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Flip Comes to LA

Brazilian street artist Flip has a solo show soon at The Carmichael Gallery in LA. Here’s some preview photos and the PR. I haven’t seen too much of Flip’s work before, but it looks to be pretty beautiful stuff.

Flip on Wood

“Seiva Bruta”

A solo exhibition of new artwork by Flip

Opening reception: Thursday, March 5th 2009 / 7.00pm – 10.00pm

Exhibition Dates: March 5th – March 26th 2009

Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art is proud to present Seiva Bruta, the
first West Coast solo exhibition of work by Brazilian artist Flip. Artwork
featured in the exhibition will include acrylic, ink and mixed media on
wood, canvas, and paper as well as a site specific installation. An opening
reception will be held on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 from 7.00pm – 10.00pm
with Flip in attendance.  The exhibition will be open for viewing through
Thursday, March 26th, 2009 from 1.00pm – 7.00pm.

In Seiva Bruta, Flip continues his exploration of the natural world and the
relationships that exist within it. In this new body of work, he interprets
plant sap as the blood of plants, comparing and contrasting it with the
blood of animals.

“I make a parallel between the fluid and the blood,” comments Flip. “Nerves,
veins, and roots.feelings, diseases, patterns all mixed up.”

With an environmentally-flavored color palette and textural variations
created by a unique approach to Asian calligraphy, Flip offers a fresh,
intuitive voice to the international contemporary art scene.

More photos after the jump… Continue reading “Flip Comes to LA”

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Swoon Original Charity Raffle

Swoon Raffle

Swoon needs our help funding her latest Swimming Cities project, so she’s organized a raffle. I’ll definitely be buying a ticket (or two), and hope you will too.

From Black Rat Press and Swoon:

When we first worked with Swoon in 2007 she spoke vaguely of wanting to do a project in Venice involving floating cities – 2 years on and this ambitious project is taking shape. This project requires some assistance and as a part of the fundraising Swoon will be raffling a really beautiful work on wood. Tickets are $30 each and you got to be in it to win it. More details below about the project and the raffle. Buy one – make a hippy happy.
BRP

The Swimming Cities of Serenissima is a fleet of three intricately hand-crafted vessels that will navigate the Adriatic Sea from the Karst region of Slovenia to Venice, Italy in May of 2009. Designed by the artist SWOON, the floating sculptures are descendants of the Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea (Hudson River, 2008) and the Miss Rockaway Armada (Mississippi River, 2006 and 2007). The Swimming Cities of Serenissima are built from salvaged materials, including modified Mercedes car motors with long-tail propellers. For Swimming Cities, SWOON will collaborate with 30 artists from the United States, including OBIE award-winning playwright Lisa D’Amour. As the Swimming Cities move toward Venice, the crew will collect and install keepsakes in an ark-like cabinet of wonders that will be on display on the boats when they arrive. Once in Venice, the boats and crew will offer intimate performances that incorporate music, shadow puppetry, and story. The project is produced with the assistance of Deitch Projects, Paper Monster, Black Rat Press, Build It Green, and a thousand other people.

Letter from SWOON:

Last year, with a team of about 75 friends, crew, and collaborators, I built a flotilla of rafts out of salvaged bits of New York City. Our precarious floating home traveled 140 miles south along the Hudson River. What left as the refuse of the city’s mega construction returned as six vessels trying to encompass a whole world (the seventh died along the way).

This year, with some of those same vessels, and some new, we begin the second leg of our journey. Our destination? It’s the city whose outrageous countenance, rising straight up out of the ocean like that was a fine sort of thing for a city to do, was our original inspiration. Yes ma’am, we’re headed across the Adriatic Sea toward our first love, Venice.

This year we are a crew of 35, all artists, musicians, crackerjack mechanics, and folks who specialize in big, impossible, ridiculous dreams. We will put on a performance and cobble together a cabinet of wonders. We will, in our form, be working on themes of recycling and reuse, considering the footprint of a human community on the planet, and on issues of climate change. We have not found a solution to floods and sinking cities or where to go next, but we know that it’s important to us to create art and community at the same time as we seek a different relationship to our world.

We are starting in the Karst region of Slovenia (a former forest barren to this day after its large trees were cut for pilings in Venice), and skirting the northern coast of the Adriatic. For fun and a little mischief, we will be crashing the Venice Biennale.

