Open Walls Baltimore is a project that I have been personally coordinating with the not for profit Station North and is supported by the PNC foundation and a generous Our Town grant from the NEA. The intention is of course to produce great art on the streets and put on for my city that I love so much. Yet, of course, as every public art project must be, the OWB initiative will hopefully produce more than just spectacular murals. This is about an investment in a neighborhood that is burdened by 150 vacant homes and bridging the gaps between the artist community that calls Station North home and the residents of Greenmount West. Inspired by my experience with both Wynwood Walls in Miami and Living Walls in Atlanta, this initial and very exciting start will hopefully result in a continued support for public art and experimental intervention that can become more holistic as time moves forward. The current line up is as follows: Interesni Kazki, Maya Hayuk, Swoon, Specter, Doodles, Jaz, Ever, Freddy Sam, Mata Ruda, Nanook, MOMO, Vhils, Sten and Lex, Chris Stain, Jetsonorama, Overunder, and others. The website is now live. More to come!!!
Last month, I saw an installation by MOMO here in Philadelphia at Space 1026. Seeing the installation made me fall in love with MOMO all over again. Some of the first pieces of street art I ever noticed around London were his abstract wheatpastes, which stood out among a sea of logos and figures as something different and fresh. Since then, MOMO has been the artist whose work I think best exemplifies successful abstract street art. With street art, there is a tendency for galleries, blogs, festivals and magazines to stick to “easy” art, but MOMO doesn’t make art that you can look at for two seconds and leave alone. He changes environments. MOMO isn’t just putting up a photoshopped Batman stencil or whatever the kids are doing these days to get some hype. Nevertheless, MOMO has worked with Papermonster, FAME Festival, The Underbelly Project, Anno Domini and more. While staying just outside of this culture’s mainstream, it seems that MOMO has a lot of fans who, like me, keep him in the back of their mind at all times for his ability to push post-graffiti and street art forward and make spaces beautiful. That is to say, here’s an interview with MOMO after the jump… Continue reading “MOMO is the man”
Surge, Gaia, Stormie, Remi/Rough and in The Underbelly Project
UPDATE – LOCATION CHANGE: The Underbelly Show has moved to 78 NW 25th Street in Wynwood, Miami to accommodate the large scale of the artwork in this show.
The Underbelly Project is back. Last year, I posteda lotabout the project where 103 artists from around the world secretly painted an abandoned/half-completed New York City subway station. After that initial burst of press here and around the web, The Underbelly Project organizers stayed silent. With only occasional vague tweets from a mysterious twitter account and the appearance on Amazon of an upcoming book about the project. Yesterday though, The Underbelly Project announced that they will be participating in this year’s Basel Miami Week madness with a pop-up gallery in South BeachWynwood.
The organizers of The Underbelly Project and The Underbelly Show, Workhorse and PAC, have this to say about the show:
Workhorse: The New York Underbelly was an important chapter for us, but the story hadn’t been comprehensively told. The Underbelly Miami show gives us a chance to present the broad scope of documentation – Videos, photos, time-lapses and first hand accounts. The project is about more than just artwork. This show gives us a chance to show the people and the environment behind the artwork.
PAC: While the experience each artist had in their expedition underground can never be captured, it is my hope that this show will highlight some of the trials and tribulations associated with urban art taking place in the remote corners of our cities. Too often the practice of making art in unconventional venues remains shrouded in mystery and I hope this exhibition will shine a faint light on those artists who risk their safety to find alternative ways to create and be a part of the cities they live in.
35 of the 103 artists from The Underbelly Project will be exhibiting art in The Underbelly Show, plus video and still footage of the artists at work in the tunnel. Here’s the full line-up: Faile, Dabs & Myla, TrustoCorp, Aiko, Rone, Revok, Ron English, Jeff Soto, Mark Jenkins, Anthony Lister, Logan Hicks, Lucy McLauchlan, M-City, Kid Zoom, Haze, Saber, Meggs, Jim & Tina Darling, The London Police, Sheone, Skewville, Jeff Stark, Jordan Seiler, Jason Eppink and I AM, Dan Witz, Specter, Ripo, MoMo, Remi/Rough, Stormie Mills, Swoon, Know Hope, Skullphone, L’Atlas, Roa, Surge, Gaia, Michael De Feo, Joe Iurato, Love Me, Adam 5100, and Chris Stain.
For this show, the space will be transformed into an environment imitating the tunnel where The Underbelly Project took place, right down to playing sounds recorded in the station while The Underbelly Project was happening.
If you absolutely cannot wait until February to get We Own The Night, the book documenting The Underbelly Project, a limited number will be available at The Underbelly Show in a box set with 9 photographic prints and the book all contained in a handcrafted oak box. Additionally, you will be able to your book signed by the artists participating in The Underbelly Show.
