LOOK INTO MY OWL

Elms Lesters continues to pound the art world with one great show after another. “Adaptation/Translation”, the latest exhibition from José Parlá is no exception.

Parlá is a student of wildstyle and focuses on how tags incorporate visually into urban decay. The paintings are on canvas but feel as though they were removed from a graffiti dream wall.

The gallery has produced a stunning book to commemorate the exhibition. In addition to covering “Adaptation/Translation” it documents José Parlá’s travels as well as previously unpublished works.

“As our society moves forward through time, ever faster and in ever more complex patterns of living, we forget our spirit - our inner growth. We believe ourselves to be on the cusp of evolution but perhaps we are only experiencing an involution. The marks on the walls of our cities are perhaps a testimonial, like scars of a wounded civilization.”
- José Parlá

José Parlá
Adaptation / Translation
10 October - 8 November 2008
Elms Lesters Painting Rooms
London

Just in from BLU. This is a piece for the FAME Festival in Italy. More on the festival soon. Enjoy this short time lapse video of the creation below.

Very pleased to find this video. Graffiti-Post Graffiti is an episode from “ART/new york” the long lived video series on contemporary art. The excerpt below has rare interviews with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Crash, Futura 2000 and Keith Haring. To order the full episode head over to ART/new york, be sure to look through the program guide for other titles.

The stencils of XOOOOX are derived from collage works that the artist has been creating since the mid 1990’s. The majority of the imagery comes from high end fashion. Specters showing off the latest from the couture elite can be found in the streets of Berlin, Paris, Milan, Vienna and New York.
“Molotov High Heels” opens at Circleculture Gallery in Berlin on July 17th. It should be interesting to see how this work transitions from the gutter to the gallery.

“You can use the power of fashion like a personal weapon. It can act like a shield, or it can destroy you.” ~XOOOOX

XOOOOX
Molotov High Heels
17 July - 10 September 2008
Circleculture Gallery
Berlin

The Graffiti Research Lab is, “dedicated to outfitting graffiti artists with open source technologies for urban communication”. This entity is encouraging community within the public arts while expanding the genre at an unprecedented rate.
Enjoy “L.A.S.E.R. Tag” it is a stunning use of simple technologies. The Graffiti Research Lab and Theodore Watson offer free open source software and complete instructions so that you can build one for yourself. Now that’s going BIG!

This is street art in top form. The guerrilla gardening crew is always searching for public spaces that have fallen into neglect. These hoodlums are tilling the soil and replacing weeds with sunflowers, garbage with geraniums. GuerrillaGardening.org has tips for the burgeoning vandal and all the information to get you started. You can also head to their forum and hook up with others in your area that are looking to “throw-up”. What are you waiting on? Wreck your hood.

Converse has been running some nice ads from David Choe over the past few months. This one has the tagline, “I painted this last week with 10 cans of black spray paint and 1 can of yellow. It’s what I look like on the inside.”

Choe is gearing up for the world premiere of, “Dirty Hands: The Art & Crimes of David Choe“. The documentary is set to open in Los Angeles on June 21st.

This is too much. I’m becoming very emotional. I think that I might Krylon.
The Tate Modern deserves the respect of the art world. Most of us have matured in an environment that shuns graffiti. The current show “Street Art” at the Tate is a revelation. They have commisioned 6 very talented artists to drop large scale works on the side of the building overlooking the Thames. Sixeart, Os Gemeos, Faile, Nunca and Blu have all participated in this show of cooperation and acceptance. Britain, thanks for “getting it”.
Now in the US, which major museum is going to step up?

Street Art
23 May - 25 August 2008
Tate Modern
London

Jet-Set Graffiti has put together this great video of classic KAWS. I’m still coming to grips with the fact that 1997 was more than a decade ago. Ugh. The video shows KAWS roaming NYC placing some of his first ads there.

BLU has done it again with perhaps his most ambitious wall painted animation to date. MUTO spans 2007-08 and was conceived in Baden and Buenos Aires. It just goes on and on, everytime that you think that it must be over, something bigger happens. This one is a masterpiece. I can’t wait for someone to produce a DVD with all of BLU’s amazing videos in one place. Muto translated from Italian is “Dumb”.

Nick Walker, one of the Owl’s favorite vandals is at it again. This time he’s on Old Street in London. There are several remarkable things about this footage. The law is all over, taking pictures. He’s got a guy cleaning up overspill. There is a hardy round of applause when he’s done. It would seem that the graffiti climate is changing on both ends of the spectrum.

“The Art and Crimes of David Choe”. Can’t wait for this one. Directed by Harry Kim. Here’s the official site.