Legendary New York street artist Craig “KR” Costello customized a Mini Cooper S with his signature KRINK aesthetic. The car was shown today at Erste Liebe Bar in Hamburg, Germany. A vernissage takes place at Vicious Gallery on October 31st.

Want.

Vicious Gallery

Kleine Freiheit 46
22767 Hamburg

Via High Snobiety

Crazy work on an elevator shaft in Antwerp by Darrin Umboh from the creative collective Leyp.

To many people, the elevator is just a device to get you up or down. A ride in this amazing warehouse elevator in the city of Antwerp makes you forget about boring elevator shafts. This fully illustrated elevator-shaft is one of the recent projects of the Dutch rep agency Shop Around – mainly representing illustrators, graphic designers and animators and motion graphic designers.

Mulheres Barbadas must have been working out their arms, but considering what we already know about them, they’re used to it. They’re a few steps beyond the starting line of five long days of live painting at Sao Paulo’s concept furniture store Micasa, where they’ll leave nothing—walls, tables, chairs, refrigerators, even owner Houssein Jarouche’s Mini Cooper—untouched with black marker. The duo, who take turns intertwining each other’s wacky drawings in magnificent detail, are streaming their intense art session on their site and told me they are already so productive that they’re running out of things to paint. In fact, it must not only be their arms that are tired but their brains too: they’re encouraging viewers to suggest what images they want them to put on the walls and furniture by adding the tag “#mulheresbarbadas” to Tweets. After Mulheres Barbadas reach the finish line, they’ll put the finished goods on for sale at Micasa. The walls will likely stay put though–the building’s schedule to be demolished in a few months. Tune in between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. Sao Paulo time to watch the fun unfold.

Banksy, beloved English street artist owes much of his popularity and fame to his voluntary anonymity. Some would call it admirable, an artist could surely garner more fame and fortune if he revealed his face. While others, like myself, think that he is already famous because of the intrigue he created. Director Ivan Massow tries to capture the Banksy phenomenon in his film “Banksy’s Coming For Dinner,” which stars Joan Collins, her husband Percy and a hodgepodge of other guests as they all convene for a dinner with Banksy. There is much excitement and comotion as the diners all wonder who the man behind the art really is. I’ve watched the trailer a few times now and to be honest, it is difficult to tell how much of the movie is fact and how much is fiction. It will be available in both DVD and downloadable formats soon and should be interesting!

Hundreds of unregistered billboards flood the NYC urban landscape, creating a glut of unregulated eyesores on nearly every formerly barren surface. While the city allows this unregulated illegal ugliness to stand unchecked, Jordan Seiler and PublicAdCampaign.com decided it was high time to do something about this piracy of the common landscape. In an effort to turn those blights on buildings into works of art, they launched the New York Street Advertising Takeover; whitewashing 126 billboards across the Big Apple and then asking eighty artists to do their best to remove our memories of some of that awful imagery. One of our favorite creations of the project sprung from the mind of our good friend Ji Lee, whose Delete billboard showed just how much the previous occupier of this particular swath of concrete was appreciated. Great stuff…

Upper Playground has been supporting street artists in its stores and galleries for ten years, so it only makes sense that they would start stocking the tools to make the art. At the Upper Playground web store’s new department for graffiti supplies, you can now buy spray paint, markers and fatcaps from Montana and Krink. This should be great news for the homecoming of UP alumni, David Choe. He’s currently doing a stint in China and recently blogged about all the cheap watery paint.

Photo from Black Rainbow Extraordinaire Magazine

Although Brazil’s famous graffiti export Os Gemeos have gone from painting streets in Sao Paulo to castles in Scotland, they deserve more than a few solo shows given to them in their home country. Vertigem has the distinction of being their first solo exhibit in Brazil’s old capital of Rio de Janeiro, and just opened yesterday to amped-up Carioca fans. The twins’ skinny, yellow figures star in the usual stellar paintings, but Os Gemeos also have a few sweet installations in store. There will be a giant head visitors can stand inside filled with tiny infinitely reflecting mirrors, and even a piece that incorporates a Volkswagon Beetle. The exhibit runs at CCBB Rio de Janeiro until May 24, but you can check out photos here.

We’ve covered a lot of graffiti artist doing a lot of amazing things, but Knitta Please is one for the books (blogs?). Magda Sayeg began the graffiti group three and a half years ago to tag with knits instead of spray paint. Sort of a grandma friendly version of graffiti. For the past three and a half years they’ve been everywhere: Paris, a brick on the great wall of China, New York, El Savador, San Francisco and most recently in Mexico City where the team wrapped a freakin bus! Check out this video from MexicanReporter.com interviewing her as she puts the final stitches in place for a knitting that covered the entire autobus. We can’t help but to think, “stitch your heart out Christo and Jean Claude.” Check out their gallery of travels and projects. They’ve also stocked some T-shirts to bring out your inter Knitta.

I’ve been a Parla collector and fan for years– since he came on to the mainstream art buying radar in a big way at the Art Basel Cityscapes exhibition in Miami a few years ago, his work (and the prices) have just skyrocketed, and for good reason. He’s one talented dude.

His latest show is at the Elms Lester Painting Rooms in London, and it once again raises the bar in a huge way. More detail, more pieces, more powerful images, large scale canvases, and a world view from his travels he didn’t have a few years ago. Words can not describe the work– so I won’t even really bother. On with the pictures.

READ MORE…

This weekend's bank holiday in London is almost over, so you better hurry if you want to have a chance to compete with elusive graffiti artist, Banksy. The Cans Festival opened up a half mile of unused tunnel behind Waterloo Station to house some original Banksy stencils, along with other invited street artists. The goal, in Banksy's words, is to “transform a dark forgotten pit into an oasis of beautiful art.” Already visitors to the exhibition have added their scribblings to the walls. Although we have a feeling it will turn into spaghetti of mixed messages, the bigger danger is a word of caution posted on Cans’ Website: art outside the designated area may well result in prosecution.

