Continuing with the shoe theme (see previous post) this sculpture titled Shoe Christ: Compulsion to Refuse Something that Has Been Used is made by Czech artist Petr Motycka using approximately 1444 used shoes and sneakers. Measuring more than 6 meters high and weighing over 500kg, Shoe Christ was originally created for a public space on Prague’s riverside (see bottom photo) where it was shown last year. More recently, it was modified and displayed at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art where it has been since the end of last January.
Category Archives: Street Art
Ever: Argentine Street Artist
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Ever, née Nicolás Romero, is an Argentinean street artist who began painting letter-based graffiti in the streets of Buenos Aires in the 1990s. Since then, his art has evolved into more portrait-based murals. He attributes the shift to a figurative style, in part, on his exposure to, and the influence of, Gustav Klimt, Francis Bacon and Van Gogh.
In Ever’s most recent work, he combines aerosol and brush creating an interesting contrast between the realistic portraits and the colorful, abstract ‘thought clouds’ or sneak-peek-into-the-souls of his subjects (I love those clouds!). His preference is to paint ordinary people (clearly, Mao being an exception), sometimes finding photos on the internet or picking an interesting face out on the street. In some cases, he paints his brother.
You can see more of Ever’s work on his flickr and an interview with him here.
via graffitimundo
Nuria Mora: 3D Paper Sculpture Street Art
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Spanish street artist Nuria Mora (previous post) who we know more for her colorful large-scale abstract murals, also creates 3D street art. In the past several months Mora has been taking over public ad spaces (lit marquee-style ad boxes; do those have a name?) and inserting her origami paper sculptures that can be seen from both sides – as well as highlighted by light at night – on main thoroughfares in Madrid. I like everything about these: the idea of replacing ads with art; the origami pieces themselves; the way she blocks out the glass to create a window specific to her piece; and the happy quality of it all.
Though a different anti-ad street art approach, there is some connection to Graffiti Research Lab’s 2007 video screen intervention in NYC. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you check it out here.
But getting back to Nuria Mora, visit her site for much more of her lovely work.
Photos: Javier Montero; Miriam Moreno, Nuria Mora; and Escrito en la Pared.
Luzinterruptus: Walking in the Rain
The anonymous Spanish art collective Luzinterruptus like to use light as a raw material and the dark as their canvas to carry out urban interventions in public spaces and draw attention to problems in the city that often go unnoticed by people as well as the authorities.
Their most recent intervention, Walking in the Rain, took place on October 26th, the first day of rain after a completely dry summer in Madrid. In celebration of the rain and, thus, cleaner more breathable air, Luzinterruptus placed 50 illuminated rainboots in Parque del Oeste for a 10-hour period as encouragement to others to put on their own boots and walk happily through the rain.
You may also want to take a look at their two other recent interventions: Under Nuclear Threat and Public Art that you Fancy Touching.
Sam3: More Street Art from Spain
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Known for his massive scale silhouettes on city walls, Spanish street artist Sam3 has works in cities from Madrid to Lisbon, Cologne to Buenos Aires and even San Francisco, to name a few. I especially love the inverted silhouettes — I can’t believe there isn’t more of that in other street artists’ work. Also, the way he integrates the building façade in many of these (see third photo from top) is so clever and effective.
You can see more of Sam3’s work on his site, blog, and this flickr pool.
Leon Keer: Lego Army Chalk Street Art
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This has been making the rounds on facebook but I just came upon a whole set of images from the artist. The amazing Lego Army 3-D chalk drawing is by Dutch artist Leon Keer and the artist collective Planet Street Painting created for the Sarasota 2011 Chalk Festival in Florida. The drawing, based on the famous terracotta sculpture army of Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, measures 30 x 40 feet and is drawn in such a way to fool the eye with depth and perception.
Apparently, there is a link between an 8-foot-tall Lego man that washed up overnight on October 25th at Siesta Key beach and Leon Keer’s drawing. Clever publicity stunt or coincidence? Either way, a very impressive feat.
Photos: Leon Keer’s flickr and Herald Tribune
Shida: Street Art in Australia
Shida is an Australian street artist whose work can be found in the back street alleys of Brisbane. His characters are developed from continuous and repetitive strokes, with a mechanical, sometimes robotic, feel to them and other times reptilian, but often with warmth in their expression, or at least I read it like that.
You can see more of Shida’s work in this flickr photostream and here.
