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New Banksy artwork in LA

Photo by Ben Phen

Twitterer Ben Phen was the first to photograph this potential new Banksy in Los Angeles. It’s located at La Brea & 4th. So far, I haven’t seen anything saying that the artwork has been either covered in perspex or tagged over.

It might not be his funniest stencil to date, but the piece looks like a Banksy, and with Exit Through The Gift Shop premiering in LA this week, it’s a safe bet that Banksy is trying to promote the film with some outdoor activities. Hopefully this is the first of a few new pieces we’ll see from him in LA or across the states as his film is shown around the country.

What I’m most curious about though is not if Banksy is in LA, but if Mr. Brainwash is. And will Mr. Brainwash attend any screenings of Exit Through The Gift Shop? Thoughts?

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Aryz and Herakut in Manchester

If you’re in Manchester next month, you’ll have a chance to see Herakut and Aryz painting live at Eurocultured, a street festival. I don’t know much more than that, but it sounds like something worth checking out. Plus Eurocultured has like 1000 other things going on at the same time (art, music, breakdancing…).

On a related note, Aryz and Smash137 painted this wall recently in Barcelona and it looks sick:

Smash 137 and Aryz – Montana Cans from Mazot Hiphop & Graffiti Shop on Vimeo.

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On Jeffrey Deitch and street art

Hrag Vartanian has a must-read post on Hyperallergic this week. It’s titled “The Emergence of Real Pop Art: Jeffrey Deitch & Street Art” and raises some interesting questions about the nature of street art within the “art world” and Deitch’s role in getting street art to where it is today. I certainly don’t agree with everything he has to say (particularly regarding Deitch’s role in the street art world), but it’s one of the most interesting blog posts I’ve read in a while.

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New light works from Armsrock

Armsrock has been working on projected street art for some time now, but I think these are his best light works yet. They’re ghostly, but naturally they’re more like forgotten ghosts wandering the city than horror-film ghouls.

Armsrock says: “I have just spend the last couple of days in Lueneburg in Germany doing experiments with two light technicians there, trying out different ways of combining drawing with time based media. Here is some of the things that came out of it. Analogue projections on site in Lueneburg. The original drawings for the dia-slides are about the size of the surface of a hand.”

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Deny Me Three Times print by Gaia

Gaia‘s Deny Me Three Times image is one of my favorites by him, so I’m glad to see that Nelly Duff has just started selling Deny Me Three Times as a print. This isn’t a screenprint though, it’s made from a linocut (and if I’m not mistaken, that means that each print will be slightly different). The print is an edition of 25, and is pretty massive at 92 x 107 cm. They are available online from Nelly Duff for £350.

Also, this video with Gaia was made but in December, but it’s just gone online this week (this video is from Babelgum, so RSS and email subscribers may have to click here to view the video).

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Roa at Pure Evil Gallery

Roa‘s first London solo show opened on Thursday night at Pure Evil Gallery. In short, it lived up to the hype. Roa is the man. Is he an artistic genius? Who knows (after all, he still hasn’t given a proper explanation for why he paints his animals and prefers to let the work speak for itself)? I just know I can’t get enough of his art. Here’s from the show (apparently Babelgum’s videos aren’t currently working in some RSS readers or the daily Vandalog email, so you may need to visit the blog to watch this video):

And here are a few photos:

Photos by unusualimage

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Hush at The Shooting Gallery

The Shooting Gallery‘s have a solo show from Hush planned for next month. Hush is a skilled designer who can paint some very beautiful canvases. Maybe the content isn’t groundbreaking (not much art is), and isn’t the sort of thing that I am looking to hang on my walls, but I’m not about to dis Hush or the people who like collect his art. After all, it’s very-well executed and nice to look at. Should be cool to see his new direction. Plus, his stenciled geisha at the first Cans Festival was one of the highlights of the free-for-all stencil area.

The Shooting Gallery says:

The Shooting Gallery is proud to present Passing Through: New works by Hush. This exhibit honors the empowered modern women while celebrating the creative expression of street art. Please join us for the opening reception on Saturday, May 1st 2010, from 7-11 pm.

Hush uses a collision of Eastern and Western imagery to celebrate the modern woman. His manga inspired female forms speak of the strength and power that present day women own, confronting the viewer with a contemporary take on traditional figure painting. These anime women overlay a graffiti style background that references Western imagery in appreciation of cross-cultural influences of Asian culture and Western values.

Passing Through is a darker body of work visiting the concept of life and death.This progression on the part of Hush reveals deeper, more mature paintings. Following in suit with themes of the ephemeral, these works are inspired by Hush’s frequent travels and the graffiti he documents along the way. Each transient mark is evidence of one action and one creative expression, despite its gradual degradation over time.

Hush has developed a process of layering and defacing his canvases to mimic years of tags and wheat paste on a city wall. To begin, Hush covers the canvas with paint, graffiti tags, and collaged photocopies from graphic novels and old comics. He then uses blown up hand drawings of manga girls and screen prints them onto the canvas, embracing the medium’s imperfections by masking off specific parts to be hand painted in later. Hush paints and tags between screens to achieve a complex multilayered texture, defacing the work to reference the weathered, transient quality of street art.

Hush lives and works in the United Kingdom where he has shown extensively with Urban Angel (London) and Opus Art (London and Newcastle). His international repertoire extends to Scope Miami, Art Basel Switzerland, Fifty24SF Gallery (San Francisco), and Carmichael Gallery (Los Angeles).

Please join us for the opening reception of Passing Through: New Works by Hush on Saturday, May 1st, 2010, from 7-11pm. The exhibit will be on view through June 5th, 2010, and is open to the public.

Hush has also made a screenprint for this show. Looking West (above) is a 4 color screenprint on top of a giclee and has been printed as an edition of 50. It’s might be available for pre-order now at The Shooting Gallery for $400.