Bomb It 1 + 2 director Jon Reiss speaks with the filmmakers behind “Between the Lines” about street art and graffiti, freedom of speech and democracy. “Between the Lines” is a documentary about a group of Toronto street artists who find new meaning in their work as they defend it against Mayor Rob Ford’s War on Graffiti.
Between the Lines
In 2011, Toronto declared a War on Graffiti. Leading the anti-graffiti campaign is the city’s most controversial mayor in recent history: Rob Ford, a conservative middle-aged businessman who polarizes the public with his views on what a city should be. “Between the Lines” is a documentary about a group of Toronto street artists who find new meaning in their work as they defend it against the Mayor’s War on Graffiti.
Between The Lines – Doc Ignite Campaign Video from betweenthelinesdoc on Vimeo.
“Between the Lines” has been following the stories of street artists including Deadboy, Spud, and Joel Richardson for more than a year as they teeter between cashing in and selling out. Now they need our assistance. Please check out the “Between the Lines” DogIgnite crowd-funding campaign and donate whatever you can to help this exciting documentary fulfill its potential.
In the coming months a wave of graffiti removal will sweep across the City of Toronto leaving blank canvases in its wake. The artists are itching for the opportunity to get at those walls and the crew of “Between the Lines” need to be right there with them. With a bit of funding to back them they can be in the right places with the right equipment to capture what lies beneath the paint on the city walls of Toronto.
The Graff Lab
For all you LA writers out there be sure to check out The Graff Lab in downtown LA. Bomb It 2 co-producer Rory Owen Delaney has been directing a documentary about the Graff Lab and the Pico Union neighborhood since 2010.
Located at Venice and Union, the Graff Lab is a safe space in the Pico Union neighborhood for the creative arts. People come to do street art, stand up comedy, jerk dance, skateboard, DJ, barbeque and hang out. It is an uniquely LA phenomenon.
The goal of the film is to show that the changing street art in Pico Union and downtown LA is a reflection of many of the social and political issues affecting the city at large, including immigration and gang violence. In short, it documents the characters and culture behind LA street art while giving people a window into one LA’s most unique neighborhoods.
New Carmichael Gallery Exhibit
Just got word that the Carmichael Gallery is presenting A Gleeful and Relentless Forward Moving of Time, a group exhibition featuring works by Shane Hope, Husmann/Tschaeni, Evan Nesbit, Adam Parker Smith and Lola Rose Thompson. The exhibition will be on view from July 14 to August 4, 2012, with an opening reception on Saturday, July 14, from 6-9pm.
A longing for the past and anxiety about the future is a universally shared
sentiment in modern Western societies. Whether it is through nostalgia for
one’s own history or an interest in that of another, the memories, individual
and collective, that we thread together are evidence of our self-conscious
existence. Lola Rose Thompson’s dark yet humorous, innocent yet cynical musings
documented on a dying medium, the typewriter, attest to this need to flourish
while maintaining certain roots. Influenced by the period of Marina Abromovic’s
life in which she engaged in performances with Ulay, her then partner, Thompson
values her friendships with other artists, the collaborations that grow from
them, and moments between moments where creativity emerges.
Collaboration is essential to artist duo Husmann/Tschaeni’s process. The pair
work backwards, painting simultaneously in reverse on Perspex, until they
achieve what they call “a hell of positive energy with a small hint of hidden
otherworldly darkness mixed with visual poetry and deep sensitive natural
beauty, a daily biological presence combined with absurd undefined monstrous
fantasy.” Quotidian details are represented through vibrant and unnatural
colors. The artists often feature children performing everyday rituals in the
fantastical environments of their paintings and films, turning the worldly into
the otherworldly and reality into dreams.
The joy of play should never be jettisoned. As Shane Hope demonstrates through
his use of computer technology to form a series of lenticular-3D prints,
curiosity about the future of imagination is what drives his artistic practice.
Hope customizes user-sponsored open-source nanomolecular design software
systems and then uses this software to modify, manipulate and design groups of
molecular models. To build his painterly pictures, he assembles together tens
of thousands of these models, resulting in fantastic compositions depicting
organic, inorganic, synthesizable, theoretically feasible and nano-nonsensical
molecules. This process is akin to what Hope says partially motivated his
foray into things nanofactural to begin with, Willy Wonka’s Everlasting
Gobstoppers. Molecular manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and life
extension technologies may make possible the printing of printers, inventing
inventors, as well as the expansion of ontological wiggle-room into and across
novel substrates. The resulting artworks are colorful, abstract holographic-
like objects with relief-sculptural depth, which Shane equates to looking into
a forthcoming nanotech toy chest.
Evan Nesbit is interested in the porosity and cognitive physicality of
vision. He utilizes pattern, color and material relationships as visual
devices, challenging the pictorial space of his painting and our
habitual modes of perception. In his work, the imbrication of pattern
and materiality activates and unifies the expansive fragments of experience.
His jesting visual propositions, decidedly entrenched in the traditions of two-
dimensional pictorial space, explore the multifaceted language and syntax of
painting as it relates to Nesbit’s own experiences. His constant striving to
create intellectual uncertainty and spontaneous investigation demonstrates an
understanding of our limitations and inevitable failures.
Adam Parker Smith’s tapestry made of woven friendship bracelets is symbolic
of our interconnectedness. Be it through the increasingly globalized world, a
testament to our technologies, or the knowledge that we are all of the same
species, our friendships are what define our humanity. Parker Smith aims
to mimic the human endeavor, to understand the universe through a bizarre
confluence of real events, daydreams and preexisting fables. His work often
offers a false sense of intimacy, a product of our ever more connected yet
divorced world.
For information on current, past and upcoming shows at the Carmichael Gallery, visit www.carmichaelgallery.com.
Posted in Art Show, Events
Tagged Adam Parker Smith, Carmichael Gallery, Evan Nesbit, Husmann/ Tschaeni, LA Art, LA street art, Lola Rose Thompson, Shane Hope
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Picasso Defaced by Houston Street Artist
This is one of the crazier art stories that I have come across in a while. Allegedly, twenty two year old Uriel Landeros, a Houston area street artist, entered the Menil Collection and stencilled a bullfighter killing a bull and the word “Conquista” on Picasso’s Woman in a Red Armchair 1932 oil on canvas painting. There is even a video on YouTube that caught it all on tape.
Now I know that times are tough and it’s hard to get recognition, but this crosses the line. I’m all for dudes who sneak into galleries and hang their own art; that’s cool. But spray-painting over another artist’s work is disrespectful, and spray-painting over a Picasso is beyond comprehension. But what do I know. In the end it was mission accomplished for the guy: He is notorious. Thoughts?
