Eliana Willis

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    in Street Art

    Coverage: Sneakerwolf “The New Abnormal” in Shibuya, Tokyo

    Japanese artist SNEAKERWOLF recently had his latest solo exhibition in elephant STUDIO, Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, organized by WATOWA GALLERY. The exhibition which is entitled “The New Abnormal” will run until the 7th of February.

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    The series “The New Abnormal” which treats the alphabet established by SNEAKER WOLF as a radical of Chinese characters and resembles , is positioned in the tradition of graffiti culture in that it is “unreadable”. Although it is a language, it looks abstract when it is in a single language world such as English-speaking countries and Japanese-speaking countries. The fictional Chinese characters, composed of parts of the alphabet, are an attempt to keep others from understanding, and reflect his own rebellious attitude in a playful manner.

    In addition, SNEAKERWOLF has established its own style by controlling the “impulse” that the graffiti culture has revealed with craftsmanship. SD(Super Deformed) conversion, which he uses, is a method of simplifying the elements of anime and manga characters and compressing the ratio, and can be said to be a characteristic form that shaped the cute culture of early Japan. What’s more, he has recovered to the SD style, including the dripping of paint called drip, which is one of the characteristics of the spray depiction used by graphic writers.

    On the other hand, this SD conversion also shares the characteristics with the MATOI(Firemans coat) used by fire extinguishers in the Edo period and the typography of Edo characters used on the back of happi coats and SENJA-FUDA. In addition, the SENJA-FUDA, which was popular in the middle of the Edo period, is said to have started with the act of sticking a piece of paper with your name on it in a place that is as hard to peel off as possible to show that you have visited a shrine or temple. In other words, this SENJA-FUDA was about 200 years ahead of Vandalism, a style of sticking stickers around the world like BNE. In addition, there was a tendency that KABUKI characters, in which the names and performance names of KABUKI actors that were popular around the same time were intentionally written to be difficult to read, should be read by those who can read them. The style of SNEAKER WOLF is vandalism that transcends time and nationality by standardizing multiple cultures into the style of SD while quoting the typography of Edo used for Kabuki characters and Senjafuda and its spirit. Refine your impulses as a craftsman.

    SNEAKEREWOLF uses the strokes I drew and the works of artists related to graffiti culture as an application. Although the work is an extension of graffiti culture, it is catchy like pop art, and it cleverly escapes the dullness of the kanji graffiti that we are accustomed to, and the authority of the genre is seriously teased.

    Text by Yuzu Murakami, Watowa Gallery

    In contemporary Japanese art, pre-modern art styles such as UKIYO-E, folding screens, and Japanese paintings have always been quoted and reinterpreted. What SNEAKER WOLF practices in this exhibition is an invention that positions Edomoji between “writing” and “drawing” and adds artistic value in relation to street culture, and can be said to be a discovery.
    Check out below to see more photos from “The New Abnormal”. More

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    in Street Art

    “Still Life Studies” by Ludo in Paris, France

    Street artist Ludo just recently shared with us his new series of mural on the streets of his hometown, Paris, France.

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    Ludo’s new “Still Life Studies” features his iconic skulls together with flowers on a Sanofi vase filled with pills, tulips bouquet in a Johnson&Johnson container, and many more brands related to supplying vaccines against  COVID-19.

    The work of Paris-based Ludo (Ludovic Vernhet) explores a world where biotechnological chimeras offer to merge plants and animals with our technological universe. Through his work, Ludo aims to reveal the opposites that cohabit our world, often taking unlikely pairings to absurd lengths. These dualities are reconciled by the artist through the creation of hybrid organisms.
    Check out below to see more of Ludo’s murals. More

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    in Street Art

    “El TAMARUGO” by INTI in Chile

    Street artist and muralist INTI just worked on a new mural in Chile entitled “El TAMARUGO” for the project “Iquique En Color Es” organized by Nomadesert.

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    The mural features a Tamarugo tree which is a native species from the north of Chile, which manages to survive in one of the most arid places on the planet, Atacama Desert. The ability of this species to survive has been vital to the communities that inhabit these places since ancient times, and a symbol of life and resistance to the devastation of resources caused by mega-mining in these lands.

