Modart Magazine #14 by Modart Magazine

We Love Breast!

Will Barras, Mr. Jago and Board Sports Neasden Control Centre goes Little Land 2nd Hand Smoke Modart Exhibition in “Odo – Land”

14 4 197565 304950

STEFAN JANOSKI

www.analogclothing.com

DESIGN UNLIKELY FUTURES

Things to Make and Do. Love Eneroth Stretch Armstrong The Lady Tigra Chad Robertson Cobrasnake

This season WeSC invites you to imagine a world where craftiness is king. A chalet where hastiness is traded for hobby, and the day-to-day talents of your friends are known and appreciated. Here the world moves at a slower pace. Letters are handwritten, meals homemade, and moments last just a wee bit longer. Turn off your TV. Unplug your microwave, and trade binary code for conversation and craft. Welcome to your coziest, most creative Fall/Winter yet.

Flip 2

10 Open 12 Spy 1: Niark1 (Paris) 14 Spy 2: Swanophobia (Warsaw) 16 No More Ads? Exit here

54 I Used to be a Superhero

18 Riders Ink

64 In Your Ear

24 The Process of Belief

66 Show & tell

26 Squatting the White Cube

68 Show & tell

28 Both Sides Now

70 Show & tell

34 Illustrative Works

72 Inside

Liz Haines looks at urban silence in Brazil

Jo Waterhouse talks to EKTA

Tristan Manco on Calmaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s latest trip

News on the last Modart exhibition

Adam Neate walks the line (without caring)

Jason McLean Word to Mother Herbert Baglione

47 Sawn Off Tales

Story: David Gaffney / Image: goRg

48 We Love Boobies

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A look at the remarkable Keep A Breast Foundation

Ripo interviews Anthony Lister in NYC

58 Yo! What Happened to Peace?

A Poster collection and YO! so much more!

62 Sophisticated Fetishism

Mike Kelley in Modart? By Steve Schepens With Florent de Maria and Jon Kennedy Small, Medium and Large at the Elms Lesters Little Land at the Helium Cowboy Artspace Bored Sports at No New Enemies Adeline Jeudy and Galerie Beaubourg in Paris

74 Spraying Powder

The next step for photographer James Holm

F.a.r.t. Forget art in order to feel it.

The strongest works of art will not look like they are supposed to, failure and progression are crucial to improving, challenging and just experiencing our way of life. Skateboarding is not art. There are skateboarders who make an art of skating, but there are also footballers who make an art of football. However, comparing the amount of footballers who are imaginative people as well as players, with the number of skaters who have creatively based lifestyles, is like counting Argentine Steaks served annually in Malawi and comparing the total with the number of Big Macs dished out in Manhattan. It’s a slim to many ratio and there are strong reasons for that.

OPEN

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Open

There is an undefined creative drive and need for exploration with constant sensation that appears in most people who skate with any sort of passion. It isn’t coincidence that members of the skate community continue to impress with their other creative pursuits and the list of riders who have emerged as talented photographers, painters, authors, film makers, fashion designers and other types of artists is growing and flowing, coming from a place that people connect to with an emotional as opposed to theoretical bond. Like skateboarding itself, the work coming out of this community tends to be brave, exciting and full of friction. The most penetrative stuff often has nothing to do with skateboarding, except for the influences and memories an individual took from it. These memories, the way a life has been spent and who its been spent with, this sense of community is crucial. This community doesn’t get closed into a circle of friends, it overlaps with influences and common ideas, senses of humor, hedonism, society, destructive positivism and even politics. The overlaps between the street art explosion and skate culture, between punk and Graffiti and hip hop or body art go past the board, the brand and the daily session, deeper than the music or the piercing, the spirit that can’t be claimed has a link to the aesthetic search Modart encourages. We admire those among us who make an art out of skateboarding, but share the work of those who make art to express themselves visually. There are loads of magazines where you can find amazing pictures of people pulling tricks, but if choosing between a good shot of a great trick and a great shot of a good trick; we choose for the second. That’s how we feel about it. Skaters skate. Artists art. You may do both. We may love both. But we won’t print both unless there is some pointless point we feel the need to get out. Creative Action = Active Creation and we are all artists of our own lives sharing a canvas in as far as we share perception. Live it. Paint it. Ride it. The Dream is already Dead. -Harlan

Cover: Adam Neate

Creative action = active creation

Issue #14 Managing Director Christian Vogler christian@modarteurope.com

Creative Director Harlan Levey harlan@modarteurope.com

Art Director Tobias Allanson tobias@modarteurope.com

Distribution/ Production Manager Oliver Kurzemann oliver@modarteurope.com

Modart Editorial Tristan Manco, Jo Waterhouse, Landry A Limbo

Modart Music Florent de Maria, Jon Kennedy

Contributors Hadley Howes and Maxwell Stephens, Jason Horton, Niark1, Pavel S, Elizabeth Haines, William Baglione, Herbert Baglione, DFace, Word to Mother, Jason McLean and Alex, Ripo, Anthony Lister, Shaney Jo Darden, Steve Schepens, John Carr, The Lovemovement, Jerome Catz, James Holm, Fiona at the Elms Lesters, Mr. Smith and goRg.

Advertising: Oliver Kurzemann oliver@modarteurope.com +43 676 4205126

Publisher Rebel Media Limited

Editorial Office Good Guy Marketing GmbH Modart Magazine Erlerstrasse 1 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

Printing Grafica Editoriale Srl Bologna, Italy www.monrifgroup.net

Distribution: ASV Vertriebs gmbh Süderstrasse 77 20097 Hamburg, Germany Modart magazine is published 6 times a year by Rebel Media Limited. Reproduction of editorial is strictly prohibited without prior permission. Views expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature without prior written consent, except for permitted fair dealing under the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988. Application for permission for use of copyright material including permission to reproduce extracts in other public works shall be made to the publishers. All rights reserved copyright 2007.

www.modarteurope.com

Spy 1: Niark1 The Road is Long

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Lots of young guns have been inspired by how artists took the streets and their own lives into their own hands. It’s pretty often these days we hear from talented young artists looking to launch right into orbit.

SPY 1

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Others understand that it’s a life not a moment that will tell the story. They don’t wait for fame or fortune, but keep on keeping on because it is who they are. Niark1 is no baby. He’s been doing and doing it and doing it for years, inspired by art slapped onto the streets of Paris and all the sounds that keep the river Seine flowing, he made a name doing flyers and other promo materials for drum n bass or electro gigs and music festivals. Not a huge surprise that several record labels have asked him to color their jackets. Founder and member of a younger crew called, ‘We are Chaos,’ he’s worked with large communication agencies on different projects, like a recent campaign aimed to educate about Aids. Niark1 has also participated and organized several group shows, and worked on toy and book design (like the well known C215 books). Still … you’ll have to ask him … We are Chaos? Who is We? What is Chaos? www.niark1.com | www.myspace.com/niark1 Ev i l Coll eg e Gi r l

All The Sam e

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Swanofobia By & About: Pawel Kozlowski â&#x20AC;&#x153;Swanskiâ&#x20AC;&#x153;

CMY

Sound Infantry Trooper

SPY 2

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Swanofobia was born back in 2001, while I was living in Germany. It was right after I'd finished creating my one-man graphics studio under the name of Swanarts, doing mainly commercial work as a designer and illustrator. Of course, this particular project was not my first encounter with art and design. It all started way earlier when at the age of 4 I discovered how cool colored pencils work on my grandmaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wall. That's when the first swan appeared and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been going since thenâ&#x20AC;Ś

From escapism to â&#x20AC;&#x153;enthusiasmâ&#x20AC;&#x153; - The idea behind Swanofobia is captured by this slogan, which I've been using for quite some time now. In the beginning what drove me was escapism caused by the fear of the world, its complexity and the lack of a permanent point of reference. This brought out a longing in me to have my own creative space. All these things drew me to the world of art where my state of mind has shifted to enthusiasm; a need to act, create and realize this new world in as many ways as I can. This brings me to the point where I am now. I'm still on the same creative path, bringing my work to life in different ways, starting with painting and drawing right through to clothing design and modern media such as motion design. While working on these different creative

platforms I try to stay open to new avenues of expression, the latest of which is TURBOKOLOR - a company and a still homeless gallery. The aim of this project is to publicize ideas, to connect with other artists, and, most of all, to offer my ideas to people in the simplest and most enjoyable way. The most important things in my everyday work are drawing and painting, these are the things that are sense of my life and making me a happy man. www.swanofobia.com | www.swanarts.com | www.turbokolor.com

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P h oto : To ny d e M a rco

No More Ads? Exit Here!

Liz Haines comments on this Sao Paulo initiative and potential consequences of visual silence.

Medieval Cathedrals are covered with images. From foundations to spires and sprawl statues; saints, devils, torture and ecstasy appear as they spin right up past the sky and into the heavens. The details reach far beyond what can be seen from the ground, because the viewpoint is intended to be from above what is above â&#x20AC;&#x201C; God himself is watching and those eyes donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t blink. Look up. These images talk to us as sinners locked into an inextricable relationship with G.O.D. Exit here for eternal life...

The streets are painted by artists, balancing the line of what can be reached, the limits of an arms-reach or brush-length traced out along the edges of rooftops and fire escapes... Places that architecture has defined as unimportant, the back walls & functional non-spaces become premium locations to distribute art to those who see the world from the highways or railways that spilt the landscape into unexpected new pieces. These images print a human scale back onto the out-sized structures around us and put them in question. Exit before it's too late say the angry utopians.

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Then there are the images that talk to us as consumers. They shout, whisper, instruct and plead with our insecurities, persuading us to slip our hands back in our pockets one more time. Exit here to buy the solution to the wrinkles and fuckups that plague your nearly perfect life... Last January, the mayor of Sao Paulo eliminated the advertising that covered his city as thoroughly as the stonework on a cathedral wall. No posters, no LCD screens. Nothing. The publicity that pasted the streets, smothering the facades, and literally covering-up the favelas, is gone. The images that turned the reality of the city into the 'off-screen' of the glamorous daily drama of *buy*buy*buy* have gone. Left behind are the empty boards, the grey skylines and the citizens without that large-scale glossy fiction in their eyes and their minds... For months now they have been adapting to a landscape without images that tell them they are incomplete, and highlight the lack in their lives. So how does the city speak to them? What different kinds of visual voices are making echoes and holding conversations with the passers-by? Whose statements or outbursts or questions will be there instead? Where are the new exit signs pointing to?

More from Jo Waterhouse weekly on modarteurope.com

How would you describe your work today? Quite often people seem to want to label me as an illustrator, mainly other artists, or 'the real artists' as I call them: people that take themselves and their work far too seriously. I paint and draw 95% of the time without a brief or other given reason. If I do commissions or freelance work it needs to be on my terms not the client’s, this is why I can't relate to being called an Illustrator or designer. I would describe my work as play, kind of making stuff up as I go along, drawing loads and loads of fairly random stuff with random styles. I then try to assemble stuff, trying to find relations between characters/ objects or a sentence. I don't like to sit and try to be clever with my work: i.e. think up some kind of content and then execute it. That's pure creative slavery to me. I don't want to know what’s going to happen until it's already there. If I can't play I'll be bored within seconds. I like to work on several different sketchbooks or paintings simultaneously, that way I can avoid being frustrated or feeling stuck, I can just leave it for a while and switch over to something else.

