Don’t ask me how it happened, I’m still not entirely sure, but if you happen to pick up a copy of Vogue Italia this month, you’ll find an article about me and street art on page 96. I don’t speak Italian, but based on Google’s very rough translation, the article seems to be about The Thousands and me proselytizing street art as “museum quality.” So that’s pretty cool. And, because a. I’m no fashion icon, and b. it was an article about the virtues of street art, instead of photos of me taken by a famous photographer, the article features some pictures from The Thousands book of work by Burning Candy, Skewville, Elbow-toe and Chris Stain, so be on the look out for next year’s line of Skewville inspired tshirts at H&M.
… and two relatively new elbowtoe pieces. Took Clownsoldier out to this wall. The MBW literally went up the other night cause when I was scoping this spot it wasn’t there. So all of this is totally fresh.
One thing that makes street art so great is the dialog it creates, and the opportunity for collaboration. Of course, I think it’s going to be a while before I see anything better than Skewville’s Your Ad Here, but Elbow-toe has made something pretty interesting out of a decaying wheatpaste by Mr. Brainwash.
There is so much going on next week in Miami, that some events are bound to be lost in the sea of parties and paintings. I’ve recently come across a few events lesser-known that have gotten me pretty interested.
ART BURN, the most combustible art show in the world, will combine an international selection of original art with fire. Original works on canvas, wood and paper by a selection of more than three dozen international artists will be displayed and then flambeed in Miami on the evening of Thursday, December 3, 2009 at sunset. The exhibition/grilling, curated by NYC artist El Celso, will take place in the Wynwood Arts District, within walking distance of Miami’s lesser contemporary art fairs.
An exclusive selection of more than three dozen exceptional pieces by the hottest renowned artists and sizzling, cutting-edge newcomers will be displayed from 1pm until sundown. After the brief exhibition, all of these original works will be burned for the public’s viewing pleasure. Nothing is for sale.
Venue
TBA
Duration and opening hours
Thursday, December 3, 2009
One day only from 1pm to sunset.
This line up looks great. I’m especially looking forward to seeing Stephan Doitschinoff aka Calma’s piece.
Calma
Here’s the full line up:
Pedro Barbeito, Melissa Brown, Stephan Doitschinoff (aka CALMA), Doze Green, Luis Macias, Christof Mascher, Fernando Mastrangelo, Dave McDermott, Ted O’Sullivan, Jeff Soto, Christoph Steinmeyer, Ouattara Watts, Andrzej Zielinski and Kevin Zucker.
And of course, it’s at SCOPE, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find.
Curated by James and Karla Murray, authors of best-selling titles Store Front-The Disappearing Face of New York, Miami Graffiti, Broken Windows and Burning New York, the exhibition will feature a selection of work from today’s top street artists. This groundbreaking exhibition, set to take place in a 4,000 square foot venue in the Midtown Arts District, will be the largest of its kind in Miami.
Exhibiting artists include: 131 Projects (Argentina), Aiko Nakagawa (Japan), Armogedon 2057 (Armenia), Billi Kid (Colombia), Crome (Miami), Cycle (NYC), David Cooper (NYC), Doze Green (NYC), Ewok One 5MH (NYC), Flip (Brazil), Ghost aka Cousin Frank (NYC), Jana Joana (Brazil), Lady Pink (Ecuador), Nina (Brazil), Shiro (Japan), Smael (Brazil), Sofia Maldonado (Puerto Rico), Suiko (Japan) and Vitché (Brazil).
Graffiti Gone Global Show Info: Location
3252 NE 1st Avenue
Suite 101
Miami, FL 33127
General Hours
Friday, December 4: 12 – 8pm
Saturday, December 5: 12 – 9pm
Sunday, December 6: 12 — 3pm
Street art news seems to come in cycles, right now there is a lot of news coming in. Here’s a few highlights:
Sam3 has a new book out with Studiocromie and it looks great. More info at Feed Your Wall.
Shepard Fairey’s opening at the Warhol Museum looks amazing, but as Richard Lacayo points out, the AP case might have run into another snag for Fairey since the AP has countersued again on the basis that either Fairey only spent about 5 minutes “transforming” the photo into his poster or he is lying again and didn’t forget which image he based HOPE on. One thing Lacayo and the AP seem to have forgotten is that Fairey has a bunch of assistants. I don’t know how his studio functions, but it seems a fair assumption that Fairey sent his assistants a photo and they developed poster from there, or they gave him an already cropped photo based on his specifications and he went from there. It’s definitely not as simple as Lacayo is making it seem.
I think this might be the catalyst for a post sometime in the next week. A while back, I posted about recession-inspired street art, but there has been so much more recently that maybe another post is due.
At first glance I didn’t particularly care for this latest paste-up by Elbow-toe, but I can see how it fits into everything he’s been doing and I’ve begun to rather like it.
Street artists love skulls almost as much as Dick Cheney enjoys shooting people in the face (God, that’s a really dated pop culture reference, isn’t it). Here are five pieces by artists who use some form of a skull as their logo:
1. Kaws
Maybe an ad disruption would be a ‘better’ piece by Kaws, I love the way somebody spray painted around this sticker. Very few stickers get that much respect.
Photo by Jake Dobkin
2. Cyclops
You can’t mention London street art or graffiti right now without a nod to Burning Candy, and Cyclop’s skulls are in many of their best collaborative pieces.
Photo by bixentro
3. Booker
Booker/Reader/Readmorebooks/Boans… This writer gets up under too many names to keep track of, but one of his many trademarks are these skulls:
Photo by funkandjazz
4. Katsu
No discussion of skulls on the street would be complete without Katsu.
Photo by dreamsjung
5. Skullphone
Don’t really know what Skullphone is trying to say with this image, but he’s said it all over the world.
Photo by Laughing Squid
So that’s five street artists and graffiti writers who use skulls as logos. Now the reason I started thinking about this post. This is a new piece by Elbowtoe that I’m really liking:
Beach Blanket Bingo is the summer group show at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York. Some of the artists I’m looking forward to seeing work from are AJ Fosik, Onesto, Anthony Lister, Ron English, Elbowtoe and Dan Witz. In fact, here is one of Elbowtoe’s pieces, which I absolutely love. I think it might be a bit London inspired.
I’m a bit late on this one, but I think the work that Elbowtoe put up while he was in London recently is really something. He came over as part of a show at Black Rat Press, but I think where he really made an impression is on the streets. Unfortunately, a lot of this work hasn’t survived very long, but there is still one large piece completely untouched just outside the doors to Black Rat Press (as if you needed a reason to stop by that gallery).
Photo by KriebelPhoto by KriebelPhoto by Mermaid99Photo by Mermaid99
Let me be the first to acknowledge that, seeing as I spent the weekend in Los Angeles, I am the last person who should be writing this post. That said, RJ himself would have done a fantastic job covering the London shows that just opened so I feel there needs to be at least some mention of them on his blog.
I was very excited about the show at Black Rat, and, as expected, the three artists delivered a strong body of work. Matt Small’s multi-paneled piece is amazing (sorry, no picture! Go to Ian’s flickr!) and I’ve heard particularly good things about Brian’s pieces from those who saw them in person. My only disappointment was that, although the space was beautifully lit, the show lacked the installation component I had been hoping for.
Matt SmallSwoonBrian Adam Douglas
Now to Laz, where Vhils’ London solo debut simply looks incredible. As if it weren’t already obvious, Alexandre has now made it clear that he is going to be a very important artist for our generation.
