Perseverance at Known Gallery. This show is an amazing display of contemporary artists dealing with the struggle of transitioning from Graffiti artists to  the title of just plain amazing artists. Revok, Rime and Roid each bring with them over twenty years of experience of making art, where ever it was executed. Their unique vision is validated by the years of prolific art making using many different materials usually at a large scale. The art world will not be able to deny the pure artistic integrity of those who have built their respectable credibility of  painting in the public sphere. The art work always speaks for itself…….

PERSEVERANCE from WWW.REVOK1.COM on Vimeo.

KNOWN GALLERY

Only Time Will Tell from Vans The Omega on Vimeo.

Revok tells the story of the wall:

“I just finished a wall in LA with Rime, Askew and Deus from Auckland, Vans from Australia, Score from Berlin, Dabs & Myla, and Witnes…

“Instead of the typical bullshit, everyone decided on the phrase ‘Only time will tell’ with the wall being divided into four sections, with each section representing a change of season… Using that as a starting point, everybody built on that and went in their own direction, some of us getting dumber and more retarded than others.

“The assignment went as follows… VANS/ RIME/WITNES; Winter, with VANS on letter detail painting the phrase ‘ONLY’.

“DABS/MYLA/SCORE; Spring, With SCORE on letter detail painting ‘TIME’.

“REVOK/RIME; Summer, REVOK on letter/background detail painting ‘WILL’

“ASKEW/DEUS; Fall, ASKEW on letter detail painting ‘TELL’.

“I’m pretty proud of the outcome, as I’m sure so is everyone else involved… There are a lot of stupid little details and jokes throughout the wall we all had a lot of laughs coming up with both intentionally and by accident.

“A big thanks to ASKEW for shooting the final shot and putting in the labor stiching it all together.” -Revok.

Here’s Rime’s account of the “stupid little details”;

Dysfunctional points of interest:

* Coked up Charlie Bronson Yeti saying “AAAAARRRGGGHHHH” to a timid young chick.
* Santa says yes to 4LOKO.
* Jesus turning tranny was unintentional. The legs were on the wall first. Intended to come randomly from behind the “Will” piece. Later I sketched up Jesus chillin’ at the beach. Revok said I sketched it too small and too far over to the left. I ended up buffing the first Jesus sketch out and painted it larger and more to the right. It took us a good two hours before we connected the possibility that the legs could be Jesus’s. Tired and late as fuck we laughed about it and embraced the idea… Fuckin’ Tranny Jesus!”

Music Credits:
Jesus I was evil by Darcy Clay
The Flame by Black Keys
Numb by Portishead

The ongoing whitewashing of street art adds to the Los Angeles’ growing reputation as an intolerant mural curator, an unfortunate tag for a city once known as the mural capitol of the world.

One could make a case that it is an 80-year tradition that continued this week.

It dates back to 1932, when David Alfaro Siqueiros unveiled “Tropical America” at El Pueblo, a masterpiece that was quickly painted over by the order of Olvera Street founder Christine Sterling.

Forward to Friday, when a graffiti abatement crew was busy recovering a mural they painted over just days before, under their orders passed down by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety. The street art style work is located at Fairfax and Rosemead, hosted by nearby Known Gallery, and features a background by Renta, highlighted with graffiti style signatures by artists Saber, Os Gemeos, Revok, Norm and Rime. The eradication was preempted by Casey Zoltan from Known, the gallery that first commissioned the piece over a year ago…………………

READ MORE HERE>>>

Photo by ReignmanP

My commute down Fairfax Avenue has pretty heavy street art traffic. One of the recent gems of this stretch of our pot-hole ridden streets is the mural on Fairfax and Rosewood by Retna, Rime, Revok, Norm, Saber, and Os Gêmeos. I was horrified to see an orange Graffiti Control Systems van parked in front of the wall on my way to work Thursday morning. It was being BUFFED! They had just started rolling over Rime’s characters as I drove past. I resisted every impulse to turn back and wrote the tweet in the car when I got to LACMA. I hit “send” the moment I emerged from the underground parking and by the time I got to my desk Saber had hit the timeline with a flood of comments including:

The wall was painted in July 2010, and I remember it was an exciting production. Besides Os Gêmeos being in LA from Brazil, Jeffrey Deitch stopped by and had everyone buzzing about the MoCA show. Almost a year later, LA Taco’s headline pointed out One Week From “Art in the Streets” and Someone is Destroying Art by Famous Artists.

