We found – 17 articles for Point+of+Space
Jan Kaláb: « Point of Space » – Berlin Book Release & Signing
Urban Spree and Jan Kaláb invite you at Urban Spree Galerie next Saturday 24.11 at 18:00 for the Berlin release of the much-awaited first published monograph of the influential Czech post-graffiti artist.
Published in November 2018 by Prague-based Trafo Gallery on the occasion of the artist's new solo exhibition in Prague (02.11-20.12-2018), the 320-page book – edited by the artist himself with the support of critic Petr Volf and designer Jan Novák – encompasses the many different aspects of Jan Kaláb's artistic career, from the early graffiti bombings as CAKES and POINT to his versatile works in public & indoor spaces, murals, sculptures, and paintings.
Signed copies will be available in our Berlin shop and online after the event. Please make your order on our webstore now to reserve a signed copy. All orders placed before 25.11.2018 will receive a signed copy.
In addition to the book signing event, Urban Spree Prints and Jan Kaláb release « Shine Around Blue 1118« , a very limited silkscreen print on Saturday 24.11.2018 at 18:00.
Edited by Urban Spree Prints and printed by Dolly Demoratti (Mother Drucker/Urban Spree Studio), the print is a 6-colour, 70 cm x 70 cm hand-pulled screen print, with vibrant colors and a hologram glitter layer.
The print is edited in a very limited run of 18 prints. 9 prints are reserved for the Berlin event while the remaining 9 prints are available to the subscribers of the Urban Spree newsletter (you can join our newsletter by signing in on the bottom of our homepage and by clicking on any of the sub-categories).
Jan Kaláb: Point of Space
Book Release and Signing
Saturday 24.11.2018 from 18:00
Urban Spree celebrates 10 years of the Astronaut Cosmonaut Wall
To mark the 10-year anniversary of the iconic « Astronaut Cosmonaut » mural painting in Berlin Kreuzberg, Urban Spree Galerie invites the French street artist Victor Ash for a special pop up exhibition.
The exhibition will be centered around the cult figure of the Astronaut with numerous original/stenciled works on paper and a mural at Urban Spree. A series of screen prints is expected to be released as well.
Alongside Blu's now gone white characters on the Cuvrybrache, Victor Ash's « Astronaut Cosmonaut » has achieved a cult mural status for Berlin.
Standing in Berlin-Kreuzberg near Kottbusser Tor and painted during the legendary Backjumps Festival #3 in 2007, the painting of a floating astronaut on 22 x 14 meters strikes a particular chord in Berlin.
For the parisian artist born in 1968 and fascinated by the Cold War, space exploration, graffiti, subcultures & electronic music, Berlin was to become from the mid to late 80s and since then a focal point of his attention, with regular trips to the city alongside artistic projects and residencies.
Victor Ash photographed by Soren Solkaer in 2013
In 2007, the Backjumps Festival – brilliantly curated by Adrian Nabi, gives Victor Ash the occasion to paint a big wall. Victor wants to concentrate and express his past experiences and vision of Berlin, the space race between the USSR and the USA but also the different Berlin subcultures and the desire to escape reality. « I got inspired by the song from David Bowie « Space Oddity » from 1969 in which he tells the story of a astronaut who gets lost in space and later on with the song « Ashes to Ashes » in 1981 where Bowie tells us that the spaceman was in fact a junkie on a trip ».
For the artist, the « Astronaut/Cosmonaut » represents the will to escape to other universes, « like as a little child, I escaped to a fantasy world with my space drawings and as a teenager, I escaped to subcultures to find my identity in the urban environment where I grew up ».
Opening Reception: 17.11.2017 from 18:30
Exhibition: 17.11.2017 to 10.12.2017
Tuesday-Saturday 12:00-18:30 or by appointment
Gallery and Press enquiries: galerie@urbanspree.com
www.victorash.net
instagram: victor__ash // #victorash
For their first show of 2020, Urban Spree Galerie presents « WALLS », a collective exhibition featuring 30 international artists and dedicated to the notion of the « wall ».
