Archive for the 'Graffiti' Category

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Calendar. 06.09.11.

By c-monster on June 9, 2011 in C-Monster, Graffiti, San Francisco and Street Art. Closed

Swampy, in Oakland. The artist has a solo exhibit coming up this weekend at Fifty24SF, in San Francisco. Things get started this Saturday, June 11th, at 7pm. (Above image courtesy of EndlessCanvas.com.)

Portland, Oreg.: Jack Pierson, Twilight, and Mise-en-Scène, a group show, at Elizabeth Leach Gallery. Through July 16.
Los Angeles: For a Long Time, Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Raymond Pettibon and others, at Roberts and Tilton Gallery in Culver City. Through August 6.
S.F.: Sign Your Life Away, with Steve Powers, Jeff Canham and New Bohemia Signs, at Guerrero Gallery. Opens Saturday at 7pm.
Fort Worth: Focus: Teresita Fernández, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Through June 19. (…might be good.)
Chicago: Avant Garde Art in Everyday Life, at the Art Institute of Chicago. (And while you’re there, be sure to check the African art galleries, which will display a textile made from the silk of a Golden Orb spider. Like, whoa.) Opens Saturday.
LAST WEEK — NYC: Live From Detroit, a group show, at Fred Torres Collaborations, in Chelsea. Nice to see a show featuring Detroit artists rather than outsiders doing ruins porn. I really dug the paintings by Dick Goody. Through Saturday.
PLUS: get my up-to-date New York City recommends over at WNYC.

Tags: fifty24sf, graff, swamp donkey, swampy.

That sublime point where art, politics and merch intersect.

By c-monster on June 2, 2011 in Art Merch, C-Monster, Galleries, Graffiti and New York. Closed

What I Learned Today: Star Cigarettes, a division of Philip Morris, sold a limited edition pack in Europe in the early ’90s that celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall. Shown on the package is a piece of graffiti-covered slab being removed from the wall. It’s bubbly letters read STAR. An ad from the period shows a man’s hand clutching the commemorative pack.

Conceptual artist Martin Kippenberger used this image to create the wallpaper shown above in 1991. (It’s now on view at Luhring Augustine through 6/18). It is so many levels of conceptual: A cigarette company using a political act and someone’s tag to sell cigarettes which are then turned into art that is itself commodified. In other words: the art merch becomes the art. Like, whoa.

Find a bunch of Star Cigarettes special edition packs here. (Scroll to the bottom.)

Tags: berlin wall, i hada vision, luhring augustine, martin kippenberger, star cigarettes.

MOCA LA’s ‘Art in the Streets.’

By c-monster on June 1, 2011 in Announcements, C-Monster, Graffiti, Los Angeles, Museums and Street Art. 2 Comments

Eye-popping overload: My review of MOCA LA’s Art in the Streets is now up at ARTnews. And, in case you missed it, my bit on Studio 360 (from April) about graffiti outside the museum. (Photo by C-M.)

Tags: art in the streets, augor, Los Angeles, MoCA.

The Day in Graffiti Wallpaper.

By c-monster on April 25, 2011 in C-Monster, Graffiti and Street Art. 2 Comments

How much you want to bet that REVS and COST didn’t know about this? A pic of the McDonald’s at the Louvre, in Paris, with REVS/COST wallpaper — found on -eko-’s Flickr. Plus: see the Norm MSK wallpaper at a McDonald’s in Japan. Also, Jake Dobkin provides a little background.

Tags: cost, Graffiti, mcdonalds, paris, revs, Street Art, wallpaper.

Street art and graffiti gets a Barr chart.

By c-monster on March 30, 2011 in C-Monster, Design, Graffiti, New York and Street Art. 3 Comments

A graffiti/street art tribute to historian and Museum of Modern Art director Alfred Barr, by Daniel Feral. See it in the old Donnell Library windows across from MoMA, as part of the exhibit Pantheon, starting this Saturday.

Tags: daniel feral, moma, museum of modern art, pantheon, tribute to alfred barr.

The Figure in Contemporary Art: Miscellaneous Round-Up.

By Ben V on March 2, 2011 in Ben V, Conceptual, Graffiti, Photo Diary and Sculpture. 1 Comment

From Jon Rafman’s series The 9 Eyes of Google Street View, Berwick Rd. Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, which was on view as part of the exhibit Free, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, until late this last January.

Last month, I launched a semi-regular series devoted to the way the human figure is depicted in contemporary art. This month, I continue it by looking at a number of works I’ve seen recently in museums, galleries and even on the street.

I want to begin this particular round-up with a look at Jon Rafman’s work, which is pictured above, and explores, among other things, the nature of travel. Rafman has ‘traveled’ the world through Google Street View and brought back the screen shots to prove it. This series along with the rest of the show, raised a lot of questions about the future of our online lives: Namely, will we eventually experience art, travel, and relationships exclusively online? How will the virtual experience differ from real-life? How is our view of other people colored by the internet? Certainly, we’re still figuring out the answers to some of those questions. But Rafman’s found imagery speaks to the abilities as well as the limitations of the web.

Find other images after the jump. All photos by me unless otherwise noted.

Continue reading ‘The Figure in Contemporary Art: Miscellaneous Round-Up.’

Tags: dan mccarthy, free, friedrich kunath, jonathan chapline, new museum, the figure in contemporary art.