Since we are doing all of this in an otherwise collapsed economy we need lots of help. It’s a big project that we are trying to fund with the help of many small contributions from people who would like to be involved and help us get these crafts afloat — even if you just think we’re cheeky and want to see if we’ll sink. This raffle is just one of the many ways we’re trying to get back on the water.

www.swimmingcities.org

For information contact Heather Jones at hmacionus@gmail.com

Benefit Raffle for Swimming Cities of Serenissima
2/26-3/26/

To enter the raffle, purchase a ticket by going to www.swimmingcities.org and clicking on the RAFFLE button. Buy more tickets to increase your chances of winning. If we sell 100 tickets and you buy one, you’ll have a one percent chance of winning — if you buy 10, you’ll have a 10 percent chance. When your purchase is approved you’ll get a confirmation number. We’ll announce the winner on March 26.

Good lucky everybody!

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Bonhams Auction Results

Just got home from tonight’s Bonhams Urban Art Auction. Results can be found here.

My immediate reactions can be found on the Vandalog Twitter.

In short, most work didn’t sell or was at the low end of the estimate (Banksy’s “Happy Copper” went for just above half the low estimate). The room was packed, but packed full of non-bidders interested in just seeing the results. The atmosphere was not depressing or so, but it was certainly a buyer’s market.

Surprise of the evening was the canvas by RESO which went for over £5000 (including buyer’s premium). I’ve never heard of him. To compare, two pretty good Supine pieces went unsold for much less. Anybody know about this RESO guy?

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Contemporary Art is a Fraud (not my words)

This article from The Independent should be read by anybody who has ever bought a Damien Hirst “spot” painting or even a crappy piece of street art by a Banksy rip-off stencil “artist.” Here’s a short excerpt:

One of the world’s leading art dealers this week launched an astonishing attack on the contemporary art market, condemning the millions charged for some works as “almost fraud”.

The comments from David Nahmad, a Monaco-based dealer who is possibly the biggest in the world, come as art buyers reel from the collapse of the contemporary market.

They echo remarks by the British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro, who last week said that “stupid outrageous values” had become more important than the work itself.

Mr Nahmad, who is reputed to have a £2bn collection of some 5,000 paintings, including 300 Picassos, told The Independent on Sunday: “There are a lot of embarrassed people who bought art that is now not worth what they paid for it. For the past three or four years it’s been a very, very thin market, with just two or three buyers pushing up prices by bidding against each other.

Pretty interesting take. It is worth keeping in mind though that Nahmad’s collection focusses on work by artists like Picasso and Rothko, so he’s obviously got an interest in people realizing that Hirst is overpriced and then having them move back to collecting Bacon.

Another choice quote: “He added that he doesn’t think any artist since Francis Bacon had pushed art forward.”

Not that I agree with Nahmad that NOTHING has pushed art forward since Bacon, but I’d say that this does leave a lot of potential for street art (if it can avoid destroying itself by becoming derivative). Street art provides the chaos that might be needed to revitalize art. Or maybe I’m doing the same as Nahmad and just talking my book.

Thoughts?

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Vids: Pure Evil in Brazil and Shep Fairey on CBS

Two really enjoyable street art videos hit the blogosphere today.

The first is from Pure Evil. He’s been in Brazil for a show, and it looks like he’s having a great time checking out the street art there. Some really cool work by extremely talented artists, most of whom I’ve never heard of.

C00l Pure Evil story. The other day, my friend asked me about buying some art for her room. She’s into stuff like Rothko, but I thought I’d try to get her into street art. I sent her an email with links to about 15 street artists to try to get a feel for her taste. I figured she’d end up loving stuff by Remi/Rough or Anthony Lister for their more traditional styles. I threw Pure Evil onto the list because I have a piece by him that I really like, but I didn’t expect her to like it at all. It’s a stencil and it just didn’t seem like her taste. Turns out, Pure Evil was her favorite artist that I linked to. Now, she and I are going to stop by Pure Evil’s gallery to check out his work in person. So that’s my tangent for the day.

The other video is of Shepard Fairey on CBS. It’s a pretty good interview, though I think I caught an error or two when they talk about his original Andre the Giant campaign. Fairey mentions his problems with the AP and claims that his work falls under free speech, so he is not guilty. Can’t wait to hear how that argument plays out in court. I’d love it if he gets off not guilty with that defense.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Via The Art Collectors Blog and Hooked

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Sweet Toof Reflections

Eventually, once I understand the area enough myself, I’m going to do a post about all the great work in Hackney along the river. In the mean time, check out this work by Sweet Toof. By itself, a pretty average piece for him, but the reflection really completes it. By the way, I hear Sweet Toof has some work available at Black Rat Press’ print show, which opened today.

Sweet Toof Reflected

Photo by delete08