We recently had the chance to get ourselves to Oslo and were eager to discover the street art scene the city could offer and came across the wonderful pieces below.
Masterpieces revisited by FatCat
Revisited famous paintings by Fat Cat who thinks that these iconic paintings would be better off with the appearance of a big ginger cat. Well some are defo better. See by yourself.
Venus by Velazquez
Great Wave of Kanagawa by Hosukai
Musical Angel by Rosso Fiorentino
Danae by Rembrandt
Mona Lisa by Leonardo De Vinci
The Arrow Above: Portrait of a Street Art Icon
Born in California, Arrow is a world-renowned street artist who has kept his identity a secret. His name was created when he began painting the word ‘Above’ on freight trains as a teenager.
He later shifted to drawing arrows pointing above, which became his trademark.Much of his work is made with these abstract shapes, though he’s also known for art with a social conscience.
Perhaps most controversially, in October 2011 he created a city block-long text mural in Miami which read ‘give a wall street banker enough rope and he will hang himself‘. Above it he suspended an effigy of banker being hanged. He hoped the art would draw further attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement shaking US politics at the time.
In 2012 he visited Spain, a nation in the throes of the Eurozone crisis- when 24% of the population were unemployed. He created a stencil piece showing a queue of people waiting outside an unemployment office along with text announcing the figure, the highest unemployment rate in the world. At the time Spain’s unemployment rate for under-25s was 53%.
In South Africa he created a giant mural to raise awareness about the illegal blood diamond trade. In his very own ‘jewel heist’, he tricked one of the world’s largest jewel exporters into allowing him to paint on the side of one of their buildings. His mural read ‘Diamonds are a woman’s best friend and a man’s worst enemy’. He hadn’t informed the company about the second half of this sentence.
In 2014 he was commissioned by Redbull to design and decorate obstacles for their professional fixed gear BMX competition Ride+Style in San Francisco (pictured below).
In October 2015 Above went to Johannesburg, South Africa to paint his biggest mural yet, a 33-meter tall piece of work called Incognito.
What’s great about this mural is the way the overlapping arrows create stunning colour combinations.
For Above, this was a crucial part of the work that he wanted to get right:
“My colour selections were predetermined by the relationship of how each colour transforms when laid on top of another.
This was easy, however, in the designing of the mural I had to constantly move colours and shapes to finally get the final colour arrangement you see.”
More pics below of the Incognito mural – click to enlarge
Above is still thriving worldwide, creating both pieces both abstract and political.
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Sally Kirschell
https://www.bluehorizonprints.com.au
Faile at Lazarides – part 1
If you like street art or graffiti, you know that you should find some good stuff at Lazarides as these guys have been around for a while and primarily sell this type of art. Artists such as Antony Micallef or Jamie Hewlett to name just a few have seen their first artwork being sold by Lazarides.
The exhibition, a retrospective of Faile’s work over the last 10 years consists of two parts, the first bit is held on Greek street and is the fun and interactive one, the second one is a more classical exhibition held on Rathbone place is all about showing you a number of Faile’s pieces from when he started up to today. ART-PIE went to the latter one (but will go this week end to the one on Greek street soon!) Continue reading Faile at Lazarides – part 1
James George or how to use Kinect (Xbox)
Microsoft must have amazed quite a few of us with their latest innovation, I want to talke here about Kinect by like for all genius products, there is a sleepy hacker waiting to exploit and excel in using such products.
James George had the idea to modify the Kinect accessory and with the help of a HD SLR, he presents us with these amazing shots below taken across the NYC subway.
For the techies, James is using the depth image in a custom open framework application.
Related links
> James George’s blog – www.jamesgeorge.org
> Set of James’ Kinect work on Flickr
Augustine Kofie at White Walls
A Group Show – Never A Dull Moment Curated by iO Wright at White Walls, San Francisco is now underway and I wish I could jump on the plane right now and go and enjoy it with my own eyes.
The collective of artists have all got a graffiti art background and have been asked to continously create and express themselves and they have been using all sort of mediums: short film, sculpture, installation, … everything and anything is on display here. Continue reading Augustine Kofie at White Walls
Soundsculpture by Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer using Kinect
When I first watched this video of Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer’s soundsculpture project, I was fascinated and watched it again several times.
Not for me to try to breakdown to you how this is done as it is quite complex. I’ll invite you to read the complete explanation from Creative Applications Network. In short, you are looking at a moving sand sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person.