Curated by Fabrice Douar and Cyrille Gouyette (Le Louvre Museum, Paris) and co-curated by Pascal Feucher (Urban Spree Galerie, Berlin), « WALLS » invites prominent artists from both the comics scene and the street art scene to create graphic works of fiction related to walls, interpreted either as simple architectural elements, ominous symbols of segregation, canvases and vessels to convey meaning, textures, or imaginary playgrounds and labyrinths.
Fragment of an antique wall, Pompeii. Courtesy Galerie David Ghezelbash
While some antique artefacts appear in the show to testify of their immortal, silent presence, in the 21st Century, the Minotaur doesn't wait at the center of his realm but has clearly moved outside, demultiplied its presence, and is building more walls.
The exhibition's direction is therefore resolutely multifaceted, contemporary and graphic-oriented, spanning several topographies (Europe, South Korea, Middle East, Hong Kong, Cuba…), and art forms (painting, photography, installations, videos).
Levalet: « Voie de contournement », China ink on paper, 70x100cm, 2019
30 Artists: Alias, Andreas, Jim Avignon, Bault, Enki Bilal, Broken Fingaz Crew, Isaac Cordal (installation), Hendrik Czakainski, Christian Durieux, Philippe Écharoux (mapping installation), EVOL, Jean Faucheur, Flix, Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, Miles Hyman, Kim Jung Gi, Levalet, Stéphane Levallois, Loustal, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Mode2, Alexandra Novosseloff, Ernest Pignon-Ernest, Michal Škapa, Pen So, Thom Thom, Sam Tse, Santiago Valenzuela, Lars Wunderlich, Zevs.
Enki Bilal. Excerpt from the Portfolio « Die Mauer Berlin », Futuropolis 1982
In cooperation with Galerie David Ghezelbash, Galerie Huberty & Breyne, and Galerie Lelong & Co.
Vernissage: Friday, January 17th, 2019 from 18:30
Exhibition: 17.01.2019 – 29.02.2019
Wed – Sat – 12:00-18:30 or by appointment
info and catalogue: galerie@urbanspree.com
To download the Press Kit: https://www.urbanspree.com/press/
New York Perspectives
Urban Spree Galerie presents New York Perspectives, a duo show featuring Chris « Daze » Ellis and Joe Conzo, curated by Mode2. The vernissage will be on Friday, November 22nd, at 18:30, in presence of the two artists.
Through the work of two New York City-born artists, a painter and a photographer, this exhibition is an attempt to show aspects of New York City life, through the eyes and the work of two very different individuals; though both come from a part of its counterculture.
The drawings and paintings of the artist Chris "Daze" Ellis, and those many moments and people captured by the photography of Joe Conzo show us how the youth that were more in osmosis with the steel, the concrete, the glass, the streets and the city's subway system, could develop new forms of visual dialogue that could form a bridge between their own social and cultural background, and a movement that would infiltrate the artworld and become a global phenonmenon.
Coming from different neighbourhoods and cultural backgrounds, both have lived long enough to have witnessed first hand the huge transformations that the city has gone through over these last decades, while their "work", which was actually their hobby, passion and life pretty much, has documented seminal eras during that time.
These tumultuous years of cultural flux; of blossoming, blooming, destruction and rebirth, are often overlooked by today's focus on the "now" of street art, and the way through which this eclipses the very alchemy that gave birth to the way in which artists express themselves in the street today, or the way in which they document city life.
It is doubtful that much of what is happening today in visual art, music, dance and written or spoken word ever would have happened, if generations of youth in New York City had not lived what they did many decades ago; and we can count ourselves lucky that a few rare individuals happened to be there and have the instinct to document it.
Here then, are views of New York from two different perspectives, they themselves being a complex accumulation of all of life's experiences, and how they shape each individual's understanding of the world around them; and the ways by which they choose to express and share this with us.
Urban Spree Prints will release two 18″x 24″ silk screen prints by Daze on the opening night and online.
The gallery and the curator heartily thank Henry Chalfant for letting us show his documentary movie "From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale."
Poster Artwork by Tyler Askew.
"New York Perspectives »
Christopher « Daze » Ellis / Joe Conzo
Curated by Mode2
Opening: Friday 22.11.2019 at 18:30
Exhibition: Tu-Sa – 12:00 – 18:30
Info & Catalogue: contact@urbanspree.com
Chris « Daze » Ellis
Growing up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Chris Daze Ellis (b. 1962) was aware from early on of the names and the odd characters that would be dancing along the trains that wove their way through the city. When he started out at the High School of Art & Design in 1976, he found that there was a whole community of very diverse yet like-minded individuals there, also involved with this scene; some of whom would go on to make a name for themselves in the art world.
