Art in the street, on the walls, in your mind, on your body, in your soul, on your computer, in your life, as your life, FOR your life. SKREET
Take Oldenberg, for example.
Here is a fragment of a beautiful text he wrote in 1961:
I am for an art that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a staring point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.
I am for the art that a kid licks, after peeling away the wrapper.
I am for an art that joggles like everyones knees, when the bus traverses an excavation.
I am for art that is smoked, like a cigarette, smells, like a pair of shoes.
I am for art that flaps like a flag or helps blow noses, like a handkerchief.
I am for art that is put on and taken off, like pants, which develops holes, like socks, which is eaten, like a piece of pie, or abandoned with great contempt, like a piece of shit.
I am for art covered with bandages, I am for art that limps and rolls and runs and jumps.
I am for the art of underwear and the art of taxicabs.
I am for the art of ice-cream cones dropped on concrete.
I am for the majestic art of dog-turds, rising like cathedrals.
CHECK OUT SOME T-SHIRT DESIGNS FROM MY STREET STENCILS BY CLICKING THIS LINK!!!
Lucha Libre (which translates literally as Free Wrestling or Free Fighting) is the professional wrestling performed in Mexico and other Latin American countries.
Starting in the early 1900s it was mainly a regional phenomenon until Salvador Lutteroth brought wrestlers from the United States to Mexico in the 1930s, giving the sport a national foothold for the first time. (from wikipedia.org)
The Cozmic Luchador series borrows liberally from the Lucha Libre culture. I like to think of the "Cozmic Luchadors" as heroic spirits of the “multiverse†or “meta-universe†defending us from the negative energy of the "evil clowns" of this world. (You know who you are...) They speak in an unknown language that I translate into iconic symbols expressed in thought or speech bubbles. I like to use many different materials to portray these spirit gods, including gouache, acrylic, gaffer’s tape, ink, embroidery floss, felt, tin, papier mache and whatever other materials I find that intrigue me.
The use of the word “cozmic†is to indicate that these spirit gods are completely constructed from my imagination. They exist in this universe as masked humans portraying warrior characters who fight each other but they also exist in the multiverse as spirit gods who protect and defend us from the aforementioned “evil clownsâ€.
The multiverse or meta-universe is a hypothetical set of multiple possible universes, including our own, that together comprise all of physical reality. Some physicists believe that the universe is spatially unbounded and that there are an infinite number of regions of space the same size as our observable universe. This infinite set, which must contain an infinite number of identical copies of you, is about 10 to the 10 to the 29th power meters away and must also contain equally infinite not-so-identical copies of you.
I believe that in one of these “multiverses†the Cozmic Luchadors are fighting and defending us from the evil clowns of the world (or worlds) we live in, making that world or those worlds a better place.
Peace, love, and art, yo! SKREET
More New Work from SKREET...
Two young street artists doing some Parkour in Philadelphia!
THE HUMAN PIXEL PROJECT
These EIGHT small paintings were done on 2" x 2" pieces of wood with oil-based paint. They are part of a collaborative art project called The Human Pixel Project
If you would like to participate, click
NEW BODY OF WORK!
The Polaroid Instant Camera always brings to mind the 70's for me. I have fond memories of photo albums stuffed full of those almost square prints, the slightly out of focus blur of people whose faces were too orange standing on grass that was too yellow and whose poses seem awkward and mawkish somehow.
The blurriness and strangely faded colors always made me feel like the photos were taken by a drunken uncle whose strawberry-scented alcohol breath was so overpowering, the quality of the photos were affected.
Opening a shoebox full of Polaroid photos has that same intoxicating effect on me. When I see those blurry faces of forgotten friends and neighbors and images of myself as a child, my head pounds, the room swirls and I HAVE to look at each one, bending and twisting it so that I can see everything there is to see under the glare of its super glossy plastic coating.
Polaroid photos can be sensual and smoky and look like they are somehow revealing a secret side of life, a dark side, perhaps, or even a dull, deadening side that we fight so hard to avoid. To then etch into that sorrow, to scratch another image into that deadening color underneath a shiny coating, is to take power over it somehow and transform it from a record of a moment of sadness into something stranger, curiouser and somehow more uplifting and revealing than just a standard Polaroid snapshot.
I like to think of these tiny square photos as mirrors behind the sorrow of our lives, reflecting back a possibility of something more, something deeper, maybe even something sacred. They are fetish objects, objects of erotic mystery and power. They are Polaroids, instant, one-of-a-kind images, chemicals translating light and darkness into a story.
Skreet like the sound my Chuck Taylors make on the pavement when I'm running away from the police and into the arms of the one I love. Skreet like the sounds in the street late at night: cars honking and people making love and glass breaking and Skreet like the street itself taking you everywhere and nowhere depending on which path you take. Skreet like in da skreet and in-di-screte and the skreet goes on, and the skreet goes on, and the skreet goes on...
Other examples of some of my postcard art!
PLUS a painting on an altered magazine page...
Nobuyoshi Araki
Kiki Smith
Larry Rivers
Nam June Paik