Tag: saber

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Weekend link-o-rama

TresOhUno

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

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Street Cred – graffiti artists at the Pasadena Museum of California Art

Chaz Bojórquez

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

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Legal mural by Revok, Os G, Retna and others partially buffed in LA

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

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And it begins: Art In The Streets

Patti Astor at Keith Haring's Fun Gallery show, 1983, Photo by Eric Kroll

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:

  • First of all, what lots of people have been asking for: a solid and confirmed opening date. Art In The Streets opens on April 17th.
  • There will be 50 artist installations including Futura, Margaret Kilgallen, Swoon, Shepard Fairey and Os Gêmeos. Arrested Motion has some photos of Shepard’s installation process.
  • The MOCA iteration includes a lot of West Coast stuff like Cholo graffiti and writers like Revok and Saber.
  • Oh, clarification on the last point: The show movies to The Brooklyn Museum next March. Presumably the show will be refocused a bit NYC graffiti for that iteration.
  • The show will include some mini-shows within it including a space dedicated to The Fun Gallery, a RAMELLZEE installation and Todd James, Barry McGee, and Steve Powers’ new iteration of their legendary Street Market show.
  • Because MOCA is looking at skateboarding as art on the streets too, there will be a custom skate ramp in the museum and Nike’s skateboarding team will be skating there throughout the run of the show.
  • There will be a film festival component to the show.

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:

Chaz Bojorquez, Señor Suerte tag with ‘veterano/veterana’ roll calls, Arroyo Seco River, Los Angeles, 1975, photo by Blades Bojorquez
RAMMELLZEE, Battle Station, New York City, 2005, photo by Charlie Ahearn

Photos courtesy of MOCA

 

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INFAMY – A Graffiti Film

One thing I’ve noticed through my lack of productivity as of late is that there are a ton of graffiti orientated films and documentaries out there. For the most part many of them are really great to watch and INFAMY is one such bi product of documenting the graffiti scene that really caught my attention. Whilst it may not be all that new to some of you, I was so impressed by the documentary I felt compelled to post something about it here.

INFAMY is an intense journey into the dangerous lives and obsessed minds of six of America’s most prolific graffiti artists. The movie takes you deep into the world of street legends SABER, TOOMER, JASE, CLAW, EARSNOT, and ENEM. With brutal honesty, humor and charisma, these artists reveal why they are so willing to risk everything to spray paint their cities with “tags,” “throwups,” and full-color murals.  From the streets of the South Bronx to the solitude of a San Francisco tunnel, from high atop a Hollywood billboard to North Philadelphia for a lesson in “Philly-style tags,” from the Mexican border to a Cleveland train yard, INFAMY doesn’t analyze or glorify graffiti – it takes you there and brings it to life.

Check out the 10 minute clip above (The rest can be found on Youtube if you look hard enough!).

For more info visit Infamythemovie.com

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Saber – Peppers World

California based graffiti artist Saber was recently inspired to make a new short documentary entitled Peppers World about a homeless man who embraces the culture of street art. Pepper is a true street artist in the purist sense. He’s known to some by his altar ego; the Mayor of Skid Row, and he’s proud to proclaim that he’s the last homeless person on the forefront of downtown LAs gentrification.

“Pepper has a habit of decorating his immediate surroundings, wherever that might be, with multi-colored paint splats, piled on discarded toys, and other purposefully arranged found objects.” says Saber “You can frequently catch him running around the city with his red shopping cart full of freshly discarded trinkets. The print Peppers World, and the mural I painted on 7th and Mateo that it inspired, is in homage to his existence. I have enormous respect for those who can survive in such extreme conditions yet still be able to express themselves creatively”.

Pretty cool how David Choe just turns up in this video out of nowhere!