Being a fan of drawing and comic books already, Daze camouflaged his nighttime activities under his parents' gaze, exploring and expanding his visual vocabulary, combining the traditional with the dynamism of a new and challenging environment, with stimulus of its own.
Having mastered the medium and the environment, Daze would go on to shape his own personal vision of the world, looking as much inwards as outwards, in the relationship between the trains and walls, and what he could further explore in the studio. The strength of his successful life as an artist in his own right would develop from then on.
From his participation in his first group show, Beyond Words, at the Mudd Club in 1981, before having his own solo show at Fashion Moda (the historical South Bronx art space that bridged the established art world with the raw talent and energy coming out of New York City), Daze embraced the wide horizon that opened up before him.
From then on, Daze began to show in many different cities around the world, whether it be galleries and museum, in solo shows as well as group formats. He has participated in many public or educational art projects around the world, working with students and communities from South Korea to Brazil via Haiti, while often visiting Europe as well, and contributing to New York mural initiatives like the Leap Arts Program or Thrive Collective.
From his appearances in the film Style Wars, to being an art consultant on the Netflix series The Get Down in 2017, to participating in public painting projects from the Star Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong in 1993, painting an entire Hannover train station with fellow artists Lee Quinones and John Crash Matos, or being commissioned for murals by private clients like the law firm, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in Washington D.C. 2018; Daze has constantly had his hands on a whole range of different projects.
Daze's paintings have found themselves in many private collections including Eric Clapton, Natalie Imbruglia, and Madonna. His work can also be found in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum, NY, Museum of Modern art, NY, The Museum of the city of New York, The Ludwig Museum, Aachen, Yale University art Gallery, New Haven, Addison Museum of American Art at the Phillips Academy, Andover.
Chris Daze Ellis continues to live and work in New York City.
Joe Conzo was born in the Bronx during an era of great upheaval, when the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway was nearing its end, having destroyed the communities that lay in its path, and condemning those parts of the borough around it to social and economic decline. The apocalyptic landscapes of urban devastation, and the high criminality associated to it are emblematic of that era.
President Truman's Urban Renewal announced in 1949, ruthlessly applied by Robert Moses, targetted the more modest and ethnically diverse neighbourhoods of New York City whose resistance to forced removal would fall on deaf ears, as private developers grabbed the prime lots. The Bronx represented both the laboratory and the collateral damage for these extreme experiments of urban renewal.
And yet, out of what looked like an urban war zone, the city's youth began to pick up the pieces, and, out of the desolation around them, began to build their own road out of it. Realising that the state was not going to do anything positive for them, their survival instincts eventually kicked in; and out of the gang culture, the drugs, and the sheer nihilism that had reigned for a while over much of the borough, new and greener shoots were beginning to break through.
Joe Conzo's cultural capital, and that of his peers, was probably key to his survival and his blossoming during those harsh years; grandson of Dr. Evelina López Antonetty, a political activist who played a huge role in developing educational programmes for Puerto Rican children, and son of Joe Conzo Snr., who was in the thick of the huge Latin music scene of that bridged those decades; hanging with all the main players of that era, and having been the biographer of Tito Puente.
While studying at the Agnes Russell School on the campus of Columbia University, he discovered photography, the medium that would enable him to document what went on around him; from the world of latin culture through his father's connections, to the collision of art forms that would later be called Hip Hop; a word that eclipses the sum of its parts.
Having lived many ups and downs in the eighties, to a rebirth of sorts, Joe Conzo went on to become a qualified medical nurse, then worked for the New York City Fire Department, being among the first responders on 9/11. At some point along the way, he was reunited with the camera, and began shooting again…
Whether as the photographer of rap crew The Cold Crush Brothers, a hugely influential group of MCs from the early days, or just a boy from the Bronx who had a camera and curious eyes, Joe Conzo's photos provided reference material to Henry Chalfant 's documentary "From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale.", and were documented in a book called "Born In The Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop".
His negatives have been digitalised and archived at Cornell University, providing a unique and indispensable resource for those wishing to research the those eras.
