Have a look at the Paris project in detail HERE…

BANKSY IN “THE WORLD’S FIRST STREET-ART DISASTER MOVIE”
By Elanor Mills | SUNDAY TIMES, February 28, 2010
He’s the most successful graffitist ever, the elusive outsider who has become our unlikeliest national treasure. Now we are about to glimpse him in ‘the world’s first street-art disaster movie’

Whether it is snogging policemen, a House of Commons full of chimpanzees, Princess Diana on a £10 note, or I Don’t Believe in Global Warming half-submerged in a canal, a Banksy makes you smile, but it also forces you to take a second look, to think a little deeper.
It’s funny how this anonymous graffiti artist evokes such strong affection in people, particularly those who don’t usually reckon that art has much to say to them.

“Banksy, love ’im,” says a mate who wouldn’t be seen dead at Tate Modern. Another friend, who met him at a crusty travellers’ party in Bristol, says: “He’s very quiet, sweet though, very Bristol, scruffy and funny, but you’d never know if you didn’t know, if you know what I mean.”

So why does everyone have a favourite Banksy? Perhaps because he catches us unawares, shows us a clever take on our culture from a topsy-turvy angle on a scruffy bit of wall, or bridge, or hoarding we’ve looked at a million times but never noticed before.

My commute takes me through Shoreditch and Hoxton in east London, and I’ve learnt where to look for them. Recently he has been painting in Camden Town, north London, where he has had a running spat with a fellow graffiti artist called Robbo. On a freezing day I went down to have a peek. Past the lock, along a grotty towpath in the snow, under a most insalubrious bridge, and there on a bit of concrete on the far side of the muddy canal is a stencil of a workman painting a wall. The workman was added by Banksy to the original Robbo tag. Since then, a vengeful Robbo has revisited the work to daub “King Robbo” in giant silver letters over it.

Back towards Regent’s Park there is a charming stencil of a little boy fishing in the canal, which now bears the aggressive slogan “Did you think it was over? Team Robbo”, and the words “street cred” where the fish should be, implying that Banksy has lost his. Click HERE to continue reading at the SUNDAY TIMES…

NASTY NECK FACE is back in town and Hollywood swingin’ over at BARRACUDA…

Billboard by Kerry Tribe

If you live in Los Angeles, you’re well aware of the increasing visual pollution caused by the endless propagation of billboards and supergraphics vying for every open inch of Southland skyline. A welcome break to the aesthetic ad-driven monotony comes in the form of the “HOW MANY BILLBOARDS” project, presented by the MAK CENTER, featuring the artwork of 20+ artists plastered (legally) on billboards at key locations in and around the Hollywood area. While the artist roster doesn’t exactly blow our minds or, likely, the minds of many young people in the area(WTF, no Skullphone, Ron English, Allison Schulnik, Barry McGee, Barbra Kruger, Raymond Pettibon, Catherine Opie, or Chaz Bojorquez?!), the project itself is a great follow-up to the precedent-setting and more visually stunning ARTBOARD FESTIVAL that took place in LA in 1977 and featured artists like Rick Griffin and Ed Ruscha, a project that has been kept alive in recent years by UNDFTD who have maintained their eye-popping art billboard for several years now.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Kimberli Meyer

The philosophical proposition of the exhibition is simple: art should occupy a visible position in the cacophony of mediated images in the city, and it should do so without merely adding to the visual noise. How Many Billboards? Art In Stead proposes that art periodically displace advertisement in the urban environment.

Billboards are a dominant feature of the landscape in Los Angeles. Thousands line the city’s thoroughfares, delivering high-end commercial messages to a repeat audience. Given outdoor advertising’s strong presence in public space, it seems reasonable and exciting to set up the possibility for art to be present in this field. The sudden existence of artistic speech mixed in with commercial speech provides a refreshing change of pace. Commercial messaging tells you to buy; artistic messaging encourages you to look and to think.

