All the World’s a Canvas at Graffiti Art Exhibit

In recent years, “street art” has gradually begun replacing “graffiti” in the popular lexicon.

Street artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairey have become household names.

But practitioners of the form — which came of age on city walls in the 1970s and ’80s — have branched out in wild directions to keep street art fresh and genre-defying.

The spirit of contemporary street art by Latino, Caribbean and Latino-American artists will be on full display at Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance this fall, in an exciting exhibit that’s part of El Museo del Barrio’s sixth bi-annual exhibition series, the “(S) Files.”

On display you’ll find pieces that move beyond the the classic application of paint to wall, and imaginatively re-use ephemeral objects from everyday urban life. Garbage bags, trash, postage stickers and street signs become both mediums and canvases.

Click on the images below to see some of the street art that will be on display:

This work makes reference to graff writing forms, but moves these shapes into three-dimensions, adapting to the specificity of each site in which the sculpture is created.
MARE139 has been making work for over 27 years and is currently Scholar in Residence at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture and Human Development, Metro Center for Urban Education, H2ED Hip Hop Education Center.

Turning her graffiti abilities into a business, TOOFLY is the creator of a line of urban-inspired accessories, apparel, and limited edition works of art.
Letters are transformed into energetic lines featuring colors that fade into one another, often seen against an urban landscape. In this case, the artist has used a plastic toy as her canvas.

Mixing images from posters and postcards found all over the streets in some NYC neighborhoods, the artist creates collages that blend popular culture with the gestures of both street writing and abstract painting.

Recycling materials such as those found in the local post office, FEEGZ creates abstract works that layer graffiti lettering with abstract forms.
He also uses found DOT signs as the surface for enamel paintings, playing on the relationship between the “official” front of the sign and the reverse, which becomes his urban canvas.

In a twist on graffiti and hip hop culture, Edwin Gonzalez-Ojeda creates works that use the signs and symbols of these urban styles, but filtered through a queer aesthetic.
This gesture is a response to the marginalization of the work of queer artists within the larger urban subcultures of graffiti and hip hop.

Enamel on DOT parking signs.

“It’s an interesting mix, looking at artists inspired by historical street gestures, but most of them have graduated to something different,” explains Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, one of three curators for the exhibit.

For example, Carlos Rodriguez, better known by his tag MARE139, grew up a decade after the first generation of New York City graffiti artists. Rodriguez’ became increasingly concerned with the three dimensional aspects of graffiti, and eventually sculpture, said Aranda-Alvarado. His work, which will be shown at the exhibition, involves sculpted pieces, inspired by the movement of letters.

“We were thinking of ‘street’ in the most broad sense, even inspired by artists who did performances in the street or public acts or got their materials from the street,” said Aranda-Alvarado.