Guns on the streets in Miami…

Artistic comrades-in-arms and emissaries of Franco-American relations SHEPARD FAIREY & WK INTERACT were literally some of the busiest artists on the streets in Miami last week at ART BASEL. While both were represented by galleries at several fairs, the pair also managed to get extremely busy in the streets, posting up large-scale pieces throughout the Wynwood district with Shepard’s installations featuring political imagery from his recent Shooting Gallery SF show, while Frenchman WK illustrated a monochromatic futuristic-cops-and robbers scenario gone wrong. HAVE A LOOK:

Additional photos by Michelle Brecher and Manuel Peralta…

SHEPARD FAIREY:

Shepard chills with moneyman gallerist Jonathan Levine…

I was just down in Miami for Art Basel and it was a blast. I took a sturdy crew including Z Bomit, Dan Flores, and Nic Bowers to help handle bis. We bombed Miami for three nights and also did an amazing legal wall coordinated by Logan Hicks and Darren “Books” for the PRIMARY FLIGHT project. The hilarious thing is that right when we started the mural a cop pulled up and asked what we were doing. We told him the spot was a legal wall and he said “cool, I’ll hang out and make sure no one bothers you guys”. The cop even grabbed a crow bar out of the trunk and helped us pry off an old sign that was in the way on the wall. We were worried he would notice the connection to all the images we put up in the city, but he either didn’t, or didn’t care. When it was getting dark, the cop even turned his lights on the wall. The whole surreal incident was the real version of a board series Real Skateboards did in the 90’s called the “Real Fantasy Series” which had graphics of cops bucketing out swimming pools to drain them for skating… hilarious.  These photos are less than half the spots we did. Obey had a party with Spread Magazine and Supertouch Art  at the Shore Club and I got to spin records with my favorite DJ, Z-Trip who killed it as usual. A ton of great people and old friends came through the party. Russell “Rush” Simmons even rolled through toward the end. Thanks to Levi’s, Obey Clothing, Bombay Sapphire, and Lucky Beer for supporting the party. Of course the art fairs were cool too. Jonathan Levine did an awesome job with my work in his booth at Scope. I saw a lot of great art at Scope, Basel, and Pulse, but there was creativity on the streets and everywhere else. Basel is pretty intense and I’d recommend checking it out. —Shepard

WK INTERACT:

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 9:58 am and is filed under Art & Commerce, Art Basel, Graffiti, News, Shepard Fairey, Street Art, art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.