On Art Run
Join On for the second European edition of Art Run at Urban Spree! For one exclusive evening, use the power of On running shoes to discover the best outdoor art pieces of Berlin and get prepared for a memorable after-party with live art, live music, streetfood and drinks.
Check in and bag drop @ % Arabica Berlin Kreuzberg- 5:30 to 6:30 PM
– Enjoy your % Arabica welcome juice
– Get your special edition race bib
– Lace up a pair of On's demo shoes
– Prepare for an incredible community experience
The Run: 6KM – 6:30PM
– Discover the specific connection of art and running with our ambassador Laurent Petit, the founder of Urban Art Run
– Discover the specific connection of art and running
– Run by the hidden gems of Berlin's worldwide's art pieces
– Pause to capture that selfie with new friends
After-party – 7 to 9:30PM @ Join Urban Spree Gallery
– Food and drinks on us during the whole evening!
– Surprise art-focused performance
– Explore the art exhibition from Marina Zumi at Urban Spree Gallery
– Get your exclusive and personal screen print give away
– Celebrate with live music and shake your legs to the beat
– Sign-up early; space is limited
– Not intended to be a race or an official 6KM run. Instead, plan on a casual stroll with friends!
– 1 EUR per kilometre will be donated to Active Giving
Please sign-up here: https://www.on-running.com/events/on-art-run-berlin
#ONARTRUNBERLIN
Meeting Point: % Arabica Berlin Kreuzberg, Reichenberger Strasse 36, 10999 Berlin, Germany
After Run Party: Urban Spree Gallery, Revaler Str. 99, 10245 Berlin, Germany
Automatic – Urban Spree, Berlin
Like all the best bands, Automatic found each other in an organic way. Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon (bass, vocals) met in the DIY band scene of Los Angeles and started jamming together in 2017. Over the last year, they have become an important part of the L.A. Club circuit, sharing the stage with bands like Surfbort, Wand and Flatworms. On 27 September 2019 their debut album « Signal » will be released on Stones Throw / PIAS.
Lola was born into a punk household (her father is Kevin Haskins, the drummer of Bauhaus) and joined her first band, the art-rock outfit Blackblack, when she was just 13 years old. Halle and Izzy met in local bands in the northeast of L.A.; Izzy was a guitarist and singer, and Halle liked to plug her fretless bass into a guitar amp. Unimpressed by the masculine energy of the local scene and the rock music on the radio – « pumped out like plastic bottles into the ocean » – Izzy changed guitars into synths and joined Halle and Lola in 2017. They called themselves « Automatic » after a song by the Go-Go's – the only (!) purely female band that ever wrote and recorded an entire album that reached number 1 in the charts in the USA.
Automatics guitarless setup seemed to leave a void in the sound at first, but their interplay gave them strength and they took their place in the scene. Empowerment in the best sense. They refined their sound and, informed by Neu! and Suicide, combined their preference for dub reggae, motoric rhythms and gnarled synthesizers with their cinematic pop understanding. In collaboration with sound engineer and producer Joo Joooo Ashworth (FROTH), they started working on their GarageBand demos and their debut album.
Their first single « Calling It » captures the feeling of drifting in an endless space, tearing everything apart and starting anew. Elsewhere on « Signal », songs speak directly from the band members' experiences: « Humanoid » and « Too Much Money » are reflections on boredom, misfortune and the disappointing falsehood of social media personae, while the title track « Signal » is about « being trapped in the drudgery of a shitty life/job and realizing that no one but yourself will save you from it. » « Signal » is the title track of the band's album. A shocking near-death accident in her apartment inspired Izzy to write « Electrocution » – an experience alluded to in the cover packshot, which shows a switch on a red background.
Izzy studied film at college and Halle used to work at the legendary video store « Kims Video » in New York, so it's no wonder that the band also mentions film as an important influence on their music. David Lynch and Dario Argentos in particular have left their mark on the ambiguous lyrics and eerie atmospheres.
The red thread that runs through « Signals » is the feeling of fear and alienation, possibly one of the most formative experiences of the early 21st century: the feeling of being on the edge of the world. Or as Automatic put it: « The world is so fucked. I don't know how a musician could say: 'That's all great.' »
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