Posted inArt

But, Is It Punk?

Any punk with their wits about them is bound to react rather viscerally to the words “punk rock,” “rainbow” and “sparkle” being tossed together in the same salad of a sentence. So, naturally, when I walked into Jonathan LeVine gallery last month to catch the tail-end of Natalia Fabia’s East Coast debut, I shivered at the sight of its title. Punk Rock Rainbow Sparkle? I shook my head, wondering what I had walked into. Whatever it was, I stood convinced that at best it would be an uncomfortable experience I’d hopefully forget. However, I soon got a schooling in the life lesson, “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” or rather, you can’t judge a show by its title.

Posted inBooks

30 Years of Dan Witz’s Art, Illegal and Otherwise

In the history of street art, New York’s Dan Witz is a pioneer and one of the only names in the field that continues to enjoy an impeccable reputation based on skill, reinvention, and innovation. Yet, his monograph In Plain View is more than your conventional street art book. Its 220+ pages document a personality who arrived in New York in the late 1970s to attend art school, played in a band in the city’s thriving music scene, started working on the street because of the lack of opportunities for young artists to show in galleries, and continued to develop related but independent bodies of work both in public and in his studio. What makes Witz’s artistic contribution impressive is his endless stream of ideas that demonstrate an incredible knack for adapting to the times without falling victim to trends.