Not sure, right now I think it’s 60 / 40. I’m feeling a bit shit about that to be honest. Sweden is an extremely stupid little country in many respects and finding the right places outside is mostly a hopeless mission. In the summer I try to travel as much as possible to places were you can get away with a lot more. So the last 2 months I’ve been a bit slack with the stuff on the street. I've never really been into painting something super quick - all throw up style just to get up. I like to take my time with things and hang out and get the feeling about the space I’m going to paint.

What are your preferred medium and materials to work with? Walls. All kinds. I like to paint walls because they help you devaluate your work. I love the idea that the things I make won’t be around forever, it kind of makes you a bit more humble I think. Being too precious about something you've done could be an ego-trap. Walls, and when there aren’t any walls I'll settle for pretty much anything. Materials vary, acrylics mainly, spray paint, markers etc, anything that dries fast. I do prefer a brush to a spray can though. Maybe it's because I’m pretty shit with cans…

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I grew up in a small coastal town on the west coast of Sweden, the kind of place a restless kid would aim to leave as soon as possible. Before I got my first skateboard at the age of 6 or 7, my main tools for avoiding boredom were pens and crayons, (I was well into sticks as well, nothing beats a good stick). I used to make little zines that I gave to my friends and family. I still have copies of most of them. Drawing was always a huge part of my life.

How much of your artwork would you say is drawing/painting on canvas etc, and how much is street based art?

Interview by Jo Waterhouse

What is your background, where did you grow up and what are your first memories of creating art?

E K TA

Ekta resides in Sweden but he’s not overly enamoured with the place. He loves London but just to visit these days. One place he won’t be found is resting on his laurels. He’s a maker and a doer, immersed in his art, creating impressive works on walls, on paper or anything he can get his hands on.

How has your work evolved over the last few years, and are you happy with the way your work is progressing? More content and more fun. I’m very confident about what I’m doing and don’t feel the need to justify my methods to anyone anymore. A few years back, art college made me do just that and I think it took some time to find myself again. I struggled for a while with the fact that most of the time I apply content at the very end of my work process. Today I would say it’s a superior way to go about things.

mo d ern man

What is the art scene like where you live in Sweden? Are there any Swedish artist the rest of Europe should know about? To me personally, Sweden has got fuck all going on but I’m not really making massive efforts to check what is going on. The only people I collaborate with from Sweden are Majls & Ollio in Gothenburg. That's about it. Then there's probably a whole bunch of graff artists in Stockholm that people rate for different reasons, but I don't find that very interesting, except maybe the IB crew.

You moved to London 10 years ago, staying there for 8 years. What brought you there, kept you there, and what took you back to Sweden? Just got back from a trip to London with my girlfriend and I have so much love for that place. It’s pure inspiration to me but I don’t feel that I have to live there anymore. I had enough of the 'race': never having enough money and being worked like a dog. I hate most things about Sweden but my current setup is good. It allows me to travel a lot and do the things I feel like, even when I’m only working 25% at my day job as a carer for the disabled. I could never do that in London. As long as I can leave Sweden every 2 months or so to breathe, I'll be fine.

What artists are you into at the moment? Has any particular piece of artwork or artist impressed you lately?

I used to have a friend years back who was a musician, we used to skate together and he turned out to be one of my creative mentors. I used to be baffled by the fact that he hardly listened to any music. He had his 10 favourite artists and every now and then he'd find a new one. I can relate to that now. I've stopped looking in books, even on the Internet. I follow the progress of a bunch of people most of whom are friends. People like MISS LOTION / MAJLS / DEM666 / REMED / 3TTMAN / DAVE THE CHIMP / OLLIO / DHP / ERIC PENTLE. Other inspiring artists would be people like BLU / ECO / BASQUIAT / PICASSO / ASGER JORN / MIRÓ / CONSTANT etc.

E K TA

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I know that you're inspired by the 'Situationists'. Can you elaborate on that and how have they inspired your work? They put a theory to a lifetime of practice. When I found out about them it put the things I've spent my life doing (skateboarding/painting) into words, and kind of made it political at the same time, so it justified it as being ‘real art’. Not the art of museums but the art of everyday life. Their theory isn’t as important to me anymore; I found that I was trying to live a life that was impossible to live. I don’t mind being an idealist, but you need to have a life too. I've chilled out a lot on the angry young man front. They are still a massive influence though, maybe not so much Debord, but the people around him. I put Guy out of my head a few years ago...

What inspires you on a daily basis? Conversations, architecture, cities, capella, friends, shit I find, or see in the street, music, and collaborations. Not necessarily in that order...

Tell me about the ORO gallery you founded with friends. How did it come about, and what goes on there? It came out of the fear of boredom. I don’t think any of us ever wanted to approach a gallery all Oliver Twist, like “Please sir, can I have a show?” We needed some kind of platform for ourselves and our friends, or people that we think are doing something worthwhile. It’s a non-profit based gallery, which means we don’t make any money ourselves. The little money we do get we waste on rent and bills. It's not a traditional gallery in any sense: sometimes there's a 3 month gap between shows because people are too busy with their jobs or their own work. It doubles up as a studio too and is a super sweet place to have. I have tons of love and respect for what we have created.

Is there anything specific/any ambitions you'd still like to achieve with your artwork? As long as the process is all - hahaha! I don't mind so much, I don't want to take things to seriously.

What's the best piece of advice you have ever received? Creative-wise: when at work, keep your pencil sharp and your brain blunt. Work-wise: if they're not paying you to think then you won't need a brain.

Where can people see more of your work, and do you have any upcoming projects you'd like to mention?

Nothing lined up right now. Keep an eye on the following pages though: www.flickr.com/photos/3kta www.fotolog.com/ekta www.orosmoment.com

E K TA

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“The Process of Belief” The Latest Journey of Stephan Doitschinoff (aka Calma) Words: Tristan Manco | Photo’s: Sonia Oñate & Calil Neto

My first glimpses of Stephan Doitschinoff, aka Calma’s works were through his postings on the essential street art blog -Wooster Collective. While this experience was not first-hand, I somehow felt an affinity with his work. The following year (2004), I eventually got to meet him in his home city of São Paulo while researching for the book “Graffiti Brasil.” He was one of my first contacts there and I became absorbed by his accounts of the local street art scene and his own personal journey as an artist.

As his work gained international attention, Stephan took every opportunity to travel. He was invited to exhibit in Europe and during that time he lived and worked in Manchester, London and Madrid. In the US, he exhibited his work in California for a collective show at the BLK MRKT gallery as well as at galleries in NY, LA and Pittsburgh. While those experiences were invaluable, it has been his recent travels in Brazil that have stimulated his latest creative voyage.

In the beginning of 2007, he traveled to the north east of Brazil, abandoning the distractions of city life to focus on a new series of drawings and paintings. Arriving at the historic town of Lençóis, in the state of Bahia, he set up a small studio in a countryside cabin to isolate himself and work uninterrupted. Over the following months he worked on a new series of canvases while discovering

Today the decaying town is quite abandoned, nothing but diamond mines and a few thousand descendants of those who once worked in them. The architecture is a combination of century-old historic structures and modern day shanties. Inspired by the unique quality, textures, and colors of such surfaces, Stephan soon found it difficult to confine himself to the studio and ventured out to the small communities of “Tomba Surrão” and “Alto da Estrela.” He was particularly inspired by the homes of some of the most impoverished residents. Social abandonment by government bewildered him as he dialogued in the run down, poverty stricken communities where his trip had taken him. He began talking to locals about painting some of the most dilapidated homes (all of them housing entire families of as many as 6 people in a small one room dwelling). The images accompanying this article illustrate this project. Over these few months as Stephan immersed himself in painting canvases in his studio and murals in the streets, he developed relationships with the locals. He remembers one of those experiences vividly: “I was painting this little house; it was one of the most decaying houses in that area so I wanted to make something beautiful and colourful. There was a toddler, probably about 18 months old or something, anyway, very small, who was sitting in front of the house inside a piece of wood, just by this pool of mud and garbage. I had my headphones on and the music was loud so when I looked to the right, the baby’s older brother (probably about three and a half years old) was playing the woodcutter and hitting the wood as hard as he could with this huge machete that was as big as he was. He was hitting the wood just 15 centimeters from the baby’s hand! When I saw this I wanted to do something about

it, but at that moment their mom showed up and saw that I was pretty choked up and yelled to the kid something like ‘he should go play over there or something.’ He left running after some other kids his age with the big machete...” Brazil’s North East is a world apart from the Industrial State of São Paulo. While predominantly Catholic, this area of the country is the birthplace of Afro-Brazilian religions such as Candomblé. These traditional African religions retained and adapted by slave descendents are rich with rituals and folklore that have been another interest for Doitschinoff. Recently Stephan returned to Bahia for another 6 months to work on his next show at the Anno Domini gallery in California. As well as new canvases, he’s had the chance to paint a small and unusual chapel, which was finished on the Day of the Dead. We are privileged to present a preview in Modart of the fantastic finished result. stephandoit.com.br Thanks to Sonia Oñate (who helped paint some of the murals) and Brian Eder (from Anno Domini Gallery).

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the unique community around him. Lençóis has an exceptional history; it was founded by fugitive slaves and around the turn of the century became a world famous diamond-mining town.

Urban art is important in Stephan’s work, but his biggest inspiration is religious art. As the son of a protestant pastor he was born in a church and though he rebelled against its restrictions as a teenager, he remains fascinated with sacred art. From Ars-moriendi to Tibetan Buddhism to Voodoo imagery, all symbolic/spiritual and mythological art are sources for his own expressive codes. His works plays with symbolism such as skulls, daggers and keys, adopting them into his visual language without eliminating the intention of the original icons.

CA L M A

Through skateboarding he discovered punk music and graphics, which ignited his artistic tendencies and pushed him to experiment with stencils. He recalls that the first stencil he cut was the logo of hardcore punk band Black Flag. Then he moved on to his own designs. Developing his newfound flair for art, aged 16, he found work with a scene painter called Zé Carratú. Over three years he painted backdrops for rock festivals including bands such as Black Sabbath and Bad Religion. After some time in Europe he returned to Brazil and sought out new collaborations. Along with artist and musician Carlos Dias he formed a collective known as FACA, which painted murals, produced posters and stickers as street art on the streets of São Paulo. Working on the street he developed his style and outlook, through the action of painting and the experience of interacting with other artists and onlookers alike. The energy of this vast city, its walls, its graffiti culture and its inhabitants all became part of the aesthetic.

Squatting the White Cube? Words: H L | Photo’s: Ruedione

W H IT E CU B E

Later he would rethink this publication, considering that he shot images of Graffiti from a photographer’s perspective when he was interested in the view of the writer (hiding under the train, standing in the shadows) and began to retrace his steps around Europe to reshoot the work. This proves to be not only an obsessive exercise, but also a stunning portrayal of frames and perspectives. While Smash137 and Ruedione showed some of the most innovative stuff we’ve seen coming out of the Graffiti scene, Wayne Horse shared his “Legends of Graf ” project with friend StreetLaw and Sebener. The series is a cheeky piss take on the hype and lack of understanding

S m a s h 1 3 7 o uts id e

If we had the Black Forest, man there was light, right from the beginning. For the first time we had the pure pleasure of working with Lichtfaktor. The member of this crew who gave us so many hands, managed to do 7 events in 6 days. From a party with and for Metallheadz to 2nd Hand Smoke, a concert in a church, visuals for a book reading … I never saw a person who remained so calm and was so busy. The weather pissed out some of Lichtfaktor’s plans, but he built a phosphorus black room for public, and mostly private, light painting sessions, beamed out his latest work for Current TV and Sky Movies and then helped keep the party spinning out of control as a new day began to make its appearance.

