Another post about 3 street art works you should see today.
See more on our street art spotter page.
OsGemeos in Sao Paulo, Brazil
Kabir Mokalem in Kabul, Afghanistan
‘King Bear’ by Trash
Ben slow x Guy Denning, Nychos and Bisser x Renil Emil street art
Part of our 3 street art works series you should see today. Artists featured are Ben Slow x Guy Denning, Nychos and Bisser x Renil Emil.
Ben Slow x Guy Denning
Nychos – located in San Francisco
Bisser x Renil Emi – located in Leuven (Belgium)
Bauhaus: Art as Life
Last week The Barbican Centre opened its doors to a major exhibition about the highly influential Bauhaus movement. The show explores the German art and design school that ran between 1919 and 1933 and made a profound impact on our contemporary world by uniting art, craft, design and technology. Bauhaus: Art as Life brings together over 400 works and highlights the scope of the Bauhaus vision. Throughout the exhibition are examples of architecture, paintings, film, sculpture, furniture, costume design, photography, children’s toys, typography and textiles from names including Paul Klee, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Josef Albers and Oskar Schlemmer. Nothing it seems was too ambitious or insignificant for the Bauhaus masters to tackle, from redesigning teapots and ashtrays, to creating vast housing estates and design manifestos that aimed to change the world they lived within.
Bauhaus: Art as Life is displayed in a loosely chronological order, starting with Walter Gropius founding the school in 1919 by merging of the Arts and Crafts school and the Academy of Fine Art, a radical move that incorporated the disciplines of art, craft and technology. Having lived through the horror of the First World War, this collective of artists and designers were keen to use their creativity to herald a brighter future and you get a sense of the optimistic, utopian force behind the work. However the Bauhaus was not just about high design for the greater good, the students and teachers were also having a good time behind the scenes. The Bauhaus group put on events that could have rivaled Warhol’s infamous art happenings. Gropius actively encouraged socialising between the masters and students and this took the form of spectacular themed parties with a Bauhaus band, elaborate costumes and performances. Included in the exhibition are photographs documenting this playful side of the movement and party invites.
By the mid 1920’s we see architecture, advertising and photography added to the curriculum and the school started to become commercially successful by partnering up with manufacturers. There was a focus on branding and a unified approach to typography and layout, as we can see in the ‘instruments of communication’ section. Pioneered by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the Bauhaus had started to produce its own promotional material to communicate with a larger audience and this bold style has since become highly influential to the world of graphics. Elsewhere in the exhibition we also see Gunta Stolzl become the first female master at the Bauhaus, raising the profile of the crafts with her beautiful woven wall hangings. Josef and Anni Albers take a graphic slant on textiles, with simple geometric shaped patterns created from cotton and silk. As many of the Bauhaus group were on the political left, they came under pressure from the Nazi government and following pressure from the Gestapo, decided to close their doors in 1933. However as the students and masters emigrated, the principles behind the Bauhaus movement spread internationally and became the driving force behind Modernism as we know it.
The Barbican is embracing the experimental spirit of the Bauhaus by hosting a diverse series of events and workshops relating to the exhibition. They have done a good job in making the links between the Bauhaus and its relevance on our everyday lives. The schedule includes guided walking tours around the Finsbury area looking at the Bauhaus influence on local housing estates and a tour of the City of London focussing on the relationship between the Bauhaus and commercial architecture. The Barbican will also host an experimental two-week ‘Art School Lab’ where a chosen group of artists will collaborate to create work that contributes towards social change. To be considered you must apply via the Barbican website.
If you are looking to take home a slice of Modernist design, head to the Barbican Gallery Shop where there is a great selection of iconic designs, in keeping with the Bauhaus philosophy that design should engage with production. These including geometric plates hand woven rugs, DIY Paul Klee puppet kits and an exclusive range of Bauhaus inspired jewellery from the BA students at Central Saint Martins.
Bauhaus: Art as Life . Barbican Art Gallery, London, 3 May – 12 May 2012. http://www.barbican.org.uk/
Review by Zoey Goto, freelance art and design writer and PR. www.zazzipr.com
More photos of the exhibition below
The Space Between The Stars at Scream
‘The Space Between The Stars‘ opens this Friday at Scream. Expect London and international artists and the recurrent yet infinite “light” as a medium in art. Many artists in the past experimented with it, such as Robert Irwin for example, and as the artists in this show, gave an immersive experience for the viewer.
This show promises a variety of approaches in trying to break down light.
Korean-born US based artist Bohyun Yoon gives us an installation of silicon rubber figures suspended like puppets from a steel bar with a spotlight. Caroline Jane Harris works with paper and will present us with an epic landscape titled Sylvan Landscape over two metres in width. Chris Bracey, a veteran in working with neon and lights and who has worked for big names or productions such as Vivienne Westwood or the Batman films will impress. James Hopkins’ will use sculptures to create illusions. Regine Schumann also works with sculptures but made of acrylic glass and a special phosphorescent pigment that allow the works to glow from within.
The collaboration between Hsiao-chi Tsai (Taiwan) & Kimiya Yoshikawa (Japan), masters in Mixed-media textiles and Sculpture respectively, their light sculptures and installations might steal the show. Shane McAdams ‘ landscape made with a ball-point pen, oil and resin has also to be something to look for. Last but not least Sylvia Hommert experiments with a range of mediums including pigment, beeswax, holographic paper and glitter on birch panels to capture this ephemeral and iridescent quality.
Artists featured; Bohyun Yoon (Korea), Caroline Jane Harris (UK), Chris Bracey (UK), James Hopkins (UK), Regine Schumann (Germany), Tsai & Yoshikawa (Japan & Taiwan), Shane McAdams (USA) and Sylvia Hommert (USA)
Exhibition opens on 11th January to 16th Febuary.
