For several years now, the Woodward Gallery Project Space on Eldridge Street has been one of the Lower East Side’s visual highlights, showcasing works by an impressive range of artists from veteran graffiti writers to street art-stencil masters. Through July 26 a handsome retrospective of these works can be seen indoors at Woodward Gallery, directly across from the Project Space’s outdoor wall. Here are a few images:
L’Amour Supreme, Moody, NohJColey and Darkcloud & David Pappaceno on floor. Photo by Dani Reyes Mozeson.Moody, Chris RWK, Faro and JMR. Photo by Dani Reyes Mozeson.NoseGo. Photo by Lois Stavsky.Cycle. Photo by Dani Reyes Mozeson.Chris RWK and Royce Bannon in center. Photo courtesy of Woodward Gallery.Clockwise: Celso, Kenji Nakayama, Cassius Fouler, Visions Scmisions, Moody, UR New York and Buildmore. Photo by Dani Reyes Mozeson.
Located at 133 Eldridge Street, Woodward Gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 11-6pm, Sunday 12-5pm and by private appointment.
Photos by Dani Reyes Mozeon and Lois Stavsky and courtesy of Woodward Gallery
Mata Ruda’s piece on Broadway. Photo courtesy of Wall Hunters.
Editor’s note: I tried to write about this fascinating project that just finished up in Baltimore, but for some reason I was unable. So, instead, I asked Nether to write about the project for Vandalog. Nether was one of the co-organizers, so instead of my guesswork and thoughts based on a few articles I had read, now we have a first-hand account of one of the more daring street art projects in recent memory: Wall Hunters’ “Slumlord Project”. – RJ Rushmore
Wall Hunters‘ “Slumlord Project” was a project that installed 17 pieces on dilapidated vacant houses that are owned by people we consider to be negligent property owners. The project was a collaborative venture between the newly-minted street artists’ nonprofit, Wall Hunters, and Slumlord Watch, a local blog that documents the city’s shameful and shockingly large stock of uninhabitable vacant homes. QR codes and text descriptions were pasted alongside the art. A cell phone app scan of these instantly unveiled ownership information on the guilty landowner by linking to the Baltimore Slumlord Watch website. The artists’ ephemeral work and the community reaction to it was recorded for a documentary being produced by the project’s third partners, filmmakers Tarek Turkey and Julia Pitch. The project’s goal was to catalyze a larger conversation on Baltimore’s vacancy issue–a conversation that includes the normally muted voices of those who live in the targeted neighborhoods, as well as politicians and the developers whose phone calls get answered by city hall.
The idea for the project was born about a year ago. At that time I was putting up wheatpastes on dilapidated, vacant houses. As I was researching specific properties I was hitting, I regularly came across the Baltimore Slumlord Watch blog run by the housing activist Carol Ott. Slumlord Watch is basically Wiki-leaks for Baltimore’s underfunded housing authority. As blog posts make clear, many of the blighted houses are owned by entities with the means to fix their crumbling properties–slumlords who blithely ignore the cost of their neglect on city communities. Since much of my work uses images to deal with the vacancy problem and Carol was battling the same issue, we decided to meet and try to do something that joined street art with housing activism. I began driving her around while she catalogued vacants and researched ownership, and I wheatpasted.
From the Street Up is a show coming up soon at NYC’s Woodward Gallery. The gallery invited artists Royce Bannon and Cassius Fouler to co-curate the show, which focuses on sculptural work by street artists and public artists. The line up includes John Ahearn, Richard Hambleton, NohJColey, Leon Reid IV, Skewville, Gabriel Specter, Stikman, UFO and more. That’s one of the most interesting and impressive lists for a group show that I’ve seen in a while. Some of my favorite artists will be in this show, including a few like Hambleton, UFO and Stikman who don’t show their work indoors very often.
As Caroline mentioned earlier this month, the group Young New York is having a charity art auction this Tuesday at White Box Gallery in New York to raise money for their restorative justice art workshops with teenagers who have been put into the adult court system in New York.
Here are just a few of the dozens of artists with work in the auction: Steve Powers, NohjColey, Joe Iurato, Cake, Overunder, Gaia, Rudie Diaz, LNY, Blackmath, Mare139, Doodles, ND’A, Radical!, C215, Clown Soldier, Jill Cohen, Labrona and Luna Park. And here are a few of pieces that will be on offer:
Young New York: A Silent Art Auction & Fundraiser is an fundraising initiative for the Young New Yorkers (YNY) program, which aids and raises awareness for teens who have been legally classified “adults” and thrown into New York State’s adult criminal justice system.
The silent action will be happening Tuesday May 29th from 6pm-10pm at WhiteBoxes projects, and feature works by Steve “ESPO” Powers, LNY, Steven Holl, Gaia, Labrona, NohjColey, the YOK, ASVP, Doodles, Radical!, Feral Child, Cake, Ian Kuali’i and many others. All proceeds will go toward enabling workshops with successful artists, designers, teachers and social workers who will use creative theraputic methods to reach out to these teens in New York State’s criminal justice system.
You can purchase tickets to attend the auction here. For more information check out the YNY website or Facebook.
Jesus Saves -- whose tag is just about everywhere in NYC
We made it over to Pandemic Gallery’s current exhibit ALL TALK! earlier in the week and loved the way it presented the works of some of our favorite artists whose work surface regularly in the public sphere. We also loved the incredible mix of aesthetic sensibilities. Here’s a sampling:
NohJColeyGabriel SpecterAakash Nihalani
The exhibit continues through March 11th @ 37 Broadway (between Wythe and Kent) in Brooklyn.
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.
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.
While I should probably be studying for final exams right now, I’m spending just as much time getting ready for Up Close and Personal, which opens next week in NYC. Check out a preview on Brooklyn Street Art. Here’s some stuff I would have liked to have covered this week:
New questions about if Banksy’s This Looks a Bit Like an Elephant piece left a man homeless.
Banksy is selling a poster on Saturday at the Bristol Anarchist Bookfair, and all the proceeds are going to charity. Just £5 per poster. The design is a “Tesco Petrol Bomb,” referencing the recent riots in Bristol over the construction of a new Tesco supermarket.
Melrose&Fairfax have an article about Jeffrey Deitch’s continued ties to The Hole, the gallery that his right-hand woman Kathy Grayson set up after Deitch Project closed and Deitch became the director of MOCA in LA. Most of what they mention was already well-known or expected and a lot less explosive than Melrose&Fairfax make it out to be, but I’d still be curious to hear what The Association of Art Museum Directors think about this.
This piece by NohJColey, titled Kleptomaniac, is the first in his upcoming Just Dieserts series. One of the many things I hope to come across when I’m in New York City next week.
