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Weekend link-o-rama

Overunder
Overunder

Sorry I missed the link-o-rama last week. Was having a fantastic birthday in NYC. Thanks to everyone who came out to say hello.

  • I just picked up the recent Troy Lovegates book (now sold out), and I wish I could pick up this print as well. Absolutely beautiful stuff.
  • Nice little Pink Floyd-themed stencil by Plastic Jesus.
  • Interesting JR-esque posters in UK mines.
  • Philippe Baudelocque in Paris.
  • Judith Supine on being bored with street art.
  • Leon Reid IV’s latest sculpture addresses the crushing personal debt of so many Americans.
  • Tova Lobatz curated a show at 941 Geary with Vhils, How and Nosm, Sten and Lex, and others.
  • Shepard Fairey released some prints using diamond dust, which is quite interesting. As the press release says, “Perhaps most famously used by Andy Warhol, who understood perfectly how to convey a message, Diamond Dust was used to add glamour, transforming ordinary images into coveted objects. The material aligns with Shepard’s work and interest in the seduction of advertising and consumerism. Diamond Dust, literally and metaphorically is superficial, applied to the surface of the print, the luminous effect is both beautiful and alluring.” But it’s one of those things that just gets me thinking about how the art world, much like capitalism, seems so good at absorbing critique and spitting at back out as product. People love the meaningless OBEY icon, so Shepard sells it. Shepard needs to make more product to continue selling to this market he has created, so he takes an old design (or a slight variant, I’m not positive), and adds meaningless diamond dust to it and sells it as something new. The best critiques participate in the system which they critique, but that’s a risky game to play. Of course, I say all this with a print by Shepard hanging on my wall.
  • OldWalls is a project where the photographer took photos of graffiti in the early 1990’s and recently returned to those spots to take the exact same shots, and then each matching photo is displayed next to its counterpart.
  • Artnet’s latest street art and graffiti auction has a handful of interesting pieces (Artnet is a sponsor of Vandalog btw). Here are my favorites:

Photos by Luna Park

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“Second Cities” a new zine by Gaia

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Over the last two years, Gaia has traveled the world, from Europe to Asia, South America to Africa, and all across the United States, not to mention he also brought in artists from across the globe to Baltimore for his mural festival Open Walls Baltimore. Gaia’s effort to connect his street art with the historical context of its location has resulted in homages to architects, images representative of carefully researched histories, and murals that have meaning to the people who will interact with them everyday.

Recently, Gaia published a zine entitled “Second Cities” that speaks to the street art experience; both of the artist and of the audience. He addresses the dialogue that is created by street art in its physical context. With that context, readers follow Gaia with a personal anecdote on how he disguised himself as a construction worker and attempted to put up a large wheatpaste on a failed housing project in Chicago as cops watched.

Gaia illustrates the importance of cities’ infrastructure and the frequently interesting yet ill-regarded histories of the places he tries to beautify.

The best part of all is that the zine is available and free for download here.

Image courtesy of Gaia

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How and Nosm’s upcoming pop-up show in NYC

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How and Nosm have a show opening this week with Jonathan Levine Gallery in NYC, but not at the gallery’s usual location. The duo’s Late Confessions show opens this Friday evening (7-9pm) at 557 W 23rd Street in Chelsea. Caroline and I stopped by the show over the weekend for a preview and were both very impressed. I’ll have to go back at some point to look at everything properly, but it seems to be some of the best work I’ve seen from How and Nosm to date.

Sometimes the extreme detail and intricate layering of complex visuals in How and Nosm’s artwork is a bit too much for me. I just can’t follow everything. In those cases, I feel like I’m seeing too much at once, and my brain just shuts down to the point where I see and understand nothing rather than at least part of the whole. I know that many people get a very different experience, and the qualities that I’m describing are exactly why they love How and Nosm’s work so much. Those fans need not worry. There’s plenty for them at Late Confessions. But for people like me who can reach a point of sensory overload with the complex pieces and long for something easier to follow, How and Nosm also have a good number of simpler-to-read works in the show. The artists took a risk with that decision. The simple works could have fallen flat and exposed a hollowness masked by the more complex works, but instead, I think the simpler works are some of the best paintings at Late Confessions. They are visually engaging on their own, and in a wider context, they helped me to better-understand the worlds that How and Nosm develop in their more chaotic paintings.

Late Confessions opens on February 1st from 7-9pm and runs through February 23rd at 557 W 23rd Street, New York City.

Photo courtesy of Jonathan Levine Gallery

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Update on Stinkfish and Zas

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Graciela Iturbide (left) and Stinkfish (right)

Last time we saw Stinkfish, he and fellow APC member ZAS had been traveling around Chile and painting. The two have thus moved on to Bolivia, where they found and had a field day in a “train cemetery” in the small southern town of Uyuni,  bringing a whole new meaning to painting freights. Stinkfish says that his piece above is based off of a 1979 portrait by one of Mexico’s greatest photographers: Graciela Iturbide.

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Stinkfish

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Zas

Photos courtesy of Stinkfish

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Dope freights by Troy Lovegates

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If you’ve ever wandered through a train yard, work like Troy Lovegates‘ (aka Other’s) is the kind of jaw-dropping stuff you feel fortunate to have come cross. For the past few months Lovegates has been spending time in Germany, but with all his freight car pieces running, his presence will be felt across borders.

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Photos by Other