Calamardojo, photo courtesy of Wonderland Gallery

Belin

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*Los Angeles' War on Street Artists

At the back of Kat Von D's High Voltage Tattoo shop, 20 distinct spray-painted faces stare back at you. This detailed mural wraps around the wall space in the parking lot, the shock of red hair on Von D's head standing out from the crowd.

The tattoo vixen and TV personality didn't employ just anyone to do the job. She flew out an artist who'd never been to L.A. -- Spanish street artist Belin. He completed the task back in 2010 (and appeared on Von D's reality show LA Ink) and will now show his exhibit "True or False Superheroes" at Kat Von D's Wonderland Gallery in West Hollywood, opening tonight from 8 to 10 p.m. and running through July.

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Courtesy Richard Telles Fine Art

Dan Finsel's E-thay Inward-Yay Ourney-Jay

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*Getty's Pacific Standard Time Series on L.A. Architecture: A Preview
*Our Calendar Section, Listing More Great Things to Do in L.A.

This week, a panel of architects and a performance at a science fiction conference imagine a high-tech future L.A. and an artist uses Pig Latin to title the work in his half-biographical, half-fantastical show.

5. Home for a wayward shopping cart
The lot on Traction between Third and Fourth Street, in Little Tokyo, used to be a gas station. Recently, it has become a pop-up art spot for street artists. Right now, there's a reshaped shopping cart angling up off a concrete slab at the center of the triangle and an eagle at the top of a found-object totem pole along the outskirts. Traction Avenue, between Third and Fourth streets.

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See also:
*Banksy Revealed? Our 2010 cover story on Exit Through the Gift Shop

Several weeks ago, the Internet exploded with stories about a Banksy piece removed straight from a wall and later found at a Miami auction. As the story unfurled, more and more people from around the world got involved, from Banksy fans to fellow street artists.

The story indicates how, in the last decade, one man who never reveals his face has managed to get as famous as the most recognized celebrities. The controversial antics that have shaped Banksy's persona include: hilarious, sometimes-inappropriate stencil art in London; 2006's "Barely Legal" show in an L.A. warehouse featuring a painted elephant; and his 2010 documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, about the street artist Mr. Brainwash, in which Banksy narrates the film but doesn't appear in it.

Now, London-based writer Williams Ellsworth-Jones explores Banksy's rise to fame in Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall, an unauthorized biography that doesn't want to figure out who the hell Banksy is but instead how the hell he got so big.

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Gabrielle Canon

Fabian Debora

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*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week

Fabian Debora stood on the railing of a busy I-5 Freeway, just beyond Hollenbeck Park, watching the cars zoom by. Blood spewed down his mouth and onto his water-soaked shirt -- consequences of the manic escape from his mother's home where she had discovered him doing meth.

Haunted by his children's faces and the hurt he had caused, he fled in shame to this spot, where he planned to end his life. Voices shouted in his head, beckoning him to do what he had come to.

"The voice said, 'You worthless piece of shit, kill yourself,' and it's starting to sound scary and its sounding like a demon...and it's getting louder and louder and I just said 'Ahhhh I don't want to hear this!' I ran across the freeway. First lane, second lane, third lane. There was no turning back."

Debora's story nearly ended that day. It is a story laced with sadness and loss, tragedy and regret. But most of all it is a story about an artist's mission to heal himself, help his community, and bring attention to the forgotten area of Los Angeles -- his home neighborhood, Boyle Heights.

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Eva Recinos

On a small grass field, a group of young students walk in a row lugging paint cans. Last Saturday, early in the morning, some of the younger members of A Place Called Home -- a South Los Angeles non-profit organization that helps 8-to-20-year-olds through mentoring, art classes and more -- gather excitedly to begin a new project. They sift through a bucket of black aprons, lay out material to protect the grass and tease each other in the way only elementary school students can.

Then David Choe arrives.

To the students assembled, Choe is just an artist coming to help them out with a mural for the day. But for those familiar with the name, Choe resides on the more famous side of the art spectrum. Besides creating his distinctive style -- with explosions of color and weird characters -- Choe cemented his name in popular culture through works like the album cover for Jay-Z and Linkin Park's Collision Course.

