Click to enlargeSpanish street artist E1000 (previously here and here) has recently been leaving his mark in the form of a triangular multi-fingerprint-like image. Maybe they’re fingerprints or maybe just abstract patterns, but either way they have a nice effect, giving the color of the wall as much weight as the paint itself. Plus, the cool cropping!
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This weekend’s picks for Free & Cheap things to do in NYC (2/15 to 2/17) in art, music, theater, performance, dance, architecture and general fun.
Click to enlargeSeems fitting to post about a love mural on Valentine’s Day, no? The Baltimore Love Project began a few years ago when local artist Michael Owen developed a design of four hands spelling out the word love. Since then the image has been painted on several walls with a total of 20 scheduled across Baltimore City; the idea being a way of expressing love and connecting people and communities all around the urban center. The community seems to have lovingly embraced the project with an impressive level of enthusiasm including a couple taking their wedding photos in front of one of the murals.
You can see a time lapse video of one of the murals in progress below, and there’s a 5-minute documentary on the project over here.
via think.bigchief via notcot
We haven’t posted music in ages, but Daniela’s friend Cody Fitzgerald let us know that his band Stolen Jars just came out with a video and, well, we really like the song. It has that clappy/percussion thing that I, for one, am always a fan of. Stolen Jars has a bit of a Postal Service-like history (who, by the way have a new single out after a long hiatus.) Cody Fitzgerald started the project in 2009, originally a guitar-based solo project out of his home, but later asked his friend Magdalena Bermudez to sing with him and write the lyrics. Magdalena lived in Massachusetts so most of the recording was done separately and sent via Dropbox. The group has since grown to include John-Elio Reitman, Jonah Fried, Sam Skinner, Molly Grund, and Elena Juliano. If you like what you hear, check out more of Stolen Jars’ music on their site, or follow their blog here, or on facebook.
Click to enlargeWell this is something I’ll definitely check out when I make it over to Berlin. Buchstaben Museum (Museum of Letters) is devoted to preserving and documenting letterforms. It is nestled away in the back of a mall and houses a beautiful collection of found type, which the owners have rescued from around the world. The sizes of type vary, and the conditions of each piece too. All the letterforms are piled up over several rooms, some rooms are color coordinated. Neon letters that are still in working order are presented in all their glory. Sounds like a graphic designer’s dream museum!
Click to enlargeLooks like the ballet has developed an edge. For the inauguration of their NYCB Art Series, the New York City Ballet has commissioned the Brooklyn-based street artist duo Faile to create an installation for the special Art Series performances on February 1st and May 29th where each seat was/is available for $29 and each audience member takes home a limited edition work (seemingly in the form of a cube) made specifically for the event by the artists. Inspired by the old posters, playbills, and other past company-related ephemera that fits so well with their collage style work, Faile created a tower in the ballet’s main hall titled Les Ballets de Faile. Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller who make up the artistic collaboration see their participation as bringing together the “glamour and grime” of NYC under one roof.
There is limited availability left for the May 29th performance, but the installation is open to the public this week (2/10 to 2/17) for free. You can see the schedule here.
And here’s an interview with Faile on the project:
via wooster collective; video via animalny
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This weekend’s picks for Free & Cheap things to do in NYC (2/8 to 2/10) in art, music, theater, film, performance, dance, architecture and general fun.
Check our previous Culture on the Cheap posts for ongoing events and check back over the weekend for possible updates. Enjoy!
Click to enlargeSouth African conceptual artist Ed Young enjoys challenging the art world and its methodologies working in various mediums ranging from sculpture and painted type murals to videos and more. And his work does not go unnoticed. Last year at the Jo’burg Art Fair, Young created an exact-to-scale silicone replica of his naked self at two-thirds his actual size, titled My Gallerist Made Me Do It, fascinating most of the 8,500 attendees of the fair. His piece titled Arch (short for Archbishop Desmond Tutu) swings from a working chandelier in the conference room of the IDASA headquarters, and apparently brought huge smiles to the Archbishop himself upon setting eyes on it.
Young’s murals are equally provocative in their bold type. Unknowingly, we ourselves came across one of Young’s murals a few years back in Miami…that’s Em in the bottom right photo!
Young doesn’t say a heck of a lot about his work when interviewed as you can see in the video below.
via SMAC
Click to enlargeBarry Rosenthal is a New York City based photographer. His Found in Nature series is created using plastic objects, garbage, waste and detritus found on beaches polluting our water and land including parking lots. Rosenthal organizes these pieces making for some graphically interesting photos.
via featureshoot
Click to enlargeLast September the Spanish art collective Luzinterruptus (previously here and here) was invited to Caracas, Venezuela to participate in their urban arts festival Por en Medio de la Calle (In the Middle of the Street) which celebrates the importance of public space. Luzinterruptus stuck with one of their recurring themes: water. It is common for the streets of Caracas to flood in the rain, so in the hopes of having viewers stop and admire the element, they created a Portable River (Rio Portatil) filling 2000 transparent bags with water and made into ephemeral aquariums with toy fish and plants, highlighted with lights. At the end of the night, visitors could take the illuminated ecosystems home with them.
Click to enlargeFrench-born artist Aude Moreau lives and works in Montreal. Her installation piece titled Sugar Carpet (Tapis de sucre) is made with two tons of refined white sugar spread out evenly across the floor in a carpet-like manner embellished with Persian rug motifs in activated charcoal and food coloring. Moreau plays with the idea of ‘refined’ both in the production of the sugar and its selection process, as well as describing a sophistication that the carpet represents.