The Tidy Street Project
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I went to see the new documentary Urbanized—the third film in Gary Hustwit’s trilogy starting with Helvetica and followed by Objectified—which looks at city planning issues and stresses the importance of intelligent urban design for the immediate future when 75% of the population is estimated to inhabit cities by 2050. It’s a great film and I highly recommend it. There’s a lot more that could be said about the film, but instead I wanted to share a project that was featured and relates more to art, design, and typography: The Tidy Street Project.
During March and April 2011, participating households on Tidy Street, in Brighton, UK, recorded their electricity consumption. Each day the participants’ electricity usage over the previous 24 hours was marked; and each week participants could choose to add another comparison line that showed how their electricity consumption compared to another region in the UK or even a different country. The residents, in collaboration with the local graffiti artist Snub, produced an engaging street infographic that stimulated the street and passersby to reflect on their electricity use. In Urbanized, several of the participants are interviewed as well as the project creator, Jon Bird from Open University. It was interesting to see the enthusiasm in the project and how the tenants were made aware of which appliances used the most electricity as well as a general awareness on how to lower their consumption, resulting in a 15% usage reduction.
Definitely a fun way to get people involved and interested.
The Tidy Street Project is part of CHANGE, an EPSRC funded research collaboration between The Open University, Goldsmiths, Sussex University and Nottingham University.
Photos courtesy of The Tidy Street Project, Sare, thelastretort’s flickr, Kevan’s flickr, and boxman’s flickr.
Alfabeto Graffiti: Graffiti Alphabet
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Attention type lovers and street art aficionados: this may be just the book for you. Claudia Walde, author of Alfabeto Graffiti, spent over two years collecting alphabets by 154 street artists from 30 countries. The brief given to each artist was to “design all 26 letters of the Latin alphabet within the limits of a single page of the book.” The result: Alfabeto Graffiti.
Though I haven’t seen the actual book, the spreads on the publisher’s page look like the perfect combination of street art photos and fun (complementing) typography.
via Editoral Gustavo Gil and available here. 319 pages with text in Spanish.
Recent Buenos Aires Street Art
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A smattering of street art recently spotted on the streets of Buenos Aires.
From top to bottom: Top three images from Jaz in super-economical asphalt paint. Next three images from MPC crocodiles around BA; Mural by Bixo; Wall mural by Malegria; Bottom mural by Ene Ene; Che with mate artist unidentified.
via graffitimundo and buenos aires street art
Aaron De La Cruz
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Illustrator, street artist, graffiti artist, designer Aaron De La Cruz started drawing on everything, including the walls of his bedroom, from a very young age. Much of his street art appears in California, from L.A. to San Francisco. His work, “though minimal and direct at first, tends to overcome barriers of separation and freely steps in and out of the realms of design, graffiti, and illustration.”
Next Saturday, October 15th, 2011, De La Cruz will be showing past, present, and future work at his exhibit Long Walk Home at Loft in Space in Honolulu. Included in the exhibit will be a room created to look like his childhood bedroom… the one where he drew on the walls.
via Arktip
Jan van der Ploeg: Wall Paintings
Dutch artist Jan van der Ploeg has been painting walls and large panels for a couple of decades. His colorful and precise geometric designs are mostly simple forms sometimes in black and white, other times in bright contrasting colors, but always producing a dramatic effect, in my opinion. Painted in multiple layers of acrylic to create a smooth, untextured finish, reinforces the notion that the color has been reduced to a mere surface.
Jan van der Ploeg is also a co-founder of PS Projects, an artist-run exhibition space in Amsterdam.
Photos courtesy of the artist, CCNOA, West and Minus Space.
Bring to Light/Nuit Blanche 2011: Follow-up
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Last night, a night bookended by heavy rain showers here in NYC, fortunately offered a 2- to 3-hour precipitation-free window. Just enough time to ferry on over to Greenpoint and catch the Bring to Light Festival.
Though the ferry was quite empty, I was happy to see that the crowds obviously made it over by other means of transportation. It was one of those really nice NYC events, where everyone seemed so happy in sharing such a fun and unique experience. The brick and corrugated metal façades of the industrial warehouses on the Brooklyn waterfront made for the perfect backdrop and canvases for the various video projections and colorful light installations. There were over 50 works displayed, so naturally I can’t go over all of them here, and some I am not sure of the names or artists, but some of the highlights are pictured above starting with, possibly my favorite, a very Buñuelesque image:
Marcus Zotes-Lopez’s CCTV/Creative Control TV; a projection of an eye on the bottom of a water tower looking over the crowds.
Devan Simunovich & Olek, Suffolk Deluxe Electric Bicycle.
