Vandalog – A Street Art Blog

Yesterday, I had a chance to chat with artist Damon Ginandes. He has a few works for sale at Presciption Art’s Outside In show, which opens tonight in Shoreditch at the Truman Brewery. I’ve made comments in the past questioning why Ginandes is associated with street art, but I really love his work. It’s got a refined quality that’s lacking in a lot of street art, and the wire relief creates an awesome effect.

Although Ginandes did some graffiti in his teens, he first got involved in street art in 2007 when he painted a mural in Brooklyn. Wooster Collective posted photos of the mural, and since then, he’s been associated with street art. Ginandes doesn’t necessarily see himself as a street artist. “Street art is a good jumping off point, but it boxes people in,” Ginandes said.

As for the work itself, Ginandes uses paints and wire to draw what he describes as “portraits of souls.” The paintings are part of his process of getting to know the souls. “[Outer] identity is defined by factors like music and clothes, not the core of the person,” Ginandes said. In his paintings, Ginandes tries to strip away those factors. Often times, the people are squished together or merged (one man’s head turning into another’s body) like pieces of a puzzle.

Although the watercolors are interesting, Ginandes’ best work is his sculpture and wire relief pieces. Loggerhead (above), a piece from his recent solo show “Dimentionals” at The Artbreak Gallery, is a great example of his sculpting. Some artists, such as Banksy, have taken great paintings of their’s and made terrible sculptures out of them. Ginandes doesn’t fall into that catagory.

Ginandes has been making his wire relief pieces for about a year and half, and they are one of the reasons I think his work is so great. The wire relief is hard to appreciate online because from photos shot straight on, you don’t realize how much of the piece encorporates wire, but his website has some videos that show what they are really like.

Ginandes has big plans for the coming year. Besides the Outside In show, he’ll have his work in shows in the USA, and he plans on doing more work on the street. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing a lot more of his murals.

UK Street Art has just posted a really insightful article on Hush, who has an upcoming show at Opus Gallery. Check out the interview here.

Yesterday, I posted part one of this interview with Mike Snelle, owner of The Black Rat Press. Part one focused on Black Rat at the present. This half has more on street art in general, and what’s ahead for the gallery.

RJ: Time and time again, art critics say that street art is a fad, and other people say it shouldn’t be even be considered art, but you make a living on selling it. How do you respond to those critics?

Mike Snelle: I think when art critics make bold sweeping statements about ‘street art’ it’s an indication that they have not looked around at the huge variety of work being produced by artists who work in the streets. The very idea that there is something that unites all artists who sometimes do work in a public environment beyond the fact that they put things in the street is a false one. To say that a Swoon woodcut for instance, should not be considered art is a very strange position to hold and suggests that you probably haven’t seen one. So I think the question about whether street art can be considered art is a misguided one. And judgments about whether it a ‘good’ art or not is equally not a valuable question. Some artists who work in the streets are important artists with valuable things to say and others less so. The thing about putting things up in the street is that there are no curators, or gallery directors filtering what gets seen and making value judgments along the way. This is one of the most positive aspects of street art and why there is such a huge variety of work. Not all of it is perhaps significant as a work of art (and nor is much of it intended to be) but to say that within street art there are not great artists is just false.

The fad bit is interesting. The problem with this is the idea the grouping together of a group of artists with little in common and then labeling it as a movement called ‘street art’ and then the media writing a million articles about it. There is some danger in this that it is something fashionable and that when the public get bored of reading about it they move on to the next thing and great artists get harmed in the process. I don’t think this will happen as I feel that people and institutions recognize that there are some interesting and important artists working in the streets and these artists will still be interesting and important artists with valuable things to say even if the mainstream media get bored of ‘the next Banksy’ type article. Continue reading “Gallery Profiles: Black Rat Press – Part 2”