Available in iTunes: Issue #3 Discosalt Magazine
ArtBattles returns to New York after a tour through France and Spain with the ArtBattles Pop Up Gallery NYC. The gallery is open for free to the public for a limited time from Thursday, January 12th through Saturday, January 14th and located at 159 Bleeker St. in the West Village.
This exhibition of one of a kind originals will feature a live and silent auction starting at exclusive pricing that can only be found at the ArtBattles Popup Gallery. ArtBattles will not only showcase large-scale works created by rising stars and painters from the US, France, and Spain, but also Live Art and a video installation. Art enthusiasts will be able to learn about the artists’ process, history and style. This unique collection of work represents a range of painting from fine art to street art that will be showcased in a floor to ceiling exhibition of epic scale.
“We are excited to bring back a collection of work that accurately reflects the unique artistic cultures found all over Europe and the US. These pieces, which were made in a series of battles over a course of 6 months, show the dynamism of live art today. It’s fresh, it’s frenetic, it’s liberating,” said Sean Bono, founder of ArtBattles.
ArtBattles Pop Up Gallery brings famed European artists to the New York stage. All featured works were painted live, on stage, in front of hundreds and sometimes thousands of viewers. ArtBattles curated all 300 pieces from the most innovative artists who participated in these international, competitive, creative presentations in 2010 & 2011.
All pieces are available for sale on site and can also be found in the ArtBattles Gallery.
DATE
LOCATION
New York, NY
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
US: Andre Trenier, Max (Mega 330) Bode, Zito, Don Rimx, Max Neutra, Michael Pukac, Beast, Ben Angotti, Sean Bono, Lexi Bella, Marthalicia Mattarita, Dirty Duke, Yatika Starr Fields, Kevin Ragnott, Gia Gutierrez, Erin Cadigan, Gregory Siff.
Spain: El Niño de Las Pinturas, Kram, Japon, 3TTMan, Paria,Daniel Thomas, Pichi & Avo, Sakristan.
France: Deuz, MattB, Kouka, Shane, Skio, Titi from Paris, Michael Beerens, Monsta, Move.
EVENT SPONSORS
Artist canvas will be supplied by Fredrix for Live Art each day of the Art Battles Pop Up Gallery.
Exhibition space has been provided by PopUpSpaceNY.
Photographer Davis Ayer can’t get enough analogue. He shoots most of his projects on film and his photo essay series called Time Travel, combines two forms of film photography: vintage photographs of cityscapes and forests projected on nude models. The arcs of bridges and trunks of ferns hug the hip lines of partially lit girls. Autumnal foliage wraps around the curved back of a model, warping and blurring, as if frozen mid a caressing motion. Scratches dotting the film become indistinguishable from beauty marks. It all seems quite effortless and light.“
From music-mash up DJ super star Girl Talk, whose last album All Day sampled 372 popular songs, to the crude cut-and-paste street art remixes of Poster Boy, Miss Bugs and Mr. Brainwash, the gap between influences and references in art is shrinking.What emerges is merely an alteration of some current cultural contribution. So, does the remix strip the uniqueness, diversity, and vision of the original art so that it is softened and homogenized? And does the speed at which art is produced and re-produced render it culturally insignificant or unsustainable?In the music world, the solo DJ project Girl Talk, started by Gregg Gillis is paving the way for an onslaught of copycat DJ projects looking to cash in on their own brand of re-mixes. While hip-hop artists have been sampling music for well over a decade, Girl Talk is something altogether new. Gillis prolifically produces dozens of hip-hop, pop and rock mash up-style remixes, using dozens of samples from different pop songs (including current work) to create new ones, sometimes sampling 20+ songs in a single track. The result: pop songs for the attention-deficit.Gillis says the songs he creates, while hashed from other pop songs are, in fact, entirely original. The mashed results mean something entirely different to his listeners than the originals ever did. While they may sound familiar, they are at the same time foreign, and the re-shuffled end-product is given new meaning. The songs are unique and “new”, he says.”With a lot of music, it’s about creating a new way to look at it…If this is a novelty, then it’s a novelty that I’ve spent 10 years really developing. Like, Weird Al [Yankovic] is a novelty, but it doesn’t mean he’s not a genius”. (Gillis on NPR MUSIC: Girl Talk: Cataloging Samples ‘All Day’, December 4, 2010)We can call “Eat It” genius all we want (and, as satire, maybe it is), but will it ever be considered culturally significant?
Nerd Alert: French illustrator Grégoire Guillemin delves into the golden age of superheros to create this new retro poster series. The posters are part of a larger Exercise in Style, a slice of which, is available online at Society 6 store, including his papercraft designs aka. Paper Heroes.