    INTI creates artworks surly carries out not more than the meaning, he also transmits the warm colours of it. Painting on canvasses, creating sculptures or large murals, his artwork addresses birthplace of the Latin American culture, multiplying it on a global level.
    His work can be seen across walls in Belgium, USA, Slovakia, France, Lebanon, Spain, Germany, Poland, Norway, Turkey, Peru, Puerto Rico and – of course – Chile. INTI ‘s name is from the Incan sun god and the Quechua word for ‘the Sun’ as homage to his Chilean roots.
    Take a look below for more photos of the vibrant mural. More

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    in Exhibitions

    A New Show Places Emma Amos, Whose Art Captured the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements, Where She Belongs: the 20th-Century Canon

    The artist Emma Amos died in May, at age 83, from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease. But even as her illness progressed, the painter, printmaker, and weaver was sustained by the knowledge that her seven-decade career was finally on the brink of her first retrospective, “Color Odyssey” at the Georgia Museum of Art.
    “Emma always knew that she was going to have a show with me—she might not have remembered my name at the last, but she knew that I was organizing an exhibition,” Shawnya Harris, the museum’s curator of African American and African diasporic art, told Artnet News. “That really touched me.”
    A pioneering African American artist, educator, and activist born in Atlanta, Georgia, Amos studied visual art at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and London’s Central School of Art, before getting her master’s in art education at New York University.
    It was there that her professor and mentor, Hale Woodruff, invited her to join the short-lived yet groundbreaking Black art collective Spiral, alongside the likes of Romare Bearden and Charles Alston. Amos was its youngest member and the only woman. As an artist dedicated to making work that spoke to the experiences of Black women, Amos went on to join the feminist collectives Heresies and the Guerrilla Girls.
    Emma Amos, Equals (1992). Courtesy of a private collection.

    “Her involvement with these groups show the conviction she had not just as an artist but also as a person who wanted to fight for injustice,” Jeffrey Lee, of New York’s Ryan Lee Gallery, told Artnet News in an email.
    “There are so many aspects to Emma,” Harris added. “She was entangled with some really formative parts of the art-historical narrative, around feminism, around Civil Rights, around Pattern and Decoration.”
    The curator met Amos in 2009, and was immediately interested in organizing an exhibition. When Harris joined the Georgia Art Museum in 2015, Amos was near the top of her wish list for shows, both because she was a local artist and by virtue of her work, which addresses issues such as race, class, gender, and privilege in figurative mixed-media paintings that combine lithography, intaglio, collage, and laser transfer.
    “The way she depicted the human form and the process of mixing painting and fabric by introducing an element of craft all resonate today,” Lee said.
    Emma Amos, Have Faith (1991). Courtesy of the collection of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University; acquired through the Truman W. Eustis III, Class of 1951, Fund, and through the generosity of the Class of 1951, 2017. Image courtesy of the Johnson Museum.

    But despite her prolific, multifaceted career, Amos—like so many Black women artists—remained largely unrecognized  for much of her career.
    Her last solo museum show wrapped up its tour at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1995, and it has only been in recent years that Amos began appearing in important traveling group shows, such as “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” originating at the Tate Modern in London, and “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965–1985,” organized by the Brooklyn Museum. Both were in 2017.
    “It just has taken longer to get women and artists of color into the forefront,” Harris said. “It’s a very phallocentric art world.”
    It was an issue that Amos addressed herself in an artist statement that proclaimed, “yes, race, sex, class, and power privileges exist in the world of art.”
    Emma Amos, X-Flag (1992). Courtesy of a private collection.

    “In some of her writings,” Harris said, “Amos talks about not being able to be a part of the literature or the criticism of art. It hampers the development of women artists’ careers if nobody’s writing about them.”
    In giving Amos the spotlight she has long deserved, the Georgia Museum has brought together more than 60 of the artists’ works, from all stages of her career.
    Seeing it all laid out chronologically, the viewer will realize how, early on, Amos began incorporating the African textiles and other fabrics that characterize her later work, and how her use of color remains a through line as she moves from the abstract works of her Spiral period to figurative compositions.
    “She used color from a political standpoint to make statements about social relationships and culture,” Harris said. “There is no one representation that embodies all of Blackness or anything else. That’s why you see all these women with multicolored body parts in her work.”
    Emma Amos, Does Black Rub Off? (1992). Courtesy of the Morris Museum of Art, Georgia.

    “It’s always been my contention,” Amos once said, “that for me, a Black woman artist, to walk into the studio is a political act.”
    “Emma was concerned about her legacy,” Lee said. “Now, we can rest assured her legacy will continue on forever. She is part of art history and the canon, and is being recognized for all that she did during her lifetime.”
    See more works from the show below.
    Emma Amos, 3 Ladies (1970). Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with the John D. McIlhenny Fund, 2019.

    Emma Amos, Creatures of the Night (1985). Collection of the Amos family, courtesy Ryan Lee Gallery, New York.

    Emma Amos, Creatures of the Night (1985). Collection of the Amos family, courtesy Ryan Lee Gallery, New York.

    Emma Amos, Streaks (1983). Courtesy of a private collection.

    Emma Amos, Identity (2006). Collection of the Amos family, courtesy Ryan Lee Gallery, New York.

    Emma Amos, Take One (1985–87). Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art; gift of Sylvan Cole, in memory of Lillyan Cole.

