Also....LONG LONG LONG overdue...
kelly towles | charles steelman | and their Great One-Nighter, bollocks @ david adamson's old space
None of the usual suspects covered this event on their blogsites, so I'll try to fill-in the blanks...
Art openings are performances, performances of everyday life. They are as fleeting as walking down a street. Maybe a particular moment will get tangled up in your blue web of a memory - maybe the face of someone you actually hadn't seen at an opening lately, a friend who's been in hiding. Or perhaps it is actually the image of an art work that managed to paint itself into your mind, long enough to give yourself some credit for getting out the door that night...
Street art, to me, is the beautiful semi-permanent experience of someone else's moment in that very same location: graffiti is cool 'cause it means someone else, besides myself, was there at least once before, and they decided to do something about it, about the "there" and the "being there." Rather than, la la la, this is the same way I walk to work everyday...someone (who? who cares? anonymity is not just a legal protection, it is crucial to the work itself) decided to grab that space of concrete, that bit o block, that tiny moment of physical presence and make it into an expression of their own. Like taking photos with your cell phone's camera, you've appropriated time and space for your own use.
Often the use value isn't just for the fleeting pleasure of painting with a can and stencil; the messages and motivations of street art are often politically charged and, thankfully, give you a visual experience that differs from the space-invading techniques of corporations. UGh - remember Nissan and their "Exercise in Tagging?" Isn't that like a plastic surgeon giving himself liposuction?
Anyway. BORF, featured in this week's City Paper in a little one-paragraph bit, was one of the street artists represented at bollocks. Rightfully so, I was called a "Delinquent" -- I opted to hit the 14th street openings first -- so, I can't comment on the event prior to the auction. Bollocks!
I made it in just as they finished auctioning off one of the four, (all it took was a slip of paper with your name in a box - be in the flesh to win a piece of street art), almost white walls (the walls had loosely been painted over Kelly's figures from his solo show at adamson last December. The heat of the bodies made the sweat feel as welcome as the dirt under your fingernails after hiding in the bushes to tag a sign yourself. It was there, I was there, we were there. The Event was never more eventful than this. My sweat paid off. I got a piece (we all got a piece), of the action, of the art work, memento of a moment, the work of street artists shown in a space typically reserved for ideologies antithetical to the where of why we were there. Appreciation and "being there." A new audience was assembled, and touched.
All I can say, is my own, thank you. Wish you were there...
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