Day 1 of a two day Creators Project affair invaded DUMBO yesterday, with 4 locations along the waterfront and a number household and soon to be household names, it was, in this review’s mind, an unabashed success. That said, it wasn’t without glitches; a prematurely printed schedule booklet failing to reflect accurate set times, a number of recalled rsvp confirmations, and most unfortunately of all, a prematurely shut-down Justice DJ set (that they performed without their iconic cross platform). On a grander scale however, these “glitches” were minor when juxtaposed against the grandeur of the days events at large. We were fortunate to catch Chairlift, Yuksek, Atlast Sound, Florence + the Machine, and finally, Justice.
Chairlift:
Yuksek
Atlas Sound
Florence + The Machine
Justice
Maybe if the United States started printing rock legends on our dollar bills, the economy might pick up. Over the great pond, the Brixton district in London has been experimenting with it’s own alternative to the sterling pound to promote local commerce. The newest, and hands down, the most fun to funky cycle of this British currency features David Bowie, wearing ‘Aladdin Sane’ makeup from the 1973 album following up ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’. Bowie is the first musician to be included on the currency and we are excited to see who Brixton will come up with next. Keep the ch-ch-ch-change.
LA based artist Doug Aitken is most known for his innovative fine art installations but not limited. In 2007, Aitken’s “Sleepwalkers” exhibition at MoMA was able to transform a whole city block into an expansive cinematic experience. His work, which utilizes a wide array of media and artistic techniques, ranging from photography, sculpture, film, and sound can be seen on display in London, in a new solo exhibition in London taking over both floors of Victoria Miro. The exhibition includes a specially reconfigured presentation of his acclaimed multi-channel film installation Black Mirror, alongside new wall-and floor-based sculptures and light box works. Check out more HERE.
“In the upper gallery Aitken’s film installation Black Mirror explores the story of a nomadic individual, set in a modern wilderness: a geography constructed of calls, electronic messages, and virtual documents superimposed over the physical world. It is a portrait of people who are the products of a society that has lost track of information and is saturated with change. The characters move in shorthand, they communicate in quick pulses, they travel long distances for short meetings. They depart quickly. The protagonist, a young woman played by American star Chloë Sevigny, exists in the borderless world of Black Mirror where people live fast lives in the shadows. These are the people you pass and don’t identify at the airport terminal, the hotel lobby and the car rental kiosk. Black Mirror explores modern life accelerated. Like a river of light moving on the highway, we’re all on this road, but this is the story of those for whom the road is existence; those who don’t step back to breathe the air, those who never stagnate or stop… this is “the now.” (http://www.victoria-miro.com/exhibitions/_425/)
Meet Elodie Chapuis, the newest member of the discosalt Artist Collective. Since she began photography in 2006, Elodie has contributed her music and fashion photography to a slew of culture magazines and fashion projects. In 2007, she spent 4 days covering the Roskilde Festival in Denmark; the first step towards a personal artistic project to photograph live performances and off stage portraits. Elodie’s work in music, has lead her to several solo and collective exhibitions and she is constantly looking for new upcoming artists and bands to photograph. Some of her work includes The Kills, Franz Ferdinand, The Drums, Razorlight, Florence & The Machine, The XX, Iggy & The Stooges, Cold War Kids, PJ Harvey, The Strokes among others. For updates, check back soon to find more of Elodie’s work in the collective here.
At just 20 years old, revealing little background information, English photographer/ graphic designer Dan Mountford has created a professional portfolio which already includes clients like EMI Records. His series of portraits titled The Worlds Inside of Us, is a surreal visual journey into the minds of his subjects, using the process of double exposure and photoshop to create thoughtful, captivating and superbly composed images. You can purchase prints through Dan’s shop or see more of his work on flickr.
Johnny Lyon, the shaggy haired kiwi guitar player of the surf pop revival band, The Psychs, flexes his vibrant artistry in the world of digital illustration with a distinct visual style that is an “eclectic mix of candy-pop surrealism; featuring plenty of skulls, mullets and Davide Bowie.” See more of Johnny’s work here: johnnylyon.tumblr.com
Before immigrating to Europe and studying at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, Algerian Driss Ouadahi studied architecture. His paintings of the ubiquitous high-rise, the legacy of Modern Architecture’s failed promise to improve the human condition, are renderings of impenetrable boundaries of steel, glass and concrete.
Ouadahi’s exploration begins with images of the enormous public housing developments in Algiers that had been modeled on France’s habitation à loyer modéré (housing at moderated rents). In North Africa, these monoliths accommodate displaced rural populations; in Europe, they house immigrants from former colonies. They are symbols of the politics of class, religion and ethnicity. Reminders of otherness.
In addition to the permutations of cityscape which Ouadahi has been exploring in the last few years, his work consists of two new types of paintings. The first are rigorously formal renderings of chain-link fencing that are both minimalist abstractions and a signifier of separation. The second are depictions of tiled passageways, akin to subway systems like the Paris Métro. Fluorescent-lit and grimy, they are labyrinthian and claustrophobic. Ostensibly their purpose is movement from one place to another. But they feel more like blocked escape routes or morgues. They speak to restricted mobility in a supposedly global culture.
