Travels through Europe

Months late, I’ve finally uploaded all the photos from my 3 week holiday traveling through Europe in June/July to flickr. You can see the full set of street art photos here, but I thought it would be fun to pick out a few highlights.

First, Venice. The Swimming Cities were gone this time I was in Venice, but the Biennale was still on, and Miranada July’s sculptures deserve a mention. Here’s a photo of me with one of July’s sculptures.

July

And if anybody knows who painted this piece, let me know. It was also in Venice:

Venice

But most of the street art I found was in Berlin. Here’s some of that:

Kripoe
Kripoe
Blu
Blu
The London Police
The London Police
Os Gemeos
Os Gemeos

Blu at FAME

While Blu is working an animation for FAME festival with David Ellis, he also painted this wall (or maybe it’s part of the animation, I’m not positive). Amazing amazing amazing. I just love it.

Blu

Blu

And here is the story behind the wall, just as interesting as the art itself (via the FAME Festival blog)

If you’re new to FAME festival, you probably dont know that Grottaglie is 10 minutes far from Taranto. if you’ve been in Taranto, you probably remember that the city has a massive ugly factory called ILVA (one of the biggest steel factory in europe).this factory is destroying the territory and killing a lot of workers ’cause of its big lack of security measures and high environmental pollution. the direct consequence is that Taranto has one of the highest rate of death by cancer in italy.

As a plus, the smartest politicians from Grottaglie’s town council allowed, back in ‘96, the construction of a very filthy special wastes dump right outside the city. they did not inform the people, they did not ask anybody’s opinion, they just did it. i wish i could wonder WHY they did it.

this said,
i usually like to think that every piece of art can have different meaning, depending on who is looking at it and from wich perspective he is looking from. this time, i prefer to think that we’re all looking at a mere mirror of the actual situation we’re living in.

especially for our mean local politicians, none of them excluded. i hope that they can recognise themselves in these huge faces and feel disgusted for what they’ve done to their people.

Via Unurth

Blu in Belgrade

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Ever since Blu mysteriously wrote “my building” above an image of a large blank wall on his blog last Sunday, I’ve been constantly checking back for progress shots. I’ve been excited about seeing his new work in Belgrade for weeks now, so it’s nice to finally be able to share some pictures. Here is the progress to date. (That piece above is another street piece he just did.)

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Can’t wait to see the finished piece! Belef 09 definitely seems like a very cool event (see M-City’s work here). I’ll post pics from another of my favorite artists in a bit.

Elisa

It’s Showtime

The number of interesting shows is really starting to increase as it starts to get warmer. Here’s a number of shows around the world open or opening soon which look interesting:

Ron English

Art In Mind

BrokenHorse

RareKind Gallery

Poland (this show features Blu, Nunca, Os Gemeos and others)

Great Outdoors

  • Spring Fever at Kings County Bar in Brooklyn, New York. A group show curated by Andrew Michael Ford. Open now.
  • Nick Walker’s “A Sequence of Events” at Black Rat Press (speak of BRP, Part 2 of my Matt Small interview will be online as soon as my computer stops freezing when I try to upload it)
  • The always amazing José Parlá has a show in Hong Kong right now.
  • Lazarides will be reopening their main London gallery in a new location on Rathbone Place on May 15th. Lazarides Rathbone place will start out with another “Outsiders” show.