Mo rc k y Gra m o ph o n e

How does a person know where they are meant to live? How to we feel our homes? What the fuck is Heimat? I said that Smash137 finds his in the past, uses that ‘these are a few of my favorite things’ idea to collect himself and carry on. Our lives change constantly, we change constantly, what is the link between the man who sits here reading this today and the one you think of when you read that one sentence or see that image that suddenly takes you back. Does it matter where you are taken in moments like these? Heimat may be those senses that assure you that while you may be lonely, you are not alone. While Smash137 is a sort of modern day sailor (thus not an enormous fan of the mobile phone) with roots scattered along the tracks, the other artist featured in the Montana Scholarship program, Stefan Strumble returns to ideas popularized by Heidegger, those questions of land and blood and history and home. As with so many terms from German philosophy, there is no accurate translation for this sense of nostalgia. ‘Heimat’ is that smell, that taste, the certain temperature in October that brings you back to your beginnings. Strumble’s work is delicate and playful, yet simultaneously reflective of some sort of simple and solid base; the necessity of grounding, his rooted in Heimat asking what the fuck it is, but softly smirking, because the viewer needs to answer that. Like the artist, the work appears almost impossibly non-chalant and playful. It does not ask to be taken seriously, though from the first moment of recognition, it clearly is. Skateboard decks and jig sawed evergreens, the Black Forest can be seen making several appearances in his oeuvre and there was no need to explain this to the crowd at 2nd Hand Smoke, on the contrary, guest after guest approached to discuss this subtle and strong inspiration.

Sma sh 137 inside

One of the best surprises at the event was the music, Nu Motion, Electric Larry, DJ Cem (Beatpackers) and El Criminal kept all the guests dancing till the morning time. Thanks to everybody who attended the celebrations at 2nd Hand Smoke, and special biggups to Super Bertram and George, Odo the Great, Chris, Matthias, Andre de Dirt Flames, Sascha and Anne Katrin Scherer, Modart’s latest team member and event coordinator. myspace.com/lichtfaktor bronxism.de ruedione.com smashtrash.net waynehorse.com twothings.net farmprod.com odonien.org super.odonien.org

Wa ny Ho r s e Le g e n d s Of Gra f

Wh at Th e Fuc k Is He im at ? St e fa n St rumble

This event was supported by Suzuki, Carhartt, Veltins and Rebel Media …

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Smash137 also appeared in the gritty photograph exhibited by Ruedione, a dark silhouette with finger itching in frozen motion. Ruedione’s work has earned him international acclaim as of late, and while the most amazing Martha Cooper acknowledges her own art as communication and not photography per say, Ruedione is a technically tight shot who also possesses a profound passion for, and knowledge of, Graffiti culture around the world. He showed up at the event straight out of Sao Paulo where he’d been involved with the Just Writing My Name project and like his friend Smash137, you could surely say he is addicted. In 2000, he began to concentrate on the temporal nature of Graffiti and the media reincarnation of images focusing on photography as his preferred medium of self-expression. A mere 6 years later, and Ruedione had founded the Montana Writer Team, launched his own photography studio and published his first book.

Also out of Amsterdam came the Never Ending Space Colony, Foolish Girl, Massive Morcky Beakers and more work from Twothings. While the pair couldn’t be there and at their show in Kuala Lumpur, Nelson Dos Reis and Guillaume Desmarets of the Farm Prod crew in Brussels grabbed the train up, showing some of their paintings from 2006 and working a massive piece on the spot. If these two are street artists, it has mainly to do with the fact that they are down on the streets, with the people, getting dirty, tasting it all, giving and taking at the hard smack count of urban life. This life is their practice. Painting is their release. That the venue was just across the street from Europe’s largest brothel (a hotel with a hooker in each room), seemed to provide the wall where Guillaume’s No Money No Honey super bling totem pole was meant to live.

2nd Hand Smoke took place parallel to Art.21Fair between the 1st and 3rd of November. First, and eventually last, Smash137 did a massive piece beneath the train rails; a mixture of crack and glide, pink eyed stars and tender blue bombs bleeding against a first layer of grey (first layer? That’s not quite right, unless you ignore all those that were already there). You could say Smash137 was a total addict, except that there is a constant evolution that has nothing to do with tolerance and that boy travels so light the only thing he’s chugging is here and now. Basel, his hometown, can also appear as his personal gallery. But for Smash137, home doesn’t mean hometown. His sense of “Heimat” consists of traces and faces on the street (country not relevant here). On a trip to NYC he’d hoped to hit 10 trains, and while many active European Graffiti or Street based Artists I know won’t dare to get up in the apple after Guilliani, Smash137 hit 17 trains. In Cologne, he shared a authentic genius trick to take Graffiti outside to inside and keep its soul in tact.

around Graffiti (even by those who practice it). Visitors I spoke with all said that the work shown in these films wasn’t nearly as hot as the stuff from Smash137, but none of them got that it wasn’t the Graffiti in the films that we were actually exhibiting. Draw your own conclusions. There are several to make and I don’t believe in painting by numbers. While the responses this project got a Youtube make the whole thing a good laugh, I’m more curious to see Wayne’s latest work, a video project following the famous Elephant Boy.

W H IT E CU B E

This time, there was no white cube. The walls weren’t smooth. In fact, most of them were straight out rotting. While fine art (I hope it was fine, unfortunately I didn’t actually get to see any of it this time) took over Cologne in the shape of the Art.21Fair and a few similarly shaped events, Modart proposed the city another way to explore aesthetics, fun and each other.

Wo r ds , portraits : Ja s oHorton .

Just a year later, Adam’s first solo show, Pots And Pans turned yet another corner, maybe the biggest corner of them all; from being an alleged street artist with an interesting angle to a hot up-and-comer in the art world. How? Well, conceptual bullshit aside for a minute, Pots And Pans proved that Neate can really paint: his new work was subtle, crafted, varied and… stunning. The coarse cardboard boxes that had

ADA M N E AT E

Did you start out as a graffiti artist? In a way… it all goes back to the eighties again, such a great time. I had an older cousin who got me into Beastie Boys, and from there it got me into hip-hop culture. I saw the book Subway Art, which I started taking out of the library

every week. He did a bit of spraying garage doors around his village, doing little pieces… messing about really. But when you’re ten years old, it looked great, and you wanted a go too. You weren’t really worried about the aesthetics of it… it’s a spraycan… wicked! And a bit naughty too. Anyway, I guess it opened up that door for me, along with the skating, the music… And then, along with all that, for me it was 2000AD, all the graphic novels, Judge Dredd, and all that rich imagery. But of course back then none of it had anything to with wanting to be an artist…

But it was just there, a part of your life. Exactly. Then through the nineties I was mostly just skating. Next came leaving school and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. I left school at 16 and started doing ‘Information Graphics’. I wanted to do airbrush stuff; which stemmed from looking at custom cars magazines in the newsagents with all those cool paint jobs. Again, that was an eighties thing: all those hyper-real illustrations that were popular back then. So I wanted to be an airbrush artist… Yeah, me too. It was like a ‘future pen’! Exactly! The book cover even had a robot arm holding the airbrush. So, I learned how to use an airbrush, could do all those technical paintings of an exploded car engine’s parts. But by the end of the two-year course, I realised that computers were coming in, Apple Macs and all that, and I had this qualification that nobody wanted anymore. I thought, “oh shit! I’d better start learning about these.” So then I did a computer-based design course, because I could see that’s where the work would be. It was funny, because while I was doing this pretty dry stuff, some of my mates were doing the fine art course, where they were getting to express themselves freely. Yet two of them are landscape gardeners now, whereas I’m the painter…

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Adam Neate

And then came the 2006 Sell Out show, which confronted the subject head-on. Sat in the front window of a gallery, he knocked out a continuous stream of quick pieces to later be distributed in the streets, while items for sale were also exhibited. Yes, it asked some questions about street art stepping into the gallery and art becoming a commodity. But was it not going back on the manifesto in Street Logos? Wasn’t he selling out? What is selling out? Well, vowing to continue giving away his free art while creating more ambitious ‘commercial’ work seemed more like a fair balance than selling out. Perhaps it was more a case of Neate now seeing ‘free art’ as a question, rather than a standpoint.

What kind of impact did skateboarding have on your aesthetics? I started skating in the eighties. It was the Powell Peralta era, VHS came to England, we were all watching films like Back To The Future and Police Academy 2, and all the skate videos coming over from the states. A shop in my town started selling all these skateboards, and there was just so much… colour! All the stickers were fluoro, everything was just zinging, the design was so strong…As a kid, you couldn’t help but get inspired by all those skeletons and pus. The visual impact of those boards and wheels was just as important as what people were doing on them. And then there were the magazines: I would spend hours poring over those ads showing all the different deck graphics. As a kid, you absorb so much more than an adult. I’m not sure, but these days skating seems a bit more clinical, but back in the eighties it was all so punk, mad looking – the clothes, the tricks, the customised griptape, the fuzzy skate videos… it was kind of tribal.

Both Sides Now:

In 2004’s Street Logos, Tristan Manco wrote, “He refuses to make a commodity of his art – by not reproducing his work commercially he makes it impossible to ‘sell out’ as nothing is for sale.” I loved the idea of an anonymous artist giving away his work on the street, and I loved the idea of doing it with lofty ideals of non-commercialism at heart. But even more I loved the idea of an artist compelled to paint, trapped within his need to work, producing endless melted variations of a desolate, often weeping figure (himself?).

formerly been the canvases of his street work had now become intricate 3-D constructions intermingled with the paint. The response was wild appreciation, a sellout show (in the good way) and a flare of publicity that saw Adam distributing free paintings… for the benefit of a CNN camera crew. Nearly two years on since his Sell Out, Neate’s continued rise in the art world seems assured. So, on the eve of his group show Small, Medium and Large, I met Adam at the Elms Lesters gallery, where talk meandered from growing up skating to his evolution from ‘Charity Shop Reject’ to Famous Painter, and his enslavement to the act of painting.

ADA M N E AT E

The first I ever heard of him was a passing scrap of lonely conversational driftwood: “Did you hear about this guy who leaves paintings lying around the streets of London?” I hadn’t, but I was intrigued, imagining some kind of urban Santa armed with a paintbrush and a mixed bag of canvases. Later, I heard a name stuck to this gingerbread trail of paintings, the driftwood had legs now, and so I dug a little deeper: My so called Santa, I learned, is named Adam Neate, and apparently, he simply had stuffed his house so full of his paintings that he ran out of space to store them. At this point he started leaving them around the streets of East London for anyone to discover, take home, destroy? Little gifts left for you to trip over, bump into and do whatever you wish with. By now I was fascinated.

them. So anyway, I’d been dropping them off in black bin liners at various shops, and one night I walked past one to see that they’d opened it, then dumped them out by the bins.

