Posts filed under 'Miscellaneous'
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
Administrador
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
Administrador
After his recent participation in the collective show “Tras la pared“, El tono, and now also his artistic companion, Nuria (more about both of them here: www.eltono.com), two of the most international street artist from Madrid, opened yesterday, thursday 12/1/06, their new exhibition “(x, y, z)” at the Vacío9 gallery (General Castaños 5, Madrid).
In this show, the duo has centered on their work in 3D. Nuria, whose work usually revolves around abstractions of a security key, has built a gigantic, almost intimidating, key structure in the middle of the space. El tono, on the other hand, has built 3 smaller tridimensional “tonos” (abstractions of tuning forks).
El Tono, had already constructed “tono” sculptures in the past. The first that we know of was his “Motonorista” installation in Subaquatica. Later he built the “politonos”, cardboard colored sculptures that he installed in the street. A video of that “experiment” is shown at this exhibition.
Photography by: Jorge Domínguez
Photography by: Jorge Domínguez
Decorating the walls of the gallery you can also find the traditional paintings of Nuria and Tono. It’s not very usual to see these paintings indoors since they only create them for their street interventions but the apparent contradiction is solved by making these forms emerge from windows and the chimeny as if they were coming from the outside, curiously taking a peek at their new 3D brothers.
January 13th, 2006 01:39pm
Administrador
An old acquaintance of the house, designer, artist and careful observer of the urban surroundings, Javier Abarca, has recently created a webiste that we strongly recommend that you visit: www.pifostio.org. The site contains a superb collection of pictures, taken over the years, depicting a multitude of bizarre visual elements from the streets of Madrid. Through these pictures Javier Abarca has captured commercial signs, garbage containers, and basic forms of street advertising in which the artistisc aspirations of the anonymous people behind them are visible although most of the time, quite far from what we could call aesthetic correctness. And that’s precisely the point. What’s new in the visual elements that we can find around our cities created by advertising agencies, design studios or creative departments of the big brands, companies and institutions?
My favourite section if definitely the garbage containers one. I find quite amazing the artistic intentions and care of the apartment houses managers, small shop owners or restaurant employees when labeling the containers when this in fact should be a pretty much functional and unimportant task.
Also recommended is another of Javier Abarca latest projects: “No compres”, mixture of urban intervention, photography and Net Art?? that I’d rather not try to explain so I don’t spoil the effect. Simply go there: www.manklared.com/nocompres and follow the order of the pictures.
January 5th, 2006 01:09pm
Administrador
Recently opened at the Annta Gallery in Madrid, the collective show “Tras la pared” is one of the first ocassions on which one space from the circuit of the more established and traditional art galleries in Madrid exhibit the work of street artists. In this ocassion the artists that have participated are Sixe, El tono, Nano4814, San and Pilar Soler. Some of them are good friends and frequent collaborators of Subaquatica. If you happen to be in Madrid the exhibition is worth a visit and it clearly shows that this is not the first time these artists, used to display their work on the streets, face the challenge of a indoors exhibit.
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We are certanly familiar with the difficulty, not only practical but also theorical and almost ethical, that implies for this kind of artists to exhibit not simply in a indoors space but also an art gallery where their work intends to be sold. The rebelious and altruistic attitude of an artist that displays his work on the streets is somehow contradictory of the commercial logic of an art gallery. But street artists also have to pay the rent. Their professional development can come in the form of collaborations for brand events looking to jump into the experiential marketing bandwagon, or their work as illustrator, graphic designers or motion graphics artist. But also as artists in the traditional sense of those who sell their work in art galleries. The problem, obviously, comes when the artists has to decide how its outside, non-commercial activities relate and differ from their commercial indors work.
El tono
El tono
In public and non commercial art spaces or museums and with exhibitions such as “Beautiful Losers” or the “Ill Communication” exhibits at the Urbis Museum (Manchester, UK), installations seem to be the way to go but when those pieces of art have to be sold, as is the case with art galleries, the approach apparently has to be of a different kind. Exactly as with video artists or conceptual ones who mostly do installations, there are some kinds of artworks that fail to fit into the traditional idea of the fetish-object canvas that you can hang on a wall. Sometimes the solution is to combine elements that, althought they might be for sale, will rarely be sold with drawings, canvases, etc… This is the case, for instance, of the Nano4814 contribution to the “Tras la pared” exhibit.
Nano4814
Nano4814
In any case, the success or failure of the proposal doesn’t relate only to how this problem is adressed by the artist but also by the consistency of his discourse and (such a slippery concept as) his talent. In that sense, we believe that the “Tras la pared” is not a definitive answer to these issues, that we don’t really expect to see anytime soon (the fun would be over), but a fine sample of the current state of things.
San
By the way, one the artists that participate in this show, Sixeart, will have his first solo exhibition in Madrid at our own Subaquatica space in Madrid starting Feb 2nd 2006.
Sixeart
TRAS LA PARED
Sixeart + Nano4814 + San + Pilar + El tono
15/12/2005 - 4/2/2006
ANNTA Gallery
Altamirano 46, 28008 Madrid. SPAIN
December 24th, 2005 11:32am
Administrador
A couple of weeks ago we had the opening for the joint show of french artists 3TTMAN and REMED. You can find more info about this exhibition and these artists here
If you came by already, we hope you liked it and if not, feel free to drop by and take a look at their work if you are in Madrid before it closes at the end of January.
December 16th, 2005 09:37pm
Administrador
Welcome to Subaquatica’s new website. Here you can find some basic info like Who we are, What we do, Where we are…. Also, for those of you that are already familar with us, there’s big news: This thursday Dec 1st 2005 we’ll be celebrating the opening of our first artist show by french duo 3TTMAN & REMED. Under the “Shows at our gallery” section you can find some more information about this show and in the future about past ones.
However the most dynamic section of this website will be the main page and the entries that, like this one and with a blog format, will keep you updated on our new activities, new products at our Madrid and online shop or simply assorted news and thoughts that we find interesting.
Besides all that and the artists shows every 2 months, one artist or collective will be invited every month to design the header for this site and will also be interviewed here. Our first guest artists are the MENTARY BROTHERS. Often these guest artists will be ones that develop their work partly or totally on the streets and often they won’t be very popular but they will always respond to a high quality standard, according to our own very particular taste, that is.
Thanks for your time already.
P.S: Sometimes posts/entries will give you the possibility to leave a comment. We hope that your POLITE comments will contribute to a more interesting website.
November 30th, 2005 12:57am
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