The Underbelly Show will take place at 2200 Collins Avenue, South Beach, Miami78 NW 25th Street, Wynwood, Miami. There will be a private opening on November 30th, and the space will be open to the general public December 2nd-5th, with a general opening on the 2nd from 8-10pm.
Usually I have something to say here about my week, but it’s all kind of a blur and I’ve been struggling to find any words to describe what’s been going on or excuses for not blogging about everything interesting I’ve seen this week. So let’s skip the pointless pleasantries and here’s the stuff I missed:
Some thoughts from Alone One on graffiti and street art coexisting (and the inherent superiority of graffiti, according to the author). While I agree with the author that, in the case pictured, Aakash Nihilani and Posterboy did the smart and respectful thing by utilizing a piece of graffiti in their street art rather than covering it unnecessarily, the all-to-common argument that graffiti is always always always superior to street art really upsets me. Is there something beautiful/powerful about a tag that street art cannot capture? Sure. Are there street artists (and young graffiti writers) who stupidly go over important graffiti? Definitely, all the time. But warning that street artists can never go over graffiti under any circumstances is narrow-minded and naive, especially today when so much work blurs the line between street art and graffiti. It’s too bad when such a talented writer has such a narrow view of things.
This week was exam week, so that means that the majority of my time was split equally between studying and procrastinating with my roommates on N64 and that this week’s link-o-rama is a bit longer than usual:
A perfect example of how street art can brighten up a community (unless there’s backlash for trying to make the site of a car crash look nice, like the backlash when artists painted the separation wall in Palestine).
Had a pretty interesting week. Last Friday was the opening of, Sex Drive, the latest show at The Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, where I work part time. It’s a pretty great show, so if you’re in the Philadelphia area, I’d say it’s worth stopping by. But if you’re not, there’s also a lot of online content. But here’s what’s going on the more Vandalog-relevant world this week:
There’s a trailer out for a film called How To Sell A Banksy. It seems to be about a person or group who are trying to sell a street piece by Banksy that they removed or somehow got their hands on. I’m not sure what to think of the whole thing. On the one hand, it certainly raises some questions about the value of art and what Banksy is (like the guy from Andipa, a dealer in secondhand Banksy artwork, saying that perhaps Banksy’s street pieces are absolutely worthless), but I can’t help but believe that those questions will be obscured in the film by the filmmakers themselves being sucked into the system. They are trying to sell something after all, how could they not become part of this system that the film seem to be critiquing?
Happy new year! Between snow in NYC and the general slowness around this time of year, not much going on this week. Here’s a bit of what I’ve been enjoying though:
Over on Hyperallergic, Hrag has an interesting review of Faile’s Perry Rubenstein show (now closed). He argues that they are great sculpture and so-so painters. If you agree with Hrag, it adds to the argument that Faile are essentially good designers/businessmen since they still make paintings which probably sell better than sculptures. I never had a chance to see the show in person, but I liked the photos I saw of the paintings. Of course, Faile’s best artwork from 2010 was that temple sculpture in Lisbon.
MOMO‘s debut U.S. solo show opened last week at Anno Domini in San Jose. Better Than 2009 is one of the most interesting things I’ve seen recently, since MOMO is just so different from most street artists. Certainly, there aren’t many street artists trying to paint anything abstract and MOMO gets a lot more conceptual than most street artists.
Here are some of my favorite pieces from Better Than 2009:
Miami HeatHouse by the CanalPoetry Seminar Bathroom
Almost everybody’s favorite abstract street artist (okay Elisa Carmichael probably prefers Aakash and he’s cool too), MOMO, has a solo show opening this week at Anno Domini in San Jose. I’m sure that Better Than 2009 is going to be a “can’t miss” event, as MOMO rarely disappoints. I actually remember MOMO’s wheatpastes as being some of the first pieces of street art that I noticed in Shoreditch, so even back when I only knew names like Banksy and Shepard Fairey, I was searching out more from MOMO.
And while we’re on the topic of MOMO, Depoe tipped me off that the New York Times recently published a photo-essay about MOMO’s largest artwork. A few years ago, MOMO dripped paint around New York City to make what might just be the world’s largest tag. I was never all that impressed with the tag itself, but these photos made me re-examine the artwork. I was much more interested in the piece as a sort of conceptual graffiti, because people (like the New York Times photographer) can follow the tag and walk its length. That process takes the viewer on a journey through Manhattan. Maybe it’s just an afternoon walk, but it’s MOMO’s afternoon walk that the viewer is taking.
Better Than 2009 opens at Anno Domini on October 1st (8pm until late) and runs through November 20th. Expect to see photos on Vandalog next week after the show is open.