A DA M N E AT E

cardboard in the street to paint on, just random stuff. Portraits of friends. And how did they look, stylistically? Not sure really… quite colourful and blocky. I never took any photos of them, not sure if any of the people still have them. Doubt it… just like birthday cards, you move house, clean out your drawers… they were just scraps of cardboard, after all. Anyway, as time went by I’d done all my mates, and my mates’ mates, and I was well away. I’d got my own style, and my house was getting full of these pieces of cardboard. About that time I was getting ready to move to London, so I had this utopian idea to give them all away to charity shops, and maybe they could do some good with

So what came after design school? Well, about that time everyone wanted a website, and I just walked into all of that. I was nineteen, could use a computer, and I was just really lucky to arrive at the beginning of that boom. Sometimes people would ask me to do an illustration here and there, maybe for a website we were working on, and after working in such a dry area like website design, it kind of reminded me, “yeah, I can draw.” So after a long day behind a computer, I’d get home and I’d want to draw, get creative, for myself. The drier the work got, the more it pushed me to do my own thing again. And that’s how I got back into the painting. I was living in Ipswich with a mate, never having any money for canvases, so I was finding these old bits of

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What was your perception of ‘fine art’, back then? At that college there were quite a lot of Oddball characters, and I don’t know if they were being weird on purpose because they were on the fine art course… Dunno really, I was way too sensible for my own good; I couldn’t justify doing it because I didn’t think I could ever make any money from it. It sounds really bad, but I thought I may as well learn something useful that was close to being creative, without wasting three years of my life. Plus, even as a little kid. I’d always liked painting, so I didn’t feel like I had to go and do a course about it…

And how was moving to London? Well, all the time I’d been in Ipswich I was just doing my own thing with skating and painting, and I wasn’t really following what had been going on in Graffiti and the street art scene. So when I got to London I started seeing all this experimentation going on. It was kind of interesting, but I never got too tied up with it because my world revolved around painting at home, so I felt kind of detached. But I was quite pleased, because leaving paintings lying around was ‘my thing’. It was round about then that I met my (future) wife, who was fully into the Graffiti scene, so after all these years I was back into graffiti in a big way. We would travel to other places like Barcelona and Brazil and I’d see all this street art, these amazing characters. And while all that travelling was going on, I was still painting on my cardboard, and my style was changing, I was wanting to experiment as much as possible… paint as much as possible. It was weird, because a lot of the street art I was seeing was repetitive stuff, which was great because you would recognise their work everywhere, but I still had that desire to be an artist…

A DA M N E AT E

Charity Shop Reject. How did you feel about that? I thought “I’ve got to take them away from this place!” for the sake of my self-esteem. But then halfway home, I realised I didn’t want to take them home either… And that was the turning point. I decided to just leave them on the streets, leaning against walls and lampposts, and I found the effect quite surreal. So once I moved to London, I just carried on.

So by this time, leaving your paintings in the same patch in East London, you must have started getting some collectors? Yeah, I started putting them down in the same spots time after time, and one time I had this guy come over to me saying, “it’s you! It’s you! My friend’s got five of your pieces at home!” It was nice, because I’d never really know what happened to them after I left them. Did you feel in some way like Father Christmas, or the tooth fairy? I’ve had so many emotions over the years from doing it, different mindsets of what I was doing with it. One of the key things was to lose all sense of preciousness towards what I was doing; it’s kind of a Buddhist thing. I wanted to be like that with my art; I wanted to be doing it for the art’s sake, I was experimenting, I was enjoying the act of painting, not necessarily the finished result, caring whether it was a good or bad painting: just that I’d done one that day. Nothing’s permanent, and I was painting for the moment each time. And having given all those thousands of paintings away, with nothing more to show for them now than a few photos on a CD, is all part of that feeling for the transience of life.

It’s pretty mad that you’ve only been painting for the gallery for a year… Yeah, I’m still learning, really. All the stuff I’ve been learning painting for the streets, the experimenting, trying new things, and not being afraid to try new things, has been good for me, I think. And the other part of it has been coming from an office job where I’m drawing circles with a mouse all day, doing designs only to have some guy come along and tell you to change it, trampling all over your creativity. Not that you can be too precious about it. It’s a good lesson in life, even for an artist, because then, you’ve had all that shit, so when you’re painting for yourself, it feels even more… there’s more energy to it. When you make that mark, it’s like a snapshot of an emotion. It’ll last for as long as the painting lasts. I

Back then, were your paintings all done quickly, or did you do any more considered, longer paintings like we’re seeing today? No, not at all. It was all quick stuff, it was about the energy of it all.

Would you say that you had a compulsion to paint? Definitely. It was an addiction. For me, if I missed a day, the next day I’d have to paint twice as much. It was mental, like a drug, pretty sad really… Too much of anything, whether you’re painting or on heroin, and you don’t know when you’re high anymore. You just don’t know if you’re enjoying it anymore. Then around that time, I was invited to exhibit in this gallery, and I thought, well if people are going to spend money on their bus fare to come to this gallery, I have to put some time and effort into it. And that’s when it all kind of changed. Because at the time, there were all these questions about “here’s this guy, he leaves these paintings in the streets for free, and so why would I pay money for them in this gallery?” What’s the difference? So there had to be a visual difference, a line drawn between the two. So, what it was, without being too cheesy, was taking all the stuff I’d learned from the streets, all the styles and ideas, into the big stuff, and vice-versa. And so far, I think it’s worked.

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A DA M N E AT E

} love that raw feeling of expression. That stuff I was doing for the streets was purely expressing myself; not caring of it looked real, if it was fashionable, if people liked it… it was all for myself. And today? I woke up this morning, and I thought, “I can’t believe it!” Recently I’ve learned to never say never. Nothing is set in stone. I always thought that I would be the guy who leaves his paintings on the street until he’s ninety. And now,

working in this gallery, I’ve learned to not do a painting in three minutes, but to spend a week, three weeks on one painting. And the thinking and the creativity behind the piece is… it’s another world for me. It’s a whole new thing, and I’m glad I’ve found the gallery to do this. There might be people saying “oh, he’s sold out” but I’m not even thinking about that, I’m just thinking that I’ve found this whole new way of painting.

And the street pieces? I’ll never stop doing them. After working on a sculptural piece, or sewing something intricate, something pernickety to do, the next thing I’ll wanna do is some kind of mad release stuff. Calm me down, get back some balance. Let off some steam. Right now, I’m enjoying the best of both worlds.

A DA M N E AT E

So as an artist you wanted to experiment, but you were being influenced by the whole repetition thing at the same time… Yeah. At the time I was doing portraits, these heads, but I wanted each one to be different from the last, otherwise you could just photocopy it a hundred times. I think the experimentation was what kept me going.

Yo un g A n d R e stl e s s

Here’s what Issue 12 cover artists and fellow Emily Carr alumni, Hadley and Maxwell, had to say about this boy in Vancouver:

www.jasonmclean.com

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For the past fifteen years or so in Vancouver, Canada, Jason McLean has been diligently developing his own, unique, visual language. He started working through elaborate conversations via mail-art and art-book collaborations with a wide community of artists and friends (including comicartist Mark Bell, editor of Nog A Dod: Prehistoric Canadian Psychedooolia, published by Conundrum Press in 2006, featuring ten years of archived work by Jason and many others who influenced each other). These conversations have reached the public through exhibitions, publications, and events,

where text, drawing, collage and sculptures fill spaces with a sense of a constant negotiation of form and development of individual styles. Jason continues to collaborate, but also works energetically in his private studio, where he has been applying his unique sensibilities to whatever surfaces come into his grasp; from small size collage on found images and large-scale drawings to mural sized works (like the sky is falling, which covered the ceiling of the Vancouver Art Gallery Lobby in 2005) and paint on used refrigerators, turntables, and other found objects, Jason approaches the world with ink and a patient sense of urgency. He is incredibly prolific (one gets the sense that he never stops drawing), and this continuous practice has allowed his fans (and he has many, as he is known as a loveable person as well as a skilled artist) to track his maturing skill over the years. His discipline is most evident in his larger drawings, which read like maps or networks, mechanisms of meaning production and distribution, where language is tested against representation and transformed through both humorous and poignant juxtapositions. These drawings record a rigorous fidelity to Jason’s practice, with confident application of materials and considered formal arrangements that articulate the careful and loving attention Jason pays to the world around him.

Jason McLean was born in 1971. He graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, Canada in 1997. Over the past few years, his diverse practice has included drawing, sculpture, installation, sound performance and mail art. Much of his work contains collaborative elements. He was recently chosen by MacLean’s magazine as one of the top ten visual artists to watch for in Canada. His work has been displayed at Colette, Paris; Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles; Mother’s Tank Station, Dublin; Bee Studios, Tokyo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; Neon Gallery, Brosarp, Sweden; Spencer-Brownstone Gallery, New York; Abel Neue Kunst Gallery, Berlin, Germany and also at Fondazinoe Bevilacque La Masa, Venice, Italy.

Jason McLean

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JM 37

Word To Mother

WTM

Word To Mothers’ latest visual offerings will be on display at StolenSpace’s Xmas group show, opening November 29th and a solo show will be held at StolenSpace in Spring 2008. Word by D *Fac e

www.stolenspace.com

Like a magnet drawn to metal, a biscuit to tea, this ‘now known as Word To Mother’ found himself at the refuge of rebels ‘Stolenspace’, scattering his doodles and driftwood masterpieces across the gallery floor, a handshake given and show was held... rum and tea (his trade mark tipple) was drunk and the work vanished from the walls, exchanged for golden duckets, quicker than the rum in the bottle was drunk. A friendship for life was formed and a future wife found... well thats a story left to be told... but what I can tell you now is ‘Word To Mothers’ drawings are effortlessly beautiful; his sketchbook a treasure chest of gold and his paintings so fresh and unique that to see one is to instantly know what a mermaid must seem like to a sex starved sea mate.

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As the storm passed, this modern day Robinson Crusoe nodded to the sky and said ‘Word to mother nature for saving my soul’ and set about killing time waiting to be rescued by drawing on pieces of driftwood, (which he signed ‘word to mother’, he dropped the ‘nature’ bit as it was already a stupidly long name), days, weeks and years passed (well it felt that long), his drawing skills got pretty good and finally he ran out of driftwood, rum n’ tea and got fed up with drawing the strange characters he’d encountered on his travels, so he went for a walk along the pebbled cove that had become his prison. As he walked to the edge of the cove he began to wonder why he hadn’t done this sooner, slowly as he reached the apex of the cove he was met by the sight of the fully developed seaside town of Hastings. His own stupidity baffled him.

Setting up home in Hastings this teenage castaway started to hone his drawing skills, choosing to bless some of the local walls surrounding H’ town with his works of art (as drift wood was getting sparse and dull brick walls weren’t), ‘Word To Mother’ added spray paint to his mark making tool kit. Slowly his make shift home town port became too small for this big fish and the big smoke beckoned.

On the blackest of nights lit only by the glow of a full moon, a storm blew across the North Sea turning the salt waters into a swirling, torrid black sea of tar. Waves the size of tower blocks with the power of a builder’s bulldozers crashed down onto the beaten hull of a pirate ship that had sailed the seas for many moons, searching (and finding) bounty and booty, but this sea had it beat...Smashing it’s hull into a million pieces of wood, scattering the crew and contents into the sea, lost forever to mother nature... except one... the youngest of shipmates, a shaved headed powder monkey, survived. Clung to a barrel of Rum tethered to a box of Indian tea, he was washed to shore with nothing but the rags he wore and the captain’s map making tools; a pencil, dip pens and ink to his name.

