Posts filed under 'Miscellaneous'
On July 27th and 28th, the art gallery “ABC no Rio” in New York City (www.abcnorio.org)hosted and Art auction to raise funds for the Daniel McGowan cause (www.supportdaniel.org). Called “If They Come For You In The Morning”, the show featured art works from artists like Swoon, MoMo, The Barnstormers, Elbow Toe, Judith Supine, David Ellis, Brandon Bauer, Kelly Burns, Sunny Chapman alias Flower Face Killah… … that donated their works for the cause. Some of the pieces had a set price, varying from 10US$ to 100US$ and 150US$. Artworks from better known artists as Judith Supine, MOMO or Swoon were sold at silent auction.
Daniel McGowan is an environmental and social justice activist, part of the Military Counter-Recruitment project incidentally, who was arrested in 2005 and now faces a minimum of life in prison if convicted. He was charged in federal court on numerous counts of property destruction and conspiracy. McGowan plead not guilty to all charges.
His detention was coordinated by the federal government in the Northwest US, in the state of Oregon, a part of a multi-state sweep of numerous activists who were charged with practically every earth and animal liberation case left unsolved in the area. Many of the charges, including Daniel’s, are for cases that were to due to expire. The legality of this detentions is unlikely and for this reason many have protested the charges, specially McGowan’s.
The show coincided with the summer’s biggest heat wave, temperatures reaching 100º F (38º C) and 102ºF (39ºC). The space only had a small fan to refresh but nevertheless the show was crowded and many pieces sold for more than 300US$.
Patricia Yague
September 5th, 2006 11:22am
Administrador
For those who live in Barcelona and are well acquainted with it’s artistic contemporary scene the sixth of July was an important day. A hot Thursday marked by two important exhibitions, or as one might say, one great collaboration.
Almost in the same block of the street, Iguapop Galleryand Mercado del Borne did something that should have been done a long time ago, work together. Two american artists, two separate spaces, one single audience. On one side Gary Baseman (www.garybaseman.com)with “Venison”, at the Mercado, on the other side, at Iguapops’, Tim Biskup (www.timbiskup.com) and “American Cyclops”. Two artists that are used to work together wouldn’t do it any other way, here in the condal city.
In “American Cyclops” one feels totally in american ground. The californian style can be felt in every corner of Iguapop. Tim Biskup is the first to confirm this sensation: “I am really inspired by California as a place and culturally”. He lives in Los Angeles and as much as he likes to travel he wouldn’t trade his home, in the village of Las Cañadas where he lives with his wife and child, for nothing in the world : “I really feel traditionaly based in California, and I really feel that my way of thinking about art is tipically californian”.
So, what is this kind of art that little by little is reaching our lands? An art that searches for inspiration in the history of a country, it’s own. A country that is still too young to tell a long story. An art that has as brothers the Punk-Rock movement and the Skate scene, that lives under the laws of the Do It Yourself movement. An art that never stops to criticize, that likes to put the finger where it hurts the most, and best of all, an art that uses it’s own poison, it’s traditions. In this Biskup rules, by using Folk art, the most traditional of the american way of live, he plays dangerously by using naif motivs like animals, plants and all the well known lettering that always takes us to the western world.
It’s a finger strongly pointed to the country’s ideological believes, but the irony of the situation is in the way Biskup does it visually. The worlds of animation, comics and the endless trips to Disneyland can be easily seen in every single detail of his work. His technique will leed him, eventually, to another level, the conceptualization of his work: “ Much of my work is an intelectual comment on american life, but it’s also an emotional connection for me because there’s a lot of themes about what I see inAmerica that I see in myself. The sense of trying to maintain a belief, trying to make life follow what you truly believe, and that’s what been great about America and also been wrong with America, where it’s easy to choose the easiest way, the way of corruption, lies and hate”.
Because of all this The cyclops is born. For Biskup it represents an actor that he can use for whatever he needs, he calls him “the helper”: “ I think what man does in a lot of situations is, he uses God as an excuse to do things that are really horrible, so the image of the eye of God in a picture where these peolpe are killing each other is about these people trying to make it alright, and so the “helper” to me, because it’s one eyed, he kind of feels like a symbol of this abomination that is created when you lie to yourself, when you’re trying to prove that what you’re doing is ok but you don’t really believe it, you create a monster. You turn yourself into a monster.”