Not sure of this but possibly Colin Snapp, Sylvania.
Jason Peters, Structural Light.
BOB, Columbia Architecture Students, inflatable structure (left and right pics, outside and in).
Glowing pedestrians walking around in self-made light costumes.
Not sure about the colored bulbs.
Camilled Scherrer, In the Woods, interactive projection converting people’s shadows into creatures.
Chakaia Booker, Shadows, silhouettes on installation.
Others include a bench with light emanating from the slats and a person lying down within (à la Vito Acconci): projections of hands morphing into latex gloves; a glowing lung-like object that breathed; and Raphaele Shirley’s Light Cloud on a Bender, a glowing mist sculpture.
It was all very bright, colorful, and animated. You can watch the short video clips below for a better sense of the atmosphere. Next year, I’ll at least hang a glow stick around my neck before heading over.
Top photo courtesy the artist, Marcus Zotes-Lopez. Second photo from Alix’s flickr. All other photos taken by collabcubed.
Bring to Light Festival
If you’re in NYC, you might want to check out the Bring to Light Festival tonight in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Taking place simultaneously with “nuit blanche” events in other cities around the world, the festival will showcase site-specific installations of light, sound, performance and projection art from emerging, as well as established, artists re-imagining public space. The streets and waterfront of Greenpoint will be transformed.
Sounds like something that shouldn’t be missed.
The ferry schedule will be extended till midnight from East 34th St. Pier in Manhattan and N. 7th St in Williamsburg. You can see more on how to get there here. And more about the festival and artists here.
It all starts in 6 hours and 5 minutes…. 4 minutes…
via Flavorpill and NPR
Stéphane Malka: Urban Study Installations
This is where the line between art and architecture blurs. French architect Stéphane Malka started as a graffiti artist in his younger life. Through that experience Malka discovered the city and its untapped potential. He has a strong taste for ‘soft’ resistance and lives in continuous quest for abandoned spaces that offer the possibility for “creating new urban vitality.”
Consequently, Stephane Malka has amassed an impressive body of work, from installations and other completed projects, to elaborate studies and proposals for urban projects, to impressive competition entries. The similar theme throughout his work includes reuse and reappropriation of materials; recycling the existing without additional processing.
Above are his most recent projects.
From top to bottom: Boombox Space Invader, Moscow; Boombox-luz, Barcelona (with light projections); Ame-Lot On the Blind Walls, Paris (a study on housing and avoidance of deconstruction but rather superimposing interventions onto built buildings.); The Temple of Fury for NYC, a study for an installation made of Reebok Fury Insta-Pumps. A criticism of today’s excessive consumption and desire over need.
via archdaily
Suso33: Two-handed Street Art
Spanish graffiti and street artist Suso33 is best known for his scribbled silhouettes and large expressive faces that adorn numerous walls throughout Spain and Europe. He uses a unique style of drawing with both hands which can be seen in his video Crash! Even his tag is created with two hands.
You can see more of Suso33’s street art on his site and on flickr.
Nada Sehnaoui: Bringing Order to Chaos
Beirut-based artist Nada Sehnaoui creates installations that deal with issues of war, history and identity. In her installation Haven’t 15 Years of Hiding in the Toilets Been Enough?, Sehnaoui installed 600 toilets in downtown Beirut in memory of the 15-year long Lebanese war, a time when people used to hide from bombs and shrapnel in the bathrooms. She invited residents of the city to sit on the toilets, rest their feet and contemplate what had taken place.
In This Too Shall Pass (a prayer), Sehnaoui positions a large number of rolling pins in a circle, almost as if holding hands and united in prayer against the constant threat of war. And in Plastic Memory Containers, Nada Sehnaoui, surprised by the strong connection people felt with their 6000-year old history yet complete alienation from the more recent history of the civil war, she filled 100 plastic buckets with 3000 crumpled up pieces of paper with the question “How meaningful is it to have a 6000-year old history when we have no memory of our recent past?”
via moversnshakers
Tec: Buenos Aires Street Art
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Tec started painting the streets of Buenos Aires in the 1990s. Known for his image of a fish cut in half as his tag, Tec was interested more in drawing iconic images that were bright in color instead of letter-based graffiti. He is a founding member of the art/design/music collective FASE and, along with DOMA art collective, were the force behind the graphic design influenced form of street art of bright colors and positive nature that largely defined street art in Buenos Aires in the years following the economic crash of 2001.
Tec continues to paint on urban walls.
You can see more of his work at his site and on his flickr photostream.
via graffitimundo
CollabCubed 