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WTM 41

Herbert Baglione For over a decade, along with Os Gemeos, Speto and Vitche, Herbert Baglione has been recognized as part of a movement of street based Brazilian artists that has had a tremendous influence on contemporary discussions and actions in the international street art scene. Baglione’s strong, distinctive style and complex themes visible in his illustrations, paintings, and street endeavors have earned international acclaim in the design and art world alike.

www.herbert.ind.br

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Baglione’s art is constantly growing and changing via strong aesthetics and visual language though his figurative subjects remain constant. He relies heavily on a monotone palette of black, white and golden hues. At times, his work has had a strong minimalist and simplistic bent while relying on his elaborate calligraphic language and definite style somewhere between the Art Nouveau images of Audrey Beardsley and the eerie, mystical, and whimsical language of “childrens” illustrator Richard Scarey.

Herbert is renowned for strong simplistic street murals reminiscent of Southwest Pueblo cave drawings morphed with extraterrestrial images, brilliantly cloaked in rooftop shadows and actual object street wear. They flicker throughout, but are only visible in their entirety when seen from above. His images are of the obese and the painfully anorexic - extremes of human shapes elongated and rounded for the ultimate simplistic, dramatic iconic human symbols. Thus illustrating his interest in human imperfection and extremes.

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HB 45

Wo r d s: Dav i d Gaf f n ey | I llust rat i o n : g o R g

Music like ours never dies

Sawn of Tales

Marion said the article could have been written with me in mind, and I riffled through the supplement and there it was: Losing it - the Bay City Rollers story.

She flipped Les over. ‘This is the article I meant.’ EMOTIONAL INFIDELITY, it said, above a picture of a man and woman on a park bench. Alone, I drew a penis jutting out of the man’s trousers and a moustache on the woman. That’s what the rollers would have done. What matters is the moment, not everlasting fame.

S AW N O F TA L E S

‘Darling, I will never allow us to become the Bay City Rollers.’

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Marion was right. Their story was my story. I was self-obsessed, vain, and paid slipshod attention to Marion’s needs. The Bay City Rollers were encoded in me. And Tam Patton? He represented my father. Emotions unsilted themselves, tears fell on Les McKeon’s face, and when Marion came back from her run, I hugged her close.

The Rollers had everything, but threw it all away. They were egos on legs, emotionally cramped, and manager Tam Patton had a sinister, seamy undertow that eventually destroyed them.

It’s pretty easy. We love boobies. We also love people who believe art can be a powerful thing, who make art of life and spread love without hidden agendas. Cuz you know, there are a lot of people out there who might depress us by suggesting that there isn’t a whole lot we can do about the shitty state of the world (cancer, war, poverty, you pick your own shitty state card if you like). People who might say that you can give a man a fish, you can teach him to fish, you could vote for legislation proposing free fish, you could watch Fish Bait IV and still, people would beg, steal,

Fortunately, there are other people who whether they accept the premise or not, keep on kicking and trying to turn shit into something else. Something better? Who cares? Something brighter? Who knows? Something less painful? Depends on your scale. Anyway, these are those people who refuse to be victims, refuse to accept things because this is ‘just the way it is,’ and instead offer a hand to all those sisters and brothers from other mothers to hold for a dance or a cry. These people don’t approach work as duty, but as their obligation of being another lost human being, being confused and conscious and celebrating this brief second in time we get to spend together.

Smiling faces, ripe little cherries, and talk about soldiers? And this for the feature of a sort of art magazine thing like Modart. What’s going on?

go hungry and get fat, all the while fish would be attacked, water would boil and for every happy ending there would still be an inquisition off in the distance. Either and any way, Austrians would still suggest that all fish oils are the best way to increase your alcohol consumption and not your risk of imminent arrest, one day it all smells fishy on trial regardless, etc and so on. These people aren’t really wrong.

KEEP A BREAST

Ar A t Ke w . E ep a d A Br re uc ea n a st e –a t s pr s io oj ec . A n. tw e c lo ti ve o

What are all these girls doing and why are they so happy? Are naked skin and plaster, therapeutic in combination? Usually, a cast makes you think of that one second when you busted your wrist, rib or whatever. But these girls sure don’t give me painful thoughts. They are the loveliest of soldiers, celebrating their participation in beating down the War on Boobies.

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lo ve .

Awareness

Keep a Breast does this. Art. Action. Awareness. Education. It is a project never preaching, but successfully promoting empathy, communication Photo’s: • Heather Vallentyne | vallentynephotography.com

KEEP A BREAST

As far as war goes, this is pretty paranoid and only serves to keep the blood and economy flowing. As far as cancer goes however, it’s a deadly reality. Young and old, cancer doesn’t care about your passport, your ethnicity, or religious views. Cancer is a merciless killer and this is something that no what your political or moral position(s), we can probably all as people agree on … here is some information on a project you may want to be part of.

What is Keep a Breast? Combining sculpture, philanthropy, and symbolic artistry, The Keep A Breast Foundation is a nonprofit breast cancer awareness organization unlike any other. Keep A Breast creates one-ofa-kind plaster forms of the female torso that are customized by fine artists and auctioned to raise consciousness and funding for breast cancer research and treatment. The casts are physical representations of a simple truth— while breast cancer attacks all women without prejudice, it is the powerful individual present in all women that

For 8 years now, Keep A Breast has been a sort of touring Woodstock, not the version with Pepsi as a sponsor, where water costs more than a healthy value meal from whoever and so on, but the one that was in search of something, resisting the virus that monarchy, monotheism and mono-capitalism send spinning into our emotional and aesthetic sensibilities. Beach events, gallery shows, auctions, artwork shops, images, moving and still meant to educate so as a teacher is there to ensure that the student no longer needs him.

Art. Since launching, KAB has collaborated with more than 800 artists, held more than 35 events and employed this creative spirit to help fund research into the prevention and awareness of Breast Cancer, an illness which currently kills 1 out of every 33 women it invades, which is has a more frightening ratio of 1 out of 8 in the United States where the project was born.

Most often casts are made at casting parties and then shipped off to the artists. What a thing to receive in the mail. Still, less dodgy in the eyes of gossipy neighbors than if this were geared towards the prostrate I’m sure.

time together and seem to have a pretty good laugh, but there is a lot of work involved. Most often, Shaney Jo, Mona or one of the few women they have taught to handle the task of making multiple breast casts on a lazy afternoon creates the casts.

Education. Every teacher worth half his or her unjustly small paycheck understands that education demands meaning. If a student doesn’t find a connection, doesn’t feel a subject, its all pedagogic failure. We have to give a shit if we’re going to learn. Keep A Breast works with creative talent to get its messages across and the results are outstanding. This is a project artists want to give to. On their website you can have a look at different ways KAB disseminates information, such as artist designed shower cards that help make self examinations a normal process or a series of animated and other videos, which further explain the process and the relevance of incorporating it into the cleaning of your body. Education also plays a big part in the process of making the casts. The women involved spend

Awareness. Education is one way to open people’s eyes. Then again, when media made people aware that cigarettes were killers, or that the egg in the frying pan was ‘your brain on drugs,’ people didn’t stop inhaling. KAB strengthens their communication by sharing other voices. Their artist representation programs and the KAB ‘This is my story’ campaign, let people all over the planet share their experiences with each other and provide credible spokespeople to a young public. Credible, not only for whom they are, but also for their belief in what they are doing with KAB. Here the communities surrounding Shaney Jo, Mona and the KAB crew have been amazing. Athletes, entertainers and well, just about

Whatever. Together with Mona MukherjeaGehrig she founded and fuels the Keep A Breast Foundation, an organization that has colorful grassroots planted in sand, concrete and shared creativity; a project, which has raised over 300,000 dollars towards Breast Cancer Awareness.

will conquer it. Keep A Breast’s goal is to bring a fresh perspective to this important cause in a way that is relevant and inspiring to today’s youth.

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Little Bush once said that the enemy is invisible and everywhere. The idea was obviously to suggest that none of us, not the tall ones, the fat ones, the Belgian ones, the Congolese, the smart, the silly, the clumsy or the graceful ones of us are safe.

Shaney Jo Darden has probably touched more breasts than any other woman on the planet. She has ‘love’ tattooed on the knuckles of her left hand, and ‘true’ written on the right. Does ink have any concrete link?

KEEP A BREAST

Photo: • Heather Vallentyne | vallentynephotography.com • Erin Caruso | erincaruso.com • William Branlund | branlundphotography.com • Lorene Carpentier | flowtography.fr

KEEP A BREAST

and creativity while raising awareness of a painful reality that could strike close to your home. One that is beautiful and beautifully executed. Keep A Breast has recently won the Myspace Impact awards. Finally an unarguably good use of mass commercial mediums. They’ve also teamed up with the Vans Warped Tour, the Quicksilver Foundation and a series of other great partners in the action sports, fashion and music industries.

everybody approached seems to really enjoy being part of this. Look at the pictures, everybody is smiling. You see them wearing the T Shirts, hanging out at the casting parties or taking part in events and I’ll be honest, I generally don’t trust people who always seem to be smiling. But I guess most of these people aren’t always smiling, Keep A Breast makes them smile. This is pretty amazing.

www.keep-a-breast.org Special Thanks to Shaney Jo Darden for her time and assistance.

KEEP A BREAST

52 KEEP A BREAST

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KEEP A BREAST

For more information on KAB events or to check out all the items mentioned in this article, please visit the Keep A Breast Foundation at:

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Haven’t you been looking? Forget the text. Look at all the casts, the breasts, the models and musicians and events and there are thousands of them. Its all action that ends up in art and dialogue and sales, which hope to help women keep a breast, help women and men alike keep a breast of information and health issues and communicate the concerns of young ladies around the planet. Keep A Breast is reminder of beauty on several levels. Beauty if the face of an awful beast …

Action.

Contraction Stance

Spiderwoman

Lister smoking...

I Used To Be a

“People think his work is simple, it’s just… not.” This statement by Paul Jones, the director of the Elms Lester Painting Rooms in London, is as true of Anthony Lister’s artwork as it is of the quote itself. Anthony’s work has seized upon characters and images that straddle generation gaps, culture gaps, discerning and not so discerning tastes, and even the love-hate-loveagain relationship between the street and fine art worlds. In this way it perfectly reflects how this man lives his life. Having grown up in Australia his passion and talent for drawing, not to mention a most likely unhealthy dose of comics, movies and television, continually drew him out of his shell, onto the streets, into various studios, and further into his artwork. His paintings

LISTER

can be seen as a simple reflection of his creative processes while at the same time a complex study of the various influences that the majority of our generation was raised on. What’s Good vs. Evil? It all seemed so simple then, but we can see now that it just isn’t. Soon the island wasn’t big enough to hold him in and he broke out to explore the new worlds, the old worlds, and to expose himself to the audiences that had eagerly been awaiting him without even knowing it. His work is now being shown internationally in some of the most respected, and disrespected, galleries in New York, London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Melbourne, and beyond. If you’re lucky enough to be living nearby any of these places be sure to check out the final days of the current show he’s participating in at the Elms Lester Painting Room in London, his current solo show at the Metro 5 Gallery in Melbourne, and some of the first days of his solo show at in Los Angeles. So don’t forget kids, read your comics, enjoy your crayons, draw on the walls, and just let it all take you where it will, which it seems can be pretty damn far.

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Born down under in 1979, Australian artist Anthony Lister started making pictures in 1985 and says he got serious about it some sweet 13 years later. The last time we saw him was around the Wooster Collective Spring Street madness a year or so ago, and since then Lister has been making the rounds … knock out exhibitions, prolific appearances on ragged walls, recently our boy Ripo skated up next to him and slowed him down to get a little personal with you.

