Paper Art: Explore the World of Intricate Paper Creations

Some days ago, I got an nice e-mail by the “Living Walls Conference”, which is a conference on street art and urbanism and will take place the weekend of August 13 at the Eyedrum in Atlanta. I think, that sounds very interesting: “The idea is to put the work of a very small subset of the population (street artists, graffiti writers, etc), people who actually interact with space, under the same roof with people who spend their time in a discourse about public space. Our intentions are simply to broadcast to the attendees a wide spectrum of ideas about public space. We hope that everyone leaves the event looking at the city, its walls, and how we interact with space differently. ...

Some days ago, I received an e-mail from French urban artist and adbuster Ox and I have to say, that I didn’t know him before, but really like his nice artworks! For years, Ox pastes great collages or minimalist shapes over billboards and in that way creates new, often colorful statements. His billboard takeovers - he calls it “Affichages” - could be found all over France and in other European cities like London. To cut a long story short and to show you his great doings, here are some photos… ...

Today I received an e-mail by the Spanish street art crew La Pluma Eléctri*k, who among other things makes QR code street art. Some of you will now think “Wow, how do they do that?” and the others will think “Heh?! What’s that?”. If you are in the latter case, I will explain QR for you: QR means quick response and is a bare codes 2.0, which was created in 1994 in Japan with comercial purpuse. It’s a code that can decrypted using some special software, which is for example part of modern mobile phones. You take a picture and the program tells you what is inside the pixels. ...

It seems, that New York based street artist WK Interact does not sleep. After his “How to Blow Yourself Up” skateboard exhibition in Los Angeles at the end of the last year, he pasted and painted a new mural artwork in Manhattan some days ago! The new urban mural artwork is a tribute to the American professional basketball player Dwyane Wade, who has established himself as one of the most well-known and popular players in the NBA. While planning, pasting and painting the D-Wade artwork, WK Interact was filmed. What arose from that is a very nice video with some very nice impressions of the snowbound New York City! I like it. ...

Do you remember the much talked “Women Are Heroes” exhibition by famous photographer and street artist JR, which held last year at Île Saint-Louis in Paris? Today I found the corresponding time lapse video, which shows in a stunning way the development of the giant pasted images of African women on the walls along the Seine River. The video gives also an overview about the press reporting as well as the opinions by Parisian citizen. Of course, it also shows the painful process of buffing the leftover of the fleeting street art… ...

One of the top urban art photographers Ian Cox published some photos of the “Deluxx Fluxx Arcade 2010” exhibition by Faile and Bast at Lazarides Gallery Greek Street. “The two floors of Lazarides Greek Street will be taken over for a truly experiential exhibition. Faile and Bast’s signature elements will resound throughout the gallery, creating an explosive installation. You’ll be able to interact with the products of their artistic collaboration…” (press release) ...

Between the 19th and 22nd November, there was an international art show in the United Arab Emirates, called the “Abu Dhabi Art Fair”. Around 50 galleries from the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the United States presented artworks. One of the exhibiting artists was famous French street artist and photographer JR! He created a large scale wheatpaste installation in the center of the UAE’s capital. When I saw the exclusive photos the first time, I was really shocked, because of their great atmosphere. ...

I love artworks, which are influenced by maps or the city itself. For this reason, I already wrote some articles about this part of contemporary art - remind the Manhattan Skyline Drawing by Stephen Wiltshire or the fantastic typographic lino-cut by Mark Andrew Webber. Today I will present another great example: Whether New York, Paris or London, American artist Karen O’Leary’s map cuts are amazing! She hand-cuts parts of original maps into paper and reveals in this way the paths, nodes, circles, boulevards, parks and streets of some of the greatest cities in the world. ...

Some days ago, i actually wrote about the European Invasion by Obey aka Shepard Fairey with some really nice photos of his poster actions in London, Paris and Amsterdam. Today I found this nice video of that action days. It includes a small statement by Obey and a lot of nice impressions from the streets. I started in 1989 with that images of “André the Giant”, the wrestler, just as an inside-joke with some friends. But I really want it to put across the idea of an image, calling the use of public space in the question. ...

My friend Martin from the online platform for contemporary urban art “LetterXIII” asked me to post some infos and photos about the urban art group-exhibition and advertising takeover “Nothing but…”, which took place in Berlin some days ago. About 20 different urban artists took over so called citylight-posters with their artworks between Mitte and Neukölln. Involved on this wonderful, temporary adbusting action were for example Evol, Bronco, Brad Downey, Filippo Minelli, Akim, Laurent Basset and many more! ...