For the last few days, the first MURAL Festival edition has taken over more than 20 walls in Montreal, Canada, located around the oldest boulevard of the city called “the main”, namely Boulevard Saint-Laurent. Running from June 13 to 16, MURAL offers to the public the opportunity to see some of the big masters of street art at work. Street artists, graffiti artists and muralists have been bringing all their energy and their incredible talent to refresh the streets. Among amazing international artists are the best Canadian ones. The list is long, but impressive: Pixel Pancho, ROA, Phlegm, Escif, Reka One, Gaia, LNY, Ricardo Cavolo, FinDAC & Angelina Christina, Labrona, Troy Lovegates (aka Other), Omen, Jason Botkin, Chris Dyer, EnMasse, Stare, Squid called Sebastian, Le Bonnard, Paria Crew, A’shop, Wzrds gng.
Sorry for the short notice, but Troy Lovegates aka Other has a solo show opening in Copenhagen this Friday the 24th at MOHS exhibit. Shallow Lake opens on May 24th and runs through June 29th. Definitely check it out. Lovegates is one of my favorite painters, indoors and outdoors. He has such a way of capturing people.
In addition to the show inside the gallery, Lovegates painted this mural on the outside of the space:
I’m excited to see that Troy Lovegates aka Other, one of my favorite street artists, just painted this mural in my hometown of Chicago. It was installed as part of the Art In Public Places project with Pawn Works, the Chicago Urban Art Society, and Alderman Danny Solis.
Shepard Fairey released some prints using diamond dust, which is quite interesting. As the press release says, “Perhaps most famously used by Andy Warhol, who understood perfectly how to convey a message, Diamond Dust was used to add glamour, transforming ordinary images into coveted objects. The material aligns with Shepard’s work and interest in the seduction of advertising and consumerism. Diamond Dust, literally and metaphorically is superficial, applied to the surface of the print, the luminous effect is both beautiful and alluring.” But it’s one of those things that just gets me thinking about how the art world, much like capitalism, seems so good at absorbing critique and spitting at back out as product. People love the meaningless OBEY icon, so Shepard sells it. Shepard needs to make more product to continue selling to this market he has created, so he takes an old design (or a slight variant, I’m not positive), and adds meaningless diamond dust to it and sells it as something new. The best critiques participate in the system which they critique, but that’s a risky game to play. Of course, I say all this with a print by Shepard hanging on my wall.
OldWalls is a project where the photographer took photos of graffiti in the early 1990’s and recently returned to those spots to take the exact same shots, and then each matching photo is displayed next to its counterpart.
If you’ve ever wandered through a train yard, work like Troy Lovegates‘ (aka Other’s) is the kind of jaw-dropping stuff you feel fortunate to have come cross. For the past few months Lovegates has been spending time in Germany, but with all his freight car pieces running, his presence will be felt across borders.
This work from Aakash Nihalani was done during Nuart earlier this fall, and I love it. It’s simple and site specific. Remember, always practice good placement. If you do that, you don’t have to paint 7 stories tall just to catch people’s attention.
What Are You Doing To Participate looks like a great show of zines opening this week in LA with work from Mel Kadel, Matt Leines, Pez, and many more.
Damon Landry and I recently took a trip to Haverford College so that he could photograph some of the street art and murals there. Here are some of my favorite photos that Damon took during our visit.
Labrona and Troy Lovegates aka Other. Click to view large.StikmanA black squirrel wheatpaste
All too often, I get the same basic press release in my inbox. It reads something like this:
Dear Arrested Motion editor,
Gallery X, the hippest gallery in the USA even though you’ve never heard of us before, is super excited about their upcoming show Lame Pun for a Name, a group show featuring prints from the world’s most exciting street artists. We have 15 artists you’ve never heard of or have heard of but don’t care about who we think are making a real splash and 2 artists you’ve heard of but whose prints we found on eBay for the purpose of including them in this show. Oh, and yes, we have a Banksy print! This is sure to be the best show ever in the history of the world even though we only just discovered that street art is a thing after my mom told me about this movie called Exit Through the Gift Shop.
I hope you’ll post about our show. An inconvenient to download and use pdf file is attached.
Sincerely,
Gallery Girl
Because of emails like that, my tolerance for group shows of prints is pretty low these days. I pretty much write them off as ignorable when I hear about them, even when I like some of the artists in the show. Well, I’m extremely thankful that two of my friends dragged me to New York’s Hendershot Gallery last week after I had written off their latest group print show, (Re)Print.
Troy Lovegates
(Re)Print features ASVP, Clown Soldier, Chris Stain, Troy Lovegates, Labrona, Judith Supine and others. It achieves that combination of well-known and extremely talented but up-and-coming artists that nearly every group show strives for but few manage to pull off. If you’re looking for work by artists who don’t get the attention they deserve, (Re)Print is the place to see a whole lot of them. In particular, the new prints by Chris Stain and collages by Clown Soldier are a real treat.
Here are a few bits from the show, but if you’re in New York at all this summer, definitely try to make it over to Hendershot Gallery to see the entire show. (Re)Print is open through August 15th.
