Yes. KATSU is the man. He continuing to explore what graffiti can look like in this century and he’s leaving most street artists in the dust in the process. These screenshots are from a piece by KATSU within the game Minecraft. I’m not a gamer, but, as far as I understand it, the vast majority of Minecraft games are not played in an online multiplayer setting, but they can be. So, like Franco and Eva Mattes performing during a game of Counter-Strike or Diego Bergia getting his graffiti into Tony Hawk’s Project 8 (which spread his Where’s Lepos project from the street into a game), KATSU has brought his graffiti into the digital world and could potentially put it in places in the digital world where others could see it. Most likely though, this throw-up wasn’t made in a multiplayer game and won’t be, so in that sense it’s more like doing something in a sketchbook and posting a photo of the sketch to Instagram than doing a piece of graffiti, but it’s still pretty cool and it’s another step for KATSU towards doing graffiti in the world of 1’s and 0’s.
The project was announced through F.A.T. Lab, where KATSU is currently an Artist in Residence. In that post on F.A.T. Lab’s website, KATSU says “The future of graffiti for me will be in the form of black hat tactics.” For those who may not know, “Black hat” is a term used to describe hacking which would typically be considered invasive or malicious in some way, rather than the good kind of “white hat” computer hacking. I can’t wait to see what KATSU does next. A move from physical graffiti to the digital graffiti of website defacement could be very interesting.
Overunder sent over these photos of his recent work out in Nevada. It’s always great to see what Overunder is up to out in a region which doesn’t get too much attention from sites like this one (PS, if you do street art in Nevada, or anywhere else for that matter, let us know! We like seeing new stuff in our inboxes).
So I’ve decided to start a monthly post on Vandalog to try and capture all the goings on in and around Melbourne each month as there’s always a lot happening. For completeness sake and because I don’t want anyone to miss out on this, here’s a belated January round up. What a great way to start the year! Continue reading “Melbourne Monthly Madness – January 2013”
Being an elusive figure in the graffiti/street art world is slowly becoming obsolete. Artists find themselves making the transition from anonymity to the limelight, for what many think is solely for profit. The proliferation of social media has amplified the audience of street art, and led to increased exposure and opportunities for artists. But what motivates street artists to step away from their elusive lifestyles?
Recently, it seems many graffiti writers have cast away their incognito identities and made the transition towards becoming legitimate artists. What was once considered an act of vandalism is now commissioned by brands and displayed in art galleries around the world. But in order to market themselves as legitimate, recognizable artists they need to step away from their personas and present themselves not as vandals, but as artists.
At one point, street artists in question would mask their voices and hide their faces behind a blurred out lens in order to keep their identities hidden to the general public during interviews. Now, all that smoke and mirrors are gone. Personally, I used to love D*Face. He was strictly recognized by his moniker and nothing else, with his face always blurred during interviews. Then, seemingly overnight, it all changed. He began to create work and appear in interviews under his real name. Suddenly, D*Face became Dean Stockton. His work became mild and denotative. His mythical qualities as an artist were diminished. He just didn’t seem as interesting.
So why make that transition? Why not stay hidden and attempt to make a living while staying private? Artists such as Kaws and Shepard Fairey could easily have stayed elusive, but now they’re the biggest names in the street art world. When Kaws started hijacking billboards and bus shelter ads, no one knew who he was. They only knew him by his name. Now he’s making vinyl toys, taking part in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, and getting interviewed by Pharrell Williams. Similar tale with Fairey: he started out pasting up stickers around his local skate park, nobody knew what Obey meant, but it was everywhere, so it must have been important. Fairey stepped out of the shadows and now, a decade later has his own clothing line and his face is one of the most recognizable in the street art world. Why? Artists realize that in order to market their art, they need to market their persona first. Is this the process of selling out?
But then there are the ones that stay elusive, the purists of the street art world, artists like Dain and Bäst. Born and raised in Brooklyn, the elusive Dain creates sublime works of art the merges old Hollywood glam with new age colors in their composition. This, along with his roots in graffiti, creates a gritty yet delicate street art style that is all his own. There was a weird video that came out a while back about Dain, starring someone other than Dain portraying him. It followed around an old guy as he talked about his life and art and all of his inspirations while answering questions from the camera man. At this point, we know that Dain isn’t really the old man (notice his pasting skills), but one can only assume that the video was meant as a marketing tool, for people to get on the Dain bandwagon and spread his name out to the public without ever being seen. But apart from that video, Dain has never really been a public artist but his works will always be deemed as some of the best of our generation.
Dain. Photo by Sabeth718.
Bäst plays his part really well. Brooklyn-based artist Bäst has been wheat-pasting throughout New York’s urban landscape for over a decade now. Bäst has remained an elusive character that has rarely been seen in public and whose very existence has been debated. There are very few video interviews where you can hear Bäst talk. The only interview that comes to mind was for the Deluxx Fluxx collaboration with Faile (which is, in my opinion, one of the best street art based collaboration to have ever happened). Bäst manages to frequently collaborate with Faile, who are not anonymous artists, but apart from that, he’s a pretty elusive guy that keeps producing on a consistent basis. Sure, he had this weird, super small scale collaboration with an olive oil company, and the Marc Jacobs collaboration which confused pretty much everybody, since his art being displayed on a sweater for a highly lucrative brand could be seen as an uncharacteristic “sell out” move, but apart from that, he’s always stayed true to form and just stuck to street art.
I bring up Bäst and Dain not only because of the elusive nature, but because they are in fact brothers. One can only assume that some sort of pact was made between them to stay pretty much anonymous to most social groupings. Sure they might have ulterior motives, but as long as they stay elusive, we’ll really never know.
