A heist movie, screwball comedy and documentary all rolled into one big paint splattered ball, The Banksy Job is about art, crime, authentication, ongoing feuds and a famous statue that, when it is reintroduced to the marketplace, could be worth millions.
“Amid Cairo’s brick buildings and heaping piles of trash is a sprawling work of art, which, at first, looks messy and incoherent.
But when you stand on the nearby hillside and read the spray-painted Arabic “calligraffiti,” as its creator Tunisian-French artist eL Seed calls it, the message reads loud and clear : “If one wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes.”
The quote represents the importance of withholding judgment of people just because of their circumstances, says eL Seed, who first visited the community a few years ago. He’s called the piece “Perception” for just that reason, hoping to get people to see past the area’s physical appearance.
The entire piece took three weeks to complete, and eL Seed says it was done in total secrecy from the Egyptian government due to the country’s strict laws forbidding artistic expression.”
- via Techinsider.io
French stencil artist C215 has become an international icon in the street art scene. Known mostly for his artworks depicting cats or the homeless, he is now paying tribute to the victims of the Paris attacks with a series of graffiti murals.
“In one single hectic night of paint and spray, BLU cancelled his famous and beautiful graffitis from the walls of Bologna. Here, a powerful cultural institution, Genus Bononiae, funded by private banks and chaired by former dean of the local university Fabio Roversi Monaco, is removing from the walls the works of the best known writers in order to display them – in some cases without the authors’ consent – in an exhibition on street art that will open to the public next Thursday in the city’s historic Palazzo Pepoli.
With the help of a group of squatters, the anonymous writer from Bologna who was signalled in 2011 by the English newspaper “The Guardian” as one of the world’s ten best street artists, destroyed all of his works that were still visible in town: graffitis that had been created throughout twenty or so years of work.
Blu, who has always refused to be interviewed by mainstream media, gave the writers collective known as Wu Ming the task of explaining the meaning of his gesture through their blog “Giap”: “The ‘Street Art’exhibit is the symbol of an idea of the city, based on private hoarding and the transformation of everybody’s life and creativity into a private asset, that must be fought. Confronting the arrogance, worthy of a colonial governor, of those who feel free to remove paintings from walls, the only thing one can do is to make those paintings disappear. Act by subtraction, make the looting impossible. The exhibit clears the way for the accumulation of street art, all for the benefit of ruthless collectors and merchants of stolen artwork. All this, in a city that on one hand prosecutes teenage writers and invokes street decorum, while on the other celebrates itself as the cradle of street art”.”
- via Repubblica.it
Awesome combination of stencils and calligraffiti in this mural made by MonkeyBird and Said Dokins done in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
The Painted Oceans feature documentary film will follow the trajectory of 7 of the world’s most famous street artists; SHEPARD FAIREY, HOW & NOSM, FURURA 2000, LONDON POLICE & TRISTAN EATON, as they live together for a month on the abandoned Maunsell Sea forts and paint them. We will follow them from beginning to end, capturing all of the ups and downs along the way. We hope to tell a very personal story as each artist goes against the odds and risks everything to paint epic murals in the middle of the ocean.
- via The Orion
CANLOVE is the collaborative alias of American artists DJ Neff and Paul Ramirez. Currently, they collect discarded spray paint cans and process them into works of art at their creative studio, ChalkLA, located in Venice, California.
Cloakwork paints sneaker models on the base of their respective boxes using spray paint, markers and acrylic.
Timelapse of the making of Missouri One. Shot over the course of 10 days.
Contemporary artist Louis Carreon collaborated with The Landmark Aviation in Miami during Art Basel for an altruistic, artistic initiative, which stood out in a sea of commerce-driven initiatives.
