March 2008 Archives
French graffiti forefather Blek le Rat is in town for his upcoming gallery show at Subliminal Projects.
Photos by Clare O'Callaghan
Click here for more.
On Saturday Blek painted two pieces on the walls of the Living Room furniture store in Silver Lake on Sunset Blvd.
Blek began using stencil art in 1981 (way before Banksy). From his website: "I had the idea to use stencil to make graffiti for one reason. I did not want to imitate the American graffiti that I had seen in NYC in 1971 during a journey I had done over there. I wanted to have my own style in the street... I began to spray some small rats in the streets of Paris because rats are the only wild living animals in cities and only rats will survive when the human race will have disappeared and died out."
Click here to see the whole process in action, as it happened Saturday.
All photos by Clare O'Callaghan.
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A rough patch of the river here, but there will be some better looking stuff coming up tomorrow, though we get a couple glimpses of the massive pieces, like the PDB one below, that line the second half of this stretch of the river.
All photos by Mark Mauer. More after the jump.
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Wired got someone from Clear Channel on the line to confirm that their annoying electronic billboard was not hacked.
Clear Channel's Tony Alwin is unhappy about the hacking rumors. "The advertisement was bought under the assumption that it was art that was in an art show," he says. "Any claims about hacking into our systems is false. It's a lie, even."
I don't particularly care one way or the other. It looked cool, and for a while the seething low-level hatred people have of companies like Clear Channel came to the surface as tons of people cheered Skull Phone for the "hack."
And as I said before: the idea's out there now. Someone will try it, and someone will eventually succeed at it.
And hey - there's plenty of non-elctro billboards out there ready to be liberated. I"m pretty sure this one I snapped last July was unsanctioned by CBS and Toyota.
And while Murakami may have dug the Revok/Auger work on his LACMA billboard...
We're pretty sure that Paramount and Miramax were none too thrilled with Augor's work above.
Above photo by Shelley Leopold. Toyota photo by Mark Mauer
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Curbed.la is claiming that Skullphone didn't hack Clear Channel billboards, but actually bought space on them, just like strip clubs and Disney movies do.
And while that's kind of sad, it's also kind of funny: The guy got his money's worth in publicity. Also, the idea's now floating out there. Someone is going to to hack into these huge glowing horror shows. If it's going to be you, let us know when you do it, ok?
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UPDATE: Curbed.la is claiming that Skullphone didn't hack Clear channels billboards, but actually bought time on them.
And while that's kind of sad, it's also kind of funny: The guy got his money's worth. Also, the idea is now floating out there. Someone is going to try to hack into these huge glowing horror shows. If it's going to be you, let us know when you do it.
-Mauer
Supertouchblog has amazing images of last week's Skullphone Haxxors hack of a dozen Clear Channel electronic billboards around L.A. Seems the 18-year-old artist figured out a way to insert his brilliant image into the scrolling billboards. Here are a few of the photos swiped from Supertouch, which has the rest.
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This post starts a look at a few miles of the L.A. River going north from Atwater Village to the 134 that will continue for the next week or so.
Because the river bottom is mostly unpaved along this stretch, there's a lot of trees, birds, fish, and wildlife, all just a few feet away from the Golden State Freeway.
The L.A. River plays a huge part in the ongoing history of the city's graffiti, and is of course reviled by many city officials.
All photos by Mark Mauer. More after the jump.
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Here's a little relic that won't be around long. It's been 42 years since a Studebaker rolled off the line. Yet, almost right across the street from the convention center - and just a block or two from the Staples Center -is this old ghost ad on the side of a building which still seems to function somewhat as a Ford dealership.
So far it's survived the fevered downtown rip-it-up-and-build-condos activity, but who knows how long that can last.
All photos by Mark Mauer.
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Some older ones,some new ones. There's a huge Britney/Madonna piece up that's getting a lot of talk, but I haven't been able to drive down there yet this week. Send a snap if you have one.
All photos by Mark Mauer. More after the jump.
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Pasted on a box coming off the 101 offramp into Echo Park is this bi-lingual manifesto.
There's something very honest in the frustration voiced here: An effort to strip down one's life to the barest essentials and to escape the constant bombardment of the media, consumerism, and measuring your worth against that of your neighbor.
Alas, the bottom in English got cut off, because of moving cars and a traffic light, so I'm not sure what the question at the end says. Translation anyone?
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Too many gallery posts, not enough grimy street art. Sorry.
I've been trying to figure out how to get photos of pieces I see along our freeways, particularly the 10 heading East from downtown, the 110 North and the 5 near downtown.
Here's some work, partially by Auger I think, along the 101 just south of the Sunset exit. Also Naut on the south side of the 101.
Among the fun obstacles encountered getting these were razor wire, fences, and a really angry homeless guy who though I was getting into his stuff.
Eventually we worked our differences out. Different pieces after the jump.
All photos by Mark Mauer
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The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art opens a new show tonight by photographer Richard Edson. Here's the info: It's tonight from 7 to 9 p.m. at 107 West Fifth Street, LA.
Richard Edson's pictures are close-ups of toys, shot with incredible attention to lighting, background, color, context, and focal points. The show will be running until April 5, so if you don't make the opening, you've still got time to check out the work.
(All photos by Richard Edson).
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Pablo Aravena curated the new show at Scion Space in Culver City. Nomadaz brings together eight street artists from Italy and Spain, including Microbo, Eltono, Sixe,, Bo130 and more.
Above, three pieces by Dem from Italy: cat sculpture Il Cavaliere and paintings on cardboard Libero and Sara Kali.
Close up of Dem's Il Cavaliere.
Above and below: Work by 108. The giant black holes and pyramids probably lose a bit shown inside of a gallery. However, if you saw these on the side of an office building in a downtown area, they'd be impressive as hell.
108 also had several smaller framed pieces.
All photos by Mark Mauer. More after the jump.
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New works by Jersey Joe aka RIME went on display at Ghettogloss on Friday.
More photos after the jump. Check out the art in person at Ghettogloss on Glendale Blvd. in Silver Lake. The show runs until March 20.
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Seventh Letter crew member RIME, aka Jersey Joe, will be showing new work at Ghettogloss this Friday, March 7. The show will run for a couple of weeks, and there's a reception Friday, so mark your calendars. The gallery's at 2380 Glendale Blvd. near the Red Lion and across the street from Rockaway Records.
Check out the Girls, Girls Girls group show opening from Ghettogloss several weeks ago here.
Also check out Jersey Joe's website at www.JerseyJoeArt.com to check out some of his work and see an Adidas TV spot of the writer in action.
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