new print from Banksy

It's official: a new Banksy print is going to drop in December.  A test print (or unique variant) of the image is hanging on the wall at the Pictures On Walls pop up show 'Marks and Stencils' in London, and the print appears in the new POW Winter Catalog and on their website.  There is no confirmation yet as to whether the release will be handled by a lottery (like the release for 'donuts') or some combination of in-store and online mayhem (like 'No Ball Games').  Time to practice masking your disappointment as your chances of actually nabbing this print are nearly non existant.

Keep an eye on the POW website for details of all the new print releases that are happening in conjunction with 'Marks and Stencils'.

See you later giant eyeball...

Tony Tassett's massive outdoor sculpture installation 'Eye and Cardinals' has finally come down.  Despite the project's official ending in October, the giant eyeball was allowed to remain in it's summer home in Pritzker Park for an additional month.  As much as we enjoyed the sculpture in situ, we were equally enamored by the surreal tableaux created by it's pieces secured on trailers and trucks driving up State Street.

Love Flows Both Ways: sneak peek

With one week to go until the opening of 'Love Flows Both Ways', we are well into the process of getting everything ready for the pop up gallery opening next thursday, October 7th.  We will hit you with installation shots soon, but first, we promised you a peek.  Here is a little taster of what is to be expected in the show...  Hungry for more? Keep an eye on the blog and our flickr for additional behind the scenes pics coming soon.

maxwellcolette x CUAS pop up gallery

  We've been threatening to do a pop up gallery here in Chicago for quite some time now, so we were delighted when our friends at The Chicago Urban Art Society offered us the opportunity to curate a show of the street art and contemporary art multiples that we love.  Housed in the raw space of a former bank, 'Love Flows Both Ways'  features work culled from a number of private collections, and seeks to explore the relationship between street culture and contemporary art.

  "Contemporary art's love affair with street culture is long and well documented, but street culture's return embrace for fine art is a more recent phenomena.  Designs from blue chip artists are now found at street level in the form of luxury objects like purses, in underground collectables like sneakers and toys, and in urban lifestyle accessories like skateboard decks.  Art is the new bling, and in a fit of populism people on both ends of the spectrum are buying."

We will be posting more details and some sneak peeks over the next week, so make sure you check the blog and the flickr.  And Chicago peeps, we'll see you next thursday at State and Adams!

a painterly approach to street art...

The railroad underpasses off of Hubbard Street have seen it all.  Long a staple of the local street art and graff scenes, they have been regularly bombed for years. But something very interesting has been occurring under the train tracks lately.  It's painting.  I'm not referring to aerosol artistry, I'm talking about good old fashioned brush-and-paint-can painting.  And it's on a monumental scale.

There are seven paintings in total that we found. Some are huge- nearly 20 feet in length. They appear to be in various states of completion.  It seems the artist starts with a basic form (see below) and then elaborates with increasingly drippy broad strokes until the original form is obscured.  The process appears to require a fair amount of time as there are clearly layers that were dry before the next color was applied.  The resulting murals have elements that are reminiscent of Willem de Kooning and the abstract expressionists; a visual reference seldom witnessed in todays street art scene.

All of the paintings incorporate some text as well.  They bear slogans (titles?) like "Love No Fear | Fear No Love" "the magic you don't c." and "Griots & Bacchanalia".  Sometimes the text is next to the painting, and sometimes it is incorporated in the painting itself.  The artist states on one work "my name is a four letter word" but signs all the pieces with a black spade (or many spades as the case may be).  Since we don't know what to call you, wer're going to call you "Spade".  So, hello Spade. If you've got a problem with us calling you that, let us know and we'll correct it.

We first noticed the hand painted stylings of "Spade" last month, and posted pics of the work here, here,  and here.  Chicago Art Magazine noticed as well and wrote about a piece in their Top Street Art Picks for the month of August.

View pics of all the Hubbard Street pieces by "Spade" on our Flickr set "Hubbard Street Viaduct".

why we continue to love Faile

With Faile Temple, the Brooklyn street art collective Faile have proven yet again why they are to be considered not just among the vanguard of the street art movement, but also the broader contemporary art world as well.  Similar to what they did for their Deluxx Fluxx Arcades last year, Faile have created a website for the Faile Temple project (which can be viewed here).  The site hosts all the pertinent information as well as fantastic photographs of the finished Temple.  This amazing piece of monumental sculpture is worth an in depth viewing.  If Mies Van Der Rohe was correct that god is in the details, then this is indeed a holy place.

View Faile Temple at www.failetemple.net.
Check out last year's Deluxx Fluxx Arcade at www.deluxxfluxx.com.
Keep an eye on Faile's website at www.faile.net.

yarn bombing

Recently we've been noticing a lot more guerilla knitting here in Chicago. We feel it's about time that somebody crafted Cosby sweaters for our neglected sign posts and bike racks.  The pictures above document recent work we spotted in Wicker Park and on Michigan Avenue.  After a little digging we discovered that this phenomena is confined to neither metal tubing nor the United States.  Yarn bombing hits everything from trees to a WWI tank, and has been documented in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. And much to our surprise, it's not just young hipster women who are doing these renegade street art installations.

Explore the world of knit street art on the flicker groups guerilla knitting and knithacker.

Read Magda Sayeg's knit graffiti blog Knitta Please.

Invesitgate yarn bombing and the creation of the first "knit graffiti" crew (Knitta).  Further information on the subversive undertones of knitting and correlations between knitters and hackers (yes, you read that correctly) is available at The History of Guerilla Knitting.

"encounters with the terrible sublime" / why we love Tom Sach's SPACE PROGRAM

We have been big fans of Tom Sachs since the late 1990's when he first popped into onto our radar with his cardboard and thermal tape constructions of designer branded objects like the Prada toilet and the Hermes value meal.  Since those days his constructions have become more ambitious and his staging has grown to mythic proportions.  One of our favorite Tom Sachs moments of all time is captured in the movie above.  In 2007's Space Program Sachs recreated a lunar lander, all the associated astronaut gear (like flight suits and equipment)  and a mission control center.  Then he and his staff recreated the moon shot from lift-off, to moon landing, to splash down, all with breathtaking attention to detail and a wicked sense of humor.  As the press release for the project summarizes:

In addition to the huge, intricately built lunar module that is the centerpiece of SPACE PROGRAM - replete with such classic Sachsian features as a fully stocked booze cabinet, toolkit, and soundtrack necessary for survival on an alien planet - visitors will find a fully functioning mission-control unit. On a grid of monitors, the liturgy of space exploration unfolds in a live demonstration by Sachs and his team, involving countless rituals and procedures, from instrument checks to moon-walking and sample-collecting to splash-down. Thus the gallery becomes a sort of reliquary of both the material traces and special effects of the artist's encounters with the terrible sublime.


Learn more about Tom Sachs on his website www.tomsachs.org.  While you are there be sure to check out the art goodies in his store, including the Stanley Kubrick Tape Measure which made us smile.
Video and press release from tomsachs.org.