JAIME ROJO FOR BROOKLYN STREET ART 2012
generation at this intersection of
tangible, virtual, and eye candy, we
continue to say that Street Art is
now the first worldwide peoples art
movement in history. No admission is charged, no gatekeepers are
obeyed, anyone participates, and
everyone is a critic.
Through hundreds of interviews
and postings, and thousands of
photos published, we have had the
opportunity to take the pulse of
the street while it’s big heart was
beating hard and it’s big mouth
was talking loud. There is a new
Street Artist on the scene almost
daily at this point (some with
press releases) and their styles
and abilities are in continuous
flux. Much of the work today can
be said to take as many cues from
formal art training and Western
art history as it does from pop,
commercial, and sort of “traditional” graffiti-skater-punk-hip
hop cultural influences.
To help define 2012, we would
say that over the last couple of
years we’ve seen a diversion from
the pop-irony and repetitive replication of the 2010s variety of
Street Art. With hand painting and
wheat-pasting there has been a
renewed interest in one-off, highly
labor-intensive storytelling that
can only be described as D.I.Y. In
2012 we saw an increasing “hybridism” of graffiti and Street Art
styles in completely surprising and
often successful ways; a sort of visual détente declared between the
two, now more intertwined. This
hybridism could also be due to collaboration that often takes place
on the street and the fact that
street work by nature regards its
venue as laboratory; a sketchbook
for trying out new ideas where the
pressure for perfection is not as
high as, say, a gallery show.
ABOVE:
Graffiti artist
Daniel Fila.
BELOW:
NYC-based
artist Jason
Woodside.