Time and space allotted for artworks in commercial space is limited, and the sea of signs is vast. How can a billboard exhibition make a strong enough impact? Most importantly, the art cannot be passive. It must take a strategic approach, be critically oriented, and explore the billboard as a site.

Artistically and culturally, Los Angeles is an aggregate of dynamic histories. Experimental architecture has been active here since the early twentieth century, radical art since the 1950s. An acute awareness of urban space has always influenced both avant-garde architectural and art practices in Los Angeles. Southern California’s overlaps and interweaves of architectural adventurism, pop, and Conceptual Art have generated rich environments for artistic production and yielded influential bodies of art. My co-curators and I felt that these So-Cal syntheses are relevant for the dynamics of pop-public space in Los Angeles today.

It’s a win-win situation.

Los Angeles public space begs for smart art to break up the monotony of everyday media fare, and the billboard provides a fertile position for artists who work critically and site-responsively to test their ideas in urban media space. Contemporary art gains a momentarily broad audience, and city dwellers are extended a daily invitation to reflect and contemplate. Channels are opened for experimentation, innovation, and cultural exchange.

The MAK Center, the project partners, and I invite you to explore, enjoy, and tell us what you think.

*Read more about the project HERE…

Billboard by Yvonne Rainer

Billboard by David Lamelas

Billboard by Kenneth Anger

The NEW YORK TIMES has just run a great piece on ST bro CRASH and his retrospective show, “Crash: From the 4 Train to Fenders” on view at FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY through February 28 (don’t miss it!):

TIPS FROM A MAESTRO OF THE SPRAY CAN
By Jan Ellel Spiegel | NYTimes, February 18, 2010

JASMINE JOHNSON is sprawled on the floor of the Thomas J. Walsh Gallery at Fairfield University here, her red high-tops in the air as she intently sketches on a two-foot-square sky blue canvas.

Nathaniel Jefferson is on a nearby bench, equally intent as he mulls the possibilities of a green canvas. Israel Medina, who goes by Tony, is outside in the cold, energetically spraying paint to transform a pink canvas propped against a tree.

“The wheels are turning,” says the artist John Matos, surveying the work.

These three art students from Bridgeport high schools will be joined by two schoolmates the following day as they work on a project designed by Mr. Matos, who goes by the name Crash (as a student he crashed his high school’s computer).

A child of South Bronx housing projects, Mr. Matos was younger than these teenagers when he began honing his art in the 1970s by breaking into a subway yard at night and spray painting the cars for hours in the dark and cold. Click HERE to continue reading at NYTimes…

Friday was a big nite in the Midwest when SHEPARD FAIREY’s Ohio installment of his traveling retrospective “Supply & Demand” opened at the CINCINNATI CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER and shattered the institution’s all-time attendance record. Turning out in droves, fans streamed in from throughout the region to get a glimpse of over 250 pieces of Fairey’s artwork from all stages in his career, from the outset of the Andre the Giant campaign up to Obama’s Hope poster artwork, along with some new, site-specific paste-ups (and seven new street-legal murals throughout town). Ol Shep capped off the night (only a week after his 40th birthday) with a hardcore Serrato session that made the locals feel like they were in LA for one nite (or at least a couple hours anyway). HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »

Parisian art fans need to hit up ADDICT GALERIE before March 4th to catch sight of graffiti/street art legend CRASH’s current show, “Tin Machine.” Born in the Bronx1961, John “CRASH” Matos is one of the pioneers of graffiti writing who started developing his distinctive style on the trains of New York at the age of 13. Alongside his contemporaries like Futura, Zephyr, Lee, and Lady Pink, CRASH successfully transitioned from walls and trains to the fine art world in the ‘80s with exhibits at Sidney Janis Gallery and Real Art Ways, next to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. His fine art career has continued uninterrupted with the artist breaking his graphic colorblocked style into more free-form abstract compositions in recent years, a development readily visible in this Paris show which features heavily fragmented chunks of his trademark imagery. HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »