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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Logan Hicks Logan Hicks, Shepard Fairey, Axel Void, and other artists take part in a look at the modern history of urban art in an exhibit currently running at the Thomas Center Galleries in Gainesville, Fla. “UNCONTAINABLE: Urban Art from Vandalism to Movement,” created with the National Institute of Urban Art, is a survey with 25 globally known artists. And the collection of work offers insight into the varied types of urban art created in every corner.
Robert Proch is a muralist, painter, and animator who lives and works in Poznan, Poland. His dynamic creations, featuring human figures and city landscapes, constantly push the boundaries of what we define as "street art" and "fine art" - whether they're adorning the side of a building or displayed in a more traditional gallery setting. Proch is influenced by both genres, pulling from these two worlds to produce his unique, expressive pieces.
The "Colorado crush" is a well known name among graffiti festivals, celebrating Denver’s vibrant art scene time and time again. Now in its sixth year, a new crop of incredible installations have hit the Denver area. Among them is Max Kauffman’s, in which the artist covered an entire house. "My work for the last few years has been going deeper and deeper into an architectural realm, inspired by concepts of house versus home, of sanctuary, of solace from the chaos of the world around us."
Animated fun houses have been a staple in Dabs Myla's quirky world of characters. Originally hailing from Australia, the Los Angeles duo frequently features playful installations as a part of their exhibits. Most recently, the world got to see their set design chops in action when they designed a massive backdrop for the 2015 MTV Movie Awards. One month later, Modernica Factory in Los Angeles came knocking on their door. The company is well known on the west coast for its locally made mid-century inspired home furnishings. Nearly six months have gone by since their first meeting, and today Modernica and Dabs Myla will debut what the couple calls their "dream art-house".
Originally hailing from Australia, now based in Los Angeles, David "Meggs" Hooke creates explosive figurative works and murals using bright colors and raw textures. For his upcoming solo at Beyond Eden Art Fair in Los Angeles, Meggs looked beyond his usual comic book and mythological influences and turned to his natural environment. Titled "Paving Paradise", his exhibit looks at the duality of our relationship between nature and that which is man-made. "It questions our effect on the planet's rapidly diminishing natural resources, and where our values lie as living beings on this planet," he told Hi-Fructose in a recent studio visit.
Berlin-based Japanese artist Twoone has been pushing his style further in recent months. As we saw in our studio visit with him, and again last month, he continues to expand on his hyper colored palette and materials, bringing his works to life as fluorescent light boxes. Opening on October 8th, Twoone will exhibit a new series at AvantGarden Gallery in Milan, Italy.
The work of Oakland based painter and street artist Allison Torneros, better known as Hueman, looks spontaneous, but to her, it is a science; a perfectly calculated blend of opposing elements. "I am constantly seeking balance between the beautiful and the grotesque, the abstract and the figurative, and that golden moment between sleep and awake," she says. Hueman's art has become instantly recognizable for its equally geometric and ethereal air, broken up as if seen through a colorful prism. Hueman elaborates on the ethereal aspects of her work with her latest exhibit "Just One Moment", which debuted over the weekend at Mirus Gallery in San Francisco.
Yesterday, we shared our photos from Norway's contemporary street and urban art festival, Nuart Festival. Today, we bring you our highlights from the rest of the event. After days of painting murals, creating installations and public interventions, debates, lectures, talks and workshops, Nuart festival closed their biggest event to date. On September 5th, the festival opened their coinciding indoor exhibition, "Nuart Plus", inside an old brewery building known as "tunnels".
For fifteen years, the first week of September in Norway has been reserved for Nuart festival. This year's opened on September 3rd with a large group show titled "OutsidersIN". The show features works by past, present and future Nuart artists, which includes leading names in the urban art movement. Built around the idea of 'situationism', DIY-culture and play, Nuart hosted debates, seminars, lectures, movie projections and on-site creation of artwork. Representing different techniques and subjects, this year's lineup works with both traditional and unconventional mediums like trash, cement, and posters.
French based artist duo Ella & Pitr, first featured on our Tumblr, create largescale aerial murals of children's book-inspired characters. Unless you have a birds eye view, it's difficult to appreciate the scope of the majority of their works, which can be found on rooftops, airplane runways, and even huge grassy fields. Their latest mural is not only their largest, it is also the largest outdoor mural in the world to date at 226,040 square feet.
Philadelphia based artist Nosego paints colorful and emotive images of animals inspired by the idea that we are all connected to our surroundings. We recently featured his exhibition of multimedia paintings "Along Infinite River", here on the blog, where Nosego portrays wild animals morphing into mystical environments. For his latest mural titled "Little Moment", Nosego continues to infuse his work with celestial elements and bright colors, but he also wanted to do something a little "different".
