Hasta La Ideas

“Beyond the Street: The 100 Leading Figures in Urban Art” is a behemoth of a book loaded with a who’s-who of the contemporary urban art scene edited by Patrick Nguyen and Stuart. Surveying the work from figureheads such as Aaron Rose, Wooster Collective, Deitch Projects, Stephan Doitschinoff, Faile, Brad Downey and Swoon, in-depth interviews supplement loads of color images and artist biographies to create a 400-page tome of information.

Below, Cool Hunting gets an exclusive preview of the book (it comes out in the U.S. on 20 May 2010) with this interview excerpt conducted by Nguyen with New York-based artist Steve Powers, a.k.a. ESPO.

Londoners can catch the U.K. book launch party the Friday, 7 May 2010, from 6-9 pm at Phillips de Pury & Company on Howick Place. For those in New York, the event takes place Thursday, 27 May 2010, from 6-9 pm at Deitch Projects.

Pick up the book from Gestalten or pre-order from Amazon.

What led you to become an artist in the first place?

It was just raw, desperate hunger for attention. Because I grew up in a household with a lot of other children, drawing was a way to separate myself from the pack. So I got into it as a three-year-old and have been a compulsive drawer ever since.

Is it true that you were an art school dropout? If so, why did you quit?

Yeah, I dropped out of two different art schools. I just had a sneaking suspicion as I was handing over my tuition that you probably didn’t need anything they were teaching at art school to be an artist. Like being a musician, either you have it or you don’t. If you have the talent and you put in the hours and you get lucky, art school’s not going to help you anyway.

When did you start doing graffiti?

I was doing graffiti as a teenager, basically as a sophomore in high school in the suburbs of Philadelphia. It was something new to me. It was just brutally breaking out of the neighborhoods of New York and Philadelphia and starting to go national with “Style Wars” and “Subway Art.” And it had everything I wanted in art: color, design, line, it was illegal, but not that illegal—all the things that captivate teenagers. Typically in those days, in the mid-eighties in Philadelphia and New York, it was really a young person’s game. They’d start at 12 and were done at 18. I started a little late at 16, and I didn’t really finish until I was 30.

Continue reading and see more images after the jump.

Could you describe some of the background to the ESPO tags you used to do on storefront grates in New York?

At a New Year’s party in 1997, I got in an argument with a graffiti video director/producer. I basically laid out the theory that I could paint anywhere in New York any time I wanted, and get over without getting arrested for it. He said, “Absolutely not. It can’t be done.” It was something I’d been thinking about for a while. At the time, Mayor Giuliani wanted people to be responsible for the graffiti on their own properties and for owners to be fined if they didn’t remove it. Well, the property owners in New York are an extremely powerful group of people, so that never really came to pass. But I liked the idea of doing something so fundamentally benign like painting over graffiti and then turning it into graffiti at the last minute. I didn’t anticipate the reaction it would get, but once I’d done it a couple of times, I decided to keep going and ended up doing around 75 grates. The rule of thumb in New York is that if you’re doing something new, you can’t just do it once or twice; otherwise, the next person’s going to pick it up and take all the credit for it. So in doing it as many times as I could, I really held on to the idea for myself.

When did you stop painting illegally and become a “respectable member of society?”

I stopped doing graffiti in ’99. I’d been painting for 15 years by that point and had done everything two or three times over. I really just wanted to focus on making art. To me, the term graffiti art is an oxymoron. Graffiti does its own thing; it doesn’t need to aspire to anything more than graffiti. It’s cool if it does, but I think calling yourself a graffiti artist places an unnecessary burden on you. You’re probably not going to make that good graffiti, and you’re probably not going to make that good art if you’re trying to do both at the same time.

In the design world, Tokujin Yoshioka stands as one of the purest interpreters of shapes and materials. His experiments with small objects and wide spaces beautifully translate what we see to what we feel. In his hands the most humble materials become pure wonder, like his chair for Moroso or his plastic sofa for Driade.