Bäst. Photo by Sabeth718.
And of course, one has to mention Banksy or as we know him now, most likely Robin Gunningham. Regardless of his moniker, he helped cement street art’s place in the established art world. Street art fans will forever have a love/hate relationship with Banksy. At this point, his work can come off as banal and obvious, but the fact that his identity was questioned for so long, in our surveillance culture, is pretty significant. He got his art up in the Met, or someone posing as him did. He got in and out of Disneyland without getting caught. Banksy’s evasiveness lends him a mystique and fascination, but he still manages to profit from his art.
These are the kind of question that people ask themselves when artists stay anonymous. We question everything about them, not knowing what they’ll do next. Suspense and curiosity will always play a part in their persona. Their anonymity is what keeps us interested; it plays a part in how we perceive them. Take these qualities away, and we realize that these artists are just like the rest. Would Banksy of reached this kind of popularity if he was just Robin Gunningham all along? Of course not. But he’s also a unique case; it’s hard to imagine a street artist will ever achieve what he has in our life time. So why stay elusive? Well, I guess it’s a question at the core of street art. Artists are supposed to be a hooded, hidden characters putting art up illegally, leading people to ask questions. How did it get there? Who did it? Why did they do it? When it comes to people like Kaws and Shepard Fairey, they answer these questions in the interviews that they partake in. But for others, maybe we’ll never know.
In 2011 and 2012, Patrick Waldo aka Moustache Man tagged thousands of subway advertisements. His tag was simple and fun. He wrote the word “Moustache” on the ads where someone else might scribble a crude moustache. The intervention was simple but extremely popular and fun. Unfortunately, NYPD disagreed. They arrested Waldo and charged him with criminal mischief. Not surprising, but certainly disappointing and a waste of their time.
This week, Waldo is taking the Moustache Man identity indoors for his first solo show. The show will be held at Krause Gallery in NYC, opening on the 21st (7-9pm) and running through February 24th.
Although Andrew Hosner of Thinkspace Gallery has implicitly suggested that I am shaking my head over this show because of Nico Glaude’s piece last week, I’m actually curious about this show. Outdoors, as a little prank, I think Moustache Man is pretty funny. And I love that he turned his experiences tagging and then being arrested for the most ridiculous of offenses into a one-man-show for the UCB Theater. But indoors, what is he supposed to do? What is Moustache Man without vandalism and a lack of consent, and how do you bring that indoors? This is bound to fail, right?
Well, now I’m not so sure. Part of Waldo’s show includes “Forced Collaborations” between himself and various other artists. In the case of Mr. Brainwash, Waldo has taken an actual Mr. Brainwash print and added his tag to it. Additionally, since Mr. Brainwash puts his thumbprint in ink on his prints, Waldo decided to dip his testicles in ink and the print has a print of Waldo’s left testicle next to Mr. Brainwash’s thumbprint. Mint and Serf tried something similar a few years ago, but I believe that was with the permission of the involved artists. I’m not sure if this is going to work, but it might, and I’m very curious to see how it goes.
I won’t be able to see the show in person though, so if you do go and see it, please leave a comment and let me know how it goes.
A few weeks ago, Acrylic Walls shared photos of their mural residency in South Africa, which includes artists Gaia, Freddy Sam, Jaz, and Know Hope. Local Freddy Sam has brought together international artists for, what I termed, a love letter to South Africa. However, sometimes love bites back.
One local took to Gaia‘s wall to voice his disapproval of the piece with not enough buff paint. Being an advocate for community and public space, Gaia used what some would view as heartbreaking into an opportunity to engage with the surrounding neighborhood. A hand erasing his Edwardian-animal hybrid has been accompanied by the phrase “revisionisme, uit te vee,” or “to erase revisionism” in Afrikaans. By commenting on the methodologies behind his piece, Gaia acknowledges the temporality of his work as well as its effects on those who, by their proximity to the piece, become forced viewers.
Banksy‘s website was updated recently with an animated tribute to Nekst, a very talented internationally recognized graffiti writer who died last year. The screenshot above gives you the basic idea of Banksy’s tribute, but you can see the piece in action on his website. This is the first update we’ve gotten from Banksy in a little while. I think the last street pieces he put on his site were the Olympic-theme pieces from last July.
Banksy in London. Photo courtesy of Banksy.
In other Banksy-related news, the above Banksy piece was recently removed from the streets of London and put up for auction in Miami at Fine Art Auctions. The piece, of course not authenticated by Pest Control but is pretty clearly by Banksy seeing as it’s on his website. The BBC has more about the removal of the piece. At this point, the legality of the removal is unclear, but the community is certainly disappointed. That same auction also includes another street piece, Wet Dog, which was painted in Bethlehem and was removed a while ago (it was also featured at the Context art fair in Miami last year, supposedly not for sale at the time).
When I was first tipped off to Goal Crew’s work, I was told they were crushing the Buenos Aires subway and that I had to check it out. Scouring through their Tumblr archive I did find the kind of bold color blocky tags and characters that one would expect to see on a train. What I found even more attractive about their pieces is the precision timing and care taken into photographing each train.
Rather than focusing on a perfect dead-on shot that would accurately show their skills at bombing, Goal Crew depicts each train as if it has its own personality. Light streaks and unamused passengers on their daily commute dot the backdrops of their trains. These happenstance occurrences during their photographs bring an atmosphere to the pieces’ vivid colors.
Ronzo recently returned to Village Underground in London, where he also currently has a sculpture up, to paint this mural on one of the most highly-visible spots in Shoreditch (if I’m remembering the intersection correctly).
