WAR 42

Check out Augor in the new issue of Juxtapoz Magazine, or get a preview here courtesy of The Known Gallery.

Chaos at the War 4 world premiere last night in NYC. The bitches went crazy when Kenr hit the red carpet.

Show in GENEVA

Opening Hours: Wednesday – saturday from 1 to 6 pm and by appointement.

The Geneva gallery will show Swiss born artist from Basel “Smash 137″ for the very first time. He is one of the most active writers worldwide today. Karambolage “Contemporary typography”, a show not to be missed for all those in appreciation of the art of “Writing”.

“When i used to study typography at art school i understood pretty fast that all the letters of our alphabet are constructed from the beginning to the end. A font designer has to follow plenty of rules and there is just very small space for his own interpretation. on the other side there is handwriting which also has to follow certain rules but at the same time allows a wider interpretation to show your own personal character. Now the art work i will exhibit at the show is exactly a collision of this two worlds.”

“i have started to work on canvas in 2004. I used to struggle quite often with this topic because i never have asked my self what i am doing here and why, i just did what from my point of view felt right and all of a sudden people started to ask me questions i had no answers ready. I mean i never have heard any good explanation why people do write theirs names on things. it just must be a human urge or at least it is to me. When i write, the world stops turning”

“Smash137 is the name i have given to my self. I have choose the name Smash in 1996 and since then stick to it because my plan was to hit the walls and track-sides of my city with a huge amount of fresh styles and so the name was just made for my mission.”

Smash Bio
Smash was born in Basel, Switzerland in 1979, where he still lives and works today. In 1990 he starts painting Graffiti on trains and walls, in 2000 he starts studying graphic design in Zurich, Switzerland.

The style of Smash 137 has strongly influenced the international Writers’ scene for years. The artist is obsessed with letters and it’s many ways of writing them. Driven by his obsession for Western calligraphy, he is today one of the most active writers worldwide.

Smash 137 has been participating in many Graffiti Jam’s and battles (graffiti competition on walls), and due to his very original graffiti style, he’s is since 2002 one of the members of the prestigious “Montana Writer Team”. For over 5 years he has being showing his work “In Situ” in galleries and public art spaces worldwide.

via: speerstra.net

Documentary by Alex jones.
I’m all about Obama all day long but I have to peep this shit…you should too and tell us what you think?

Pittsburgh – 2nd most-wanted graffiti artist held after lengthy probe

One night in May 2008, police said, they spotted Ian Debeer spraying his indelible moniker, “HERT,” on a bridge support in Etna.

His arrest prompted Pittsburgh detectives to search his Mount Washington home where, they said, they found 500 cans of costly, high-end spray-paint, 300 photographs of graffiti, and videos of Mr. Debeer leaving his mark.

Despite the raid, police said, Mr. Debeer continued tagging while detectives built their case against him, until his arrest yesterday on four felony and 69 misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief for graffiti that, police said, caused $212,100 in damage to city and private property.

Officers arrested Mr. Debeer, 21, after a morning court appearance for his arrest last year in Etna.

“He thought we forgot all about him,” said Detective Daniel Sullivan, who filed a 33-page criminal complaint against Mr. Debeer that lists 100 locations where “HERT” had been sprayed.

Police said his spree of painting colorful, bubbly “graffiti murals” started in April 2007 and offers glimpses into a lively underworld of graffiti vandalism that has made Pittsburgh what one detective called “the heart of graffiti nation.”

Mr. Debeer was so prolific that the Graffiti Task Force named him No. 2 on its list of “10 Most Wanted Graffiti Vandals.” No. 1 was Daniel Montano, a Highland Park graffitist who was sentenced last year to 21/2 to 5 years in state prison after pleading guilty to 79 counts of criminal vandalism.

Mr. Montano and Mr. Debeer belonged to “Not Strictly Freights,” a prominent “graffiti crew,” Detective Sullivan said. Police also found a letter from the convicted graffitist in Mr. Debeer’s house, the complaint says.

Mr. Debeer split his time between Mount Washington and his birthplace of Buffalo, N.Y., where, Detective Sullivan said, he told police in 2004 that he was responsible for “HERT” graffiti.

“That’s my tag,” Mr. Debeer told a Buffalo police officer, according to the complaint. “The name I picked.”

Mr. Debeer’s murals also occasionally bore the letters “BF,” for Buffalo’s Finest, the complaint says.

Police aren’t sure what he does for a living or how he was able to afford the $3,000 worth of spray paint they discovered in June 2008 in his house, where he also kept detailed records of his graffiti activity in sketchbooks and computer files, they said.

Police also found hundreds of photos of graffiti, 165 of which they matched to locations Downtown, in the Strip District, the North Side, the South Side, the West End, Bloomfield, Friendship, East Liberty, Uptown and Oakland. Task force detectives spent months canvassing neighborhoods to match the photos to their locations.

The complaint says Mr. Debeer caused $65,800 in damage to city property; $18,900 in damage to railroad property; and $127,400 in damage to private property.

His arrest underscores a police push to eradicate graffiti in a city where there are at least 25 graffiti crews and 650 individual vandals, Detective Sullivan said. But it might not have the desired effect.

