Concrete Art: Urban Wallscapes & Beyond

One week ago, my friend the Portuguese street art blogger Target wrote an interesting article about an at that time upcoming street art installation by the famous urban art collective Faile. One whole week, the Faile-team and their helpers worked hard on their massive, big and unique installation and what came of it is a fantastic temple in the city of Lisbon, which is part of the art festival “PortugalArte10”! Today, Target uploaded impressing shots of the creation process… ...

Last Friday, the urban art festival “Concrete Playground” started in Essen. With about 20 internationally well-known street artists, contemporary artists and urban art photographers the art show with its unique installations and paintings is the most important part of the festival, which also offers different workshops and lectures. To put the phenomenon Streetart under the microscope, a series of events called Concrete Playground is taking place in 2010’s subcultural capitals Essen, Bochum and Dortmund. In the Fördermaschinenhalle 1/2/8 of Essen’s Zeche Zollverein you can find different workshops and temporary exhibitions of modern and classical street artists. (Words from the Playgroud) ...

This Friday, May 7th, the fantastic “Concrete Playground” street art festival will start in Essen! Concrete Playground, that are different workshops, lectures and of course fabulous temporary exhibitions with a lot of the world’s greatest modern and classical street artists. Some of the participating artists, of whom you should have heard as an Urban Artcore reader, are for example BUFFdiss, Above, D*Face, Just, Martha Cooper, Base23, Niels Shoe Meulman and 44flavours. Regardless of being legal or illegal, Streetart meanwhile is part of the townscape of even smaller cities. Linked-up with other subcultures such as skateboarding, BMX and Hip Hop, Streetart has a large impact and a huge economic power that makes it ubiquitous for all kinds of media that deal with youth or culture. This means that Streetart becomes less and less ’street’, its term is reduced to absurdity because much Streetart is produced by graphic designers on a computer with an apple attached on it. (Words from the Playgroud) ...

Some weeks ago, I wrote about the upcoming Smash 137 graffiti exhibition. Yesterday it was time - Exactly 7pm, the Common Ground Gallery opened its doors. “Contemporary European artist Smash 137 has a worldwide reputation as being an innovator. His impact on the international writer’s scene is significant and widespread. He is what you might call a writer’s writer, with an advanced conceptual take on letter styles and modes of application. Equally at home in the street and in the gallery his work takes the art of writing to the next level.” (press release) ...

As you know, I’m featuring the best three photos of the Urban Artcore Flickr group every week! I do that, because I think that there are many good, but mostly unknown photos on Flickr and so I have some interesting visual content, you’ll see new shots with urban character and the photographers and/ or artists will maybe become some clicks and fame. Today, there are dirty tags, beautiful black-and-white shot of Victor Ash’s “Cosmonaut”, and a girl, breaking out of an interesting concrete location. Have a look: ...