It was a glorious day when we had the chance to see the EN MASSE crew working on anew and huge wall at Village Underground
EN MASSE : (from French) “as a whole”, or “all together”
EN MASSE is a Montreal based, multi-artist collaborative drawing project. It draws life from the many creative individuals who take part in the project to create large-scale, highly spontaneous drawings in black and white.
EN MASSE explores the creation of a collective vision; works created together that are greater than any one person could create alone.
HISTORY
The project was created by Tim Barnard and Jason Botkin in 2009, at the Galerie Pangée. Now under the direction of Botkin and Rupert Bottenberg, the initiative has worked with nearly 250+ artists internationally.
MANDATE
The EN MASSE Project nurtures the broadening and solidification of artistic communities everywhere it goes, serving artists from extremely diverse backgrounds such as graphic novels, graffiti, tattoo, illustration, design and the fine arts.
For the most part, artists participating in the project are self-taught creative entrepreneurs. EN MASSE is a high-profile public platform for these people who have often found themselves in an awkward relationship with many contemporary arts institutions (resulting in their work often being excluded from mainstream galleries, museums, and funding agencies). This is a bridge for artist to institution, and vice versa.
Belgium, the country where Roa is from, must be a far away from what this artists get to travel to. I remember seeing a few years back the first street art pieces from ROA across London and thinking: what this guy does is quite fresh.
Then, when I heard about that show, I thought it is going to be the same shit: wildlife subjects, 2 colour artwork (black and white) on some wooden panels which can be manipulated by viewers to reveal the inside of the depicted animals.
Guess what? Bang on. However, I noticed that the quality of the paintings is sharper and that the artist uses in a bolder way, the red colour to emphasise the inside of his painted animals.
A friend actually sent me a link to that show and when I said to him, ‘You know what, I am sure I have seen it before’, he replied that accomplished artists have a style of their own, a signature and if people like it, and I am sure you are all like it, why change it. He, like of all us, need to fill his pockets with money so if what he does, sell, then be it.
Point made and agreed. Yes I have seen it before but I would fly to New York right after I finished writing up this post just because seeing ROA’s stuff is always enjoyable and fun.
The show runs until the 2nd May 2015.
Lucky enough to live in New-York and actually planning on checking it that show? We would love if you could share your pics and thoughts about it so get in touch today!
What – “Metazoa”, a solo show by ROA Where – “Jonathan Levine gallery, 529 West 20th Street, Gallery I, New York (USA) When – until the 2nd May 2015
The festive season is upon which has and always will inspire artistic creativity.
While British street artist Moose just created a pretty incredible Christmas scene with only a toothbrush and moss (!) on South Bank wall Moose – see more of Moose aka Paul Curtis Christmas scene, there are many holiday themed street and graffiti artist creations.
Scouring outdoors and the web, ten recent and some less so graffiti or street art Christmas-related awesomeness caught our little eyes, see below.
The Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago. I remember it like yesterday, although at the time I did not understand the full meaning of what was unfolding in front of my eyes.
Looking back at it now as an adult, I can see the importance of what this event meant – the cold war was on its way out. Tyranny and freedom denials were starting to become something the West Berliners could dream of getting rid of.
Berliners at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall
Such dark times and oppression naturally led to various acts of rebellion, from President Kennedy standing by the Wall in 1963 and declaring: “Ich bin ein Berliner.”, to artists braving the Grepos (or border police) to express their disapproval of the tyranny that was in place in West Germany.
And it is the latter that I want to talk about here. I want to pay tribute to all these artists who defied the ‘death strip’ as it was called, a no man’s land between the two walls, the border of East and West Berlin, and Thierry Noir, a French artist, knows it all too well.
Thierry Noir is thought to be the first street artist to paint the Berlin Wall. Born in 1958 in Lyon, France, he moved to Berlin in January 1982 with two small suitcases, and lived in a squat at Mariannenplatz, near the Berlin Wall.
His first attraction to the city was the fact that David Bowie and Iggy Pop lived there at the time, and Thierry Noir was a big fan on their music.
“Nothing really happened at the Berlin Wall. There were no cars, no shops, no noises. I never saw any ‘actions’ with the Grepos, never saw any soldiers shooting at anybody.” – Thierry Noir
One of the first things he painted on the Wall was this elephant (see photo below). “I started painting outside because I wanted to say that it’s good to put art in the streets and not solely in museums and galleries.”
This painting symbolises the key to success – heavy work every day. In other words, get your ass out there and grasp opportunity, do not stay at home waiting for something to happen – that is what the artist’s message was all about.
Thierry Noir in 86 painting the Berlin Wall
“We used to collect leftover paint and materials from the renovation of houses in Kreuzberg. We made do with whatever we could find. We had no money to buy materials.” Thierry Noir
Thierry Noir’s cartoon-like profiles
Thierry Noir’s style quickly changed to become what he is famous for – brightly coloured paintings depicting cartoon-like profiles (see below). The artist called this transformation – his Fast Form Manfesto, which is in fact the result of a need to adapt his style. It was in an effort to cope with the hundreds of people who approached him to talk while he was painting, at risk for being caught by the German authorities.
One famous incident is when Keith Haring was invited to come and paint the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie in October 1986. Thierry Noir, with the help of Christophe Bouchet, an artist he’d met a few years earlier, painted a series of 2-meter Statues of Liberty at this precise location. Unfortunately the wall got painted over in yellow, in preparation for Keith Haring. Haring however was not aware of this, so after apologies and embarrassment from Keith and annoyance from Thierry Noir, both artists were fine in the end.
What else to say about Thierry Noir? A great artist with a great story, his brightly coloured paintings are now seen as iconic and are still visible on the wall’s East Side Gallery.
Meet Alexa Meade. He creates amazing series of living graffiti art but the twist is that he masters the ability of using actual people made to look like they belong in their 2D graffiti background.
No need to say that the level of careful painting and attention to detail is huge here but it works pretty awesomely to turns three dimensional figures into two dimensional figures. All participants are painted in black and white and cleverly get tangled in the explosive and coloured backgrounds and the illusion of they are part of the static art is achieved.
Meet Alexa Meade. He creates amazing series of living graffiti art but the twist is that he masters the ability of using actual people made to look like they belong in their 2D graffiti background.
