Os Gemeos is currently in Boston at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) for their first US solo exhibition, painting murals and beautifying the city with street pieces! As usual, I’m more than flashed by the twins’ painting skill and their famous Pixacao motive is one of my personal favorites. Bostonians can be happy, having these two graffiti artists in town! Make sure to watch that video interview with Os Gemeos for some private insights into their history, but first enjoy that great new Os Gemeos street piece… ...

Artbase is back - The urban art festival, which took place in the abandoned sanitarium Grabowsee near Berlin in 2011, is now heading to the abandoned NSA fieldstation at Teufelsberg Berlin! With about 100 confirmed urban artists, including Karl Addison and James Bullough, Alias, Buff Diss, Graffiti Research Lab Germany, SAM Crew, Mean Marek, SP-38, Tona and Wurstbande, Artbase 2012 is with no doubt going to become this year’s biggest urban art festival in Berlin… Artbase 2012 is not a commercial festival, but an urban art weekend. We like free spirits and promote fine arts. The festival combines urban art, royalty-free music on different dance-floors and workshops with the magical feeling that radiates from this place. (loosely translated) ...

Remember the yarn-bombed Wall Street Bull? Now, Polish street artist Olek struck again when she covered the almost 9 meters tall memorial statue of Albert Einstein at the National Academy of Science in Washington DC! Unfortunately, the city cleaned the yarn-bombed Einstein within hours… Olek says Einstein, for her, was an easy choice since he was such a creative thinker himself. “I thought he might have a sense of humor about it,” she says. […] Presumably this kind of thing is par for the course when you’re a guerrilla yarn-bomber. (Washingtonian) ...

This August the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston is going to present the first US solo exhibition by the Brazilian brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, better known as Os Gemeos! But before they will open the exhibition doors tomorrow, the Os Gemeos twins are painting outside at both The Revere Hotel and on the ventilation building in Dewey Square… Best known as Os Gêmeos, the twins are a major force in graffiti and urban art. The twins have a deep bond; they are tireless collaborators and say that they often experience the same dreams. In an effort to share their dreams with the world, they depict their visions in surreal paintings, sculpture, and installations: human figures with removable faces, exploding bursts of color, and room-size heads installed with shanty interiors. (ICA Boston) ...

With a line-up reading like the who-is-who of Europe’s urban mural artists - including DXTR, Nychos, Pixelpancho, Etam Cru, Arsek & Erase, ECB and many more - the probably biggest European street art festival Like it. Art, which took place in Kazan, the capital and largest city of the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, just finished. As promised a few days ago, I managed to get some impressions from there… Like it. Art Festival Large and medium scale graffiti appeared on the walls of around 40 objects across the city. The festival arranged under the project MadeInKazan also encompassed public master classes, lectures of the European artists, the best canvases exhibition, “Trash-truck hunting” night painting session and a graffiti contest. ...

After that pretty nice stencil art village near London’s Smithfield Market, Evol just created some new pieces in Warsaw! As collaboration with Monstfur, the new stencil art village is extended by an entire butterfly swarm, adding some life to the usually very material houses by Evol… Those of you who want to know, how these fabulous street artworks are created should watch this short making-of video, documenting Evol at work. All the others should go and give some love to Evol’s stuff on Flickr! ...

Italian mural artist Pixel Pancho just came up with an fantastic Soviet-style piece in Kazan, Russia! This huge new mural is part of the Like It. Art festival in the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan. Announced as Europe’s largest street art and graffiti festival, Like It. Art took place between 17 to 22 July and was officially supported by the Mayor’s Office of Kazan. But although the line-up includes pretty big names like Etam Cru from Poland, Kislow from the Ukraine, Belin from Spain, Nychos from Austria, and of course Pixelpancho, I unfortunately haven’t heard much about this urban art festival before… ...

What happens when a city declares war on graffiti? That’s one of the questions, the documentary Between the Lines, a film about a group of Toronto street artists who find new meaning in their work as they defend it against Mayor Rob Ford’s War on Graffiti, is going to answer! As mentioned by thegridto.com, Toronto’s Mayor Ford is making sure that everyone knows that he hates graffiti and street art since he took office in late 2010: He’s since gone so far as to slap on the coveralls himself to power-blast it from the walls of the city and herald a new mobile app that lets Torontonians report what they deem to be unsightly scribbles and murals themselves. ...

Graffiti Architecture in Melbourne In Melbourne, Australia, a building complex called Hive combines graffiti and architecture in an exciting new way! Whereas usually graffiti is added afterwards to the facade of a building, the facade of the Hive incorporates a giant three-dimensional concrete tag! This project by ITN Architects is real graffiti architecture! Built for an architect and artist, this building has its name written right into its walls and also comes with other graphical elements like arrows giving the entire complex an urban, sci-fi dynamic… ...

With urban artists like Ox, Ludo, Vermibus or Neko being specialized in this kind of critical vandalism and cities like Berlin and Madrid getting ad-busted on a grand scale, street ad takeovers seem to be quite popular these days. Now it’s Toronto’s turn… Mainly targeting billboards and advertisement street signs, the cARTographyTO crew has been responsible for 35 ad-busting hacks all over Toronto. A spokesperson for cARTographyTO stated, These structures are billboards masquerading as sources of useful public information. When you look at the pillars, it’s hard to find the maps, and this goes against the City’s own public space guidelines. How could City Hall allow this to happen? Beyond mere visual pollution, these pillars are a safety hazard. And Astral’s influence on our city is a public insult and embarrassment - more power has been given to those who already have the loudest voices, to the detriment of all who use these spaces. ...