April 28, 2011
Crime And Punishment?
By Rachel Schwerin
Last week, Revok was arrested by LAPD in LAX, on his way to Ireland. The charge was failure to pay court ordered restitution to past victims of his street activities. His bail was set at an astronomical $320,000. According to blogger Logan Hicks, comparing Revok's bail to that of other detainees in Los Angeles right now, he could have "molested three young girls ($300,000 bail)" and then "threatened a man while wielding a machete ($20,000 bail)" for the same price. (Man charged with assaulting partially paralyzed grandmother in front of her two granddaughters Bail set at $100,00; Baby left in 115-degree car; father may face charges Bail set at $50,000)
“We take graffiti vandalism very seriously, said Lieutenant Vince Carter, Sheriff’s Metro Transit Services Bureau. “Criminal graffiti vandals who insist on damaging other people’s property are going to jail and need to pay to fix the damage they caused.” Revok has since been sentenced to 180 days in jail for violating his parole on a misdemeanor vandalism charge after he failed to repay restitution for damages. His work is currently on display at MoCA's "Art in the Streets," which is really pissing off the LAPD.
The Seventh Letter is selling "Free Revok" t-shirts with all of the proceeds going to Revok's legal defense fund. Check them out on their site.
April 27, 2011
Shepard Fairey in Chicago
April 20, 2011
Art In The Streets In The Museum
By Rachel Schwerin
The opening of "Art in the Streets" at LA's Museum of Contemporary Art has spawned a rash of tagging in downtown Los Angeles. The museum says such 'anarchic' work was anticipated, and is being cleaned. Many critics argue that the museum's pledge to help with graffiti clean-up annihilates actual "art in the streets." A culture war between purist taggers and the aritsts supporting Jeffrey Deitch's museum show has led to an anti-Deitch, anti-authority campaign of pasters around L.A. depicting the Director of the museum in silly, embarrassing contexts. (via Art News)
The LAPD is cracking down hard, hoping to not just fine but arrest any artist found attempting or associated with illegal work. According to a report in the L.A. Times, Space Invader was their first victim, detained in Los Angeles last Friday. The show has led to an all-out attack: the Los Angeles city attorney’s office has filed a lawsuit against Cristian "Smear" Gheorghiu and nine other artists associated with the MTA tagging crew, charging them with violating California’s unfair competition laws because they’re selling art works on the strength of their outlaw names and reputations. “They’ve obtained an unfair advantage because they gained fame and notoriety through criminal acts,” said Anne Tremblay, assistant city attorney. “This is unlawful competition." (via Huffington Post)
The opening of "Art in the Streets" at LA's Museum of Contemporary Art has spawned a rash of tagging in downtown Los Angeles. The museum says such 'anarchic' work was anticipated, and is being cleaned. Many critics argue that the museum's pledge to help with graffiti clean-up annihilates actual "art in the streets." A culture war between purist taggers and the aritsts supporting Jeffrey Deitch's museum show has led to an anti-Deitch, anti-authority campaign of pasters around L.A. depicting the Director of the museum in silly, embarrassing contexts. (via Art News)
The LAPD is cracking down hard, hoping to not just fine but arrest any artist found attempting or associated with illegal work. According to a report in the L.A. Times, Space Invader was their first victim, detained in Los Angeles last Friday. The show has led to an all-out attack: the Los Angeles city attorney’s office has filed a lawsuit against Cristian "Smear" Gheorghiu and nine other artists associated with the MTA tagging crew, charging them with violating California’s unfair competition laws because they’re selling art works on the strength of their outlaw names and reputations. “They’ve obtained an unfair advantage because they gained fame and notoriety through criminal acts,” said Anne Tremblay, assistant city attorney. “This is unlawful competition." (via Huffington Post)
April 18, 2011
Don't Fret get's up in Brazil
Recenly we heard from Don't Fret, who has been wintering south of the equator in Sao Paulo. He says its been amazing, and he has been busy doing pasters in the streets and paintings at an abandoned cement factory complex whose sole full-time occupant is a ferrel horse.
Check out more work from Don't Fret on his Flickr. You can see the horse there too...
April 16, 2011
JEFF KOONS MUST DIE!!! video game
For 25 cents, you can virtually destroy Jeff Koons artistic oeuvres in the new arcade game (or is that artcade game) 'Jeff Koons Must Die!!!'. Designed for a 1980s style stand up arcade machine, the game is set in a large museum during a Koons retrospective. From frist-person perspective you are given a rocket launcher and the opportunity to destroy any of the works displayed in the gallery. After you have annihilated your Koons of choice, an animated Jeff Koons walks onto the screen, chastises the player, and then sends guards to kill the player. The game is un-winnable (because you cannot win the art game). Creator Hunter Jonakin claims the game "acts as a comment on the fine art studio system, museum culture, art and commerce, hierarchical power structures, and the destructive tendencies of gallery goers."
April 12, 2011
GAIA 'Tiger Rabbit' print release
Tiger Rabbit (2011)
edition of 50
hand pulled, five color screen print, on 90 lb. Stonehenge paper
signed and numbered by the artist
By Rachel Schwerin
Gaia’s Tiger Rabbit is a postmodern yin yang, harmonizing the opposing forces of an aggressive animal and a submissive animal. Tiger Rabbit unites dark and light, cold and warm, strong and weak in order to deflate the strictures set forth by contemporary Western culture. Gaia is reminding us that no thing is definitively one thing, as Western materialism promotes, but rather that everything in the universe oscillates between polar opposites.
Reclaiming traditional visual iconography, Gaia’s image transcends cultural literacy and achieves significance on multiple levels. Tiger Rabbit reflects the dynamic ebb and flow that permeates life, in which nothing is stagnant. Seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and they give rise to each other in turn. Contemporary urban culture devalues nature, but Gaia’s Tiger Rabbit invades the city of glass, steel and concrete with a breathtaking reminder of earth and life. The confrontational, full-frontal depiction of the hybrid animal implicates each passerby in the destruction of the relationship mankind once shared with both the natural and mystical worlds.
While members of Eastern society identify the tiger and the rabbit as archetypal symbols of annual transition, members of Western society would more readily associate tigers and rabbits with manufactured brands. Gaia emasculates Tony the Tiger and demonizes the Easter bunny, usurping the power vested in our familiar brands and materialistic ideals.
Tiger Rabbit is an animal in transition, seemingly changing before our eyes. But its original state and objective end are elusive. Is it a tiger transforming into a rabbit, or a rabbit transforming into a tiger? It is at once a tiger with bunny ears, a symbol of aggression turned benign, and a rabbit with the mug of a tiger, a symbol of submission turned fierce. Gaia’s ambiguity conflates multiple layers of meaning, presenting us with an image that seems familiar and simultaneously inexplicable, reflecting the inherent duality of our complex and ever-changing systems of political and social power.
'Tiger Rabbit' is available exclusively at maxwellcolette.com.
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