Best. Reader Mail. Ever.

By c-monster on February 25, 2011 in C-Monster, Graffiti and Street Art. 1 Comment

In response to a story I did for ARTnews in January. Thank you, Curly.

Tags: abstract, ArtNews, c-monster is wrong, conceptual, curly, Street Art.

The Digest. 02.18.11.

By c-monster on February 18, 2011 in Art for stoners, C-Monster, Graffiti and The Digest. Closed

Smells on a freight car. (Image courtesy of Smells.)

Sculpture you can shred on. (Eyeteeth.)
Atonement via smartphone app.
The five worst gallery websites.
The world needs more video interviews with Tracey Emin.
Jasper Johns to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom.
NEH and NEA likely to get hit with brutal budget cuts. In NYC, the Department of Cultural Affairs is about to get hit with some serious slashing, too.
Opponents of Barnes Foundation move are attempting to get the judge reopen the case. (@KnightLAT.)
Iowa Republicans really really really want to sell Jackson Pollock painting at the University of Iowa. I mean, like, really.
Crowd-sourced shows: Kyle Chayka is over them. So am I.
Groday: Wafaa Bilal’s body rejects camera implanted in his head.
‘Cuz They’re Old? Why Van Gogh’s sunflowers are turning brown. (Arts Journal.)
New York Times photographer criticized for taking award-winning pix with smartphone app. He responds.
The Day in Art Merch: The Damien Hirst bling skull hoodie. For when Ed Hardy is not douche enough.
Ruins Porn: Gary, Indiana edition.
Aerial shots of Germany. (Eyeteeth.)
Today’s Graff is all about being green: Mosone in Italy.
For sale: Subway station.
Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal at JFK to serve as the entrance to a boutique hotel.
I want it big and brutal and with a lot of windows: Cosmic Communist Constructions.
What Eli Broad can learn about urban planning from The Grove.
From the Department of Holy Crap: The five strangest shows on Latin American television. The Peruvians take the prize for scary surrealism, while the Argentineans win for nasty sexual harassment. (@giovannigf.)

Tags: freight graff, smells.

Photo Diary: ’112 Greene Street’ at David Zwirner Gallery, in NYC.

By c-monster on February 7, 2011 in C-Monster, Conceptual, Galleries, Graffiti, New York, Photo Diary, Photography and Sculpture. Closed

A piece of Gordon Matta-Clark’s graffiti truck, from 1973. Matta-Clark was inspired by graffiti in the early ’70s — before it had caught on with the mainstream art world. (Photo by C-M.)

The 1970s were not kind to New York. There was a middle class exodus to the suburbs. The Son of Sam was terrorizing the town. The city was bankrupt. Which, in a way, made the place an ideal spot for artists — who could take over empty SoHo warehouses for dance performances and attack derelict buildings in the Bronx with chainsaws, all without anybody batting an eyelash. The current David Zwirner exhibit 112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970-74) examines this history — specifically, the story behind the alternative arts spot that gave rise to a number of figures, among them sculptor and conceptualist Gordon Matta-Clark. (Most interestingly, he was able to make a real live cherry tree grow in 112′s by-all-accounts-nasty basement.)

For those who relish examining a period when the city was entirely bereft of velvet ropes and gaggles of Sex and the City wannabes, this is definitely the show for you. It is heavy on Matta-Clark, containing evidence of some of his early building slicing experiments, but also has some compelling sculptures by Richard Nonas and Alan Senet. In addition, to anyone interested in the history of graffiti, the show is an absolute must-see. Matta-Clark had a heavy duty interest in the art form — letting Bronx teens tag up his van and documenting early tags on the subways in pieces he called Graffiti Photoglyphs. (See the photos below.)

You’ve got until the end of the week to catch the show. 112 Greene Street runs through this Saturday, Feb. 12.

Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: ’112 Greene Street’ at David Zwirner Gallery, in NYC.’

Tags: 112 greene, david zwirner gallery, gordon matta-clark, graffiti truck.

Calendar. 01.25.11.

By c-monster on January 25, 2011 in C-Monster, Calendar, Graffiti, New York and Street Art. Closed

Ellis G, Permanently Temporary, at the Mighty Tanaka Gallery in Dumbo, through Feb. 4. (Image courtesy of Mighty Tanaka.)

S.F.: Christopher Taggart: Away, at Baer Ridgway, opens Saturday at 4pm.
L.A.: Art Los Angeles Contemporary, at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, begins on Friday at 11am and runs through Sunday at 6pm.
NYC: Matt Mullican, an artist who worked with a computer programmer to create a navigable scale model of the solar system, gives a talk at Artists Space in SoHo tonight at 7pm. You can view the piece here.
NYC: A free screening of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis at Rabbit Hole Studio, in Dumbo, at 8:30pm. Doors open at 8pm.
NYC: Ancient Sci-Fi Update, Pavel Kraus and Megan Burns, at The Proposition, through March 13.
NYC: Cooking with Gallery Beat, a live talk show with Paul H-O and Dr. Lisa, featuring Phoebe Hoban, Peter Bolte, John Lee, Pat Daugherty and Jen Friedman, at BravinLee Programs, this Saturday at 6pm.
Valhalla, N.Y.: Oona Stern: The Reluctant Naturalist, at Westchester Community College, through Feb. 26.

Tags: ellis g, mighty tanaka.