When trying to define his work terms like barroque modernism, modern pop, pop surrealism or cartoon modernism show up but when asked about it Biskup easily answers: “The work defines itself”. And so it is, the message has been sent and it has reached its goal, the exhibition was a success and the book, especially done for this occasion, was bought by many.
Talking about future plans Biskup advances something about a carrousel inside a museum, but that will take a while, for the moment he seems happy with this experience and hopes to return to Spain for, who knows, new collaborations.
Ana Neto
July 20th, 2006 12:14pm
Administrador
Less than 5 minutes from midtown Manhattan, at the end of Queens Midtown Tunnel, sits the Queens neighborhood known as Long Island City. To arrive there from Manhattan you can take three different trains, the E, the V or the 7 and you’re there in just one stop. If you take the E or V lines, the train will travel underground. From the 7 train though, wait two stops and you’ll have an amazing view from your coach… Arriving at 45th Road-Court House Square the train runs over a building fully covered in Graffiti. The view is spectacular; Manhattan with the East River appears in the immediate background and sometimes you’ll catch a group of youngsters on the roof with ladders and scaffolding finding spots out of reach.
This building is known as 5Pointz due to the 5 boroughs of NYC: Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. 5Pointz took this name in 2001 when Jonathan Cohen aka Meres assumed its management. The story of this warehouse started years ago though, in the mid 90’s when Pat DiLillo began a Graffiti buffing service for businesses upon request. He realized the loss of this urban art he was covering so he decided instead to ask one of his clients for walls to let writers create large scale mural pieces with an advantage of being able to finish their artworks. This way color is added to the neighborhood and walls are kept looking neat, adding prestige and publicity to the building once It’s become a place of pilgrimage for Graffiti artists. And so “The Phun Factory” was born, a project that lasted 6 years total, from 1994 to 2001 ending with a dispute between the landlord of the building and Pat. When the program closed it was hosting an average of 20 kids in the wintertime and up to 100 to 150 in the summertime. That year Meres took over the management of the place initiating some changes in the project; starting with the name: “The Phun Factory” became “5Pointz”. Artist selection changed as well; with more than 20 years as a Graffiti artist, Meres brings a different kind of artist and public than Pat, who only worked as a patron.
Meres also agreed with the landlord to take all the walls for painting, from sidewalk to rooftop instead of just half of some of the building front walls. This meant more space to paint with more artists getting up. Things are not easy anyways. Some of the tenants, mostly artists surprisingly, didn’t like the result of the paintings and wished to stop the project. This began debates and included the police, and for some months the project was stopped again. After 6 months of no work, agreements and some headaches, Meres decided restart the program again.
So what is this program about? 5pointz takes an average of 15 to 20 kids each Sunday from noon to 3p.m. who want to learn aerosol techniques with Meres and help him rebuild the space; they paint the walls, clean old paintings, take care of the area… The length of these classes is four weeks. The best students go on to help Meres with bigger projects. Besides that, there is the chance for everyone to paint there, once they ask for permission. That’s the most important rule for the project, to ask before you paint on the walls. If someone creates a piece without permission, it’s removed.
In the summertime there are BBQ’s and linoleum to break-dance on, and sometimes well known Graffiti artists come over to sign books and be with the kids. Artists from NYC and the West Coast, and Europe have been here to paint. The building is acquiring prestige. Magazines such as “Glamour” write articles about it, and big fashion corporations as H&M use the walls for backgrounds in their catalogue photo-shoots. 5Pointz is located very closed to the P.S.1, an affiliate of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where then focus is young and contemporary. Meres is discussing with the museum ways to host a show with some of his buildings more important pieces. The show would give support and publicity to all the people who are working hard to make this warehouse project something pioneering inside the Graffiti world.