When we visited Berlin-based Japanese artist Twoone in his studio last month, he shared explorative new works featuring animals. We got a chance to catch up with him again in Berlin last week, where he was hard at work on a new mural in the Urban Spree complex. Named after the nearby Spree river, the complex features rotating urban art by emerging and well known international artists. Sadly, it is rumored to become the construction site of a new highway, making Twoone's large scale mural covering the main building's facade particularly significant.
English graffiti artist Banksy has just revealed to the world his plans for his upcoming exhibition in a seaside resort town of Somerset, England. Opening August 22nd, "The Dismaland Show" is located inside an original full-scale and particularly dismal theme park called "Dismaland: Bemusement Park". The artist has a personal connection to the abandoned site, which previously housed a facility where he took swimming lessons as a kid. Now it is what Banksy calls a "family park that is unsuitable for children" - and he has been quick to add that it is not street art.
Italian street artist Agostino Iacurci recently teamed up with All City Canvas to support the children of Camp Best Friends summer program in Atlanta. In a workshop hosted by Iacurci, the children created imaginary portraits that were later put together to compose a large 150ft mural in the Ben Hill neighborhood. Titled "Wallter", their collective piece took the artist almost nine days to complete.
Cannon Dill (previously featured here) recently completed his largest mural to date in Oakland, California. The mural is a part of the Artist Initiative Project that features murals by local artists, curated by bay area gallery Athen B. Gallery and VSCO. Dill's is located on the side of an office that provides services to people renting and buying homes, which inspired him to create a sense of community.
The Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga (aka CAC Málaga) has increasingly included urban art in its program, starting with projects in the streets. In 2014, the museum invited D*Face and Shepard Fairey to paint two massive side by side murals. The pair returned to CAC Málaga on June 26th to present two adjoining exhibitions. Notably, D*Face's "Wasted Youth" marks his first major solo museum debut in Spain. Growing up, the British artist felt stifled by the curriculum set forth by his parents and schooling, which considered anything outside the norm to be a waste of his youth. 15 years into his career, the artist looks backs with this exhibition as if to proclaim the value of following your passions.
Brooklyn based artist Ray Bartkus has toyed with the idea of reflections in his paintings, drawings and street art work, but not quite like this. When he was invited to paint a building along Šešupė River in Marijampole, Lithuania, the idea to paint it upside down was undeniable. "I never did anything with the reflection in the river before, but since the building was next to it, it was kind of an obvious thing to consider," he says.
In recent years, Mexico City has played host to some of the most progressive urban artists in the world. Many of them have come together in Celeya Brothers' anniversary exhibition, "Cuatro Igual A Uno": 3TTMan, Christiaan Conradie, Franco Fasoli aka JAZ, Fusca, Augustine Kofie, Lesuperdemon, Sten & Lex, Sanez, Smithe and Jorge Tellaeche. The group represents not only the freshman artists to show with the gallery, but also the city's international draw, hailing from the United States, South Africa, to Argentina. Take a look at more photos from the exhibition after the jump.
Faith, God, Science, Belief, Doubt... LA artist duo Cyrcle tests these every day philosophies in their glow-in-the-dark exhibition, "NOTHING EXISTS!". The title points to their theme, Solipsism, a theory that asserts that nothing exists but an individual’s consciousness. It's a grand concept tackled by concise forms, shapes and a largely monochromatic color palette. With hints of glowing green, their acrylic paintings on wood and relief sculptures feature deceivingly simplistic, spacey imagery. We recently got a behind the scenes look as they prepared for the exhibit, now on view at Station16 Gallery in Montreal.
On June 20th, Howard Griffin Gallery in Los Angeles introduced "Journey Galactiko," a debut show by Broken Fingaz in the United States. For this show, the Isreali artists created a site-specific installation inside the gallery space, in form of a large 150 cubic meter temple. This type of monolith structure, which represents the show's general theme, was inspired by several months of traveling and working across India, along with their vision of modern Western society. With this show, the artists pushed their limitations by constructing a large sculpture using only wood and found materials and presenting a new kind of work.
Twoone, featured here, is a multidisciplinary Japanese artist currently living and working in Berlin perhaps most recognized for his animal portraits. His latest works, which he will debut in an open studio event, explore a range of new themes like psychology, anthropology, and the structure of nature, all inspired by his memories. We got to visit his studio ahead of the crowd last week, where we went behind the scenes of his process. At the moment, Twoone is experimenting with a new material - acrylic pieces that are displayed in a light box format. See more after the jump.
