Art Magazine: Urban & Street Art Features

Art Magazine | On September 14th, 2006 the first issue of an urban art magazine was printed which should later become one of my favourite underground art mags. Since then the quality, circulation and publicity of that quarterly street art and graffiti documenting magazine grew steadily and today “Very Nearly Almost” (VNA) is probably the most well-known magazine for urban art forms and their protagonists in Great Britain. What I really like about VNA is not only the interesting content or the nice pics. Much more it’s that ongoing advancement and of course the nice launch parties which unfortunately are confined to London. But I heard that this will maybe change in the near future… ...

Last Thursday the new, twelves issue of the fantastic VNA magazine was released at the Pure Evil Gallery in London. In addition to having some too much beer and talking to some nice guys, I was able to take some closer looks at the first Roa prints… Roa has been on the top of our hit list for a while now, so it was a real blessing when he came through London and this dream cover could actually come about. Three days of shooting Roa painting was still not enough and we could have easily sat up on that roof watching him paint for quite a few more. (Team VNA, Issue 12) ...

Before the FIFA football world cup will start in a few minutes, you should cast an eye at the sixth urban art eye candy edition. I summarized some interesting and kick-ass news and reading tips about street art and graffiti as well as urban photography. In the last days a lot of new urban artworks were created around the world and new issues of some great magazines were released. To cut a long story short, here is this week’s urban art eye candy: ...

The German Klebstoff magazine is a sticker magazine which consists only of stickers. Yes, it’s a bit crazy, but very successful! After the first issue with its 1000 copies was sold out after only four weeks, the Sticker Mag crew did another one: The second issue contains on 46 pages more than 100 stickers by 24 more or less famous urban sticker artists, including Klub7, Dan Witz, xXcrew, Eko, 1010, and others… ...

At the end of February, the second edition of the subcultural and urban Urban.Spacemag magazine was released, including info about Japanese tape artist Shuetsu Sato, Australian tape artist Buff Diss, and other articles corresponding to the magazines topic Gaffa-Urbanism. Now the third edition is in work and the crew behind the Spacemag calls for your contributions! This times topic is Copy & Paste. They are searching for statements and articles from the creative fields of architecture, urban planning and arts… ...

Wow, there will be an stunning graffiti art exhibition in Zurich tomorrow! I was really excited when I saw these amazing buffed graffiti artworks first… Thierry Furger presents his “Buffed Paintings”, which show - as the name implies - graffiti pieces that look like recently buffed. This is his way to deal with the transience of graffiti: “Often graffiti is gone within a few hours. Removed by cleaning crews, repainted by other sprayers or destructed by time and weather, because no one is responsible for their preservation. For that reason, the writer has to learn to deal with the almost self-evident ephemerality of his pictures…” (press release) ...

When I arrived back in Berlin yesterday from my Scotland trip, my postbox was full of new mails and packages, including the new best of Modart book called “Modart No. 01 - Forget Art: In Order to Feel it”! The 250 pages hard back book contains features about several urban artists, illustrators and photographers like JR, Os Gemeos, Adam Neate, Space Invader, Blu, Ruedi One and Mark Jenkins, organized by the categories Spy, Rider’s Ink, Illustrated Works, Inside, Show & Tell, Photo and Random. ...

The “Color Ink Book - The DIY Art Periodical” is - as I think - a very interesting piece of art magazines, because it showcases both, established artists as well as fresh faces. For four weeks, the sixth edition of the “Color Ink Book” is available, which includes artworks by and info about Project Detonate, El Gato Chimney, Andrew Council, Ron English, Vassilis Gogtzilas, Chuck Harrison, Jeff Lamm, Pat Moriarity, Kool Skull, McFaul Studio, Jon Vermilyea and Ben Walker. ...

In October 2009 I informed you about the second edition, called “Gaffa-Urbanism”, of the urban magazine Spacemag by Hamburg based Spacedepartment. Now, the release date is fixed and I was able to cast an eye at the new edition! As you can read in the title, the whole issue is about the new “Gaffa-Urbanism” movement. For that reason, pacemag #2 includes articles about Japanese tape artist Shuetsu Sato, who tapes redirecting hints at the subway-stations in Tokyo and about Australian tape artist BUFFdiss, who is a real globetrotter and tapes great artworks in the urban landscape. ...

Do you know the Slanted magazine? It’s a typography magazine, which exists since 2005 and is published quarterly. It combines the sectors typography, layout, illustration and photography. The ninth issue, named “Stencil. Type.”, of the Slanted magazine is about stencil fonts and their modern applications! “Slanted presents the innovative work of Gavillet & Rust and their fontlabel Optimo (Geneva), the large format paintings of Christopher Wool (New York), an impressive photo series of Francois Fleruy (Paris) and many more. The sections “Fontlabels, Fonts & Families”, “Fontnames Illustrated” and “Typolyrics” introduce contemporary fonts and designers from all over the world, followed by interviews with John Boardley, Kouga Hirano and Chip Kidd and an interesting type essay by Hannes von Döhren.” ...