Ian Strange's (@kidzoom) perspective of Home, Suburbia, & Displacement.

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There are artist as we all know artist, then there's those who are working on a grand scale that stuns and makes you wonder "how the fuck?"

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I've followed the work of Kid Zoom aka Ian Strange since about 2010.  Social networks got ridiculously useful and made accessing new things even faster. I followed Kid Zoom every where via tumblr. Coolest thing is, he's accessible. Often open to brief discussion about projects.  What struck me in 2010 was the size of his art work. I was breaking out 16x20 inch canvasses and he was working on taxidermy bears and huge wall sized canvas. My tiny studio efficiency was no where near large enough to work large, but didn't stop me from dreaming about larger work.

Soon after the large canvas and taxidermy works, Strange built a replica of his childhood home from memory in the exhibition "HOME" and spray painted one of the dopest skulls I'd seen on it. This is the exhibition that Ian also beat up and set fire to 3 sedans in the short film "The Destruction of Three Holden Commodores"

Of course after doing work on a grand scale you have to do it now on a grander scale. The Home exhibition was followed by "Suburban". This was a personal " investigation " of the "icon" status of the home and suburbia as many know it. The project was photographed and recorded in amazing quality but the exhibition was held in Australia. 

 "Final Act" was the continuation of the Home & Suburban projects. It was executed in the town Christchurch, New Zealand that suffered major damage from an earthquake. 180 people were killed in the quake that buckled the earth's crust and liquefied sections of soil. The town of Christchurch was evacuated due to structural instability. The abandoned town was a showcase of nature's power and how humans are displaced by it. The home were cut, dissected, and lit to highlight the framework. The project showed the homes in a more spirited manner before being demolished. 

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After seeing & speaking to Kid Zoom via his Instagram, I learned that this project is continuing in Japan's Nuclear exclusion zones that were abandoned in the tsunami disaster that was also caused by an earthquake. The force of the quake no only caused a massive tsunami the killed almost 20,000 individuals but it also displaced many more from structural damage to homes and Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Power plant. Interested to see how this body of work will be executed by Strange. I would like to also see how the work is received by the residents that once occupied the exclusion zone.

All pictures and video is courtesy of Ian.

Oh Ashley Graham....... I love you.

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Yasssssssssssssssssss Ashley Graham! She's killing it this year and I love everything about it. The lovely lady is made it to Maxim Mag. This is craaaazy considering that most of the models on the cover of the magazine are like ....all boob, nk hips and no ass lol.

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Any.. Women are gorgeous. Ashley... Baby.... I love you forever!

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photos by: Gilles Bensimon 

Fucking hearing me... Feel what I'm saying B.

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On Saturday night, the renowned and mysterious Italian street artist Blu went on an art-destroying spree through the streets of Bologna. The work he erased was his own — with the help of activist groups XM24 and Crash, Blu covered 20 years’ worth of massive, colorful murals with gray paint.

The gesture was an act of protest against an upcoming exhibition, Street Art: Banksy & Co.,which opens Friday in Bologna’s historic Palazzo Pepoli. The exhibition, co-organized by the privately funded cultural institution Genus Bononiae and the Arthemisia Group, features 250 works of street art, some of which were removed from their original public locations without the artists’ consent. The show was curated by one of the city’s wealthiest patrons, Fabio Roversi Monaco, president of both the Academy of Fine Arts and the powerful Banca Imi.

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When Blu learned that the exhibition will include some of his own work, Genus Bononiae’s attempt to “[salvage street art] from demolition and [preserve it] from the injuries of time,” as they put it, dramatically backfired. 

Blu’s destruction of his remaining murals in Bologna, as the leftist artist collective Wu Mingexplained on its blog (per the artist’s request), keeps it away from private institutions. The gesture is intended to expose the hypocrisy of a city that “on the one hand criminalizes graffiti, puts 16-year-old writers on trial, praises ‘urban decorum,’ and on the other celebrates herself as the cradle of street art and wants to retrieve it for valorization on the market.” Just last month, another globetrotting Italian street artist, Alice Pasquini, was fined €800 (~$889) for a graffiti-related offense. In this context, the collective wrote, “the only thing left to do is [to make] these paintings disappear, to snatch them from those claws, to make hoarding impossible.”

We reached out to Blu and the Wu Ming Foundation for more commentary, but as the Wu Ming Foundation made clear in a blunt email, Blu never does interviews:

Blu never talks to journalists, he never gives interviews, he doesn’t even write about the meaning of his work or his actions or “how it feels,” nothing like that. He only draws murals or, in this case, he erases them. Silently. That’s why he asked us to write a statement about his latest action, which we did. However, the agreement we have with Blu is: no interviews, and we respect that. Sorry, we cannot help you.

Blu and his comrades taped up said statement at the sites of the destroyed murals, and also posted it online. “Seeing street art exhibited in a museum is paradoxical and grotesque,” they wrote ofBanksy and Co. “This ‘street art’ exhibition is representative of a model of urban space that we must fight, a model based on private accumulation which commodifies life and creativity for the profits of the usual few people.”

This isn’t Blu’s first brush with censorship, self-inflicted or otherwise. In 2012, a mural he created as part of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s Art in the Streetsexhibition was whitewashed (prompting him torepeatedly break his own “never talks to journalists” rule). In 2014, he and artist Lutz Henke (with some help) painted over an iconic, collaborative mural in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood to protest the area’s gentrification.

Blu’s desire to retain control of what uses his street art is put toward — and keep it out of the hands of those seeking to profit from it — echoes Banksy’s reaction to the Sincura Art Club‘s 2014 auction of his “sensitively salvaged” works of street art. “This show has got nothing to do with me and I think it’s disgusting people are allowed to go around displaying art on walls without getting permission,” Banksy wrote at the time in a statement on his website.

 (Story pulled directly from Hyperallergic. Written by: Carey Dunne. Photo by:  Michele Lapini). Check out more of Blu's work here.

 

 

 STOP PISSING OFF THE ARTIST!

Marvel is handing DC plenty losses.

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As DC prepares to release the Batman v Super man movie, Marvel comic movies continue to drop better trailers. Be it Marvel, Fox, PBS, Nick At Night or who ever owns the rights to characters..... DC is getting their ass spanked by Marvel Comics. X-Men(Fox) just dropped their latest Apocalypse trailer one week before The Premier of Dawn of Justice. This is literally one week after Captain America: Civil War threw the retro Spider Man into the mix and put fans in a frenzy. DC needs to fight back so this isn't a one sided fight lol

Moto Gp Starts tomorrow! Recap to the greatest race finish EVER!

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Glory!! Moto GP is upon us! This Sunday kicks off the GP Race schedule. I grew up watching all forms of automotive racing, from NHRA Drag racing, to NASCAR, but my favorite it Moto GP and AMA Super Bike. Something about the precision and speed makes watching an incredible experience. The GP returns with 18 rounds of excitement. This year's schedule is missing Indy. Kinda sucks the US went from 3 races Indy, Laguna Seca, & Circuit of The America's in Austin to JUST Circuit of The America's. Hadnt thoroughly read into why the tracks were cute from the schedules. Above is the greatest final laps in Moto GP history.. Rossi v. Lorenzo. Below is the 2016 schedule. I'll keep a look out for a good stream link.

Moto GP race schedule