got a ton of new subscribers. You can get a deeper sense of the contents of this issue on the tasj tumblr here, but just quickly, street art fans will find Elbow-Toe and Keith Haring in At The Auctions, Sixeart, Dan Witz, Krystian Truth Czaplicki and Boxi in Perspectives, a Conversation with Slinkachu (plus a pull-out poster of one of his recent pieces!), highlights from the collection of Wendy Asher (remember her scene in Exit Through The Giftshop?), which includes Banksy, Mark Jenkins, Shepard Fairey and JR, reviews of Untitled III: This Is Street Art and Barry McGee and Remi/Rough’s monographs in Bookshelf and Aakash Nihalani and Kill Pixie in Limited Edition. Unurth picks for this issue range from Over Under, Labrona, Roa, Vhils, Phillippe Baudelocque and Monsieur Qui to Ericailcane, Sr. X, Jote, Ludo, Liqen and Sten & Lex.

Most importantly for Vandalog readers, however, is the mention of the Faro x Vandalog collaboration t-shirt (also available: Gaia and Other) alongside Rime‘s Balaclava Dude tee in Toolkit!

Grab a copy to see the rest of the issue! If you don’t currently receive it in the mail and would like to, click here. You can also keep up with us on Facebook.

– Elisa

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Parallels: John Ahearn’s Bronzes

The work of critically acclaimed public artist John Ahearn is as diverse as the models that he casts, yet in retrospect, his work is most commonly known from the community debacle of his three bronzes commissioned for the 44th precinct in the South Bronx.

The contentious issue is eloquently considered in the Jane Kramer essay Whose Art is It (provided here on mediafire) and is very pertinent to Baltimore Open City’s attempt to work publicly. The question is what role does art serve in the public? Does it function best as an affirmative representation of ideals, like many of the massive murals in philadelphia, as an expression of political action or a critical gesture that challenges the perception of its audience? While such questions and their sundry variations may be difficult to answer, when producing work for the public sphere, these modes due warrant consideration. Yet one thing is certain, a cohesive vision of community is in fact illusory, and once the artwork steps into the fray of contending opinions the myriad antagonistic voices clearly differentiate the affiliations that surround our places of living.

In the case of John Ahearn’s three bronzes, after years of deciding the appropriate work and getting its approval for the location, once the pieces were installed, the site became a channel for rhetoric regarding political correctness and representation. The issue was that these were not ideal figures represented in the work, but actual down and out individuals, a reality that the South Bronx dealt with every day but did not want to look towards. In the end the pieces were quickly removed personally by John Ahearn and relocated to the safety of PS1. The empty pedestals became an unfortunate testament to an artist collapsing under the pressure that art should make people “happy” rather than inspire dialogue.

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Blu dvd out now

Blu‘s got a DVD out. While the signed edition of 100 is already sold out, you can still get the unsigned version, which is probably a better deal anyway at about half the price…

I haven’t seen the DVD myself, so I can’t say too much about what’s on it, but it’s described as “a collection of the videos made during the last 10 years including: wall painted animations, time-lapse documentation of many murals, other hand drawn animations and over 40 minutes of extra contents technical details.” Sounds like no interview with Blu, which is unfortunate, but plenty of other interesting content. It’s available online for 16 euros.

Here’s a trailer, which shows at least a couple bits that I don’t think I’ve seen before: