SpanishWHAT: Art in The Streets 2011
WHERE: MOCA, Los Angeles, CA
WHEN: April 17th, 2011 / August 8th, 2011
Photos and Text by Isaac Bonyuet
The beginning of every new art movement will always generate controversy. “Art in the Streets” started on April 2011 at the MOCA with the biggest expo yet dedicated to this urban art in the LA area and with it protests of neighbors and puritans. Shop owners reported to LAPD the increase of illegal tags on the zone. Ironically this exposition, which has been very popular, is bringing good business to those establishments around the museums.
Inside the museum you could find an encyclopedia on this street art; from its beginnings in New York on the 70’s to his expansion throughout Philadelphia, San Francisco and LA. This exhaustive documentation included original samples by Lee Quinones, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Fekner, Keith Haring, between others. Then you entered into an animated zone where they duplicated a New Yorker neighborhood imagined by graffiti artists where you saw how they survived on the urban jungle.
Two complete wings of the museum where dedicated to the great pioneers of modern graffiti. Neck Face, Os Gêmeos, Invader, Shepard Fairey & Banksy. These last two artists with a greater presence on the showing.
Banksy is one of the center figures on the expo. The acclaimed urban artist gave some stencils he used in the past with anecdotic taglines about how he came up with his ideas. His satiric art entertained the public. In 2011 it’s exhausting the argument about graffiti as vandalism, quoting Banksy: Cavemen began their art as graffitis on caves
You got extra points if you saw the urban art around the museum. “Art in the Streets” will generate controversy once again on its next stop in Brooklyn in 2012.
