IN THE NEWS, STREET ART

Exit through the gift shop: a Banksy movie

This is the movie everybody is talking about right now and whoever is behind the promotion of it is just very clever.

We are at the Sundance Film Festival last month in the United States. No mention at all about the movie in the official programme but rather a very late announcement a few days before the start of the festival and there you had it: speculation and expectation leading to the sort of buzz that makes people queuing up hours before the screening.

I expect the same level of interest when Exit through the gift shop comes out here in Europe on the 5th March. Let’s not forget that Banksy’s show last year at the Bristol Museum attracted more than 300,000 visitors.

Should anyone have thought that at last Banksy’s identity would be revealed, ditch that idea, this is not what that movie is about at all. Banksy can only been seen from behind and in shadow and his voice is digitally altered. Who would give up his identity when it precisely what is making some of his artworks fetch the £200,000 + mark, come on.

“I guess my ambition was to make a film that would do for graffiti art what ‘The Karate Kid’ did for martial arts — a film that would get every schoolkid in the world picking up a spray can and having a go,” Banksy said of his first film earlier this month at Berlin Film Festival.

Beyond being some sort of graffiti ambassador, I believe Exit through The Gift Shop deals with a much more interesting issue: How do we assess or evaluate Art and eventually like it? Why Street Artwork is now selling as much in terms of value than more classical type of Art?

With actor Rhys Ifans as narrator, he allowed  Thierry Guetta to film him while ‘at work’. To make it short (a post about Thierry Guetta is coming up soon) he is the cousin of the artist Invader, a French guerrilla artist who sticks mosaics upon walls and buildings inspired by the video game Space Invaders. Guetta filmed his cousin’s artwork as well as other artists and was thus sucked into the street art world which led him to meet Banksy.

The London premiere of ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’ is happening right now as I am writing this post around Leak Street tunnel so if like me you did not get an invite, you might as well watch the trailer below

ART-PIE

BLOG, CONTEMPORARY ART

Terrestrial Series by Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada

Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada is a Cuban American contemporary artist. He as bee around since the late 90´s he has been replacing the faces of cultural icons chosen by advertisers with the faces of anonymous people to question the controls imposed on public space, the role models designated and the type of events that are guarded by the collective memory.

His spectacular interventions are created for the sake of bringing awareness to relevant social issues. His large scale time base works avoid negative impact on the environment, challenge the conformity in contemporary art and allow for a reflection that goes beyond the completion of the piece to focus in its concept, process, and the metaphor that comes forth because of the material chosen.

Here below is ine if his works – an 11 Hectare portrait in Belfast, Northern Ireland!

Jorge Rodríguez Gerada | Art-Pie

Jorge Rodríguez Gerada | Art-Pie

Jorge Rodríguez Gerada | Art-Pie

Jorge Rodríguez Gerada | Art-Pie

CONTEMPORARY ART

Forgetting Mechanisms

I recently posted the opening clip for the cult movie Paris, Texas, directed by Wim Wenders and written by Sam Shepard, on the RECURSIVE blog in response to something I read from Difference and Repetition by Gilles Deleuse,

Bledne kolo (Vicious Circle) by Jacek Malczewski

“For it is perhaps habit which manages to “draw” something new from a repetition contemplated from without. With habit, we act only on the condition that there is a little Self within us which contemplates: it is this which extracts the new – in other words, the general – from the pseudo-repetition of particular cases. Memory, then, perhaps recovers the particulars dissolved in generality…It is in repetition and by repetition that Forgetting becomes a positive power while the unconscious becomes a positive and superior unconscious (for example, forgetting as a force is an integral part of the lived experience of eternal return).” (p.8-9).

I find this compelling and very true in the sense that normal forgetting moves information into the subconscious where it ruminates and comes back out in a creative interpretation. At least, that has often been my experience with a forgetful mind. As an artist I don’t want to copy the work of others, but I can’t help absorbing the visual stimulation of other’s influence. I rely on my ‘forgetting mechanism’ to make something new – at least I always hope it does.

But in a film like Paris, Texas, the forgetting is a looping trap that neither removes pain nor finds relief. It is not a positive force, but a negative destruction. That’s why repetition is a double-edged knife, both positive and negative, and why Nietzsche’s ‘Eternal Return’ contains the unending and unbroken circle of experience, passing through pain to find salvation.

I’m disturbed by reading of huge increases in prescription pain killer use and a rise in heroine deaths in the US. What would Nietzsche and Deleuse say about that I wonder?

[Image: Bledne kolo (Vicious Circle) by Jacek Malczewski]

PREVIEW

Stik at Subway gallery

We have all seen the stick men across East London, well the man behind all this, STIK, is having a solo exhibition at the Subway gallery, venue as quirky as STIK men.

Stik’s show at the Subway Gallery will feature an exciting Live Graffiti event, an installation comprised of four large light-boxes and hosts the long awaited launch of the new high quality print edition “Single Mum” produced by Squarity. As always there will be smaller, affordable pieces on sale too at this show which is set to be a vibrant and fascinating event for all.

STIK

When –
Preview is on Wednesday 2 March 6—9pm
The show will then run until the 26 march 2011.

Where –
SUBWAY GALLERY | Kiosk 1 Joe Strummer Subway | Edgware Rd / Harrow Rd | London W2 1DX

STREET ART

P183, street artist or Bankski copycat?

P183 is his name and Moscow his playground where he has recently dropped a series of street artworks which some will tell feels very “banksy-ish”. Banksy, British artist, first began his guerilla artwork campaign in Bristol in the early 1990s.

It is hard not to agree when you see some of his works below but one piece particularly caught my eye – Seeing is believing, I actually think it is very clever and is one of the best use of the urban furniture I have seen in recent street art. It uses lamp-post to double as the arm of a giant pair of eyeglasses, with the rest of the ‘frames’ drawn in the snow. Clever

Another piece is worth mentioning too – Instigators Of Bridges. A rioter with a flare has been drawn on a flyover and fire is lit at night giving the piece another realistic dimension.

What do you reckon?

P183 - Seeing is believing
P183 - Seeing Is Believing
P183 - Instigators Of Bridges
P183 - Instigators Of Bridges
P183 - Seasonal
P183 - Seasonal
P183 - Urban Hazard
P183 - Urban Hazard
DIGITAL ART

A 97 year old, nearly blind man who works wonders with MS Paint

His name is Hal Lasko, his nickname Grandpa. What he did for living is something we will probably never see again – he was a graphic artist back when everything was done by hand. He then had to retired and his caring family had the genius idea to introduce him to the computer and especially to Microsoft Paint.

Since then Grandpa spends ten hours a day moving pixels around his computer paintings. Some would call his work pointillism, others 8-Bit art but it might be a bit of both.

Anyway, another inspiration that is Hal Lasko, The Pixel Painter. We have included below a video interview of the artist plus a few examples of his works.

Hal Lasko | Art-Pie

Hal Lasko | Art-Pie

Hal Lasko | Art-Pie

STREET ART ENCOUNTERS