OBEY Giant has posted this video of Shepard Fairey walking around his studio as he and his team work on preparing his upcoming May Day show at Deitch Projects. May Day opens May 1st and is pretty much guaranteed to New York City’s street art event of the year so far.
These two pieces from Jerm IX were pasted in an abandoned building in South Vancouver:
And this piece (also with Rize-Up and starheadboy) is for a project that I’ve really enjoyed following, The Vancouver Transit Adspace Re-appropriation Project.
Photos by Jerm IX
David Choe’s LA solo show Nothing To Declare (with Lazarides Gallery) opened this week and it looks like Choe has outdone himself yet again. Fans of his work have got to love these new paintings. For me, Choe is kind of like Barry McGee; some of the images are interesting and others aren’t, but damn that technical ability never fails to amaze me. There are few who can use a spray can better.
The LA Times has a nice article about Choe and Nothing To Declare. Pretty cool that Choe’s gone from leaving LA when he could only get shows at hair salons to now being profiled in The LA Times for his return.
The show is taking place in a massive warehouse, so of course there are some installation bits. I love the giant whale.
Photos by Brandon Shigeta
Drago (the wonderful Italians who published my book last year), Wooster Collective and Meet At The Apartment have a very cool sounding event going on next week in New York City. The 41st Parallel is a special Q&A event with some of street art’s biggest names. Some artists from The Thousands (Chris Stain, WK Interact, Elbow-toe and Swoon), other Drago-affiliated artists like Logan Hicks, Drago’s founder Paulo von Vacano and Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective will all be there. I spoke with Paulo today, and it sounds like the artists might be signing books as well. Unfortunately, I’ll be here in London, but I’m sure this is going to be the place to be in NYC next Wednesday evening. Check it out if you want to meet some artists, ask them questions and maybe pick up my book if you’re so inclined…
And yes I realize that I’ve been criticizing people recently for advertising stuff without really saying that they are advertising things. So, I guess this is an advert in the hopes that more people will buy my book, but if you’re flat broke or just don’t want to buy a book, this should still be a nice Q&A with some of the most influential people in street art.
I think it’s fair to say that these three pieces that have just appeared in San Fransisco over the last few days are all by Banksy. Nothing confirmed yet on his website though. Two (the piece pictured above and the rat below) are above street level, and one is at street level. I think This’ll Look Nice When Its Framed is a great one. It continues Banksy’s commentary on the commercialization of his own artwork through canvases, screenprints and a film and it ties in nicely with the artwork that was removed from a street in LA last week. And the giant rat is just classic Banksy. Not so keen on this Peace + Love thing though.
Can anyone enlighten me on what’s being said here:
Maybe it’s referencing the song “Peace, Love and Understanding” and nothing’s really funny about it? Surely I’m missing something. After all, I thought Banksy’s Jeff Koons’ dog in LA wasn’t anything special until Tim McCool came along.
Photos by Troy Holden and dennis
Keeping the urban art scene alive in Europe, Spanish street artist El Tono recently put his latest ingenious and experimental idea in to fruition by installing a number of white washed glass panels across the city of Coruña. El Tono’s idea was simple – To bring the essence of the street into the gallery. To do so El Tono would merely instigate the opportunity for the art work to be created, leaving the entire experiments out come completely in the hands of those who should past by. But of course the plan worked and El Tono would later find creative scratches and scribbles left behind on and around his panels, enabling him to create in this way a new and unique form of street artwork. Once El Tono was satisfied with the art work that he had captured, the panels were removed and displayed in at the Fundación Caixa Galicia during the MUAU in A Coruña. I sure hope those people got some credit!
Watch El Tono at work in the video below!
“Branco de España” – Eltono, MUAU, A Coruña from EltonoVideo on Vimeo.
Photos courtesy of El Tono.com
Expect the next week or so to be filled with Shepard Fairey related news. He’s in New York for his upcoming May Day solo show at Deitch Projects. Here’s some of what’s happened already:
And I’d just like to note how much I love Shepard’s new flag image which appears to be one of the core images in May Day.
I just wrote over 1000 words describing a series of tweets and blog posts by Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City and Marc Schiller of Wooster Collective without even getting to my thoughts on those events, but I realized that it was kind of boring and pointless. If you want to know the full story behind what I have to say now, you can read it yourself. In short, there was controversy surrounding the possibility that Marc Schiller was doing marketing for Exit Through The Gift Shop and using his twitter and Wooster as part of the marketing campaign.
The end result of all this back and forth? Yes, Marc is helping with the marketing for the film. Wooster Collective has supported Banksy for years and Marc’s day job is in marketing, so it kind of makes sense. But Marc isn’t getting paid for his work. Nonetheless, he didn’t ever make it clear on the Wooster Collective website that he was part of the film’s marketing team (to be fair, it wasn’t a secret and he would tell you his involvement if you asked, but he wasn’t volunteering the information to all of Wooster Collective’s readers).
After initially being upset (particularly because he commented on my post about Banksy’s marketing efforts for Exit Through The Gift Shop without mentioning his own involvement) and then speaking with Marc about the situation, my take is that as a reader of Wooster Collective, my trust was betrayed. On Vandalog, Wooster Collective and just about every other blog in the world, there are times when we post about our friends or other things like that, and it would be impossible to declare every possible conflict of interest. In this particular case though, I feel very strongly that Marc and Sara should have simply noted once or twice on their blog that they are officially helping with the marketing efforts of Exit Through The Gift Shop.
I still enjoy reading Wooster Collective and I think that they are the most important street art blog in the world today (so don’t stop reading Wooster just because of this, and if you don’t read it now, please start reading), but in this one instance, I was disappointed and I just wish they had been more straightforward with their readers.
There’s a few developments in the story of Banksy’s Jeff Koons dog stencil that was stolen in LA, so I thought I’d just throw it all together and link to the best reports of what’s going on.
A nice friendly reminder from Mr. Di Maggio about the benefits of riding your bike…
Photo by Mr. Di Maggio