LISTER

Anthony Lister

interv iewed by Ri po

Spinning Tricks

Bent Over Backwards

Themes in a lot of your work are noticeably based around pop imagery, mostly television and comics. Have these always been influences on your work? Yeah I guess so, I mean I have always read comics and watched TV. Those two sources have always been major influences for me in art and life. What made you put pencil/pen/paint/clay/whatever down and create something for the very first time (as far as you can remember at least)? Or what are your first memories of being an artist?

My mother still has the first drawing that I was really proud of which is a lead pencil portrait drawing of a bushranger outlaw wearing a big hat. I remember always being told that drawing was what I was good at so I just kept on doing it.

then. It is a real pleasure for me to set up an exhibition. Some of the most satisfying moments in my life have been just after setting up a show. I look forward to doing it for the rest of my life. Many of the "street artists" who have started to have some level of success in galleries or with commercial work have all but stopped putting their work in the streets. Is this something you find necessary as a process for learning and developing your work? What other reasons do you have for going out and making it happen in the streets for all to enjoy?

I always only paint for me. Sometimes the streets just get in the way. How do you view artists, especially so called street or graffiti artists, working with corporations and putting their work into the commercial world?

I have never done anything like that and don't plan to anytime soon. Who is your favorite Superhero? Now and at 10 years old?

Hero Hostage

Do you have a love/hate relationship with TV? or just love it or just hate it?

I guess so. I am actually pretty good with not watching too much TV I think, my wife would probably say different though. I find television time to be quite relaxing; It is of course the contemporary mode of meditation. Television has replaced the fireplace. Did you attend art school?

4 years I will never get back ;) Much of the work that people first began recognizing you for was what you were doing in the streets. Do you feel there is a strong community behind this type of work?

Are you planning on staying in the NYC for a while?

As long as I can avoid alien abduction. What are some of your upcoming plans? Travels? Gallery shows? Top-secret projects?

I'm just going to keep painting in the studio and updating my site with news of exhibitions etc. I have a few shows coming up and a few prints being made. My family and I are actually in the process of building a giant boat for the second coming of Christ. www.listerart.com.au

Batgirl Fronting

How has it helped your travels and your â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;World Tourâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;? What are some of the locations your artwork has brought you?

Traveling and eating are the best things money can pay for. My practice has taken me all over Australia, to Roma, Milan, Paris, London, LA, San Francisco, New York, Berlin. There are still so many places I want to travel and re-visit. How did you make the transition into working with galleries? Has working with galleries always been a goal of yours or was it something that came out of chance and circumstance?

My grandparents took me to galleries as a child. They made a big deal about them and I guess that rubbed off on me. My 1st solo exhibition was in 2001, and I have been having at least a couple every year since

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} LISTER

NYC has been on my mind since Ghostbusters came out in the mid 1980s. the first time I came here in 2002 I felt like I had arrived home. I know that probably sounds really corny, but I have always felt an affinity with this city and I think it began to spawn by the way it made me feel through the television screen. Living here doesn't change that.

I have always drawn in the streets. I was encouraged as a child with chalk and progressed from there. I encourage my own children to do the same. My street practice and studio practice are 2 very different worlds for me. I like it this way, it helps me free up my style and concepts, and not get too bogged down with consistent rhythms of complacent satisfaction.

How are you finding New York, New York?

LISTER

Lister smoking...

Still Spiderman. There's something about him, I think its because he had to work so hard at balancing his life and study and hero practice. I have never been attracted to characters that were wealthy or had everything given to them, I could never respect that as much as hard work or pain.

Words: HL & The ove Movement

YO!

‘We the people’ are alienated by the absurdity of authority while honesty and simplicity get lost in the ashes of illusion. We know it. We can’t change it. This can be some seriously dick deflating news in moments when the news always seems brutal. In 1990, the Hip Hop duo of Eric B. and Rakim asked the question “Yo! What Happened To Peace?” , in their acclaimed song Paid In Full. Twelve years later Los Angeles based artist and curator, John Carr asked the same question and took some initiative in communicating his sense of civil responsibility. John decided to use his unalienable rights as a U.S. citizen and make a stand against the violence. He contacted some of the most exciting artists attached to various cultural or political movements and proposed an anti-war and pro-peace art show dubbed “Yo! What Happened To Peace?”.

Back in 2002, the first Yo! show started with 14 artists spreading the message of non-violence on handcrafted prints using stencils, silkscreens, letterpress, block print, and lithograph. There is no coincidence that poster (from activists to advertisers to the promotion of any sort of party propaganda) have long been successful at reaching people as they go about their personal whatever. Nor is it coincidence that Carr himself is a prolific screen printer. Yo! What Happened to Peace, was a call to artists to articulate something other than the consensual myths of mass media in terrifying times. The response was strong and the collection and various interpretations of this somehow rhetorical question continue to grow as the War on Terror continues to terrify. Since the Iraq War has carried on and grown almost miraculously uglier and uglier since its start in 2002, so has “Yo! What Happened To Peace?”, which has been exhibited all over the free world in galleries and museums in places such as Tokyo, San Francisco, New York, Milan, Rejkyavik, Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, Rome, Brussels, Los Angeles, and London. This collection has grown from 14 posters to over 250 posters from over 150 artists from all over the world including Ames Bros., Chaz Bojorquez,

Robbie Conal, 3D, Eric Drooker, Emek, Shepard Fairey/OBEY, Karen Fiorito, Doze Green, David Ellis, Edward Culver, Firehouse, Brandy Flower, Forkscrew Graphics, Futura, Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca, JK5, Kayrock & Wolfy, Josh MacPhee, Mear One, Favianna Rodriguez, Seripop, Yuri Shimojo, Winston Smith, Seth Tobocman, Mark Vallen, Voodoo Catbox, Cody Hudson, The Love Movement and John Carr. As a show, this collection has appeared in museums and galleries, fashion stores and book shops. While much of the art is top grade, this isn’t the point. The point is for the art to engage a broad audience. If there were a shared political conviction in there, it may be the action itself, the fact that more and more artists are interested in supporting this project and putting the question out there. As the White House awaits the next cowboy to cum in the saddle, the Yo!Show will have a lot of work ahead of them, employing art to instigate dialogue and seeing if it can have a political impact. Visit yowhathappenedtopeace.org for more info on the Yo!Show, Books, and Submission Policy. Check out lovemovement.com for a well played Yo! T-shirt.

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Is this question rhetorical? Is the question important? Are answers realistic expectations? Has there ever been peace?

For all our technology, human civilizations remain as savage as ever … idealism to materialism to media-lism, and the circle of blade saws keeps spinning into the sand. Today, as Wolfgang Schirmacher points out, ‘the barbarians are wearing Mickey Mouse smiles. Governments and story spinners make exception the rule and fear the flavor of day.

YO!

What Happened to Peace?

YO!

E k at er i n a R i et z - R a k u l St eve S ch epen s B er l i n , O ctob er 2007

61 F E T I S HI S M

60 F E T I S HI S M

The opening of Mike Kelley’s (*1954, Detroit) show KANDORS on 29.09.2007 at the Jablonka art gallery, a fancy space in Berlin Mitte, was very well attended. Neither the prohibition of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes nor the presence of Mr. Kelley’s vigilant art guards could prevent a fight between Mr. Kelley and a ‘fucking bohemian artist’. The next day’s exclusive artist talk of Mr. Kelley at the American Academy Berlin offered valuable insights into his work.

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SOPHISTICATED FETISHISM

After losing some time in a line and abandoning drinks and cigarettes at the entrance one got into Mike Kelley’s brave new world. “The beautiful acid-trip”, as Mr. Kelley described it, took Mr. Kelley more than six years and one million Euros to produce. The dimmed space was crowded by sight-seers, admiring various self illuminated objects in saturated colours: red, green, blue, yellow, violet and pink. The show represented Kandor, the capitol city of Superman’s destroyed home-planet Krypton. According to the comic, Kandor is preserved in a reduced state in a bell-jar that is in Superman’s possession. The Bottle City is what remains of his memories. Ten resin stalagmite-like models of Kandor were placed into approximately one meter-high coloured glass belljars. Some of the bell-jars were placed on futuristic or altar-like pedestals, some on the background of Plexiglas walls. Each of them was connected to gas-bottles of various modifications. Details, like a forgotten yellow rag or a kitsch porcelain flower bouquet, played with the highly aesthetic and formalistic nature of the installation. Furthermore, the exhibition included lightboxes of raster graphic illustrations form The Bottle City of Kandor and two kinds of expressive video installations. Large projections of the bell-jars with a ‘natural’ action happening inside (for example, a whirlwind of elements) and small monitors showing jars with crystals developing inside, added movement and sound and vitalized the static installation.

The notion of ‘technological utopia” was central for Mr. Kelley’s work at the exhibition Zeitwenden at the Kunstmuseum Bonn in 2000. In that show he presented his first work about the city of Kandor: Kandor-Con 2000. Mr. Kelley’s ambition was to form an internet community, where each individual could create his own version of Kandor. Afterwards, the people of the community should have been brought to the place of the exhibition and actually construct their versions of Kandor. Unfortunately, the plan did not work out well, because of the impossible costs of realizing such a utopian project—an impossibility Kelley pointed to in that project by showing the estimated costs on the walls around the exhibition. “The project showed that technological utopia was crap”, - so Mike Kelley.

Further, Mike Kelley talked about his studies and the weight of Hans Hoffman on American Art. Four generations of art school painters were exposed to Hoffman’s influence. Mr. Kelley, who was born one generation later, claims: “Quality is academia, it is not art”. The artist also referred to the importance of Vito Acconci’s criticism on minimalism. In the installation/performance Seedbed (1972) Acconci was masturbating underneath of an evidently minimal floor piece and fantasizing about the visitors walking above him. Mike

Kelley’s Framed & Frame (1999) included a hidden room with a “fuck bed” inside. He called the installation an “informal sculpture.” Over and above, the maître presented the audience with some broader arguments, such as “beauty can only be Kitsch”, “the sublime is Kitsch (and frightening)”,“art is a sophisticated form of fetishism”, and “art is structural opium for the people”. Mike Kelley explained that art is a Brechtian opiate, revealing the structure of meaning. According to postulates of structuralism, art plays with cultural codes, and reveals not “truths” but the way they are constructed. Mr. Kelley criticised Clement Greenberg, who said that the “quality of art is based on being true to materials” and Robert Rauschenberg and brothers-in-arms for using “pop-culture to hide the fact that they were fomalists”. Nevertheless, Mr. Kelley said, “Kandors became a beautiful formalistic show”. In cooperation with Harald Falckenberg

He explained that the peculiar language of his art is an example of differences between the New York and Los Angeles art scenes: “NY is a European city, but it is the symbol of the American art world, a symbol based on European models, such as modernism. Therefore I started working with regional ingredients instead, creating a regional style instead of adopting the ‘international American Style”.

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Opening the talk, Mr. Kelley pointed out that KANDORS fits into the larger context of his work, although some viewers might have expected different aesthetics. The peculiarities of human memory have always been a fascinating topic for him. The artist referred to his earlier work Educational Complex (1995): a scale model of all the educational institutions he attended. Some pieces of the model were left blank, symbolizing the blank spots in the mind caused by traumatic experiences, a phenomenon known as “Repressed Memory Syndrome.” “I did my work because I was abused”, - Mike Kelley said. The audience responded by burst of laughter.