Several months ago, we about lost our crap when we heard that Beautiful Losers – the museum exhibit-turned-most brilliant coffee table book ever bound by mechanical means – would soon be joined by another extension of arty rectitude. Beautiful Losers, the documentary, would relate to the book and exhibit by way of subject matter, but would differ from the previous installments through one defining characteristic: The punk, skate, hip hop and graffiti subcultures it traced would take the literal form of the men and women that led the movement.

Now, over six months after we started getting excited about it (and several years after the film's creators starting working on it), Beautiful Losers, the doc, has arrived. Thanks to the hard work, creativity, passion, and rule breaking of the same group of individuals who drove this creative crusade, the film was enthusiastically debuted and received and at this year's SXSW.

This August, Beautiful Losers will open in theatres nationwide. We feel strongly that our readers should go see it – because we're of the opinion that this movement is more significant than most other things the past thirty years have given us – but since we know you're a rebellious bunch, we brought in someone else to spread the word. Readers, meet Aaron Rose; artist, writer, curator, co-editor of ANP Magazine, owner of Alleged Gallery, and the man driving the Beautiful Losers trilogy.

Joshspear.com: Can you walk us through the history of Beautiful Losers, from the exhibit up until now?

Aaron Rose: It started as an exhibition that opened at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati in 2003. The book (catalog) was released as the same time as the first exhibition. Since then, the exhibition has traveled throughout the US and is currently touring Europe. It will open in Madrid this fall. READ MORE…

While the political process can often be filled with a lot of hot air, sometimes that air is actually the winds of change a-blowin’. As we’ve shown you before, those winds of change have proven capable of inspiring some pretty eye catching artistic endeavors. The latest PrObama campaign by Ray Noland is another shining example of how Politics can captivate the imagination and inspire more than it’s fair share of moving imagery. The Chicago-based Freelance Artist launched an unpaid, unauthorized one-man street art campaign under the moniker CRO in support of the Democratic frontrunner, consisting of a multitude of posters and stenciled graffiti that has since sprouted up all over the country as far away as New York and LA. His designs paint a warm, yet purposeful portrait of the Illinois Senator determined to capture the Presidency and help to change a nation in need of new leadership and direction. You can check out some of his designs and even buy his t-shirts and posters at his Obama-centric site, Go Tell Mama, I’m For Obama.

Sao Paulo artist Eduardo Kobra shares a hip-hop influence in his graffiti training, but beyond that, forget about drawing any other similarities between him and his contemporaries. While they’re bombing the town with imaginary characters, Kobra has been working on his Wall of Memories project, (spray)painting incredibly realistic city scenes all over Sao Paulo completely on his own accord (read: without any commission). It’s his gift, he says, “to bring the good old days to the residents and the visitors of the city.” Kobra sources public-domain photographs taken in the beginning of the century from the Department of Historical Patrimony in Sao Paulo for his murals and gets to work with an airbrush, using graffiti technique to add dimension. This guy, with the help of a team, works super-fast: Twelve pictures have been finished so far with another six planned for the pipeline this year. While he’s not so interested in making money off the project, he is open to sponsors helping him pay for materials. Click on the ‘Wall of Memories’ link to see this stunning, unusual street art series so far.

You may not know the name Greg LaMarche, but if you count yourself as a connoisseur of urban artwork, then there's a good chance you're familiar with his work. LaMarche spent his early days spraying tags in the streets of Queens in the early 80's, under the monikers Spanky, SPY, and most notably SP One. He even went on to found the graffiti magazine Skills in 1992. Just as LaMarche's name has gone through an evolution, so have his skills as an artist. While he still employs the ‘clean-hand style’ he is noted for, his new work is fused with certain ‘collage aesthetics’ as well as that of other mediums that reinforce his own sense of personal style. It's that personal style that has LaMarche in high demand from folks like Zoo York and Quiksilver, as well as magazines like Mass Appeal and Juxtapoz. He's also had his urban aesthetic displayed across the country from Brooklyn to San Francisco. If his particular sense of street style hasn't hit you yet…maybe you're living on the wrong street.

Thirty years ago, when graffiti was withheld the respect of the subtitle “Art Form,” a twelve year-old Vulcan hit the subway cars of New York with his collection of wildly colored paintcans. Over thirty years — and countless walls, trains, and buses — later, the now San Francisco-based graffiti legend has made a smooth transition from street to START SOMA, where the artist-in-residence uses his decades of experience to continue doing what he's done all along — create some of the most significant works of art, both street and otherwise, this side of 1973.

We chatted with Vulcan about his graffiti past and his gallery present, and came out the other side in agreement with the artist: Corporate or communal, gallery or ‘getting up'; art is art, and making it is what truly matters.

Joshspear.com: As one of the earlier writers, what graffiti represents to you is probably somewhat different than what it represents to today’s newest artists. Has any important meaning been lost over the years?

Vulcan: When I was 12 years old in Harlem, I wanted to CREATE. But options were pretty limited – scavenged paint cans and public surfaces were pretty much my only options. Throughout my teens, I painted wherever and whatever I could – buses, subway trains, city walls. I painted my name. I painted giant robots. I planned ‘masterpieces’ in my notebooks at school, and horded paint cans until I had literally hundreds of colors. But I didn’t call what I was doing ‘graffiti’. I was just painting. As I honed my technical skills and found my voice, at some point I was making ART – but it was never a conscious progression. READ MORE…