Photo via Melrose & Fairfax

Melrose & Fairfax were the first on the scene and posted the buffing in action. LA Taco looked into Who is Graffiti Control Systems? and posted their Facebook and Yelp pages. It soon became clear that the company had pulled the locked gate off it’s hinges to get to the mural. The buffing was stopped before it covered the whole wall by the outraged owner of the building, actress Julie Newmar. In a comment on the LA Weekly art news blog she said “Trust me, I will get to the bottom of this. The crime will not go unpunished.”

The angry local and street art community took to the web and demanded action. Blogging Los Angeles said “Seeing artwork like this destroyed is disgusting.” FatCap posted about the irresponsible business of buffing legal public art and posed the excellent question, “When are we going to organize ourselves effectively in order to preemptively combat this affront?” By the middle of the day, Graffiti Control Systems Facebook page had been pulled down and their Yelp rating plunged to 1 star. Later, Dennis Romero of LA Weekly spoke to sincerely apologetic company representative, Josh Woods who said “It was a mistake. We did not do it maliciously. It turned out to be misinformation. There was no intent whatsoever to destroy a mural. We were informed by people in the neighborhood that it was an illegal mural and was to come down. As soon as we were informed on site that it was there with permission we ceased removal.”  In the article Wood promised that workers would be back the next day and attempt to remove the layer of paint.

Photo via Melrose & Fairfax

True to his word, I passed workers trying to remove buff from the wall on Friday morning. Woods made an updated statement to the LA Weekly “… We were able to remove all of the paint we applied and as we expected some parts of the mural came off but most is intact and looks to be in pretty good shape. And most importantly the overall aesthetic of the mural has been re-established.” He also reiterated that Graffiti Control Systems would like to foot the bill for touch-up.

With the help of many, this beautiful work of public art has survived. But with the battle won, Graffuturism wondered “Will this be a one time mistake? The significance of this mural and the prominence of the artists involved that were painted over will have some serious aftershocks. The disregard of their artistic merit of this mural so close to the opening of MoCA doesn’t paint a pretty picture for Los Angeles. With this new age of Twitter and its viral strength we could see some very widespread action from the artists and its supporters if this continues.”

The fact that many of these artists are included in MoCA’s Art in the Streets exhibition should not obscure the hostile environment they frequently work in. The future of this art movement will be shaped by the people who love it and as Deitch points out “This is only the beginning.”

- Piper Severance

@PSPublicSquare

It was a great opening, with a large eclectic group of artists. Definitely some heavy hitters.

Saber- “Mini Birdwatching”

First of all, it was an honor to paint with Vulcan. He is one of my all-time favorite writers from NY. Secondly, Montana 94’s are the shit. Straight up, no bullshit, I am happy to use any paint available including mud if it be so. Coming from the days of watery Krylon, chunky solid Rusto, and moldy house paint, its a privilege to be able to use paint that has been developed specifically for writers and artists.

But….. If only there was a manufacturer in the United States? cheaper.??? I had to buy some paint recently at some bourgy art store and three cans cost over 30 fucking dollars. That means an average piece would be over $200! I never let my lack of funds or access to European paint keep me from producing more pieces. Hopefully these competing European spray paint companies could open their eyes to the profitable leviathan sleeping on the Western Hemisphere. It’s unfortunate that the American brands of spray paint won’t acknowledge that the graffiti art culture could be a huge market for them. We are the ones burning through cans, not DIY hipsters and little old crafting ladies.

Buy the way, painting at paid event is not a crime!!!!

Please find something else to do ….

revok1.com

Check out the Known Gallery Blog for a video of the event

Only One Place To Find It! Check It Out!

SABER- One of the last pieces I did in 08, downtown LA

RIME

AROE

REVOK

RISKY