F E T I S HI S M

Mike Kelley (or, as he called himself, ‘bad Mike’ or ‘dirty Mike’) made a highly aesthetical installation, which he described as “a Matissean show”. His talk with Michael Kimmelman, the chief art critic of the New York Times, delivered interesting insights into the background information about KANDORS, its place in the flow of Mr. Kelley’s work as well as its position in the paradigm of international art. The exclusive event took place in the American Academy in Berlin-Wannsee, an elitist institution of high-brow US-American culture in Germany.

In Your Ear! By Jon Kennedy

Unlike the Luddite movement born back in England during the start of the 19th century, I am not out to destroy the latest and greatest machinery people are using to create music (or otherwise) these days. That said, there are buckets of music these days where the machine might have eaten the soul. The problem isn’t using computers, its when the directing program is not your own twisted brain!

7” Single Reviews

/ Left to Right

JD73 – “Ascension / Dark Dub” ( wax on )

A superb reggae mash-up of The Beatles “Eleanor Rigby” - dubbed out and a perfect fit, so much so u might think it’s a lost Beatles track. A sure fire dancefloor filler every time. Unknown www

I’ve yet to play this record WITHOUT someone asking, “what the hell is that, its amazing…” This is the new release from Nightmares On Wax’s new label. A gorgeous disco-esque track on one side with lush rhodes and moog tinkering backed with a smooth flute-lead haed knodder. GOLD! www.wax-on.net

Superb Hawaiian skank to cheer you up without end. Fantastic 130bpm + track with lush guitars and fat booty shake bass and drums from start to finish….. seriously, this one isn’t too miss! www.freshlysqueezedmusic.com

Wicked Lester – “007” ( splank white label ) Fat 303 basslines, which punchy as fuck drums here. Its meaty but has a chilled edge to it too. There’s an unambiguous detective theme in this one, hence the title “007” www.splankrecords.co.uk

DJ Shadow – “This Time” ( universal ) A superb return from Josh Davis with “This Time,” but flip the record over for a fantastic dub version of the original. This version is solid as a rock and rarely played!! www.djshadow.com

Red – “Seen” ( deal maker )

Matsmats – 7”slip-mat R.G.R. 45RPM 001 This is simply a 7” slipmat with a raised “dink” adaptor for them jukebox-friendly 7”s. I’ve been using this for a while now and I can assure they work like a dream! www.myspace.com/matthealien

Fresh Mark feat The Soul Investigators– “I Got The Number ( instr ) ” ( number nine ) Another mashup that you would NEVR be able to point at all inside there! With pounding funk drums and a brass line to make the girls want to shag you, this one, yeah, enough to make people wanna shag you …. Back o’ the net !!

Fantastic return from Nicolette with her Eartha Kitt style vocal talents over a booty shaking dub style beat. Can’t fault any of the remixes here but the FILEWILE version is the one I work in every time! www.earlyintime.com

Another release on mastermind George Evelyn’s (a.k.a. DJ Ease, Nightmares On Wax) label Wax On Fantastic reggae, hip hop mixture, perfect for radio or a groovy DJ set. The cheeky James Taylor sampling styles of “Good Morning” is my personal fav. www.splankrecords.co.uk

RSD – “Corner Dub” ( punch drunk ) Oh good god this is the bomb people. As Rob Smith from Smith and Mighty fame returns with an absolute stormer of a dancehall anthem. Biggup yer chest! www.myspace.com\punchdrunkrecords

“Luddite’s destroying machinery in Lanchashire, England in 1811” As Gene Wilder professes in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory - “We are the music makers… We are the dreamers of dreams ….” Lets keep it that way! On recent plays of many albums, of which will remain unnamed here, I more and more realize that I could sit in front of my PC and create 50% of the pile of shite on the LP. It must be that record labels’ A&R men are only striving to find the cleanest of tracks and have no idea that it is actually the program playing its own sounds, in its own quantized fashion.

Kidda – “V.I.P” ( kidda music ) Happy as you would expect from Kidda. In a similar vein to Fat Boy Slim with cheeky sampling and fat hip hop beats paced along side. www.myspace.com/kiddauk

Jon Kennedy – “Demons” ( jon kennedy federation ) It’s trip hop and I don’t care what you say! www.jonkennedy.co.uk

45 Twister from Compost Records A plastic 12” slipmat with a 7” foam inner and raised plastic ‘dinkhole’ for jukebox 45’s. It’s a little bulky but it’s tight and I found this works excellently along side a second one for an ALL 7” / 45rpm DJ set…..

Lets take it back to the 4 track. Let us all splice cables together with electrician’s tape and mic up a drumkit down a lift shaft or stairway; like Led Zeppelin did with THE MOST famous break of all time on “When The Levee Breaks”. So seriously, please, please stick your MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) and SMPTE TIMECODE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) device up your arse and record that!! It’ll be personal to you, as no one else’s arse will have the reverb of your own anal cavity! I’d personally love to hear the effect because I’m not trying THAT ONE myself!

Ok, so called schooling aside, are their some influences you’d site as educative? The influences question is a funny one because I always mention different artist I listened to as a kid, but as far as them being a direct influence, I don't really think too many of them stuck. I listened to a lot of early rap, electro, pop and metal as a kid, and it all played a part in influencing me to generally be attracted to certain patterns, methods and sounds. But none of them were hugely a direct influence. Usually the bands I got obsessed with as a child were the ones I wanted to be and the ones I mimicked in the bathroom mirror. It was mostly Prince and Tears for Fears as a kid. What about the acclaimed Circle, realized with Dose One? It was such a blazing album, full of variations and grand interludes. Hip-hop was abstract. This album to me, looking back on it, was one of innocence and captured exactly where Adam (Doseone) and I were mentally at the time. In that way, I am very proud of it but it is also a very amateur record. We had no equipment, no idea how to mix a song, no clue as to what we were doing. It was pure and uninfluenced. I remember telling Adam the only direction and idea I had for the album was to do "one song for every genre we could think of". That is a strange way to approach an album but somehow we detoured from that agenda and landed with what you hear. We trapped ourselves in an apartment and did not come out until the record was done. It was as if our lives depended upon it to get that album done before Adam moved to San Francisco. We did not ever think of how people would react to it at all. We were just kids, we had no idea about the "music world" or the media that surrounds it. In fact, I don't think we really expected anyone to hear it. We just wanted it for each other. Something to remember each other by before

he moved away. He moved the day we finished the album. I remember him telling me he cried listening to it for the first time on the plane to San Francisco. I think I did the same at my home. Listen to the lyrics, it talks about us and him moving to San Francisco. The concept for the album was our lives and the environment we were in. Sacchrilege, snakes away from your past releases. It almost sounds like a modern version of Giorgio Moroder. It's the first time your music is that "smiley". If I say that, is this familiar to you? I would not consider sacchrilege a clue to the direction I am headed with my music. It was something I simply wanted to do and try. I could have very easily released it under a moniker, but I felt that would be silly. Eventually, people find out who you are. I like artists who change directions every now and then with their albums. It keeps the listener guessing what will come next. Consider this not unlike when the Rolling Stones played around with disco. I had a lot of fun making it and playing this live. Is your next album going to be as punchy as this EP? We heard about rafts of prestigious guests… Well, I'll keep you guessing on that one. Composing a mostly instrumental album (Blue Eyed In The Red Room) and an EP where computers and beats are the main component can be quite different processes. Is there something you prefer about one compared to the other? I think a balance between the two is best. I have to have tangible objects and instruments to fulfil the musician in me. Even with performing Sacchrilege live, I triggered sampled drums and samples with drum sticks and used a few different musicians to play the parts live. I could have easily taken the route that most dance producers take and use a laptop or cd-j players, etc. I love instruments and prefer instruments, but I love the effect of big driving drums from drum machines. So for the next album, I will play around with both and try and incorporate as much playing of instruments as possible with as much drum punch as possible. You also remixed artists such as Mogwai or M83. How is the composition work different from the remix work? Do you still consider it song writing? I try to recreate the songs as much as possible, so I do consider it song writing from my end. It is like song

writing with a guide. Some artists are much easier than others. It can be more difficult remixing instrumental work than work with vocals. Vocals are much easier to work with, because they provide a blanket for your piece and you can construct underneath of them. Instrumental artists that I have remixed you have to pick a choose a few sounds to make the track familiar enough for the listener to realize it is a reinterpretation of the original and run with those sounds.

work on feature films. I believe music is the second most important element in film and I blown away with the effect music has on some films I have seen. The relationship between sight and sound can overwhelm the human body with emotion, fear, love, comfort, etc. I want to be part of effecting people in that way, but I have to wait for the right collaboration with a filmmaker. I won't just grab on to anything. It has to be right.

Which instruments and equipment are you working with (keyboards, instruments, software and plug-ins)? A fetish instrument amongst them? A recent discovery? My general set up is using logic pro as a home base for writing. I have several synths that I have hooked up via midi to my logic set up. I have some basics, such as Nord Lead 3, Mono Machine, Micro Korg, old Casio synths, old Yamaha synths, etc. My secret weapons are usually my pedals and the way I effect my basic synths. I don't depend a lot on expensive, vintage synths to write the songs for me. Give me a Casio sk-1 and some pedals and I will write an album for you.

How did the concert at the Fondation Vasarely go? People said it was an enchanting performance. It was a beautiful night. Everything seemed to go right. It was wonderful. Is the name Boom Bip a wink to the jazz way of expressing the snare and kick?! It is. As Ella Fitzgerald used to say…

Then there is Neon Neon with Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals), who you already worked with on the track Do’s and Don’ts. This is a surprising collaboration at first sight, but fully rational from an artistic point of view. How did you meet and connect? Gruff and I met when I was asked to open up for Super Furry Animals on their U.S. tour. My crew for my live show was just me and my video guy, so we were able to be on the tour bus with them. It put is all in close quarters and we got to know each other very well in a short period of time. The relationship stuck and developed over the years. Neon Neon is just being finished and yes, it is a full album and more. It is a year and a half in the making and we are super excited to get it out. I think it will shock people what we have come up with. We had so many great guests contribute: Spank Rock, Yo Majesty, The Magic Numbers, Fat Lip, Kudu, Cate Le Bon, etc. The list goes on. Boom Bip’s music is definitely cinematographic. Your ethereal song with Nina Nastasia is a perfect example. Have you already received proposals for soundtracks or think about illustrating a movie? How have you been influenced by movies? I am just breaking into the film score realm. I hope to get more involved with that as the years move on. I have a few short films under my belt, but I want to

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Very very simple casio organ type loop with Red adding scratches and cuts as he goes. Climaxing with a fucked up harmonica cut.. Splendid ! www.dealmakerrecords.com

Nicolette – “Wholesome” ( early )

Guts – “Le Bienheureux” ( wax on )

Bryan Hollon aka Boom Bip interviewed By Florent De Maria

What sort of musical education did you have? Was it geared towards Eclectic stuff? I have never had any sort of musical education. Music has been my obsession since I was young and I just can't get enough in my life. When I say this, I mean other people's music and not my own. The craving I have for music has been growing more and more each year. The more I hear the more I want. Especially now with mp3 culture, it is so easy to track down extremely rare pieces that you would not have the chance to hear before unless you went to a specific record shop or library that would carry it. So yes, my musical education is one that continues to grow each day.

