This week in Amsterdam, Unruly Gallery is opening with their first group show. Check it out this Saturday and Sunday from 11-7pm. Unruly Gallery is located at Cliffordstraat 26 in Amsterdam. This first show at Unruly is packed with historic names in street art and graffiti including Rammellzee, Delta, Haze, Mare 139, Revok and over 20 more artists. Check out the full list on the Unruly Gallery site.
Photos courtesy of Unruly Gallery
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:
Photo by TresOhUno
Street Cred: Graffiti Art from Concrete to Canvas is a show opening this month at the Pasadena Museum of California Art focusing on the graffiti writers and street artists who have come out of the LA scenes. Artists in the show include Chaz Bojórquez, Craola, Kofie One, Risk, Jeff Soto, Retna, Revok and Saber. Perhaps just as important, the show will include photographs of graffiti by Steve Grody, because any graffiti art exhibit would definitely be incomplete without documentation out actual graffiti outdoors. Additionally, Retna will be painting a mural on the outside of the museum.
Sounds like Street Cred will be a good compliment to Art in the Streets at MOCA. A number of people I’ve been speaking with recently have argued that LA graffiti has not been given its due in the wider history of graffiti, so maybe Street Cred will help to correct that.
Street Cred opens May 14th and runs through September 4th.
Photo by Lord Jim
As mentioned a couple of days ago, Revok was arrested last week in LA and held on $320,000 bail. The LA Times is reporting that Revok has been sentenced to 180 days in jail for violating his parole on a misdemeanor vandalism charge after he failed to repay restitution for damages. I don’t think I need to say this, but I am pretty upset about this. Best of luck to Revok in fighting this extremely harsh sentence.
Photo by S.Vegas
Revok was arrested on Thursday at LAX on his way to Ireland. His bail has been set at an absurdly high $320,000. Here’s a press release from the LAPD. Best of luck to Revok. He is a fantastic artist and this strikes me as retaliation from the LAPD now that Art in the Streets is having such a positive response with residents of LA.
Update: Just how absurdly high is Revok’s bail? Logan Hicks did the math. Basically, the LA legal system seems to think that allegedly not repaying people for putting graffiti on their property is about as bad as molesting three young girls ($300,000 bail) and then threatening a man while wielding a machete ($20,000 bail). While bail is not set entirely based on the severity of the crime but other factors as well, Logan’s stats are a good place to start, and based on severity of alleged crimes, Revok’s bail is completely unjust.
Via LAist
Photo by funkandjazz
This is the start of a story about what happens when the buff men starts acting like graffiti writers and painting anywhere they wish…
LA TACO and Revok have the full story on their blogs (at least, what is known and has happened so far), but here’s the short version of this sad and seriously screwed up story: This legal mural in LA, painted last summer by Retna, Rime, Revok, Norm, Os Gêmeos and Saber, was partially buffed by a private graffiti removal company without the property owner’s permission or knowledge and entering the property required that the graffiti removal company break a fence on the property. This sucks and just shows, if this was done legally, how screwed up the legal system is when it comes to murals. I know there are some cities (such as, I think, NYC) where the city can buff pretty much whatever they want regardless of what the property owner would like to do. Of course, I’m not sure what’s more ironic: that the graffiti removal company basically graffiti-ed this mural themselves by buffing it without permission, or that people throughout the blogosphere (including me) are complaining about it. After all, the mural was painted by a bunch of writers… But I’m pretty sure that what the buff squad did is more ironic and screwed up. Luckily, the property owner was alerted to the damage and was able to stop the buff squad before the entire mural was lost.
Expect more on this in the next few days.
Photo by LA TACO
Members of the legendary Bronx-based Tats Cru have been painting legal murals on a huge wall off Avenue A and 2nd Street for the past few years. I haven’t loved all of them. The previous two were too cartoonish and gimmicky for me. But the latest one — that I passed today — is working. My favorite segments are those by How and Nosm and the tribute to Sace IRAK Irak painted by Revok who joined the Mural Kings for this wall.
If you’re the Jeffrey Deitch or museum-hating type, the next few weeks are not going to be your favorite weeks, at least not when it comes to Vandalog posts. I’m gonna be talking a lot about this topic. I could hardly be more excited for MOCA‘s upcoming Art In The Streets show, and some substantive information about the show is finally starting to come out:
So yeah. Sounds good. Can’t wait for the opening. If this show succeeds, it could be the American equivalent of Banksy Versus The Bristol Museum in terms of impact.
Here’s some more preview images:
Photos courtesy of MOCA
I really enjoyed this no-bs interview that EIKNARF did with Revok. Just a basic video: Revok is an awesome writer, here’s a few thoughts on graffiti, his work and life. Check it out:
EIKNARF Presents: “Revok: On The Run” from EIKNARF on Vimeo.
Check out what Insa has been up to in LA. Collabs with Revok and Kid Zoom:
The Kid Zoom/Insa wall is part of the LA Freewalls Project, who have been organizing a lot of murals in LA lately.
Animations by Insa via his blog (Kid Zoom post and Revok post)
