Big RED & Shiny: An Online Arts Journal For Boston
Source: www.bigredandshiny.com
Topic: Graffiti
Sort Desciption: Graffiti art has been infiltrating its way into the “official” art ... street, is it really graffiti anymore? As a definition, street art ...
Content Inside: Caleb Neelon, boat installation, mixed media, 2005. Monster Project, public intervention in New York, 2005. SPOTHUNTERS @ THE NEW ART CENTER by MICAH J. MALONE Graffiti art has been infiltrating its way into the “official” art world for more than two decades now. With artists like Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, to name only two of the most well known, paving the way for more contemporaries like Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen, the art of graffiti now seems to reside quite comfortably in the gallery world. Perhaps one of the most pressing questions about this phenomena, at least for this writer, is once graffiti leaves the street, is it really graffiti anymore? As a definition, street art resides in the street and to take it into the white cube is to take mere style and force it into a context, thus making graffiti convenient to sell, market and commodify. To this end, the “art of graffiti” vs. “the graffiti artist” is worth highlighting. The recently opened exhibition, Spothunters at the New Art Center in Newton, brings together a different sensibility to the relationship between street art and studio/gallery art practices by placing publishing in the same category. To this end, each of the four artist’s approaches a venue like the New Art Center as just another location. However, the artists of Spothunters do well to complicate this over-simplified notion. Like “old school” graffiti artists, always adaptable and mobile, the artists of Spothunters come equipped with an array of personal icons, identifiable “signatures”, zines and stickers. Caleb Neelon, the curator of the exhibition, makes certain to site that the artists are not particularly invested in being “official” graffiti artists or “official” gallery artists, although the latter is debatable. Neelon and the other artists are very aware of straddling these platforms. For instance, when making a tag in the street, the artist may only have 2 minutes or l ...