RSVP for Scream group show preview to info@leesharrock.co.uk
Facebook page related to the show – http://www.facebook.com/events/458881274161027/
SESPER at Pure Evil gallery
Brazilian artist Alexandre “Sesper” Cruz spent his adolescence absorbed in music and skateboarding – building ramps, making fanzines that documented the Sao Paulo art scene, and recording k-7 compilations. These interests influenced the sticker and paste up poster campaigns he launched around the city in 1999.
Sesper is best known for his unique mixed media artwork. He uses recycled material such as paper, cardboard and wood as his surface and paints over these with oil pastel and latex, incorporating layer upon layer of texture and color. A member of the renowned Brazilian art collective, the Famiglia Baglione, Sesper has participated in and filmed many of their live painting and gallery installations around Brazil.
He produces music and is a full time vocalist for Garage Fuzz band since 1991, as well having sung and recorded in the following bands: OVEC, PSYCHIC POSSESSOR, SAFARI HAMBURGUERS, PAURA, and the projects: NOTWORK, INTROSPECTIVE, LOFI EXPERIMENTS, VALLEJO X SUNSET, 5 GAS QUESTION, FLIPTOP, and others.
Words from the Pure Evil website
Loos with some style at Far Rock Away
There is a new boozer in town, located on Curtain road to be precised, and should you fancy having a drink while looking at various pieces from emerging (mainly) street artists, well this is your kind of place.
Ben Oakley’s Gallery acts as the curator along with Kevin Martin from Hoxton Gallery. Currently on display are Xenz, Above, Lucas Price, Cranio, Cept and Guy Denning. We are not talking just a few spread pieces but walls covered of stuff and I am not even mentioning the toilets, the best we have seen in a long time, so long that we have included a few shots below.
WHAT – Far Rock Away
WHERE – 97-113 Curtain Road, Shoreditch, EC2A 3BS.
Insane Sainer mural in Poland
This latest work from Sainer and the Etam crew has been going around lately on the web and rightly so. This is a huge mural that Sainer put together and the quality of the drawing is remarkable. What do you think?
Picture from urbanforms
The Unknown Room at Red gallery
We managed to get a glimpse of The Unknown Room at Red gallery. This installation was put together to coincide with Close Eyes to Exit, an exhibition at Red Gallery in London (2nd – 18th April) which celebrates the launch of the fifth issue of LE GUN as well as number 6 of its sister publication: BARE BONES.
Le Gun and Bare Bones are two independently published paper funded entirely by its contributors. No editorial or commercial restraints, you and I with ideas can contribute and your work may get featured in their next show.
The Unknown Room stands right in a middle of the first room on the right when you get into the gallery and you get thge feeling that you are up for some bizarre and quirkiness but this would not surprise RED gallery regulars.
Luckily, a massive help to understand what you are looking at is right there on the wall – the briefcase of a certain George Melly was randomly find in a basement and its contents were right there on display. No more needed to be said, a quick spin round and I was looking at my first skull and tramp juice bottle.
Team Robbo calling at Signal gallery
Already a legend within the international graffiti community, London’s ‘King Robbo’ will soon lead his entire UK crew (known to the world as ‘Team Robbo’) into Signal Gallery for their first gallery show of the year.
Team Robbo is an intentionally amorphous and anonymous graffiti crew, which has now grown into The Team Robbo Network. Its presence stretches across the world, overseas members working in collaboration with their UK counterparts.
Team Robbo UK will be represented in this show by core crew members: ROBBO, CHOCI-ROC, DOZE, FUEL, PRIME and P.I.C. – some of whom have worked together as a crew for around 25 years!
They will be supported by the artist known as ‘Pranksky’, who provides coverage of Team Robbo’s continuing war with street artists via his media organization, Prank Sky Media.
Several members of Team Robbo are already well-known to members of the street art/ graffiti community and to art collectors alike. This stemmed from several very successful shows last year, including Robbo’s solo show at The Pure Evil Gallery plus Fuel & Prime’s work in ‘The Architects’ Group Show at The Atom Rooms in London. Prime’s controversial piece ‘The Age of Shiva’ was widely publicised when it appeared again last year in Pictures on Walls’ show – ‘Marks and Stencils’ before Christmas.
The crew’s new show, ‘The Sell-Out Tour’ (which can be interpreted in a variety of ways), will be the first time that Team Robbo UK have exhibited in a gallery together.
It will showcase an impressive variety of their work: prints, canvases, sculpture and photographic work. The photographs trace Team Robbo’s joint output, (both legal and illegal) over the years. They will be shown alongside new solo work where crew members push forward the graffiti genre and develop their own work in highly divergent and novel artistic directions. The show is expected to tour the world after the Signal Gallery launch.
The Sell-Out Tour will be supported by work by the artist Pranksky. His work is described as hybrid art (merging art, photography and graffiti) providing a commentary on the ongoing art feud between street artists and graffiti writers that has received considerable media attention.
The show offers a rare chance to both view and purchase original new works and prints by this notorious crew. All work shown is for sale.
Words by Signal gallery
When
7th April: Private View and Press.
8th April: Writer’s night (By invitation only).
8th April – 7th May: open to public.
Where 32 Paul Street | Hoxton, London, EC2A 4LB.
www.signalgallery.com
Scenes from the City at Nolias Gallery
Critically-acclaimed London fringe theatre company Broken Glass is proud to present Scenes from the City – a collaborative art, literature and theatre project.
Taking you on a magical and surreal journey Scenes from the City follows a shifting perspective of everyday life, turning the mundane and the prosaic into something extraordinary. Continue reading Scenes from the City at Nolias Gallery