Patricia Yague
June 30th, 2006 11:05pm
Administrador
Blu started out his artistic career without a well-defined artistic project, following his passion for drawings, Street art, particularly unauthorized, illegal art. His work is developed in two stages and two different spaces. It originates from sketches jotted down in sketchbook, which represent a diary as well as a skeleton draft for the second stage: the mural. The actual project starts in front of the building, with size and load bearing elements of the wall, in effort to identify an impossible combination between painting and surrounding architecture. He avail himself of the most traditional and essential painting tools: brushes, paint roller, one colour and black; he often use techniques drawn from scenography as well as long sticks, which act as supports when working on large surfaces. The language adopted is strictly based on drawings: it originated from comics and cartoons alike, although it is best and provisionally epitomized by urban Graffiti. The work remains on paper once the mural has disappeared or faded, when it has been taken down, covered or destroyed together with its supporting frame.
Blu works and lives in Bologna (Italy) and has prepared a series of previously unseen drawings for his show at Subaquatica, entitled “La nada” (”The nothingness”).
Blu’s works can be seen on his site: www.blublu.org
June 22nd, 2006 05:38pm
Administrador
Fortunately it’s increasingly more and more common to find new shows and exhibit from street-artists in different galleries and art spaces in Madrid. In this ocassion it’s the Cruce space in Doctor Fourquet Street (near Museo Reina Sofia) that’s recently opened a new show with 5 artists of this scene: 3 locals : Nuria, Nano4814 and Eltono and 2 french visitors: Olivier Kosta-Théfaine (aka Stak) and Samuel François (aka Sam, from Inkostruction collective). Each of these artists have defined its own space inside the gallery showing some previously ellaborated elements but mostly creating ad-hoc installations for this place.
One of the first pieces we find as we enter is a scale model of a city, omnipresent theme in the show, ellaborated by Samuel François. In this model we can find a single family small house, with light inside (therefore showing is inhabited9 surrounded everywhere by tall apartment buildings. It’s seems like a simple but effective metaphor for the conflict between indiviudual expression and freedom and alienation in the big city (well, I guess that’s what it means). Next to the model, and surrounded by small color dots all over that wall, we can find some small drawings and mixed technique on paper pieces by this same artist that have been framed but which glasses have been broken. Also my guess that showing a contrast between those nice colorful drawings and the vandalic side of art on the streets.
Samuel François
Precisely vandalism seems to be the prefered subject for the other french artist, Olivier Kosta-Théfaine. His peculiar vision of the visual aspect of the most basic kinds of vandalism is portrayed through the “drawing” of a one of those classic rose-flower shaped molding in the ceilings of all apartments and houses. The drawing has been made using a lighter and slightly burning and thus, darkening, the surface, as seen in public restrooms everywhere. This contrast between the high class motif and the purely vandalic and low class technique is similar but opposite to the installation consisting of a collection of really beautifully colored molotov coctel bottles. His ironic vision of the most hooliganesque side of contemporary urban culture is completed by the installation of a typical football scarf of a non-existent team with the name of a suburbial residential city outside of Paris.
Olivier Kosta-Théfanie
Olivier Kosta-Théfanie
In this ocassion Tono and Nuria have opted for the more visual and decided not to include direct references to their street work, that is besides the fact that they have chosen not the gallery walls to paint on but precisely elements taken from the streets. The importance they give to the places the carefuly look for and choose to paint on the streets and how in these spots textures are very important gives us the key to the material used here. They have built a structure made of recycled fruit wood boxes. Usually decorated with colorful drawings these boxes prove to be an adequate substitute for the wooden doors or panels they often look for.
Eltono y Nuria
Nano4814 is the artist that has delimited and defined more clearly his space fencing the area with wood boards directly taken from his visual universe, whose characters occupy the space through the use of different techniques. The iconography is familiar to those who know his work: bearded men, cut fingers, tied-up extremities, faces with ski masks… Specially original is the pixel-like composition made with spraycans. It seems as if Nano’s world is overpopulated with a myriad of characters needing to scape into our world.