/ Top to Bottom, Left to Right

Unknown -“Eleanor Rigby”( white label nmt001 )

The Voodoo Trombone Quartet – “Medium Wave” limited edition 7" vinyl ( freshly squeezed )

IN Y OU R E A R

12” Single Reviews

Though the illustrious John Peel called him the “modern day Captain Beefheart”, Bryan Hollon is actually better known as Boom Bip and this unbridled creative brain is back after the Sacchrilege EP, which came out earlier this year as a parenthesis in a hypnotic and celestial discography. Because yes, Boom Bip knows how to bring us into contemporary chimerical sceneries and makes our dreams deeper and stronger…

We Are The Music Makers...

Boom Bip

IN Y OU R E A R

Florent de Maria & Jon Kennedy are:

Pictures by Charlene Bagcal www.lexrecords.com/boom-bip www.myspace.com/boombip www.myspace.com/neonx2

Ro n En g lis h

Show & Tell

Small

Medium

& Large

The Latest Offerings of the Elms Lesters …

j os e pa rl a

Adam Neate, Anthony Lister, Dalek, Delta, Futura, Jose Parla, Mark Dean Veca, Phil Frost, Ron English, Space Invader, Stash and WK Interact. For this exhibition, the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms invited these twelve artists to submit four pieces of work each; one small, one medium and one large, plus a small object for display in a cabinet or on a plinth placed in one of the corridors of this youthfully aging venue. According to them … “Small, Medium and Large will gave visitors an opportunity to see new works by some of the world’s leading figures in the radical movement of street art spreading all over the globe as a reaction to the old school contemporary art scene.”

www.elmslesters.co.uk

Phil Frost

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S pac e In va d e r

If you haven’t heard of the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms, well then somehow it is still one of London’s best hidden treasures. The place itself is a sort of dirty museum; the original plumbing covered in paint splashes, frantic coloured freckles, which speak for the ghosts and leave a bolstering history decaying vehemently in the air. Purpose built in 1904, she is one of the last standing fully equipped scenic painting studios in London, and Elms Lesters continues to evolve this tradition while acting as a centre for applied and fine arts.

The gallery has become internationally known for its exhibitions featuring the work of counter-culture and urban artists and has staged contemporary art exhibitions by painters and sculptors from Britain, Europe, USA and Latin America, as well as landmark multi media exhibitions including the legendary “Elms Lesters Celebrates Charles Bukowski” Exhibition in 1996. For the last 16 years they have been working with some of the finest urban/street artists from London, New York, Paris, Amsterdam and Australia, including icons such as STASH, FUTURA and DELTA. Now, as well as representing 13 international urban artists, they are also home to the work of Adam Neate.

S HOW & T E L L

The idea behind the show isn’t bad, the selection of artists is excellent and indeed the chance to see this work within the walls

of the Elms Lesters is a tasty one. If you buy Modart, there is a good chance you’re familiar with most of the artists in this show, but if you stand by how we see it, the Elms Lesters is a work of art all on its own. Even tastier …

Show & Tell

“Little Land” Neasden Control Centre A Cowboy’s Work is never done As Autumn fell late, Neasden Control Centre put on their most exciting show to date at the Helium Cowboy Artspace in Hamburg. Mr. Smith from the NCC underwater research unit sent a telegram; ‘The general theme of Little Land seen from the perspective of the tree house surrounding the 30 km exclusion zone around the border, wild life is thriving and eagle owls have been spotted for the first time in years, the meteorite message landed but got sent back via Sotherby’s, Lord Gnome bid and won it, Us and Them, Love The Visible, Polartronics was never debated, wild boar too were seen and several visitors reported repeated squealing escaping from the hatch.’ Boar squeals? Ok. But Ah Erm, which borders? Is this a declared land? Does violence start with a flag? NCC isn’t planting flags beneath the North Pole. It isn’t about conquest, but blooming culture … DIY Culture even in t hought … personal creative constructs or quirks .... the border of your own space or the limits of time with space.

Neasden Control Centre transmits art in lumps and shifting traces, the vague and brave clouds romantics crave; failing, failing better, pushing limits and exploring aesthetic promises that have yet to be made. Control here means merely and massively hands on, messy, made up in the moment and full of reflection. You can taste the presence of a struggle to stay naive smacking with unpretentious sophistication. It would be impossible to define the scope of NCC’s recent work in so few words, any such attempt would be bound to miss the recycled, rejuvenated and unspoken utterances of NCC, the dots that resemble a point in a planet we can only wish for. – hl www.neasdencontrolcentre.com www.heliumcowboy.com

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Lost? Don’t be scared, the land is little and there are all sorts of different ways to shuffle yourself across it. Take a word or a thought, have a look and find your own direction, make it up, build it from cardboard or flee market treasures; recycle, return, keep your feet on the ground so you can fly.

SHOW & TELL

By the way … Lord Gnome was a meteorite …

Show & Tell

Bored Sports. The Illustrative Arts of William J Barras and Mr. Jago

Believe the Hype! Laugh at the Labels! And whatever you do, don’t call it a comeback …

If you compare their work, the strokes seem almost at odds with each other, Will working with fat brushes and incredibly delicate fluid lines, while Duncan etches away furiously; a stack of toothpicks sort of technique that draws your eyes to form, only to make you ask if the work is actually formless. Will masterfully answers this question so clearly in his efforts that it isn’t worth asking. At the same time, these styles compliment each other to the point that visitors to this show were often unsure as to where one’s work finished and the others began.

SHOW & TELL

Neither of them consider themselves to be riders of any kind, nor do they relate to the lifestyle that industry has definitively embedded in the scenes around bored sports. Both speak with enthusiasm about collaborations with brands likes Addict, BoxFresh and Rossignal, but are a bit confused as to why they’ve been allocated slots as wizards in the mountain arts. Then again, even if they aren’t doing seasons in Saas Fee, Innsbruck or anywhere else, their influences and themes speak directly to the ethos of action sports … there is commitment

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This isn’t exactly a shock, Will and Duncan are not only good friends, they studied together, worked the flyer and later music sleeve scenes together and were together hoisted out of Bristol as faces of so called board sports art.

Likewise, we can travel back with Mr. Jago and look at how he soaked in the cultures brewing around him and took his inspiration in a completely different direction from so many other artists of his generation. His style often seems to be almost representative of much of what’s coming out of hip hop, toy and graffiti art, and though he’s been working the rounds for more than a decade, there isn’t another artist out there who reminds you of Mr. Jago. With the speed of information exchange today, how fucking rare is that? It isn’t copied and nobody has been able to copy it. This is because ‘it’ in this case, is Mr. Jago. Period.

Along with their mate Steff Pleatz, the pair can rightly be considered pioneers of the Doodle School, scrawling their collective experiences into illustrated moments and fragmented narratives before Graffiti, Doodling and Character Design had broken into the frames of our broader visual language.

and hustle, a concern for the day to day and not the cause du jour … Will appreciates cricket more than snowboarding, but his investigations of movement aren’t easily compared to any 5 day test match. In his work there is always a journey and nothing is static. Characters appear along the way, in this show suddenly the legend of the Black Pyramid came to life and there were those who could only scale up the ledges. Recurring themes in his work are bikes, women, sports and transformations (a dog turns into a fax machine, for example, perhaps inquiring to the nature of our relationship with aggressive electronic pets). There is no need to be academic however. It’s simple really. Will is painting however he feels, right now, right then and who knows for tomorrow.

Will Barras and Mr. Jago October 20th – December 1st / No New Enemies, Brussels scrawlcollective.com | nonewenemies.net | spacejunk.tv Following the opening, The London Police, Bonom, Farm Prod, Never Effect and the Belgian No New Enemies crew jumped on a private bus to perform at the opening of LUCY in Antwerp www.lovelucy.be The next show at Lucy is with No New Enemies crew members Nomad and Dave the Chimp …

SHOW & TELL

Will Barras and Mr. Jago (plain Mr. to his mates) have been around for years. They draw as if it is not a choice, but more like breathing, a necessity for survival. Pencil and brushes offer them inventive modes of transportation and they travel and travel and ...

Inside

I asked Adeline if she’d offer a word or two on what she’s been up to. I told her if she gave me the ingredients I’d whip it into a piece. Being Adeline, she was one step ahead and sent in the recipe. I’m American, I’m blunt, but I won’t interfere with French home cooking, so here’s what she wrote : Recipe to start YOUR gallery focused on urban art in Paris Ingredients :

• a young and dynamic curator who chose not to follow the path she was supposed to be made for • a bunch of talented artists who know that they’re worth it

– tips from Dr. Adelie Jeudy

• a place big enough to host everyone’s imagination

I first met Adeline when she submitted an article to Modart about her show, Street Girls in Paris last year. Swoon, Microbo, Nuria, Ephameron, Fafi, Koralie, and several others, the selection of artists was great, but more impressive was the way this young curator preparing to finish her doctoral thesis in Egypt, handled herself. The show had excellent media coverage including a review in Le Monde just before « Street Art » was so sexy that even Wired published a review on Banksy. Before the media arrived, the public did and the show became an excellent networking spot for various nodes in the Parisian underground.

• a full bucket of work and motivation

• a pinch of luck*

Since then she’s finished that dissertation and taken charge of a promising gallery two pushes away from the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Representing local artists like L’Atlas, Yaze, Fafi and Koralie, the Galerie Beauboug is anything but another niche urban arts spot, though they also represent Swoon and Brendan Monroe. Amongst their artists we also find talent like Quentin Garel, jean-Phillipe Paty and Alexone and by the time this magazine hits the stands the latest show featuring Swoon, the Polaroid Kidd, and Chris Stain will have opened.

• 1 cup of artists not affiliated to street art

Qu en t i n Garel O pen i n g Ko ral i e

• 2 cups of self-confidence for the dressing * can be replaced by a lucky star

Q ue n ti n Ga re l

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In a small bowl, stir together the young curator and the talented artists. Add a third of the bucket of work and motivation and mix well.

• Bake it a first time uncovered in a preheated oven for a year and half. • After 18 months, remove the mix from the oven and add the pinch of luck and the place big enough.

In a large bowl, toss together the rest of the bucket of work and motivation, the cup of artists not affiliated to street art, and the content of the foil covered pan.

• Pour the cups of self-confidence over the mix. Let all simmer for 2 months and serve. Warning: This recipe is in need of constant improvement www.galerieljbeaubourg.net

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Swoo n

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Opening L’Atl a

B ren dan Mo n ro e

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• Mix well and chill at least 3 months before removing from pan. Cover with foil.

Spraying Powder One of the most popular articles to appear in Modart was in Issue 8, titled Cave Paintings, the piece shared the project of Swedish photographer James Holm, who set up a studio skateboard shoot in a very special setting. Since then, he’s continued this experiment.

“I wanted to keep going forward with some of what came out of that experience. Snow seemed like the most interesting next move. I asked Graffiti artist Joel Alter to do snow paintings that reflected simple but different color patterns. With help from the Swedish Oakley team who willingly stepped up to go for rides in the dead black of a cold night. As a photographer, color is what is being explored.”

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See more shots from this session on modarteurope.com

Issue #15 Coming Soon What sort of life does an image have? Work from Ruedione, Landry, Vincent Skoglund and other sic photographers. What the Fuck is Heimat? Back to the Black Forest with Stefan Strumble By the time you read this … Modart will have broken in to its first Art Fair Can we bring new sound to the broader art scene? Apparently, but we’ll see …

Modart at Scope Art Fair / Art Basel. Miami Dec. 6-9 Featuring: Logan Hicks, Twothings, Will Barras, Mr. Jago and Vincent Skoglund

www.modarteurope.com

ONE NATION. UNDER CANVAS.

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