david de la mano

March 12, 2013March 13, 2013

Web hosting craziness link-o-rama

8547548666_500b981fb3_z — Photo by Luna Park

For the last week or so until today, we’ve been in the process changing Vandalog’s web hosts. No need to get into the technical details, but now the site should run more smoothly and with less downtime. Unfortunately it means that we haven’t been able to write anything new on the site since that process began (everything that’s gone online was pre-scheduled). So this is a mega-link-o-rama combining the usual weekend link-o-rama content with stuff that I could have written about last week even if I’d had the time.

Martha Cooper turned 70 this weekend, and the graffiti community came together at Bowery and Houston to give her a giant surprise birthday present (pictured above). How and Nosm told Cooper that they were planning to repaint their piece at Bowery and Houston and told her to come by at noon on Saturday, but they didn’t tell her how they were going to have to piece repainted. They brought together a bunch of new and old graffiti legends and painted a giant blockbuster tribute to Cooper. BSA has plenty more great photos of the piece in progress and a perfect shot of Cooper reacting to seeing the mural.
WK Interact’s pop-up show in NYC is absolutely fantastic, a must-see show. Think it this way: This show, as I understand it, is a retrospective but it’s made up of the work that WK had in his studio, not work borrowed or on the secondary market from collectors, so this is a lot of unsold work. And yet, the show is still one of the strongest I’ve seen from any artist in quite a while, and the work holds up just fine next to anything else by WK. Even the work that has been sitting in the WK’s studio for a few years is just masterpiece after masterpiece. Good stuff.
I love this t-shirt designed by Snoeman for Carnage (Snoeman is the zine’s featured artist in their latest issue).
Sick new Dabs and Myla mural in Melbourne.
Mr. Brainwash has lost another lawsuit by a photographer upset with MBW’s appropriation. Basically, it boils down to MBW’s work being too similar to the original photograph, with no original contributions to the work by MBW.
Aiko’s installation at the Japan Society in NYC is beautiful. Can’t wait to see it in person.
Sounds like Logan Hick’s show in LA was a big hit. Here are photos of the finished and installed work.
Some crazy walls from Abik.
This year’s OFFSET lectures in Dublin will include JR and Faile.
NYC has some amazing graffiti on trucks.
A quick Overunder tag.
Os Gemeos talk about their show at the ICA Boston and their massive mural there from last summer (if you can spot me in the video, you have eagle eyes by the way).
It appears that Phil Frost hit a massive billboard in LA, and then the billboard was stolen. But the whole thing seems like a shady PR scam for Ace Gallery. Melrose&Fairfax has the full story, but one point they don’t make is that Ace Gallery has a history of controversy, so that makes me even more doubtful that this billboard and its theft are real. Also, let’s face it, there’s a good chance that the billboard is illegal anyway since this was in LA, so who cares if the ad was stolen off of the billboard?
Is this new David de la Mano piece a comment on the removal of Hyuro’s Atlanta mural?

Photo by Luna Park

February 9, 2013

Weekend link-o-rama

"Órbita" by David de la Mano and Pablo S. Herrero. Click to view the full piece. — “Órbita” by David de la Mano and Pablo S. Herrero. Click to view the full piece.

Slow week, but that doesn’t mean nothing good happened. Here’s some of it…

Love this drawing by Pixote.
It seems that Hrag Vartanian was not a big fan of Les Ballets De Faile, Faile’s project with the New York City Ballet. Personally, I really liked to the project. Yes, Hrag is right in pointing out that people were expecting more (like Faile having involvement with set design and costumes), but what Faile did do was, I think, a major success. Nine artists out of ten would have seriously messed up this sort of collaboration by not striking the right balance between completely ignoring the setting and embracing it too much. Ignore the setting, and the work could just have been shown anywhere and would have looked out of place. Go too far in trying to bend the work to the situation, and the artists’ essence is lost and the whole thing comes off as a cheesy joke. Faile struck just the right balance. There was a lot of classic Faile, mixed in with some new ballet-inspired imagery, but the ballet-inspired imagery didn’t look out of place at all. Faile’s work has always had a mix of grit and classical beauty, that ballet with their spin fit perfectly into that. I’ve got to disagree with Hrag on another point and say that I thought the work looked like it fit in just as well as anything else in the theater, particularly the massive “Tower of Faile” piece.
Thoughts on Crummy Gummy? I’m not sure what I think. Another Mr. Brainwash-inspired derivative artist who never needs to be mentioned again, or actually kinda funny?
Zoer has a new print out.
Kid Acne made some scarves that are now for sale with his “art fag” character on them.
The British Zeus had a solo show open this week at London’s Graffik Gallery. It’s open through the 21st.
Ever wanted to design a t-shirt using D*face’s logo? Now you can, and you can win $500 and a print for your efforts.
Great new piece by Seacreative.
It’s exciting to see strong murals going up in South Delhi, India.

Photo courtesy of David de la Mano and Pablo S. Herrero

December 12, 2012December 12, 2012

According to the artist, David de la Mano, this is one mural in two parts (it was painted and photographed and then repainted and photographed again), entitled La caverna I and La caverna II. Reminds me a bit of a small scale Sam3.

Photos by David de la Mano

March 4, 2012

Weekend link-o-rama

It’s officially spring break, which meant the last week for me has primarily consisted of sitting at my desk where I read and type furiously until my eyes are tearing up and my fingers are sore. It also means I could only blog when procrastinating and that the next few days should be a chance to write some longer posts that I’ve been sitting on. In the mean time, here’s what I’ve been finding around the web this week:

The man who came up with the Broken Windows Theory died this week.
Great piece by You Go Girl on a bus.
If you like graffiti writers moving beyond text and generally pushing graffiti’s boundaries, make sure to check out this video of Askew.
Todd James has a new print out at Pictures on Walls.
Great group show coming up in London with Matt Small, MyMo, Sickboy, Fefe, Monica Canilao, Remi, Best Ever and more.
Stinkfish‘s work is on the cover of Diplomat Magazine this month thanks to Jeannine Saba. Here’s the cover.
David de la Mano did a fantastic job brightening up this spot in Uruguay.
Interesting article about street art that definitely makes a real difference in the world.
Plaztik Mag’s latest video features work by Skewville, Roa and Bast and is creepy/awesome.
The Living Walls Conference has two great announcements this week: 1. They are now a 501(c)(3), aka an official non-profit organization. 2. In addition to the annual conference, there will be 6 “Living Walls Concepts” mini-events throughout the year, starting in March.
Craig Ward wrote a letter critiquing Banksy’s critique of advertisers. Given: Banksy is one of the world’s best marketers himself. Beyond that, the letter is a bit of a mess and Ward points out that he has worked in advertising himself. Clearly, it’s written from the perspective of someone who has lost his perspective and seems to boil down to “There’s worse stuff in the world, so umm, please leave advertisers alone.” No doubt that there are greater evils in the world than the public advertising that seems to be the primary target of Banksy’s critique of advertising, but that sure as hell doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. Additionally, one of Ward’s points as to why traditional advertising isn’t as bad as Banksy’s advertising is that traditional advertisers pays for the locations they use. With that argument, Ward completely disregards both the negative externalities of massive ad campaigns that occur regardless of how much the advertiser pays (compared to the documented positive externalities of Banksy’s street art) and the illegal nature of many advertising campaigns which do not pay the government for the space that they use. By his standard, hiring an assassin to kill someone might be better than doing it yourself, because at least there’s money involved and somebody is getting paid for their time.

Photo by Ludo