Nano4814
Nano4814
Nano4814
Open until 15 of july at Cruce (Doctor Fourquet 5, Madrid. Subway station: Atocha)
June 20th, 2006 10:36am
Administrador
Military recruiting is becoming harder for Western countries as people don’t find wars justified and don’t want to end their days in one of them. In the USA, in the city of New York, military recruiters have begun offering free brown paper bags to delis and food stores located in some of the city poorest neighborhoods; places with high recruitment potential for young people. These bags promote military enlistment, focussing on promises of money for college, job skills, adventures, bonuses… that are either false or highly unlikely. For that reason, the art collective “The Friends of William Blake” made a little guide called “The New Yorkers’ Guide to Military Recruitment” (www.counterrecruitmentguide.org) explaining what the reality is behind all those myths and promises the military services promote. In response to the military brown bag campaign, they created the “Brown Bag Project”, with an initial print run of 1,000 paper bags to be given free-of-charge to the same bodegas and delis that received the military bags campaign. These bags feature an illustrated comic from Philadelphia artist Sabrina Jones, called “Mixed Signals”. It explains with images what the guide explained with words. The entire comic can be seen at www.nextleftnotes.net/current/sabrina.html or by visiting NY and collecting the different bags directly from delis.
Patricia Yagüe
June 17th, 2006 10:21am
Administrador
The installation”Poderes Mentales”/”Mind Powers” finally was opened and although the heavy rain that day didn’t help as soon as the sun has made appearance again we have quickly gone there to take some pictures of the outside. As for the video for now you’ll have to be in Madrid to watch it inside the installation. The way the video was done by the 6 different artists and collectives was the following: Each artist would send another one of the artists a single image, a frame, the last one from his still undone video fragment. The artists had to fill with his video/motion graphics/animation work the gap between the image received from another artist as his first frame and the last frame he had already sent to another artist. The result is an endless video loop brief but very beautiful that we will look for the time and manner to show you sometime. For more info remember we have a simple but functional mini-site for this project: www.subaquatica.com/poderesmentales.
May 8th, 2006 06:46pm
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Surprise, surprise: We’ve been secretly working on a new project here at our underwater complex and it’s time we finally let people know what we’ve been up to. This is one of those projects that put us into a state of a continuous headache and has zero economical return but we can’t help but doing once in a while. In this ocassion the project consists on a open air installation, right in front of the most famous contemporary art museum in Spain, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. For the project we have selected 6 artists or collectives that have something in common: They all come from a Graffiti or Street Art background (most are still active) and also work with video one way or another (wheter is Motion Graphics, Animation…).
These are the participating artists:
Blu (Bologna) www.blublu.org
Finsta (Stockholm) www.finstafari.com/
HearOne (Madrid) www.sintevision.com
Will Barras (Bristol / London) www.willbarras.com
Edbyus - Mr Slurp & G1 of Freaklub- (Barcelona) www.mrslurp.com
Espaun256 & Nano4814 (Madrid) www.espaun.com & www.fotolog.com/nano4814
As you can see the presentation of this installation will be next thursday May 4th but it will be open until May 15th. “Mind Powers” is part of the program of the Cultura Urbana 06 (www.culturaurbana.ya.com) festival consisting of many activities, most of them between the 13th and 14th of may in the Antiguo Matadero space in Madrid. “Poderes mentales”, is a “satellite” activity that has been curated and coordinated by Sergio Aguilar and Juan Abia for Subaquatica and has counted with the support of Montana (www.montanacolors.com).
We will be adding more information and pictures in the mini-site here: www.subaquatica.com/poderesmentales but you can take a look already if you want to find out a little bit more about “Mind Powers”.
April 25th, 2006 05:54pm
Administrador
Danny Sangra is a UK artist and graphic designer, originally from Leeds from where he moved to London to study at Central St Martins. He’s also a member of the Scrawl Collective of (mostly street) artists and A Minute Silence with whom he works for the fashion industry as a print and textile designer. He has done several solo shows and exhibited in Florence, Berlin and twice in Tokyo and has also worked as an illustrator and designer for magazines such as Jockey Slut, Blag, X-Ray or Sleazenation and companies like Sony, Orange Mobile, Beams Clothing, Bread & Butter, Virgin Records or Merlin Clothing among many others. And about his style, well, in his own words: “My Painting style has evolved to using geometric shapes and precise line work combined with organic structures. I paint freely moving in and out of styles depending on my mood. I prefer to paint spaces, so the paint has room to grow and takeover”.
“The Velvet King Overthrow” is the title of his show he has prepared for Subaquatica where he will be showing brand new work silk screen patch work painting never shown before. It is the first series of his most recent explorations combining painting and silk screening.
