Street & Urban Art « Arrested Motion

Category Archives: Street & Urban Art

Streets: Shepard Fairey (Chicago)

Posted by sleepboy, July 30, 2014

With The Provocateurs set to open tomorrow (July 31st) at Block 37 in Chicago, some of the street artists involved have been hard at work getting up around town, not the least of which was Shepard Fairey, who curated the massive group exhibition. Placed on Wabash & 9th on one of Columbia College’s buildings and entitled We Own The Future, the mural will be a welcome addition to Chi-town’s cityscape. We’ll also bring you a look soon at other artists, including Cleon Peterson, RETNA, and POSE, who […]

Previews: ‘Rewire’ @ Gamma Transport Division (Edinburgh)

Posted by sven, July 30, 2014

Art and music have long enjoyed a reciprocal relationship. Take the album cover for example. For years, musicians have found or commissioned visual artists to portray an aesthetic that resonates with the contents of the sleeve resulting in a complete aural and visual package. Gamma Proforma’s forthcoming exhibition and project Rewire flip reverses this process with a collection of artworks produced by visual artists forming the inspiration for a series of sonic interpretations of the artworks by musicians. A perfect fit for Gamma Proforma who […]

Previews: Kamea Hadar & Defer – “Paradise Lost” @ 1AM SF

Posted by SAL, July 29, 2014

After their mural collaboration for POW! WOW! Hawaii earlier this year (covered), Hawaii-based artists Kamea Hadar and Defer (seen above adding his calligraphic embellishments to Hadar’s figurative imagery) began a year-long series of collaborative walls, gallery shows and other creative projects. On this note, this Thursday, August 7th, they will be opening a show together at 1AM Gallery in San Francisco, showing a new body of mixed media works on canvas. The show and the entire series of projects, Paradise Lost, refers to John Milton’s epic poem by the same title. […]

Streets: Ludo (Paris)

Posted by SAL, July 28, 2014

LUDO (interviewed) is currently back home in Paris, spending long days creating new works for his upcoming London solo show at his studio, and pasting up public works on early weekend mornings. Over the past weekend, he created this double billboard piece on the streets of the French capital, taking up the advertising space while propagating his imagery. By bastardizing the iconic Coca-Cola logo and the company’s visual identity, he created an image of a Coke can with his familiar Pina Colada image, along the altered motto “Enjoy Ludo […]

Streets: Mobstr (London)

Posted by sleepboy, July 28, 2014

Mobstr (interviewed), who recently put on a show in London (covered), just completed a project he had been working on for over a year. Starting in May of last year, he had been counting the days a particular piece of graffiti lasted on a wall in Hackney Wick along the edge of a river, adding hashmarks for each passing day. The low wall was finally destroyed this July as part of new construction, but as you can see, this is yet another example of Mobstr’s interactive […]

Overtime: July 21 – July 27

Posted by Khoi, July 27, 2014

More stories from the week that ended July 27 (click on bolded words for more information): Azuma Makoto sends bonsai tree, orchids, lilies, other plants into the stratosphere, suspended in a balloon. RIP: Otto Piene, who died at the age of 85. Should Britain do more to protect cultural objects and sites during time of war? The Shrine of Jonah/Mosque of Yunus (Nineveh, Mosul, Iraq) has been destroyed, allegedly by ISIS. Artists destroy Beuys sculpture for an ingredient in liquor, which they drank. Eva Beuys takes […]

Streets: Etam Cru @ LFG: All My City Festival (Poland)

Posted by SAL, July 26, 2014

Dream Catcher is the newest mural created by Polish art duo Etam Cru. Both members, Sainer and Bezt, painted this large piece in Lubin, for the LFG: ALL MY CITY ’14, organised by the Europejska Fundacja Kultury Miejskiej and Brain Damage Gallery. Created over the course of 5 days, the image shows a dog wrapping up his owner with a leash, in an attempt to catch an imaginary bone. The mural is a perfect example of their signature elements – a playful scenario, a peculiar way of freezing a tensed, dynamic moment, […]

Streets: Jeff Soto (Los Angeles)

Posted by sleepboy, July 26, 2014

Last week, Riverside native Jeff Soto (interviewed) headed to Los Angeles to paint a mural (invited by Juxtapoz) for Converse and their Wall to Wall program. Set in South Central L.A. on Slauson Avenue where some of his ancestors originally settled, Soto decided to do something as a tribute to them. Working on the piece over the course of two days, he decided to go with one of his familiar owl motifs. He states: “The Owl is a symbol of age and experience, a matriarch or patriarch of the […]

Showing: Vhils – “Dissection” @ Electricity Museum / EDP Foundation

Posted by sleepboy, July 23, 2014

Earlier this month, the Electricity Museum / EDP Foundation in Lisbon hosted the opening of Vhils’ (filmed) expansive museum show, his largest to date. Entitled Dissection, the exhibition features a look at the diverse range of the Portuguese artist, highlighting his unconventional choice of mediums. Along with several public works (covered here & here) in the capital city, the pieces included in the show put his unique mark-making and destructive techniques on display from his chiseled surfaces on found objects, to torn and ripped media pieces, to […]

Openings: CRASH – “Broken English” @ Jonathan LeVine Gallery

Posted by juggernut3, July 22, 2014

One of the summer exhibitions that we checked out recently was by Bronx-based graffiti artist Crash, a.k.a. John Matos (featured) at Jonathan LeVine Gallery. Entitled Broken English this freshly minted body of work spanned traditional mediums such as canvas and paper, but also highlights Crash’s dexterity as a graffiti master as he worked his painterly street magic to redo a Mini Cooper in his signature style & visual language. This great exhibition will be up until July 26th, so if you’re in NYC, this is a must see. Photo credit: Joe Russo for Arrested Motion. […]