Then came the Facebook commission, a job that put his name on even more lips. The mission was to transform the company's headquarters with spray-can murals, in which he got free rein -- and perhaps even encouragement -- to go as visually lewd as he wanted. Choe chose stock as compensation for his work and since then, Facebook relocated, expanded and did a stock IPO -- making Choe worth around $200 million, putting him in the league of wealthy artists like Damien Hirst. Today, more than 34,000 people follow him on Twitter. He follows no one.

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Joel Revoredo

See also:
*Pomona Street Artist Alleges That Odd Future Stole His Design
*10 Places in L.A. to Draw Nude Models
*What Happened to Banksy's Buyers? Some of His Famous Works Flopped at Auction

Drama from Beverly Boulevard spilled onto the Internet on Sunday when CHOD, a street artist who has been working locally for about two years, remixed a painting created by Annie Preece and posted it on the building that once housed the Regency Fairfax Cinemas. Preece, herself a street artist who also shows at galleries, was not amused. She reclaimed the now-collaborative effort from in front of the shuttered theater and is selling it, with proceeds going to a local charity for domestic abuse victims.

It's a strange story, where street art and Internet beefs meet, one filled with enough weird coincidences and hearsay to make it sound like a convoluted television plot or art world prank.

CHOD and Preece don't know each other, but in the past their work has appeared on the same spot, that old theater at 7907 Beverly Blvd., a popular spot for street art. CHOD had been wanting to do a project that examined "value" in the art world. Specifically, he wanted to look at this in the context of street art. How does the value of one's work change when the artist moves from the street to the gallery and then back to the street?

Let's start at the beginning.

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Eva Recinos

GHLA features murals like this one, done by graffiti artist VYAL

Graffiti. Mostly on the streets, sometimes in galleries and always in heated art conversations, this spray-can form of expression remains a huge part of Los Angeles' identity.

Looking to create a supportive, communal space for experienced and budding artists, the recently-established Graffiti House L.A. focuses on offering graffiti artists the opportunity to create indoor pieces, meet other artists and pick up commercial work. Located right off the 101 freeway near Silver Lake, GHLA opened its doors about a month ago thanks to the efforts of a group with very different talents -- currently, 22 members work in creative, marketing and development teams. The unassuming building blends in with the rest of the street and the interior reveals a long hallway dotted with office doors.

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Karen Marcelo

This happened last weekend in L.A.

If you really want to see a festival that deals with the extremities of the future, any retirement home will do.

The 2nd Extreme Future Festival, which took place over two days at the L.A. Center Studios this past weekend, focused on arts and technology produced by "radical voices of the new evolution." It was in fact two days of strobe light, slam poetry and lectures on the sorry state of a world, all transfixed on fixed points in the future that, to the presenters, matter more than the crumminess of the "now."

It was also to closest thing to a reunion of the minds behind the groundbreaking industrial music and performance art book Industrial Culture Handbook from Re/Search publications, with V. Vale, Naut Humon (Rhythm & Noise), Sinan (SPK) and Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) all making various appearances over two tumultuous, chaotic days.

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BLU at Tou Scene, Nuart 2010

In Stavanger, Norway, every September for the past 12 years, Nuart, one of the largest street art festivals in the world, transpires. Closeted in the beautiful Fijords, Stavanger is a quaint, oil-rich community with a high standard of living, sometimes making the list as most expensive in all of Europe. However, it is not easy to get to, rains 20 hours out of every day (at least in the fall) and has a zero tolerance law when it comes to tagging and graffiti. A perfect spot to host preeminent street art and its artists?

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Jeff Maysh/ Coleman-Rayner

Graffiti artist Banksy suffered an embarrassing evening Monday as a number of his greatest works failed to sell at a prestigious Los Angeles auction house. While his aerosol-powered contemporaries enjoyed strong sales at British auctioneers Bonham's on Sunset Blvd, Banksy's spray-painted rats received few nibbles from buyers in Hollywood. Four of the artist's most famous works remain unsold.

"It's obviously disappointing when pieces don't sell," explains Bonham's urban art specialist, Gareth Williams. "I was surprised that the Gangsta Rat piece did not find a buyer," he admits, speaking of the iconic work chosen for the auction catalogue's front cover.

Williams said he believed the price was right, estimated at $100,000- $150,000, but suggested the storm in New York may have affected telephone bidding. (In art auctions, if the bidding does not reach a predetermined level, called a "reserve" price, it fails to sell.) Other Banksy pieces priced more affordably from $8,000 failed to receive many bids at all, and were met with that hideous indifference only found in auction sale rooms.

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