More info on the artist here:
http://www.dannysangra.com/
and here:
http://www.scrawlcollective.co.uk/danny.htm
March 29th, 2006 05:51pm
Administrador
According to a press sheet from the ARCO Art Fair organization in Madrid “Graffiti and other urban creations that usually stay on the outside of the mainstream comtemporay art circuits, reach inside ARCO this year”. This, along with the repercussion in the local press and TV about the presence of urban art in ARCO this year had created quite some expectation. In fact a whole section “On Youth Culture”, was supposedly dedicated to this field of artistic expressions. Besides the presence of some artists 3 conferences were celebrated with people like artist Ryan McGinness, one of the curators of the Beautiful Losers show (among a few other things): Aaron Rose and the directors from magazines Made or Giant Robot among some others. Truth is I couldn’t assist and all I’ve heard is that it looked quite like a bunch of friends talking about their things, mostly marketing, branding and so on and not so much art. Nothing wrong with that, anyways. Maybe a little too restrictive its admission policy: 45€ each one of the 3 discussions that were held precisely last wednesday, a day when only people with a professional pass could enter the fair.
Although it’s a good iniciative in the right direction I’ve found it frankly disappointing after all the buzz. It’s a pity that only one international artist with an actual background in Graffiti or any other form of art in the streets finally participated: Barry McGee aka Twist (I mean, besides Basquiat or Keith Haring pieces here and there).
Also, the rest of the artists that were mentioned in the press note were either scattered between different gallery stands or were simply artists that don’t have much to do with the whole urban art phenomenon. I guess that’s good if it’s a sign of normalization that the street artists participate in these kind of fairs on their own right and therefore have their work exhibited along other artists work in different stands from galleries both national and international. But the fact is that local artists El tono & Nuria and Nano4814, the only other artists of this kind, besides McGee that have shown their work in ARCO 06 were going to be there anyways, same as they were last year represented by their galleries (Vacio 9 for El Tono & Nuria and Ad Hoc for Nano4814) and not precisely because the null interest of the curators of the “On Youth Culture” program, Peter Doroschenko and Pedro Alonzo, in taking a look at what local street artists were doing and incorporating them to the program. In any case, for anyone who is attending ARCO these days and is interested in taking a look at the presence of Urban Art in the fair this year is really going to be quite hard, unless you know exactly the names of the artists, to find out where all this urban art is.
Barry McGee
Barry McGee aka Twist is witouth any doubt, one of the most representative and succesful artists to make a trasaction from the street to the mainstream art world. His installation in ARCO 06 (stand of London Gallery Modern Art) shows a clear continuity with his latest shows (Deitch Gallery, Rose Art Museum…) and it’s a collage of many small paintings along a wooden figure with a spraycan that seems to the the author of a huge tagged sentence above all the installation: “Smash the State” .
Barry McGee
Barry McGee
Besides the McGee installation there is a similar one, also composed of many small paintings by Clare E. Rojas and in the stand right next to it (Roberts & Tilton gallery) a bigger, intense and very impressive installation with both paintings and many photographs by Ed Templeton.
Clare E. Rojas
Ed Templeton
It’s nice to see the work of these very talented artists or others like Ryan McGinness (Galería Moriarty’s stand) that althought not really street artists or Graffiti writers, belong to a similar cultural background and generation as McGee or other artists that, we would have wished to see in ARCO too. Maybe the only problem, besides the lack of atention to local artists within the “On Youth Culture” program, has not been the selection of artists but instead the way ARCO has marketed this initiative in the press labelling the whole thing like “Big news!: Graffiti and urban art in ARCO this year!!”
Nano4814
El tono & Nuria (Pic: Tono)
Fortunately 2 pieces, one by El tono and Nuria and another by Nano4814 show the healthy estate of things with local street artists. In both cases they have chosen to paint directly on their gallery stands walls. Other pieces are for sale, although not for show, in ARCO through these galleries. But once ARCO closes next monday Feb. 13th these pieces will be destroyed. I guess it’s all about the ephimeral aspect of art in the streets. Let’s just hope that this disappointing initiative of bringing some street artists to ARCO is not ephimeral as well and instead keeps improving and increasing the number of artists in the upcoming editions.
February 10th, 2006 01:24pm
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