“The graffiti community believes now that the city of Pittsburgh is cracking down on graffiti and even more of them are coming to the city,” he said. “They get street credibility.”

Via:www.post-gazette.com

This is the bonus DVD that comes with the book.

Product Description
Dedicated to Japan’s rackgaki (graffiti) scene, this book illustrates the work of major graffiti artists working in Japan today. It showcases the creativity that lies within this new and relatively unexplored form of contemporary Japanese art. Interviews with the artists, and the authors’ own experiences in documenting the different aspects of this subculture, reveal an art-form at the cutting edge and often at odds with police and civic authorities. An accompanying DVD brings to life the imagery of the book and includes footage of graffiti being created. Set to a soundtrack by some of Japan’s leading Trip-Hop artists, the viewer is fully immersed in the subculture that is Japanese graffiti.

About the Author
Ryo Sanada and Suridh Hassan of Studio Rarekwai specialize in the promotion of international culture and music through documentary production and film. Their documentary film on Japanese Hip-Hop culture-Scratching the Surface: Japan-has been broadcast across Europe. This was followed by successful screenings at the 12th Raindance Film Festival in London and the Vancouver International Hip-Hop Film Festival.

Ryo Sanada and Suridh Hassan of Studio Rarekwai specialize in the promotion of international culture and music through documentary production and film. Their documentary film on Japanese Hip-Hop culture-Scratching the Surface: Japan-has been broadcast across Europe. This was followed by successful screenings at the 12th Raindance Film Festival in London and the Vancouver International Hip-Hop Film Festival.

via: revok1.com

Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York. His mother, Matilde, was Puerto Rican and his father, Gerard Basquiat is of Haitian origin and a former Haitian Minister of the Interior. Because of his parents’ nationalities, Basquiat was fluent in French, Spanish, and English from an early age. He read in these languages, including Symbolist poetry, mythology, and history. At an early age, Basquiat displayed an aptitude for art and was encouraged by his mother to draw, paint and to participate in other art-related activities. In 1977, when he was 17, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz started spray-painting graffiti art on buildings in lower Manhattan, adding the infamous signature of “SAMO” (i.e., “same old shit”) see: SAMO© Graffiti entry. The graphics were pithy messages such as “Plush safe he think.. SAMO” and “SAMO as an escape clause”. In December 1978, the Village Voice published an article about the writings. The SAMO project ended with the epitaph “SAMO IS DEAD” written on the walls of SoHo buildings.

Basquiat attended high school in New York at “City As School”, the same place where he was friends with Al Diaz, and Shanon Dawson (later of the downtown funk band Konk). In 1978, Basquiat dropped out of high school and left home, a year before graduating. He moved into the city and lived with friends, surviving by selling T-shirts and postcards on the street, and working in the Unique Clothing Warehouse on Broadway. By 1979, however, Basquiat had gained a certain celebrity status amidst the thriving art scene of Manhattan’s East Village through his regular appearances on Glenn O’Brien’s live public-access cable show, TV Party. In the late 1970s, Basquiat formed a band called Gray, with Shannon Dawson, Michael Holman, Nick Taylor & Wayne Clifford. Gray played at clubs such as Max’s Kansas City, CBGB, Hurrahs, and the Mudd Club. Basquiat worked in a film Downtown 81 (a.k.a New York Beat) which featured some of Gray’s rare recordings on its soundtrack. He also appeared in Blondie’s video “Rapture” as a replacement for DJ Grandmaster Flash when he was a no-show.

Basquiat first started to gain recognition as an artist in June 1980, when he participated in The Times Square Show, a multi-artist exhibition, sponsored by Collaborative Projects Incorporated (Colab). In 1981, poet, art critic and cultural provocateur Rene Ricard published “The Radiant Child” in Artforum magazine, helping to launch Basquiat’s career to an international stage. During the next few years, he continued exhibiting his works around New York as well as internationally (alongside other street artists now in the galleries, such as Keith Haring), promoted by such gallery owners and dealers as Bruno Bischofberger and Annina Nosei. He later showed at the galleries of Larry Gagosian, Mary Boone and, finally, Vrej Baghoomian.
By 1982, Basquiat was showing regularly, and alongside Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Francesco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi, became part of what was called the Neo-expressionist movement. He started dating an aspiring and then-unknown performer named Madonna in the fall of 1982. That same year, Basquiat met Andy Warhol, with whom he collaborated extensively, eventually forging a close, if strained, friendship. He was also briefly involved with artist David Bowes.
By 1984, many of Basquiat’s friends were concerned about his excessive drug use and increasingly erratic behavior, including signs of paranoia. Basquiat had developed a frequent heroin habit by this point, which started from his early years living among the junkies and street artists in New York’s underground. On February 10, 1985, Basquiat appeared on the cover of The New York Times Magazine in a feature entitled “New Art, New Money: The Marketing of an American Artist”. As Basquiat’s international success heightened, his works were shown in solo exhibitions across Europe and the USA.
Basquiat died accidentally of mixed-drug toxicity (he had been combining cocaine and heroin, known as “speedballing”) at his 57 Great Jones Street loft/studio in 1988 several days before what would have been Basquiat’s second trip to the Côte d’Ivoire.