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Transitions, Bruises, Busted up Speedometers‌
[ Cover: Abner Preis ]
This catalogue was produced on the occasion of the 2007 BMX Masters in Cologne, Germany. Action sports and urban arts share certain traits: the risk, the rush, the requirements of mixing up innovative, quick on your feet thinking with imaginative and competent technique ‌ we are all artists of our own lives and this catalogue is a celebration of several ways of life that struggle to maintain this. In this catalogue you will find information on Modart, works from the 3 artists who took part in these celebrations and information on a project that links art, sustainability, environment and sport.
Produced by www.suzuki-wayoflife.de
Celebrating Way of Life
Modart was born in 1997, the birth of a collaboration between Transworld Media Photo Associate Mona Mukherjea-Gherig and progressive fashion designer Shaney Jo Darden. Having themselves drawn a great deal of inspiration from the deeply rooted artistic culture surrounding action sports, they wanted to establish a platform to support this culture and share it with others. In 2003, Modart came to Europe hosting an impressive exhibition in Munich, which featured raw talents like Ed Templeton, Natas Kaupas, Jim Avignon, Lance Mountain and Shepard Fairey. A year later, Modart continued
to introduce exciting young artists to a broader public bringing together 30 artists including The London Police, Jeremy Fish, Andrew Pommier, Sam Flores and many others.
At this point, it was already clear that action sports shared certain outlooks with other creative communities and the vibe that spread from the sweat of many of these artists was essential in inspiring a coming community of artists that would reinvent their environments, cherish positive destruction as aesthetic reconstruction and search for new a new way to communicate emotional impossibilities posed by the so called modern world. Bravery, empathy and imagination, shared weapons in a sea of varied individual interests and experiences. Since 2004, Modart Magazine has documented and discussed with this coming community and evolved with it, acting as a reference and platform to place more art in public and while challenging most beliefs, holding on to one:
www.modarteurope.com
Victor Castillo Chile
Victor doesn’t mess around. He shoots straight to the core, unrooting current and historic horrors of the species known as humanity. He rips issues up and out of collective fairytales gone grim and lights them up with contrasts as blatant as the chiaroscuro of an X-ray. Victor feels that there is a delicate balance between good and evil; his work suggests an ability to toe the implications of this line. As opposed to observing soley from the almighty ego, Victor hunts for that specific quote or for that thing he knows exists and can’t yet
imagine. He maintains an Alexadrine archive of images and tattoos his research onto his attitude with masterful technique, producing an aesthetic which poses perceivable questions before dragging them off into a noir theme park where Victor hopes complacent minds will be slapped into questions. The barbarians are wearing Mickey Mouse smiles. www.iguapop.net
Victor Castillo | sexy boy
Victor Castillo | true
Victor Castillo | spirits
MORCKY Marcus Galmawsky Italy I was born in a small Italian town up the hills, in the mid seventies. I grew up in the eighties with lot of cheesy television. I started painting graffiti in the early nineties. I moved to Amsterdam in the zeros. Everyday I do a lot of things: eat, drink, smoke, smoke, smoke, draw, fry myself in front of a computer and often make my clothes unreversably dirty.
I like painting objects and things without life, I like playing with perspectives, compositions and dynamics. I like to draw smoke. I like to paint big outdoor walls the most. I forget a lot of useful things. I love black and white. I don’t usually talk this much. www.morcky.com www.twothings.net www.mikosa.net MORCKY
MORCKY
MORCKY
MORCKY
Christophe Lambert Switzerland Nothing is real.
Nothing is real.
S’approprier un lieu et en devenir le maître, prêtre de l’absurde,... pour quelques instants, quelques semaines,... dénaturer l’endroit et essayer de le faire vivre différemment, tout en conservant sa fonction primaire, investir, s’investir...
To take over a space, as the master, a priest of the absurd… for a few moments, or a few weeks… to strip it down and find a new life for it, trying to hold on to its original feel, to give to it, to give yourself…
Reflets d’un monde d’images en mouvements, ou mouvementé,... bousculer les acquis, mélanger les éléments,... essayer de faire monter la sauce,... amère, acide ou parfois sucrée... Sermon symbolique, naïf et vain,... absence de toutes religions... Welcome in the temple of nothing.