    Emma Amos, Sandy and Her Husband (1973). Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art; John L. Severance Fund, 2018.

    Emma Amos, Tightrope (1994). Courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art gift of funds from Mary and Bob Mersky and the Ted and Dr. Roberta Mann Foundation Endowment Fund.

    Emma Amos, Seated Figure and Nude (1966). Courtesy of the Emanuel Family Collection.

    Emma Amos, American Girl (1974). Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with the Lola Downin Peck Fund, 2018.

    “Emma Amos: Color Odyssey” is on view at the Georgia Museum of Art, 90 Carlton Street, Athens, Georgia, January 30—April 25, 2021. It will travel to the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, 310 Genesee Street, Utica, New York, June 19–September 12, 2021; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 9, 2021–January 2, 2022.

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    in Exhibitions

    ‘We’re All Participants in History’: Watch Artist Abigail DeVille Reimagine the Statue of Liberty for the 21st Century

    For the artist Abigail DeVille, watching Black Lives Matter marches over the past summer was pivotal. She recalls the throngs of protesters, arms linked, eyes staring straight amid a full on pandemic.
    Those images, seared in her memory, prompted the creation of her sculpture, Light of Freedom (2020), commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy and installed in the Manhattan-based park. The work takes the ubiquitous image of Lady Liberty’s torch and infuses it with contemporary symbolism. The work incorporates scaffolding as a sort of golden cage, in which a torch is suspended. The fiery blue flames of the object are in fact entwined mannequin arms pointing into the distance.
    In an exclusive interview with Art21 as part of the “Extended Play” series, the artist spoke about her influences, and the symbolism embedded in the work.
    A native New Yorker whose work reflects on the city’s history, DeVille used scaffolding both for its ubiquity in New York and for what it represents.
    “Things have always been constructed and torn down,” she says. “This idea of freedom is under continual construction—and reconstruction—from generation to generation.” 
    Deville was inspired by an elementary school teacher who introduced her to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which she said “planted a seed, for sure, of thinking about how we’re all participants within history.”

    Installation view, Abigail DeVille’s Light of Freedom (2020). Photo: Andy Romer Photography. Courtesy of the Madison Square Park Conservancy.

    The artist references a 19th-century image she saw in which the hand and torch of the Statue of Liberty were on display in Madison Square Park in a fundraising effort to build its pedestal.
    “Society has tried to separate us or define us by our bodies,” DeVille says. But the sculpture and its interlocking limbs are a symbol of the power of joining together “collectively… [to] assert something else.” 
    Light of Freedom (2020) will travel to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, in March, and to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, in October.
    Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org. 
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    This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org

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    in Street Art

    “Beyond Walls” by SAYPE in Cape Town, South Africa

    In the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, as South Africa is in the international spotlight, French-Swiss artist Saype chooses to present a fraternal vision in three neighbourhoods in Sea Point, in the city of Cape Town. The current crisis reinforces Saype’s optimistic will to present these universal frescos of benevolence and togetherness.

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    Three frescoes were created using approximately 1000 liters of biodegradable pigments made out of charcoal, chalk, water and milk proteins. The “Beyond Walls” project aims at creating the largest symbolic human chain around the world.

    In Cape Town this step was motivated by the country’s persisting need for reunification. Three frescoes representing widely different populations and realities within the city were created in Sea Point (6000 Sq. m), the Philippi township (800 Sq. m) and the Langa township (800 Sq. m).
    Cape Town, warmly known as the Mother City, represents the ninth stage of the global artistic project “Beyond Walls” initiated by Saype in June 2019 in Paris. South Africa is a country rich in culture and ethnic diversity bound by the spirit of Ubuntu (togetherness). In these unprecedented times, and while the whole world battles the effects and impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, increased political polarization and economic hardships, this spirit of Ubuntu is exactly what is needed. Striving to recover from the dark time of apartheid, South Africa constitutes a crucial milestone for “Beyond Walls”.

    The gigantic painted hands symbolize the reconciliation, a pillar of Nelson Mandela’s ethos. They intertwine beyond inequalities, created in fundamentally different areas of the city.  Saype hopes that art may be a modest contribution to reunite a city whose historic scars have not yet healed.
    This step is carried out in fruitful collaboration with the Embassy of Switzerland in South Africa, the International Public Art Festival, Baz-Art and the City of Cape Town.

    Self-taught, Saype is known today for his paintings on grass, made with eco-responsible paint. Certainly one of the most publicized artists in 2019, he was notably named by the famous magazine Forbes as one of the thirty most influential personalities under the age of thirty in the world, in the field of art and Culture.
    Check out below for more images of SAYPE’s “Beyond Walls”.

    Photo credits: Valentin Flauraud More