Tape, spray-paint and abandoned walls, that’s what the Amsterdam-based urban art duo Graphic Surgery needs to create these fantastic, architectural-inspired, geometrical graffiti artworks. In the last month they were really busy, travelling through Europe and painting new things. I got in touch with their rather interesting wall-paintings some month ago and wanted to get more info about the artists, because I haven’t heard something about them before. Fortunately, Graffuturism did that nice interview with Graphic Surgery earlier this year, which gave me some insights into the thought of Erris Huigens and Gysbert Zijlstra. ...

The three members of the French Da Mental Vaporz (DMV) graffiti crew Dran, Bom-K, and Sowat, who spray-painted that amazing wall at Meeting of Styles 2010 a few weeks ago, recently visited Barcelona to paint some more concrete and to spread their fantastic styles all over Europe… Immediately after opening their recent show at Ras Gallery with Suben, Dran, Bom-K and Sowat got to work on a massive wall on the outside of one of the new Montana Colors factory buildings outside of Barcelona. (modart) ...

Yes I know, everything is a remix and shared knowledge and shared creativity is great (that’s why all my photos are cc-licensed), but have you ever heard something about Michael Kadaz? Kadaz makes his money by copy and auction off reproduced stencil artworks by internationally well-known and successful stencil artists like Dolk, Grafter, Hutch, Mr. Brainwash, of course Banksy, and so on. And it’s not just something like an inspirational copying! He signs the works with his name and I wasn’t able to find a pointer to an attribution or something like that anywhere… ...

As you know, I’m currently in London and therefore still on the search for some great impressions of that interesting city, I could show you to complete something like an unusual city portrait of London… Today I found round about 1400 scanned diapositive-photos in doveson2008’s “London, England 1940s to 1980” photo-collection on Flickr, which is a massive historically photo-portrait of the UK’s capital! These are mostly undated red-bordered Kodachrome slides (although some have handwritten dates on which are given when present). I’ve always found these to be very colour faithful, despite the odd cyan shadow here and there. They are my favourite type of any slide, with the best having a richness of detail and quality that’s unbeatable, even despite some darkening over fifty-odd years on some of them. (doveson2008) ...

Chinese artist Jiang Pengyi has a foible for skylines, cities and urban landscapes and therefore started to create so called “unregistered cities” in abandoned warehouses. These abandoned miniature cities appeal somehow scary, but I really like the idea to stumble upon such an installation while my next warehouse visit… In Jiang’s most recent series, titled Unregistered City, he further explores the present monuments to Chinese modernity - skyscrapers, contemporary high-rise apartments and the curves of Beijing’s express ways - but all done in miniature. Jiang sets his model cities in derelict buildings and vacant rooms that belong to the old world and that have been forgotten by the present. (artnet.com) ...

Monochromatic Shades, the stencil art exhibition by famous political stencil artist SPQR, is running for one week now at Signal Gallery in London. A few days after the opening I visited that very interesting and highly critical urban art show to take some photos… SPQR is exploring the Art of Protest/Protest Art conundrum. He looks into the ability of Art to protest about the evils of society as he sees them. Included in his line of fire is the art world itself, with is fashions and favourites and at it’s core, a hollow commercialism. Themes that recur for the artist are ‘surveillance’ culture, brainwashing media and the need for acts of defiance to counteract these ills. This is brilliantly achieved in his work, with a tough humour, which is distinctly lacking any sentimentality or soft edges. (Signal Gallery) ...

Mini had KR, Levi’s had Shepard Fairey, the WWF had Photoshop and now, Mercedes Benz has Niels Shoe Meulman and his calligraffiti… Mercedes-Benz asked the calligraffiti artist Niels Meulman to customize a white Mercedes B-Class with hundreds of women’s names. These names symbolise all the Dutch women for whom the Pink Ribbon foundation works tirelessly. (graffart.eu) Of course, this is advertising but I love Shoe’s flow and style and it’s for a good thing - Pink Ribbon is an international symbol of breast cancer awareness…Now I will go out with my markers and follow the subliminal message of that ad by tagging the next Mercedes! Who’s coming? ...

Jazz w wolnych chwilach, which means something like Jazz in Free-time and is an album title of one of the finest polish rappers OSTR (thanks to AirborneMark), is maybe the greatest mural artwork I’ve seen in the last months and I still can’t stop looking at it…Done by Chazme, Lump, Sainer and Sepe in Szczecin, Poland, the huge wall-painting shows four amazing characters playing - how else could it be - jazz. ...

There are a lot of good and often interesting street art and graffiti books out there, but another one you should keep in mind until its release in October, because I highly recommend it, is “Trespass - A History Of Uncommissioned Urban Art”! That book contains not only street art and graffiti but with interventions, artistic protest and propaganda art a more general urban art context, a bit like I do on this blog…At the moment, a lot of people around the world, including the Wooster Collective, Martha Cooper and WK Interact drum up business for the book and that Banksy has written the introduction should also be not that bad… ...

Big is better is beautiful seems to be the motto of this year’s Nuart urban art festival in Norway, which gave the city of Stavanger its new huge mural artworks - some call them artistic landmarks - by Roa, Blu & Ericailcane, Alex­an­d­ros Vas­mou­lakis, Vhils, Dot­mas­ters, Sten & Lex and other urban artists… Three days ago, the town’s people turned out in force on Sunday for the first of Nuart’s landmark street art tours (via Nuart), showing the town’s new landmarks and providing background-info about the artworks and the artist. ...