The Sugar Carpet is presently on view at the Smack Mellon gallery in Brooklyn through February 24th.
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This weekend’s picks for Free & Cheap things to do in NYC (1/25 to 1/27) in art, music, theater, film, performance, dance, architecture and general fun.
Check our previous Culture on the Cheap posts for ongoing events and check back over the weekend for possible updates. Enjoy!
Click to enlargeThere’s been a recent resurgence of 7-Eleven shops around NYC, much to my dismay. In fact, I’ve always associated the chain with the suburbs and find it surprising, and a little depressing, that they should be cropping up all around town. But maybe, just maybe, it would be a little less painful if they were to implement the new identity BVD created for their Swedish market; foregoing the retro look for a clean and modern one.
via visuelle
Click to enlargeA couple of our favorite works at the What Do I Owe You? exhibit that we saw a few weeks back were by the artist duo Adam Eckstrom and Lauren Was that go by the name of Ghost of a Dream. Ghost of a Dream create sculpture, collages, and installations typically using discarded materials popular culture; mostly discarded lottery tickets and romance novel covers, though much of their other works involve handwritten type and positive and negative areas created by it. But, getting back the the lottery tickets: it’s interesting to see the juxtaposition between the luxurious items they depict and the discarded elements used in hopes of reaching those lofty goals, whether it be wealth via lottery tickets or the dream of love via romance novels. These collages and installations are intricately detailed creating impressive patterns that look more like Oriental rugs than thousands of scratch-off game cards. The artists state, “The “scratchers” are collected from gas stations, grocery stores, bars, and streets around the world. The scratch tickets represent real dreams that usually disappear just as quickly as they came.”
Update: Just came across this interesting interview with these two over here.
This weekend’s picks for Free & Cheap things to do in NYC (1/18 to 1/20) in art, music, theater, film, performance, comedy, architecture and general fun. Click through on the images above for their event page and more details, or use the links in corresponding numbered list below.
Check our previous Culture on the Cheap posts for ongoing events and check back over the weekend for possible updates. Enjoy!
Click to enlargeI’ve been so impressed by lagaleriademagdalena’s events and projects ever since anA posted her exhibit last year on facebook. The two young Madrileñas behind this urban street gallery are architects Reichel Congosto and Isa Arenas who came up with this wonderfully innovative concept two years ago while wandering through la Calle de Magdalena in Madrid and coming across a building construction site with large rectangular test color swatches painted on a wall that reminded them of art displayed in a gallery. They quickly seized the opportunity to place artworks within the rectangles and thus began lagaleriademagdalena. The gallery’s (who says a gallery has to have four walls?) pop-up exhibits foment community and interactivity. Everything that is exhibited is there for the taking; they call them “regalos urbanos” (urban gifts) and one of the main motivations behind las magdalenas’ efforts is to give the public the gift of happiness. Plus, the exhibits are smart, creative, and fun. Some created by Reichel and Isa themselves, while others are collaborations. All involve recycling of objects, some involve social activism, and all bring a smile to those who pass as well as pique their curiosity. The ephemeral exhibits usually occur on metal shutters or walls in construction sites, attaching the works magnetically, avoiding harm to the walls and allowing for easy removal and replacement by passers-by which also makes the interventions vandalism-free, allowing them to occur in the light of day, unlike most street artists. One of their exhibits made up of cut-out words from various old periodicals was titled Nevera Urbana (Urban Fridge – top photo) urging the public to play with the words like magnetic poetry on your fridge. The exhibit Tangrams (bottom three photos) offered similar play. An example of a more seriously themed exhibit would be Contra la violencia de género (Against Gender Violence) where egg cartons were used to house images of the many layers of a woman: their beauty, emotional strength, intelligence, death as well as a mirror to remind the viewer that they are the ones reflected in the box.
This month lagaleriademagdalena celebrated their two-year anniversary with their 53rd (these ladies are busy!) exhibit: #EnCinta (2nd through 6th photos). A wall of cassette cases with inserts designed by the participating artists also included their playlist with a link to it on a special lagaleriadelamusica site set up by las magdalenas and audible via spotify or grooveshark. In addition, each case had a little spool of recycled cassette tape. The intervention was a huge hit with an impressive turnout, everyone inspecting the cases and lists, with all of the urban gift cassettes disappearing rather quickly. Seems that many in-the-know have started to collect these artworks.
There are many, many more exhibits to see and read about on their website and blog. The charming magdalenas (interview video in Spanish here) and their transient gallery are definitely ones to watch. They have grasped the true meaning of “public” art. Bravo!
Click to enlargeEm pointed me to Heidi Voet’s work. The artist splits her time between Brussels and Shanghai. In her series Fruit & Vegetables, Voet took images of naked women from Chinese magazines, cropping them and visually completing the bodies with fresh vegetables that will soon age, rot, and decompose, in contrast to the unrealistic eternal beauty and youth pictured in the magazines. A humorous reality check.
Be sure to check out some of Voet’s other work on her site. Her cinderblock shoes are fun.
This This weekend’s picks for Free & Cheap things to do in NYC (1/11 to 1/13) in art, music, theater, film, performance, comedy, architecture and general fun. Click through on the images above for the corresponding event page and details, or use the links below.
Sat 1/12 The All-Day Sandy Benefit with readings by Nick Flynn, Jonathan Ames, Emma Straub and more.
Sat 1/12 & Sun 1/13 Film: Clandestine Childhood (Infancia Clandestina) Argentine film with filmmaker Q&A’s.
Check back for possible updates throughout the weekend and peruse previous Culture on the Cheap posts for ongoing events.
CollabCubed 