Reading the Streets: 'Inside Out' by JR

JR installed a specially made photo booth truck smack in the middle of pedestrian-friendly Duffy Square, allowing the countless people who pass through the busy Broadway area every day to be a little less anonymous, at least through May 10 when the exhibit ends.

The booth produces a 3-by-4 poster-size portrait. The black-and-white posters are then overlaid on a backdrop designed by JR, creating an all-photo plaza. If a recent Wednesday evening visit was any indication, is a hit with visitors and residents alike, with lines extending the length of the plaza. The photo booth does great work; everyone in the pictures—whether serious or silly—looked very good.

The project, which has been done in cities around the world before coming to New York, was a result of JR winning the TED prize in 2011. He used the prize money to arrange an exhibit where the visitors become the artists, and he more of the curator, providing a canvas and some structure for the viewers, but ultimately allowing them to become both artist and subject, with some help from the photo booth truck.

The New York debut of Inside Out also follows the Tribeca Film Festival premier of a documentary, Inside Out: The People’s Art Project, on JR’s experience bringing the exhibit around the world. Those who can’t make it to Duffy Square or to the festival can watch documentary on HBO on May 20 at 9 p.m.

Reading the Streets: 'Stop Telling Women to Smile'

NEW YORK – Last fall residents of Bed-Stuy, Clinton Hill, Bushwick and Williamsburg in Brooklyn began to notice a different kind of street art, this time with an activist bent, among the colorful tags, murals and wheatpastes that generally grace neighborhood walls. The posters, by teacher, oil painter and illustrator Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, put in images and words what many women wish they could say out loud to men who cat call them on the street: “My name is not Baby.” “Women are not seeking your validation.” “Stop telling women to smile.”

Each poster has a gray and white charcoal portrait of a woman above those statements, giving a face to their powerful demands. The portraits are just as direct as the statements, with the barest hint of gray shadows illuminating the otherwise sharp features of the subjects. There’s no abstraction here, in the messages or in the images.

The posters disappeared when the weather got colder. As Fazlalizadeh told the New York Times, cold weather is not a friend to wheatpaste. Fortunately, just as the warmer weather has returned so have the posters, most recently on the corner of Tompkins Avenue and Halsey Street in Bed-Stuy. The posters were also displayed at Fresthetic, a gallery in Williamsburg, in an exhibit called “Stop Telling Women to Smile.”

Of course, no one exhibit is going to stop street harassment on its own, but it’s nice to see an artist, and a female one at that, using the positive force of street art to combat the negative presence of street harassment.

Reading the Streets: Cost and Revs

NEW YORK – Cost’s and Revs’ cryptic, wheatpasted messages graced public walls, lampposts, and construction sites all over the five boroughs during the 1990s. They were prominent enough that the New York Times profiled them. Their posters featured their names in black or white block letters, with a cryptic message above it, like “lousy kid Revs” or “hello my name is Cost.” Were they artists? Vandals? Part of a larger plan? Street art is often colorful, bright and full of pictures; why where these two devoted to simple black and white words?

Before the Times, or even other graffiti artists could fully answer these questions, all of a sudden the messages were gone. They got arrested. There was a graffiti crackdown. Twenty years later, they’re back, resurfacing in Williamsburg, the Lower East Side, and even at a recent street art auction.

Spotting them last year was like getting a visit from an old friend. I first saw the revived Cost on North Seventh Street in Williamsburg, right off the Bedford Avenue main drag, a pope of trash Cost sticker nestled into a wall that included a cartoon face of a man with a menacing, teeth-baring smile, and lots of red and black tags. I thought it was a fluke, until last week at a preview for a street art auction at Doyle New York, there was a street-side newspaper box covered in green and pink spray paint, and Cost’s tags, which he made for the magazine Showpaper in 2010.

Revs is making a slower comeback, appearing in just one wheatpaste sticker featuring an accusing middle finger, as if making a preemptive strike at anyone who doubts them.

New York has changed a lot since these enigmatic artists first caught the city’s attention, but even in the age of the Internet, of street artists collaborating with fashion brands and being displayed in galleries, it’s refreshing how seamlessly Cost and Revs slipped back into the scene, without a press release or a tweet, just wheatpaste and ingenuity.

Reading the Streets: Siren's stenciled skulls

NEW YORK – Matt Siren’s stenciled skulls, which have been popping up occasionally around the city since 2011, have appeared once more in the East Village. This time they’re gracing an eternally under construction storefront on Avenue B near East Third Street. Two posters are sacked on top of each other with Siren’s name printed in blue block letters on bottom.

There’s a lot of competition for viewers’ eyes on this site, including the ever-increasing collection of tags that surround the wall, and the unsigned black and white cat-like face on the opposite door panel, whose big ears are outlined in orange. Despite the competition, Siren’s work commands our attention. The wheat pasted creations feature a bottom heavy skull, with narrow eyes that remain menacing despite the absence of pupils. The jaw and cheekbones seem determined to break out from the rest of the face, as if in a civil war with the nose and forehead.

The teeth are mostly short and rectangular, and relatively placid compared to the rest of the poster. There is also a zigzag of sea foam-green spray paint overlaying the two skulls, like a fresh outfit for spring.

Siren is arguably best known for his Ghost Girl stickers and signs. Inspired by the video game favorite Ms. Pacman, she has side-swooped black bangs, large eyes with full lashes, pale skin, with a white flower in her hair. Ghost Girl was so popular that toy company My Plastic Heart collaborated with Siren in 2010 to produce 3-D versions of her. A previous version of a skull, this time with crossbones also became a toy. Perhaps if fans are lucky, this one will too.