street art belongs on the street not in the gallery
Following my visit to two street art exhibitions in Berlin, Planet Prozess and Backjumps, I came to a clear conclusion. Street art does not work in a gallery. Sure there was some good work; cubabrasil’s installation and blu’s stop motion room at backjumps and m-city at Planet Prozess for example related to space they were working in and made some decent art works, but most of the work was just weak, some of the work just looked like bad murals at a kindergarten. I really appreciate these artist but I feel that they did not take in consideration that paintings (am I allowed to use this word?) that work well on the street - in a public environment, are experienced in a completely different way in a gallery, the rules are not the same, it’s a different game.
A lot of Street Art works because it’s on the street, many factors on the street make the work powerful. The sense of surprise when you bump into it, the placement and how it fits or does not fit in the environment, the use of the architecture, the use of simple materials to communicate simple ideas in a totally fresh way. Sometimes all the power is in size. In blu’s work that he created for the exhibit on walls of buildings outside the gallery you can really see how size works, of course you need to know how to draw, and blu without doubt does, but what’s really impressed me was the size. His works are exiting and moving, they make you smile but they are also a bit disturbing, but they work on the streets where he painted them, the same drawing in a gallery would have left me indifferent. But size is not only to impress, making a big piece of art in the middle of the city that is being occupied by cooperate forces is also a political act. Good Street Art raises questions about who owns the public sphere, about criminalization and who does the Law serve. It’s about freedom of speech and who has not only the right to it but also the ability to expresses themselves. Blu understood this used the walls outside to fight power with powerful street art and used the gallery room to make something appropriate for a gallery room, to bad so many of the other artist in the galleries did not.
above: street Art map of Kreuzburg, Cuba-Brasil.
under: Blu, walls in Kreuzberg (You can see more photos here)
Blu, Backjumps.The video was showing on a loop in the middle of the room and the walls still showed the painted over stains from the animation
December 8th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
i completely disagree with the statement that “street art belongs on the street not in the gallery.” maybe in the case of some of the graffiti that you saw in those shows, it didn’t work. but the same can be said for painting, sculpture, drawing, etc. sometimes it just doesn’t work. plus, street art is such a broad term, covering much more than graffiti.
graffiti does lose some of its power in a gallery (usually scale issues, or lack of anything for it to relate to other than white walls), but i think it can transform the gallery, in the way that it can transform urban spaces. (ie barry mcgee’s art)
sure, gallery rules and street rules are not the same. it’s the opposite to be illegally doing something in the streets, as opposed to legally doing something in a gallery. graffiti where i live (halifax, ns) gets painted over really quickly. people would rather have solid blocks of colour covering graffiti, rather than graffiti itself. which often is more visually unappealing itself.
i think you over generalized. street art is important in its ability to transform space and public opinion, but i also think it can play a role in transforming gallery space and traditional standards and practices of showing and viewing art. taking it to the galleries is important too, streets aren’t the only place that need guerrilla style art.