This year at Salone Yoshioka presents the “The Invisibles” project, a collaboration with Kartell consisting of a special collection and an incredible installation at their Milan flagship store. We met Yoshioka at the space, surrounded by his incredible transparent plastic stick installation “Snowflake,” to get the low-down on his latest work.

Design is made of visible and solid things. How did you manage to work on the concept of invisibility?

When I started working on this project, Kartell asked me to design something completely transparent. We began from one of my prototypes, that was made of glass. We had to work hard to find the right technical solutions. At the end of the day, we both wanted something that makes people look like they are suspended, like sitting on air.

Also, the idea of the installation here at the flagship store came out like this—I wanted to create a very complex and intricate pattern, where the objects are hidden. You don’t notice them immediately, you have to discover them and they come out like a surprise.

This year Kartell is working on both invisibility and the color black. Is there a contradiction between darkness and transparencies?

I haven’t seen the installation “Welcome Black,” but I can say that there’s no complete difference between what’s transparent and what’s dark. These are all elements present in nature. Every object has a shadow, even if it’s completely transparent.

Do your shapes come together with the materials? Do the materials suggest a specific shape?

I’m not very interested in shapes themselves, I always begin from the materials. When I choose one I work on it and the form of the final object, the final aesthetic emerges spontaneously. At this phase, I don’t know if the final result is going to recall nature or be minimalistic and geometric.

Visiting the Franco-Brazilian architects Triptyque in their São Paolo offices, this video explores the firm’s work, including their recent buildings Harmonia_57 and Loducca. Two of Triptyque’s four partners, Carolina Bueno and Guillaume Sibaud, share insight on recent projects and the city’s role as muse.

For the past eight years ArtSite Projects curator Kara Walker-Tome has been transforming a section of West Palm Beach, FL’s Hotel Biba into an annual art event. Aptly named, Showtel turns hotel rooms into conceptual installations by challenging artists fill the spaces with everything from sculpture and performance art, without using the use of nails or adhesives. We recently had the chance to speak with Walker-Tome, who shed light on this clever exhibition.

How did you originally come up with the idea for this kind of site-specific show?

When I moved to Florida after having lived in Los Angeles and New York, I was involved in the local art scenes of these metropolitan cities and I could not find an alternative art scene to speak of in Palm Beach County. I had been impressed and inspired many times in the past by installation shows in unique settings in LA and NY and I recognized that my new area was wide open for making a mark with an alternative art happening. So, I decided to put together a one-night show for local emerging cutting-edge artists in a hotel. Lucky for me the first one I approached said yes. That was eight years ago. So Showtel started as a small happening with a handful of artists and maybe a couple hundred people attended. Last year’s seventh annual show featured twenty-five artists and attracted 2,000 people in one night.

Why a hotel? How does that environment influence the artists?

I think the strict rules in place for installing Showtel installations in a working hotel accounts for incredible ingenuity. Essentially they have to put up and then take down their work as if they had never been in the room in the first place. The amazing thing is that they manage to come up with clever solutions and create visually intense environments whereby the whole room is engaged.

How do you know that the idea will work in the show?

Curating from ideas is an acquired skill. I am choosing work that has not been created yet so I have to be able to visualize their concept and plan. I believe that ability comes from my initial training as an artist myself. I received an MA in fine arts from CalArts and then also have spent years reading hundreds of proposals, working closely with artists in the development and creation of their work, and finally—a bit of intuition!

Who are some of the artists participating this year? What will they be creating?

I am quite excited this year to be working with artists from all over the state of Florida and even one coming from out of state. Showtel has traditionally attracted artists living close to Palm Beach County, but now artists from Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa and Gainesville are applying and getting accepted into the show. I hope it continues to expand nationally.

I can give you a handful of teasers about the pieces planned for this year. There will be a mythical forest, a wormhole grow room, a lunar/meteor space, a scene from a world populated only by sloths and unicorns and five of the installations will involve performance. It is going to be a very intense and dynamic show!

