Weekend link-o-rama

Ria Cruz
Rai Cruz

It’s time to read about the news I missed this week, if you missed it too.

Photo by Rai Cruz

Weekend link-o-rama

GoddoG

It’s time to talk about what other people have been talking about:

Photo by GoddoG

Dear Snyder, please be more creative

One of Snyder's recent pieces. Photo by Snyder

Update: This post should have been about Snyder’s lack of originality rather than a lack of creativity. As pointed out in the comments, Snyder has been drawing Doodle for many years. While perhaps creative, I still find much of Snyder’s work, particularly this piece, to be unoriginal. Maybe that’s worse.

From time to time, I have posted about Snyder. He seems like an enthusiastic artist, and that’s commendable. He also as a talent for finding good placement for his pieces.

Sure, Snyder’s best work was always a fair amount like something Banksy would or had come up with, but I tried to ignore that and find the positives about Snyder’s work. After all, how many contemporary stencil artists can say that they’ve never been a bit too inspired by Banksy at least once?

A classic Banksy. Photo by Wokka

And then Snyder introduced a character into his work whom he named Doodle. Okay, the character looks like a stenciled version of Dran’s character whom Dran named Scribble, and they are pretty much the same character. Both are slightly mischievous young artists. Again, this alone was frustrating, but Dran isn’t particularly well-known outside of Europe, so maybe Snyder, who is based in LA, hadn’t heard of him. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

Dran's Scribble character. Photo by Marie Aschehoug-Clauteaux

And then I saw the stencil by Snyder at the top of this post, which is actually one of at least two in a series of similar pieces. Again, I was reminded of Banksy and of Dran, even a specific piece by Banksy (the maid, shown above). But now another artist came to mind too: Saber. Revealing tags beneath the buff is pretty much exactly like Saber’s Ripped Tag series of canvases. Saber’s canvases are significantly better executed than Synder’s work, but the similarities are clear.

A painting from Saber's "Ripped Tags" series. Photo by Lois Stavsky

At first, I saw Snyder’s clear Banksy influence and I thought that it was a phase. I thought that he would eventually grow out of it and get his own style. Influences are one thing, but Snyder goes beyond that. As time has gone on, it is clear that Snyder has not only failed to develop a personal style, but he has perhaps even increased his reliance on the ideas of other artists.

This buff/zipper piece goes too far. It’s actually not a bad idea. But it is quite transparently 3 other artists’ ideas mashed into one with little original content added by Snyder.

As flattering as it may seem for artists’ to be inspired others’ work, at the heart of this issue is pretty simple: if you are going to take inspiration from others’ work or blatantly rip their ideas, then do it better and make it your own. Snyder has clearly done neither and that in itself is disappointing at best.

Photos Snyder, Wokka, Marie Aschehoug-Clauteaux and Lois Stavsky

So many shows about to open

Bom.k and Sowat of Da Mental Vaporz

There are so many interesting shows opening in the next week or two that I thought I’d just throw them all together into one post. Here’s what I think looks worth checking out:

  • Yesterday, the Museum of Sex in New York opened a show that sounds absolutely awesome called F*ck Art. It’s on through June 10th and features artwork by Aiko, El Celso, Lush, Mode2, Cassius Fouler, Miss Van and many more.
  • Love & Hate is a group show opening at StolenSpace this week and runs through March 4th. D*face, Dan Witz, Ronzo, Word to Mother, Jeff Soto, Eine, Charles Krafft and others are included.
  • Chris Stain, Veng and Taka Sudo will be showing together at C.A.V.E. Gallery, beginning February 11th. Brooklyn Street Art has a preview of Chris’ work.
  • Zes and Retna are together at Known Gallery in LA. LA TACO has the info.
  • Nick Mann aka Doodles, Brett Flanigan, Craig Rodgers and Dan Bortz are collaborating with one another in Oakland, CA.
  • Another collaborative group show will be in Da Mental Vaporz‘ (Bom.k, Blo, Brusk, Dran, Gris1, ISO, Jaw, Kan, and Sowat) show at Melbourne. That show, Le Venin, will be at RTIST Gallery from February 16th through March 4th.
  • All Talk at Pandemic Gallery will include Aakash Nihalani, Cassius Fouler, Gabriel Specter, Jesus Saves, NohJColey and others and runs from February 17th through March 11th.

Photo courtesy of Da Mental Vaporz

Weekend link-o-rama

1010 and Other aka Troy Lovegates

Had about 4 days away from a computer and it’s taken me nearly as long to catch up on emails. This post should help to finish that task. Here’s what I missed while I was away:

Photo by Other

DMV and more at Galore Festival

Dran DMV

As we mentioned the other day, Roa and the French Da Mental Vaporz crew (Blo, Bom.k, Brusk, Dran, Gris, Jaw, Kan, Sowat), as well as others, were recently in Copenhagen painting for the Galore Festival. Here are some photos of the festival by S.Butterfly, mostly of DMV’s wall. You can find more pictures from her on flickr or her blog.

First though, this is a video by S.Butterfly of DMV working on their mural…

Da Mental Vaporz at Galore DK from Butterfly on Vimeo.

There’s actually an interesting story behind the mural. S.Butterfly explains, “The mural is a satyrical reference to unscrupulous people who are willing to deface street art walls for profit. The DMV also incorporated a tribute to Kase 2 (RIP), as well as Copenhagen landmarks, including the infamous  Christiania market, where you can find anything.” So the crew painted segments of the mural on removable panels, which they then moved to the end of wall and hung next to the “street art shop” (pictured above and below). In place of those panels, they painted windows to other places, as if the wall itself had actually been removed.

Dran
Jaw at work
Bom.k
Blo

Brusk at work

And the entire mural is huge and super wide, so the best way to view large it is by clicking here.

Roa

Photos by S.Butterfly

Weekend link-o-rama

Monotremu

So I’m about to get on a flight to Philadelphia, which means that there could be power outages as soon as tomorrow night and I’ll be offline for a few days. So if Vandalog doesn’t update, that’s why. This week has been all about good walls for me, and so that’s what almost this entire link-o-rama is about as well:

Photo by Monotremu