All posts by butterfly

Magic City – The Art of the Street comes to Munich

April 11, 2017 butterfly

After its successful first instalment in Dresden, ‘MAGIC CITY – THE ART OF THE STREET‘ is now coming to the Olympia Hall in Munich, opening on the 13th April 2017. This one of kind touring and evolving exhibition, built as a dream city with all its urban features, from streets to cinema and playground, is showcasing over 60 international street artists as well as local graffiti writers. Visitors can wander through the streets and learn more about the different public art forms, and interact with the immersive installations.

Curators Carlo McCormic and Ethel Seno declared that their goal was to create a “playground for the imagination”, in a new hybrid form. Starting with an initial ‘ white walls ‘ gallery setting , the streets are getting more and more covered with artworks and installations as the exhibition evolves and continues to tour.

A pictures gallery from legendary photo-journalists Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, as well as Graffiti writer Daze, who bombed the New York subways in the mid-1970s and writer FINO’91 who grew up in the 1970s in the American sector of divided Berlin serves as a chronological introduction and education about the graffiti art movement.

The public can get immersed within 3D anamorphic installations by Leon Kerr, Truly, Replete, The Yok & Sheryo. When looking up, twin brothers Skewville ‘dogs have invaded the alleys, while shopping trolleys have been transformed into a playful seating duo. Asbestos ‘Lost’ posters advertise items never to be found. Activist artists like Icy & Sot, Biancoshock and Ori Carino & Benjamin Armas present works about the refugee crisis in Europe while SpY and Shepard Fairey highlight the surveillance society.

The city also contains a square with a colourful carrousel by crochet queen OLEK, a phone booth installation by Ernest Zacharevic as well as a red light district decorated by AIKO. Walking along the streets, visitors interact with the wooden panels by ROA, enjoy large murals by HERAKUT, Tristan Eaton, MadC, Ron English, get surprised by Brad Downey’s installation made of found material and get immersed within the miniature world of Isaac Cordal.

Magic City also features a cinema with documentaries like ‘Saving Banksy’ and a selection of movies curated by Jaime Rojo and Steven P. Harrington at Brooklyn Street Art.

New additions to Magic City in Munich are stencil godfather Blek Le Rat (FR), Faith 47 & Imraan Christian (ZA), Bond Truluv (DE), Christy Rupp (US), Gregor Wosik (DE), ‘gif-fiti’ artist INSA (UK), Jordan Seiler (US), Motomichi Nakamura (JP), calligraffiti artist Niels Shoe Meulmann (DE), Slinkachu (UK), The London Police (NL), and WON ABC.

For the full programme, from the official opening on 13 April, workshops, meeting artists on site like Niels Shoe Meulmann, The London Police please visit MAGIC CITY

Let the fun begin !

MAGIC CITY MUNICH
Olympia Park
From 13 April 2017

Shows, Street, Uncategorized

London streets: Wasp Elder

April 11, 2017 butterfly

Cardiff painter Wasp Elder is opening a new solo show ‘ Victims of Circumstance’ at 1963 Gallery this Thursday in London.

With the help of Monoprixx, Wasp Elder just completed a large muralcalled’ Manufacturing Consent’ in Hanbury Street, off Brick Lane featuring three male characters with his signature colour palette.

Wasp Elder

Wasp Elder – Victims of Circumstance
Until 20th April 2017
1963 Gallery / 5th Base
23 Heneage Street
London E1 5LJ

London, Shows

London: Mat Collishaw – The Centrifugal Soul

April 8, 2017 butterfly

The Centrifugal Soul is the title work and centrepiece of British contemporary artist Mat Collishaw‘s new exhibition at Blain|Southern in London.
The sculpture, in the form of a zoetrope a pre-film animation device that produces the illusion of motion through rapid rotation and stroboscopic light, animates scenes of bowerbirds and birds of paradise as they perform elaborate mating rituals. The work offers a captivating demonstration of how aesthetic diversity has evolved through sexual selection and also reflects the artist’s ongoing examination of our insatiable appetite for visual stimulation.

Elsewhere in the exhibition, a new body of work continues the examination of visual power play with twelve trompe l’oeil paintings of tethered British garden birds revisited with graffiti textured background, in a nod to seventeenth-century fashion for commissioning portraits of prestige pets.

A monumental visual installation titled ‘Albion’ presents a rotating ghostly image of an oak tree, in reference to the mythical Major Oak in Sherwood Forest, Nottingham.The image represents a living object that is trapped in perpetuity to present the illusion of life.

Throughout his work, Collishaw has examined the way in which we consume imagery and how our biology has conditioned us to respond. The exhibition reflects the consistent themes addressed in the artist’s practice and the diversity of his chosen mediums. Moreover, it questions how much choice we have in accepting what seems to be a natural preoccupation with self-image.

Mat Collishaw
The Centrifugal Soul
Blain|Southern London
Until 7 May 2017

Art Fair, London

Studio visit: Hisham Echafaki

March 15, 2017 butterfly

We stopped by the London studio of contemporary artist Hisham Echafaki as he prepares a new body of work with drawings, surrealist paintings,3D paintings and prints to be showcased at the Talented Art Fair opening this Friday.

His surrealist compositions show a real fascination for nature and the animal world through intricate symmetry and patterns with a trompe l’oeil effect.

Most intriguing are the 3D paintings. Using several layers of resin, Hisham Echafaki paints three-dimensional insects, that give the optical illusion they are taxidermy specimen embedded in resin. Each piece is a tribute to the beautiful intricacy and complexity of the insect world but also a critique of how humans are affecting and shaping evolutionary changes in animal species.

In parallel a series of prints from his famous Ballets will be released at the Fair and online here

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Hisham Echafaki
Talented Art Fair
17-19 March 2017
Truman Brewery
London E1 6QR

Dresden, streets

Dresden: ‘Monument’ to Aleppo sparks emotional debate

March 9, 2017 butterfly

A Syrian war memorial is currently dividing Dresden, itself a symbol of the ravages of war.
‘Monument’, featuring three buses standing upright, was erected in February 2017 next to the famous baroque Frauenkirche, which was initially devastated by Allied bombs in 1945 and then rebuilt brick by brick after the German unification, becoming a symbol of peace and reconciliation.

Manaf Halbouni, a Syrian-born artist with German roots, was inspired by a powerful image that was seen worldwide in 2015: Residents of Aleppo put bombed-out buses on their sides in the heart of the formerly thriving industrial city to protect themselves from sharpshooters. The buses became a symbol of the resistance movement in the town which, by the end of 2016, had been nearly totally destroyed by war.

In Dresden, the sculpture is comprised of three outdated public buses. The artist said he intentionally used buses that had not been wrecked, as a symbol of the peace that can still be found in Germany – unlike in Syria.

Designed to draw attention to the Syrian war while appealing for peace and humanity, the art installation has sparked an emotional debate in the city. Halbouni’s work was installed to coincide with the 72nd anniversary of the Allied raids that devastated the city. The bombings by British and American warplanes on a militarily insignificant city remain the source of resentment, and far-right groups tried to use the annual memorial to push a revisionist view of history that Dresden was a victim of an Allied war crime.

Curator of Kunsthaus Dresden Mennicke-Schwarz added: “It’s thought-provoking and that’s what we wanted: to connect the terrible suffering of the war in Syria to Dresden, to connect the commemoration of the victims of the past with those of the present. It seemed so appropriate to give us a small insight into how civilians are trying to get by at the moment in Syrian cities.”

On display in the city through April 3, the installation was funded through donations from the local community. The artist said he found it important to show that there is a side to Dresden which stands in contrast to the anti-foreigner movement that has become associated with the city.