This year Shotel runs from 8-10 April. Read more about some of Walker-Tome’s favorite Showtel installations she’s seen over the past eight years after the jump. (Pictured above in order of appearance.)

Photos by Jacek Gancarz

Picture 1: Installation by Halie Ezratty, Showtel 2008

The overtly handmade quality of these soft sculpture monsters, existing in this faux natural world made for a great aesthetic that had humor in it too. One of the monsters actually was a costume for a person who was walking around the room interacting with people. The concept was about corporations turning into huge monsters that are taking over the environment, so it made a statement to think about as well.

Picture 2: Installation by Christian Diaz, Showtel 2005

This was such an effective piece both visually and psychologically and the artist was the first to make false walls (out of fabric) so he could create the uniform grid of string which was ingenious.

Picture 3: Installation by Lauren Jacobson and Cristina Sierra, Showtel 2006

This installation was like stepping into a surreal dream and it smelled like bubble gum too! The graphics on the walls and floor reference the packaging of “Hubba Bubba” gum and the artists found a brand of gum that the pieces looked like tiny colorful square sculptures. There was a huge pile of gum on the bed that dwindled throughout the night as people were allowed to take and chew one! The installation truly engaged all of one’s senses.

Picture 4: Installation by Bradley Lezo and Denise Moody-Tackley, Showtel 2008

This is an actual bedroom sunken in the pool, complete with a tray of food on the bed, an area rug, lights that worked and even a TV that appeared to be on. It was an amazing feat and one of the most memorable pieces in the history of Showtel.

For the past decade NYC-based Bonetti/Kozerski Design Studio have been building an impressive portfolio of work centered on the relationship between the interior and the exterior as one fluid continuum.

Founded by Enrico Bonetti and Dominic Kozerski, the duo work together to develop effortless spaces, blending the fundamentals of architecture and design with distinct European flair. Kozerski, originally hailing from the U.K., and the Italian-born Bonetti apply their talents to a range of work from highly visible DKNY boutiques and a David Barton gym to intimate personal spaces, such as converted barns in upstate New York, André Balazs’ NYC pad, one for Rick Rubin, and Donna Karan’s intimate Parrot Cay getaway.

You can learn more about the pair in Columbia University’s current exhibition “2000-2010 in Architecture,” or read our interview below to get a deeper scope of their working methods.

What’s the philosophy of your studio?

Kozerski: We’re quite diverse in the projects we work on. We work on high-end residential and corporate spaces that involve re-branding and with retail companies to develop new concepts to reinvent or refresh brands. Our work is focused on the design from the conceptual level. We believe all disciplines are part of the craft of design. We’ve seen this cross over to other types of work—retail crosses over to residential for example.

Tell us about the new exhibition you’re a part of at Columbia University.

Bonetti: We are one of five New York-based architecture firms. One of our projects is a conceptual project that was never built—a house in an industrial area, working with quite difficult constraints to deal with local issues. We’re presenting it as a model and 3D walk-through.

We’re presenting a model and photography of [Donna Karan’s] residential project in Turks and Caicos on a private island of Parrot Cay, a project that started five years ago. It’s a very unique place, on the beach with both ocean views and views in the lagoon. We collaborated on a series of houses, working to achieve best view of the beach from the house.

What is your style like working together as partners?

Bonetti: We come to the same solutions and we have the same strategy. Yes, one works more on one project for practical purposes, but we make design decisions together. We’re very similar. It makes our projects more interesting with slightly different perspectives.

Kozerski: Between us the goal is always common and how we want it to end up in the end. The way we get there is very interesting.

What’s next?

Bonetti: We’re working on a large townhouse on the Upper East Side, some retail projects in Asia, a retail project in Vienna, and barn conversions in upstate New York.

Kozerski: We like to be engaged with interesting clients.

How did you meet?

Bonetti: We were both working for the same architect in the early ’90s. We found we worked well together. We started our own firm and it’s been almost ten years.