Stencil Art

Famous British graffiti artist Ben Eine did it again and stenciled his well-known, brightly colored letter styles on a huge wall in London’s Covent Garden! This new mural is Ben’s try to stirring up a debate with Westminster Council about their zero tolerance policy on graffiti and street art… …two Prets, a Starbucks, a Gap and it’s fucking boring - who the fuck wants that?! (Ben Eine) Again it was Abbie Brandon who filmed him doing his best and talked to him about his work for Amnesty International, the show at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco, artists he likes and much more! ...

Street Art | Italian stencil art duo Orticanoodles recently published photos of their latest stencil art series, which could easily been described as next level stencil art with a nice liability to absurd pop styles. The overlaying topic of theses new works, including artwork titles like “Pop Never Die”, “Skate or Die” or “Pop Uber Alles” (showing Mr. A. Hitler), seems to be death or dieing in general. Orticanoodles, who had their first Paris solo-show about a year ago, light with their new stencil artworks a beacon of hope that stenciling also improves itself and doesn’t has to be similar stuff again and again reproduced… ...

Street Art Protection | For some time now, there’s a more or less big discussion running around the world, why street artworks should be protected, who decides which one is worth protecting. After everybody’s darling and super-duper street art hero Banksy, we now have another artist (?) whose works moved up the ladder and are now worth protecting… As the Melrose & Fairfax blog for street art in Los Angeles wrote, it’s no one else than Mr. Brainwash whose street artworks are getting protected with plexiglass! ...

Stencil Flood | As I already said, the flood ravished city of Brisbane (Australia) is the new honey pot for not just graffiti artists, who paint trains on the dead, flooded railway lines, but also for street artist. A brilliant example for this street art boom in Brisbane is the new stencil artwork by Above, who recently informed my fellow RJ that he “decided to immediately fly from Sydney to Brisbane to make this site specific stencil”. The stencil shows Noah’s ark as well as an elephant and a giraffe sinking! Above said: ...

Some people out there seem to have to much spare time…Today I read about that new “Catch Banksy” project by Miguel Delarosa who urgently wants to find Robin Cunningham, a former student of Bristol Cathedral School, who - as some people believe - is Banksy… Download the sticker- or stencil-file. Print stickers and post ‘em all over the planet. Make stencils and spray with your blood! We will get him! Catch him if you can! Supporters could be: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Christina Aguilera, King Robbo. (catchbanksy.com) ...

Stencil Art Studio | London-based stencil artist FinDAC is quite popular at the moment and I can truly understand why people like his fine stencil artworks - just remember the very successful exhibition of his beautiful Jimi Hendrix artworks some weeks ago! Last month, when I still was in London, he invited me to visit his studio in South London and of course I did. It was just the time when he created the paper stencils for that nice wall he spray-painted later at the Stroke.03 Urban Art Fair in Berlin and I remember, I was highly impressed by the great details and size of each stencil layer… ...

Stencil Art | The Moniker Art Fair is going on and I had some busy last days, visiting all the live paintings by Herakut, Case and Titi-Freak and having fun at the VNA magazine issue party. But what’s more interesting is the fact that during the last days a lot of amazing new street artworks popped up around the Village Underground in London’s creative area Shoreditch! One really impressing is the new stencil artwork by internationally famous artist Boxi. He painted a whole wall in his well-known greyscale style including three of his brilliant multi-layer stencil spray-paintings. A must to see for every stencil art enthusiast in London! ...

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… ...

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) ...

Do you remember that brilliant miniature stencil art city, stencil artist Evol created in Dresden in 2009? That was awesome, right, but now he created another, new stencil city in Norway! Evol’s new stencil artworks in the streets of Stavanger are part of this years Nuart Festival and are my personal highlight of that urban art event, because they buck the trend to go big (see Dotmaster) and even bigger (see Blu) and integrate already existing graffiti tags. ...