Reflections of a world in movement, or driven… pushing aside expectations, mixing up the basics… bringing a new flavour… sour, acidic sometimes even sweet… A symbolic sermon, vain and naive, emptied of all religion… Welcome to the temple of nothing. Translated by Elizabeth Haines, june 2007
— Christophe Lambert, avril 2007 www.lambertcomix.ch Christophe Lambert
Christophe Lambert
Christophe Lambert
– An Odyssey inspired by Homer (Simpson)
the Me Bike Project
Did you have a white Christmas? Did anybody? Maybe Santa and red nosed Rudolph, but in New York like Brussels, people were singing the merits of Global Warming and while I was saying, ‘ask the penguins because we people don’t get it,’ I was also thinking of Lily Allen’s noir lyric, ‘the sun is in the sky, oh why oh why, would I wanna be anywhere else,’ and loving it. If you’re not sailing the slopes, or a struggling polar bear, the heat keeps the feet moving and all seems well. So this White Cube, we’re not going to keep squatting the planet or any particular space, nor will we get into a scientific or ethical debate on leavers and takers or how we humans have to start living with the world as is, instead of cutting it up to suit our fashionable (and soon forgotten) desires. Instead, we’re going to introduce you to a project that gets our blood flowing no matter what the weather. One that holds up an umbrella and embraces the environment, the bear’ish bellies we acquire as we drive or hibernate, and employs imaginations and the skill of artists all around the world – more importantly, it was inspired by Homer Simpson. The MeBike project is based on The Simpsons episode where Homer’s brother asks him to design his dream car. In pure Homer fashion he builds an impossible car with impossible ideas called the “The Homer”. This was the basic concept sent out to participants, but coming out
of Amsterdam, four wheels were (sometimes) exchanged for two and the theme was your dream bicycle. Ideas came in the form of photographed images and painted illustrations, some were sculpted and some were cast, some you could even ride. Over fifty artists from Amsterdam, the U.S.A. Italy, Germany, and Belgium showed up or sent in work, and a large space filled up with a new generation of bizarre bicycles: drawings, video, music, sculpture, paper cut outs, installations, Flash images, a bike made out of a watermelon and another made of books.
The project is up and rolling again, and this year it’s papa, the preacher Abner Preis is teaming up with the Mikosa Foundation and a growing list of partners from around the globe. So far seven galleries in Amsterdam and a few other public venues are slated to expose difference facets of the work and a bike tour is being organized so audiences can roll around Amsterdam, check out the work, learn about the history (and future?) of the bicycle, about the impact of the bike on our environment and basically have some shared consequence free amusement as they peruse good old Amsterdam.
women (for example), though personally I’ve always thought that the gender of bikes should be switched. My dream bike isn’t a transvestbike, but I’ve hurt myself on that bar before and well, erm … it might be said the riding a bike, not only gave women a new freedom back back when (we’d have to quote Susan B. Anthony, but why bother), but also led to them changing clothes to avoid giving away the free peep in exchange for new found mobility and the wind in their hair – oh were bloomers sexy back in the day.
— Nik Marzano 180magazine
Besides being good for the body, emancipation, besides being environmentally friendly and fun, bikes have also had implications in other vehicles and broader economy; components designed originally for bicycles like ball bearings, washers and sprockets would later be used in early cars and even airplanes.
It makes sense to have this event in the Netherlands, because there, like in China, the bicycle is the dominant mode of transport, as well as being a serious sport, and a favorite pastime. When Dutchman, Wiejbe Bijker, was developing his now famous (and perhaps dead) theory on the social construction of technology, or SCOT, he used the bike as his model, showing how the bike changed society and society changed the bike … the horizontal bar was removed for
Since my dream bike shares some qualities with Wonder Women’s invisible jet, you can’t see it here, but stop by Amsterdam this summer and have a peak and what Harlan wants to ride … a project which doesn’t aim to raise any money or sell any work, but encourages thought, supports and educates environmental and health issues, raises consciousness and tries to be accessible to one AND all … now that’s something to spin for …
“The Me Bike event was not just a show about art and bikes, but also about the environment, contemporary culture, dreams and fun.”
If you want more information about the show(s), tour and entire project or if you’d like to participate in the future, please contact: us@mebike.org or abnerpreis@mac.com and look out for the MEBIKE site, coming soon to a screen in your house. www.mebike.org