Art In The Streets In The Museum

By Rachel Schwerin
The opening of "Art in the Streets" at LA's Museum of Contemporary Art has spawned a rash of tagging in downtown Los Angeles. The museum says such 'anarchic' work was anticipated, and is being cleaned. Many critics argue that the museum's pledge to help with graffiti clean-up annihilates actual "art in the streets." A culture war between purist taggers and the aritsts supporting Jeffrey Deitch's museum show has led to an anti-Deitch, anti-authority campaign of pasters around L.A. depicting the Director of the museum in silly, embarrassing contexts.   (via Art News)

The LAPD is cracking down hard, hoping to not just fine but arrest any artist found attempting or associated with illegal work. According to a report in the L.A. Times, Space Invader was their first victim, detained in Los Angeles last Friday. The show has led to an all-out attack: the Los Angeles city attorney’s office has filed a lawsuit against Cristian "Smear" Gheorghiu and nine other artists associated with the MTA tagging crew, charging them with violating California’s unfair competition laws because they’re selling art works on the strength of their outlaw names and reputations. “They’ve obtained an unfair advantage because they gained fame and notoriety through criminal acts,” said Anne Tremblay, assistant city attorney. “This is unlawful competition."  (via Huffington Post)

JEFF KOONS MUST DIE!!! video game

By Rachel Schwerin
For 25 cents, you can virtually destroy Jeff Koons artistic oeuvres in the new arcade game (or is that artcade game) 'Jeff Koons Must Die!!!'.  Designed for a 1980s style stand up arcade machine, the game is set in a large museum during a Koons retrospective.  From frist-person perspective you are given a rocket launcher and the opportunity to destroy any of the works displayed in the gallery.  After you have annihilated your Koons of choice, an animated Jeff Koons walks onto the screen, chastises the player, and then sends guards to kill the player.  The game is un-winnable (because you cannot win the art game).  Creator Hunter Jonakin claims the game "acts as a comment on the fine art studio system, museum culture, art and commerce, hierarchical power structures, and the destructive tendencies of gallery goers."

GAIA 'Tiger Rabbit' print release

Tiger Rabbit  (2011)

edition of 50

hand pulled, five color screen print, on 90 lb. Stonehenge paper

signed and numbered by the artist

By Rachel Schwerin

Gaia’s Tiger Rabbit is a postmodern yin yang, harmonizing the opposing forces of an aggressive animal and a submissive animal. Tiger Rabbit unites dark and light, cold and warm, strong and weak in order to deflate the strictures set forth by contemporary Western culture. Gaia is reminding us that no thing is definitively one thing, as Western materialism promotes, but rather that everything in the universe oscillates between polar opposites.

Reclaiming traditional visual iconography, Gaia’s image transcends cultural literacy and achieves significance on multiple levels. Tiger Rabbit reflects the dynamic ebb and flow that permeates life, in which nothing is stagnant. Seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and they give rise to each other in turn. Contemporary urban culture devalues nature, but Gaia’s Tiger Rabbit invades the city of glass, steel and concrete with a breathtaking reminder of earth and life. The confrontational, full-frontal depiction of the hybrid animal implicates each passerby in the destruction of the relationship mankind once shared with both the natural and mystical worlds.

While members of Eastern society identify the tiger and the rabbit as archetypal symbols of annual transition, members of Western society would more readily associate tigers and rabbits with manufactured brands. Gaia emasculates Tony the Tiger and demonizes the Easter bunny, usurping the power vested in our familiar brands and materialistic ideals. 

Tiger Rabbit is an animal in transition, seemingly changing before our eyes. But its original state and objective end are elusive. Is it a tiger transforming into a rabbit, or a rabbit transforming into a tiger? It is at once a tiger with bunny ears, a symbol of aggression turned benign, and a rabbit with the mug of a tiger, a symbol of submission turned fierce. Gaia’s ambiguity conflates multiple layers of meaning, presenting us with an image that seems familiar and simultaneously inexplicable, reflecting the inherent duality of our complex and ever-changing systems of political and social power.

'Tiger Rabbit' is available exclusively at maxwellcolette.com.

CRASH x Tumi

by Rachel Schwerin
Last week the luggage brand Tumi launched its Tag Limited Edition Collection with a line of suitcases designed by John Matos, aka CRASH. They'll definitely be easy to find at baggage claim, but does bringing a CRASH suitcase onto an airplane make anyone else a little nervous?

Check out the full Tag Limited Edition Collection by CRASH on Tumi's website.

JR: the Inside Out Project

by Rachel Schwerin
Recently, JR announced his plan for a large-scale participatory, global art project that could turn the entire world into a socially conscious graffiti collective. He has invited anyone and everyone, worldwide, to upload a photo portrait for free to his project site. His team will turn these digitally uploaded images into posters and send them back to the participants, to exhibit in their own communities. JR encourages participants to place posters anywhere, from a solitary image in an office window to a wall of portraits on an abandoned building or a full stadium. “It is about making invisible people visible,” JR said.

His street art since 2004 has staged dramatic interventions of social justice across the globe. The TED foundation, which awarded JR $100,000 to execute the Inside Out project, described JR as a “true humanitarian,” whose art inspires people to look at the world differently.

JR says, “It is about taking the virtual world back to the streets.” To prospective participants he advises: “If you are going to paste it in the streets, then choose a good wall…If you choose the wrong one, get ready to run.”

To submit a portrait and get a poster, go to www.insideoutproject.net.

Voina x eBay x Banksy's Identity

by Rachel Schwerin
The two leading members of the Russian performance art collective Voina have been imprisoned in St. Petersburg without a charges or a trial for four months now. For those who aren't familiar, Voina has been responsible for numerous confrontational and political actions including the painting of a giant penis on a drawbridge that faced the building that housed former KGB offices.  Banksy, a fan of the collective's antics, announced a while back that he was going to donate the proceeds from his latest print release to fund their bail. Voina's lawyer offered the court 2 million rubles ($66,000) bail for each, but the judge denied the request. He cited a "lack of information about the person providing the money" for the bail as his justification to keep the Voina members locked up.  No doubt Voina’s imprisoned idealogist Oleg Vorotnikov doesn't appreciate the irony that Banksy's anonymity had just been available for purchase through an auction on eBay.


The highly scrutinized auction on eBay was posted by someone who claimed to have used tax records in some capacity to secure proof of the mysterious artist's identity.  Evidently the auction seller felt that this was marketable information, and that people looking for bargain electronics and obscure collectables would be equally interested in purchasing the documentation.  The auction was pulled before it was completed, but not before bidding reached nearly a million dollars for the promised info.  Speculation was that Banksy himself may have been behind either the auction listing or it's removal.  Either way, Banky’s identity can now be valued somewhere between $1 million and freedom.


Learn more about Voina (which translates from Russian as 'war') and check out the Free Voina page for the latest developments in their case.