After painting mostly around his homeland and some cities in Europe, Barcelona-based artist Pejac (covered here) recently took off on a tour around the Far East. During his trip, he stopped in Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo, leaving his mark in every city. From introducing new images and concepts to recreating some familiar ones, Pejac demonstrates his ability to work in different environments or mediums. Covering various subjects, mostly referring to the places he's visiting, the new works Pejac has created range from effective window-drawings to sculptural pieces.
"Painting doesn't follow the rules of architectural space; it has a totally different set of rules. Why should it then behave exactly according to those rules?" This is the question that German artist Katharina Grosse asks herself as she creates her colorful explosions over earth, objects and canvas. Her works, previously covered here, are raw and produced quickly with little else besides the artist's spray gun. The way that Grosse arranges colors has been recently studied in Gagosian Gallery of London's massive survey of Spray Art. Whether she is creating an outdoor installation or painting on canvas, all of her pieces are site specific, as in her latest exhibition, "The Smoking Kid," which closed over the weekend at König Gallerie in Berlin.
Miami based street artist Douglas "Hoxxoh" Hoekzema fills his murals with a burst of color and energy using abstract design. While they look like the work of a computer generated graphic, his designs are drawn freely by hand. As if subject to gravity’s pull, geometric circles and triangles radiate from their centers until they take more organic shapes. In his paintings, Hoxxoh often interrupts the design’s infinite nature as if to remind us of its flat dimension. Another way of looking at this interruption is like the stopping of time. Hoxxoh’s main concept, “Time Waits for No Man,” refers to his fascination with the properties of time, both its beauty and society’s obsession with keeping track of it.
We all have a place we want to be, whether that place is a city we want to visit or something we want to achieve in our lives. This is the inspiration behind Los Angeles based artist Bumblebeelovesyou's upcoming exhibition. Opening on June 20th at Thinkspace Gallery, "#WhereWeBeelong" represents this shared dream in images of children wearing bee-striped shirts. When we visited Bumblebee at his Culver City studio, he shared, "I feel that the children in the paintings are exactly where they belong at that particular moment in their childhood which we all can relate to."
Joram Roukes' collage-like oil paintings, with their floating figures and colorful washes, appear dreamy, but his greatest inspiration has always been based in reality. In "The Great Beyond," his new solo exhibition currently on view at Stolenspace Gallery in London, he sets out to escape it. Roukes has recently experienced a sort of escape himself, when he relocated from the Netherlands to Los Angeles. This time last year, he held his first show as an Angeleno, "Paramnesia" (covered here), which summed up that experience visually. Now with a wider sense of exploration, Roukes continues to draw upon his life experiences.
French artist JR has just completed a new installment of his "Wrinkles of the City" project in Istanbul. He first began the series (covered here) in 2008, as an effort to paint a portrait of urbanization around the world. Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey, is the economic and cultural center of the country. With a population of 14.4 million people, it is also the largest urban agglomeration in Europe - more than 60% of people living there were born out of the city. As an answer to the growing lack of space, buildings are being demolished to make room for the construction of new neighborhoods. JR spent two weeks on top of its roofs and in its streets, installing large scale images of its elder generation, who have shaped and been affected by Istanbul's population shift.
Mural artist and painter Jet Martinez (covered here) is using his art to carry on an ancient form of visual inspiration while providing a contemporary spin on folk art motifs. For Martinez, each painting is an opportunity to preserve heritage as well as build our living community through creativity and public interactions. Originally from Tuxpan, Veracruz, Mexico, Martinez attended the San Francisco Art Institute to pursue painting and printmaking. In his current body of work, the artist focuses on a technique of painting floral works inspired by Michoacán lacquered plates – objects crafted by generations of Mexican artisans that has made up a primary industry in the area for generations.
Chicago artist Pose recently rocked an installation in Detroit’s Belt, an alley in the city’s downtown that has been converted into an outdoor art exhibition space, curated by Library Street Collective. Already filled with art from some of the world’s leading street and contemporary artists, Pose has added to the madness with his signature collage of vibrant colors and cartoony textures. See more photos after the jump, courtesy Library Street Collective.
German artists Jasmin Siddiqui and Falk Lehmann, aka "Herakut," (covered here) have traveled all over the world to paint murals and exhibit their drippy, figurative paintings. Through recent social projects, they've shared experiences which have provided the inspiration for their current exhibition, "Displaced Thoughts". On view at the studio and work space of Urban Nation, the exhibition paints a picture of "displaced" individuals due to persecution, conflict, and human rights violations. Herakut sheds a light on these people and the organizations designed to help them in the Middle East, Europe and Africa with new paintings, photographs and installations.