Unfair the Whisper gallery
Message in the Code
We are surrounded by coded communications. The artists of This ‘Me’ of Mine present an interesting insight into the difference gender makes to interacting with these coded communications. Curiously, I became aware of this difference by posting snippets, sometimes almost cryptic messages, from some of the artists’ bios on Twitter. A few weeks ago I made these four tweets:
11 Sept 2012
@HarrisonHayley“a lover of objects and stories, not necessarily…historical sense but the bits that are not said. ”
12 Sept 2012
‘a set of anecdotes where meaning is levelled by celebrating the beautiful and grotesque,’ Mel Titmuss on her work
13 Sept 2012
@Captainpye on her work, ‘…a complex mixture of scientific observation and a girlish enthusiasm…’ @ThisMeofMine
14 Sept 2012
‘fascination w/passage of time…contrast between permanence of objects & fragility of human existence’ @katemurdochart
At the time, I remarked that when read together they presented a compelling view of the female point of view in art. Arguably so, yes. But then I realised something more, each of the artists in This ‘Me’ of Mine are working with, perhaps struggling with, this coded communication and there is a fascinating difference between the way the women artists explore this and the way the male artists explore it. The women speak of emptying out of memories, permanence of objects, invisible stories of objects, things left unsaid, equalizing meaning through comparison of opposites, fascination, obsession, fictions and mythologies, voyeurism, vulnerability and body language. The men speak of the limits of communicating meaning, uniforms and meaning, surprise and fear, answers just out of reach, hiding complexities within and stimulus triggering a response.
Before I go further, I want to point out there are many commonalities in the female and male views, such as removing things from context to challenge meaning, the insecurities of home, the influence of space, experience and the passage of time. So while I am not trying to create a gender-biased argument here, I was struck by the differences nonetheless.
It could be said the struggle to self-identify is the struggle to decipher coded communication. The way we go about that as males and females is indicative in the topics of importance to each group of artists. What does this say about us? Little girls are taught to believe in fairy-tales, romance and dream-come-true scenarios, encouraged to believe in the perfection of a future life, whether that is with Mr Right or more recently that we can do and have it all. Little boys are taught to believe in the importance of belonging to groups and the status which comes with that belonging, hiding their emotions, fears and all visible signs of weakness, encouraged to become providers and bread-winners. Both sexes have been taught to be competitive, in ways suitable to their sex. But if these things are to be challenged, is it really through gender wars? Wouldn’t it be more productive to realize the truth that living is hard no matter what your personal circumstances, there are no guaranteed outcomes and all you can do is the best you can in any given situation. Would prejudice and utopias disappear if we taught those simple realities to our children?
Would the message in the code change?
Remi Rough mural for Morgan Furniture
We have been a big fan of Remi Rough‘s works and have been following him for a few years. Yet, he manages to keep his artistic output fresh and keeps surprising us every day.
I would mention for the records, this very similar project we covered back in 2011, the Havana Wall Project at Rich Mix, our beloved East London based culture center.
The artist has become a master at curves, lines and perspective and this installation surely demonstrates just this.
Why such a commission for Morgan Furniture?
We gathered this statement from their website: “This is part of our exploration in to art relaxation and the benefits of colour in the workplace.”
After reading this and looking again at the piece, we can say that Remi Rough did meet the brief in a superb way. The giant curve will definitely set your mind to some untroubled mode, the colours will tempt you for a dive while the black and broken ribbon will draw you further.
A word from the artist
“I shall be transforming the two interior walls of Morgan Furniture’s Clerkenwell showroom into a huge painted installation. The two works, although separate will have a continuation and format that allows them to be viewed as one piece.”
– Remi Rough
Remi Rough exploration of shapes and colours is not something new, we again gathered from the Morgan Furniture site that he has been doing so for roughly 25 years now and that it all started a can in the hand back in 84 very late at night somewhere in South London.
Trains and walls were his targets by then. They still are, well at least walls as far as we know but more and more of his works can be seen in art galleries and commissions, sometimes commercial, keep coming his way we hear (Remi Rough will tell us if the above is not accurate).
From streets to showrooms
is how Morgan Furniture starts his blog post and we believe this got past the artist which seems to be okay with this statement and we are very happy to hear that (again, we hope this is the case – we’ll talk to Remi rough soon about so watch this space).
I wanted to highlight this point as too many so-called “street artists” this day hate this association with such organisations, campaigns or galleries as this makes them less “street” apparently. But Remi Rough does not seem to mind and we welcome this.
We could write pages about that but let’s leave it for now and just say that it is the choice of the artists to get involved or not and if they get involved, it does not take much to make sure to keep any integrity these artists may cherish.
Last but not least, these souls would bounce of joy to be featured on such (wicked) sites like ours even if they cannot admit it. Remember, if your work is awesome, get out there and be seen!
You may tell us your views on this in the Comments section below
A video which shows you how it is done
Make sure to watch the short video below which gives you an insight about the technicality and techniques it took to produce such a work. Great footage.